R10: Nuclear Energy Stands Against our Values

The popularisation of the climate issue over the last twenty years has provided
a window of opportunity for the pro-nuclear camp to make significant progress in
the cultural battle around this question. At the same time, the anti-nuclear
struggle is running out of steam in some European countries, and the pro-nuclear
fable is even taking root among some parties claiming to be green.

Far from being an inescapable situation, it is possible to resist this by
reorganising the anti-nuclear fight around its political implications. The aim
of this resolution is to highlight the political dimension of the rejection of
nuclear power, by shifting the framework of the debate and demonstrating its
incompatibility with the values of political ecology. This resolution is set in
the continuity of a previous FYEG resolution “for an end to nuclear power”,
adopted during the 2011 General Assembly.

The pro-nuclear lobby has developed an imaginary view presenting this source of
energy as deterrestrated (Pottin, A. 2024), i.e. out of touch with the concrete,
material realities of its production. This myth makes it possible, for example,
to ignore the dependence of nuclear energy on imported uranium, the problem of
nuclear waste and its burial, and the difficulties involved in dismantling power
plants.

The architecture, mode of governance and inertia associated with the use of
nuclear energy need to rely on a fundamentally centralised state model. It's no
coincidence that it has been able to develop so widely in a country like France.
Through the way it is developed, its links with military nuclear power, its
violence against the Global South, and its relationship with State secrecy,
civil nuclear power is inherently linked to a nationalist and sovereignist
logic. France for instance used some of its former colonial empire’s territories
to test out nuclear weapons, such as in Algeria or Polynesia, contaminating both
the environment and the people through radiation and nuclear waste. This is a
reminder that what is needed to develop nuclear technology comes at a cost,
which is always paid by the most vulnerable populations and environments.
Moreover, the contemporary pro-nuclear discourse doesn’t take into account the
impact of such energy production in certain parts of the Global south, where
crucial resources for nuclear energy such as uranium are extracted, contributing
to a neo-colonialist approach of the “green” transition, a path that Europe is
sadly already taking.

Thus, the choice of nuclear power is intrinsically incompatible with a
federalist and democratic political organisation on a national and European
scale, which FYEG is calling for. On the other hand, renewable energies - in
terms of the infrastructure required, the timelines of projects implementation
and the decision-making scales involved - are far more decentralised and
compatible with a commons-based logic, the implementation of which can be
thoroughly debated and accepted.

In a broader European context, the inclusion of nuclear power in 2022 in the EU
Taxonomy for sustainable activities is a clear success for the pro-nuclear lobby
and the progression of its agenda. This is an alarming signal that should
encourage us to take up the anti-nuclear fight once again. The war in Ukraine
led by Russia made us realise the deeply rooted dependencies that our different
energy systems have with this regime. It opened a breach, and new voices started
to stand for nuclear energy on the grounds of our common energy sovereignty.
But, would it be acceptable to trade one dependency for another ? While we
understand how complex the situation is, especially for countries in the Eastern
part of Europe, we believe there is another way possible, than building a
society which relies on the nuclear power system. This is not a desirable
future. On the contrary, we believe that this crisis underlines the need to
build solidarity between every region of Europe and to outline new paths towards
post-growth.

To ensure the acceptability of the development of nuclear energy and to silence
dissenting voices, a particularly violent security apparatus, comparable to that
used in the fight against terrorism, has been deployed all over Europe. In the
aftermath of Chernobyl’s disaster (1986), the use of lies and figures
manipulation was the preferred choice of different regimes, such as the USSR or
France. In Spain or Denmark, radical green organisations have been considered
terrorist organisations for opposing nuclear energy; in France, some activists
have been killed, such as Vital Michalon in 1977. The repression of the anti-
nuclear movement even seems to have been a testing ground for the repression and
criminalisation of the rest of the environmental movement, which is on the rise
nowadays with the “environmental backlash”.

Nuclear energy is extremely expensive for the EU member states where it is
developed, and thus for taxpayers and its population as a whole. The costs range
from the construction of plants to their dismantling, also including waste
management and catastrophe prevention. Nuclear power plants’ constructions lack
reliability both in terms and costs and duration: for Olkiluoto nuclear plant in
the city of Eurajoki in Finland, it went from €3 to €11 billion (Schneider, M. &
Froggatt, A. 2019); for the one in Flamanville in the north of France, the costs
were multiplied by 6, from €3,3 to €19,1 billion, and the duration of the
construction by 4, from 5 to 17 years (Breteau, P. 2024). While austerity
policies are methodically devastating whole branches of its public services,
some European countries are blindly spending billions of euros on opening new
nuclear power plants, which take several decades to actually start producing
energy. Opting for nuclear power therefore means taking an exceptionally
significant budgetary decision, both for current and future generations, without
offering a truly democratic and transparent debate.

The development of the aforementioned ‘deterrestrated imaginary’ has enabled
pro-nuclear energy companies and the defenders of the so-called “green growth”
to make people think that “green capitalism” is possible, thanks to nuclear
power. Through a climate-centric prism, and ignoring the concrete implications
in terms of infrastructure, waste management, the safety of this energy, as well
as biodiversity and adaptation to climate change; we are told that it is
possible to maintain our standard of living and of producing by relying on
nuclear energy. This way of reasoning, similar to the ‘There Is No Alternative’
logic, shuts the door on any true post-growth horizon.

Nuclear energy is only draped in environmental qualities because of the now
rather-acknowledged climate crisis. Presenting nuclear energy as a “green
opportunity” is not happening out of any sincere concern for environmental
issues, but because it offers a convenient reprieve to capitalism.

In reality, nuclear energy is a techno-solutionist delusion, likely to steal
away from us a lot of -extremely precious- time to tackle the environmental
crisis adequately. We therefore believe it is necessary to go beyond nuclear
power and to move away from it, if we are to achieve our political and social
vision for the future.

Therefore, we, the Federation of Young European Greens, and Young Green
political organisations all over Europe: