That was my suggested headline for my latest opinion piece, which ran in Australian online magazine Crikey under the sub-editors (blander IMO) choice of “We don’t need a nuclear renaissance. We need a solid plan on renewables”
The idea of the piece was to respond to Exhibit A in the case for nuclear power, the successful French construction program of the 1970s and 1980s, under the Messmer Plan. I’ve previously written about the way this program depended on the power of the French state at the time, which can’t easily be replicated today. A little while ago, I was suddenly struck by the thought that the Messmer Plan would have been much more effective if it were applied to solar and wind energy rather than nuclear.
John Quiggin 
I look at my comments in Mesmerised by Messmer. I was right then. I am still right. No prizes for being right in this society. There are only prizes for being a wrecker and a pillager. Look of the wreck of QANTAS and look at all the corporate wreckers who walk away with massive payouts after wrecking companies and ruining people’s lives, worker’s lives, family’s lives and civilization’s chances of continuing.
Of course, a society which rewards its most destructive people and its most destructive systems and procedures is utterly doomed. Would you trust this Australian neoliberal society to run a nuclear power station? It can’t even run an airline. It can’t stop a new disease. It can’t run safe hospitals. It can’t provide housing. It can’t stop the crime caused by its social exclusion. It can’t stop climate change. It can’t do anything.
Maybe when people realize neoliberalism can’t do anything but catabolize what social democracy built they will be ready for a new political economy. Maybe, and let’s hope it is not already far too late.
Did anyone see the Ted O’Brien train-wreck on ABC’s Q&A on Monday night (Sep 18)? The video and transcript are available at:
https://www.abc.net.au/qanda/monday-18-september-2023/102832640
Giles Parkinson at RenewEconomy provided a scathing commentary in yesterday’s (Sep 19) piece headlined The stunning stupidity of the Coalition nuclear push is now in plain view.
I fear there are far too many ignorant people here in Australia that are willing to swallow the dangerous propaganda that the Coalition is propagating on nuclear, that’s IMO really about delay, delay, delay to keep coal & gas running for as long as possible, at the risk of worsening Australia’s energy security & national security.
Thanks for not giving up on rebutting nuclear JQ. Many have.
Compared to Nuclear, Renewables do not seem to have:
– Governments overthrowing democracies
– Private & State military necessary to protect renewables
– IP transfers to war lords, fanatics, coup leaders
– decommissioning and waste problems
– support of military industrial complexes
– extreme subsidies
– weapons
– extreme risks
– brain drain to solve. .. puck anything else
JQ said “Still, it is important to understand that all these processes come at a cost”… And also the worst opportunity costs in the known universe;
– Nuclear Weapons.
– Military Industrial Complex.
– Capital recycling, leading to…
– Social Losses. See Aveva below.
– State Military units boosted to protect investments. See Aveva below.
Can you list any more opportunity costs categories I’ve missed?
Nuclear wink wink “clean baseload power” has all the above problems and has since day one.
!!!
Subsidies hiding real costs;
“The actual cost of generating electricity by nuclear power is not published by EDF or the French government but is estimated to be between €59/MWh and €83/MWh.[69]”
Wikipedia – Nuclear power in France
69 – “The Cost of Nuclear Electricity: France after Fukushima” 13 Nov 2013 – Nicolas Boccard
!!!
“Uranium Mining in Niger”
Chain Reaction #119, Nov 2013,
“Areva and uranium mining in Niger
…
“Areva has been mining uranium in Niger for more than 40 years and operates two mines in the north of the country through affiliated companies Somair (Arlit mine) and Cominak (the nearby Akokan mine). Areva is also working to start up a third uranium mine in Niger, at Imouraren.
“In July 2007, rebels attacked the compound of an electricity company that powers the area’s towns and the Arlit and Akokan uranium mines, but government troops fought them off. Around the same time, rebels made a series of attacks on government and mining interests, killing 15 government soldiers and abducting over 70 more.
“Four French workers were kidnapped in 2008 by Tuareg-led rebels and released several days later. The rebel Niger Justice Movement (MNJ) said the French were seized to demonstrate to foreign mining companies that the Niger government could not guarantee the security of their operations.
“In August 2008, gunmen killed one civilian and wounded another in an attack on a lorry used for transporting uranium from north Niger to a port in Benin.
“In 2010 in Arlit, seven employees of Areva and one of its contractors were kidnapped. Four of them, all French nationals, are still being held. The group has repeatedly threatened to execute them in retaliation for the French-led intervention in Mali.
