The Greens return to war against the “illusion” of nuclear power – Teller Report

“The nuclear lobby has won a battle, but…it will lose the war!”. The Greens don’t be cunning with this immediate observation: by getting too lost in ego quarrels, surreal delusions and other macho witchcraft trials, they have too much deserted the fight against “the Nuk” as they say. And left the field to the “nuclear lobby”, which, according to the Green MEP David Cormand, invented an argument: “it is the atom that would save the climate… whereas this one has in no way reduced fossil fuel consumption!

The argument does not weigh less in the public debate. “It is an illusion, according to the Green MP Charles Fournier who now participates in a working group “to dispel false pretenses and counter nucleocratic propaganda”. A tough task, “because you have to face the knowledgeable who do not want to doubt and seem everything know as Marc Jancovici, engineer and successful author with his comic strip (Le monde sans fin) with “atomic” success: more than 700,000 copies!

So, counter-arguments, they furbish them. Starting with the reminder of “a few truths passed over in silence today!” It is true that we no longer wonder how we will cool nuclear power plants with dry rivers! We don’t wonder much either about the fate of nuclear waste that we don’t know how to treat or reuse! We no longer dwell on questioning the “staggering, exorbitant” financial cost of building EPRs, nor on the technological weaknesses of the power stations which, with their breakdowns and failures, “produce intermittent energy, while we concentrate all the charges on the wind power”.

And to chain these interpellations that we no longer want to hear: “do we even have the financial means and the techniques for supposedly audacious programs but which we are careful not to quantify? And in satisfactory security conditions? ” Or again: “do not the construction of new EPRs, their operating and maintenance conditions produce much more CO2 than alternative energies?”

Fight against the “archaeo-nucleocrats”

The debate on all these points would not be, according to these Greens, “avoided for a very long time”. It would be all the less so since another questioning is needed which has only been sketched out recently: “with the war in Ukraine, we can clearly see the risks posed by the multiplication of power stations which are becoming so many targets of potential enemies and so many dangers for humanity that we wanted to believe had been overcome”.

To further strengthen their argument, the Green MEPs commissioned the Finnish University of Lappeenranta, which submitted a report studying three energy mix scenarios to deal with electricity growth at European level without CO2 emissions in 2035, 2040 and 2050. The cost will be high in any case (in the region of 200 billion euros), but for the researchers, the result is not in doubt: “solar and wind voltaic panels are the dominant sources of electricity production thanks to their competitiveness in terms of cost in the three scenarios”! There will still be progress to be made, particularly in the storage of electricity, but in this case, the ecologists, despite their frequent left-leaning deviations, are not against progress! They refer to the “nucleocrats” the accusation of “archaism”: “the archaeos are those, all these elitist obscurantists who do not want to see the failure in which they are bogged down”, pleads David Corman. But to recognize “that we will have to wake up, fight the battle. Because we fell asleep”.

A “secondary” atom

After Fukushima, in particular, then in front of the patent failures of EDF and the financial abyss dug by these “incompetent competent”, the cause seemed heard to us. Nay!

Our elected Greens thus note, “we are even invaded by fake news, for example on Germany which would have made the bad choice by closing its nuclear power plants. While they are getting ahead of renewable energies and that in 20 years, we will be the ones picking it up”.

Indeed, this is not what is put forward these days when we see that Germany is paying very dearly for having yielded to the Greens by closing its power stations and when it has to do without Russian gas. due to invasion in Ukraine. Suddenly, partial and momentary reopening coal mines and reinforced conviction in France that nuclear would have its place, “central” in the energy mix. Except that, for ecologists, economic and technological failures condemn the atom to be only “secondary”. And to add: “on a number of important subjects we were treated like lunatics before recognizing that we were right before everyone else. And on energy, we will see who the irresponsible huluberlus will be tomorrow”!

See you in ten years…