“After the 2010 kidnapping, the French government sent special military forces to protect Areva’s uranium mines in Niger, supplementing private security companies which mostly employ former military personnel. The use of French military forces to protect commercial interests led to renewed criticisms of French colonialism in Africa. (France ruled Nigeria as a colony for 60 years, ending in 1960.) In any case, French military forces and Nigerien counter-terrorism units failed to prevent the May 23 attack.
“An Areva employee said questions were still being asked as to how the May 23 attack could have happened considering “the impressive military and security apparatus” that was in place.
…
“… Yet the government has also complained about Areva’s behaviour. In 2007, the government expelled Dominique Pin, head of Areva Niger, from the country. In February 2013, President Mahamadou Issoufou said the government intends to renegotiate its partnership with Areva for the exploitation of uranium resources.”
foe dot org dot au /uranium-mining-niger
Wikipedia “Areva S.A. is a French multinational group specializing in nuclear power” … “As a part of the restructuring program following its insolvency … “Areva S.A. became wholly state-owned by the French government, remaining responsible only for the liabilities related to the Olkiluoto 3 project in Finland and holding a 40% stake in Orano.”
“Europe’s First EPR: 13 Years Behind Schedule, Olkiluoto‑3 in Finland Starts Up
…
“… under a unique arrangement that makes them liable for the plant’s indefinite capital costs for an indefinite period, whether or not they get the electricity—a capex “take or pay contract”—in addition to the additional billions incurred by AREVA under the fixed price contract. With the confirmation of the settlement and TVO disclosing its total investment, it is possible to estimate the cost of the Finnish EPR. TVO’s current capital expenditure assumptions and the effect of the settlement agreement put its total investment at around €5.5 billion (US$6.42 billion); on top of this, AREVA had losses of €5.5 billion, for a total of €11 billion (US$12.4 billion) compared with the initial estimate cost in 2003 of “around €3 billion”.
…
worldnuclearreport dot org
“/Europe-s-First-EPR-13-Years-Behind-Schedule-Olkiluoto-3-in-Finland-Starts-Up.html”
!!!
“This is a summary about Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan’s decades-long involvement in the illegal transfer of nuclear materials and technologies.”
MICHAEL LAUFER
SEPTEMBER 07, 2005
…
“The complete extent of Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan’s decades-long involvement in the illegal transfer of nuclear materials and technologies is not known. The details are submerged in Khan’s work over the past thirty years, which has included both the development of Pakistan’s uranium enrichment capabilities and a complex international network of experts, suppliers, and front companies that have aided Iran, Libya, North Korea, and potentially others. Since we do not know exactly what Khan did, we cannot know when he did it. As more information is released from those who have questioned Khan and his network partners, a more complete image of the nuclear black market will emerge. This chronology summarizes what we now know.”
…
carnegieendowment dot org
“/2005/09/07/a.-q.-khan-nuclear-chronology-pub-17420
!!!
I could keep quoting negative externalities and opportunity costs for a month.
Nuclear – too slow, too expensive, too socially & politically & financially destabalising, AND the public picks up the losses and gets bad government, bad military and bad futures.
Interestingly, Messmer himself was not all a standard-issue French technocrat from the grandes écoles like the architects and executives of the nuclear plan but a very hard-boiled colonial soldier and administrator.
From the Wikipedia bio: ” In the outbreak of World War II, he was sous-lieutenant of the 12th regiment of Senegalese tirailleurs, and refused France’s capitulation after the defeat. He then hijacked in Marseille an Italian cargo ship (the Capo Olmo), along with his friend Jean Simon (a future French General), and sailed first to Gibraltar, then London and engaged himself in the Free French Forces as a member of the 13th Demi-Brigade of the French Foreign Legion.[….]
[In 1956,] Messmer was nominated as governor general of Cameroun, where a civil war had started the preceding year following the outlawing of the independentist Union of the Peoples of Cameroon (UPC) in July 1955. He initiated a decolonization process and imported the counter-revolutionary warfare methods theorized in Indochina and implemented during the Algerian War (1954–62) […] Mao Zedong’s people’s war was reversed in an attempt to separate the civilian population from the guerrilla. In that aim, the local population was rounded up in guarded villages located on the main roads that were controlled by the French Army.”
Yup, these are the kind of people you need to get things done in a hurry. Just don’t get in their way.
PS: More on the piracy, in French: https://www.france-libre.net/affaire-capo-olmo/ The diversion was the captain’s idea, so the enterprising pair did not actually seize the ship at gunpoint. The trio did not consult the rest of the crew.
I left out another detail of Messmer’s cv: he “was a prisoner of war of the Vietminh, during two months in 1945”.