Anti-nuclear activism distracts from the climate transition

WISE's own figures undermine their argument

WISE presents some striking figures about the Dutch situation in their article:

• 60 FTE of central government civil servants work on nuclear energy
• Only 0.5 FTE works on enforcing energy saving obligations
• EUR 65 million has been reserved for provincial SMR studies

WISE concludes from this that nuclear energy "distracts." But they omit the context — presumably deliberately.

The real distraction lies elsewhere:

The Dutch electricity grid is running out of capacity. Not because of nuclear energy — there is not a single nuclear power plant under construction — but because of the unpredictable peaks from wind and solar energy that the grid cannot handle. The cost to resolve this: nearly 200 billion euros, according to NOS based on calculations by grid operators. That is three thousand times more than the EUR 65 million for SMR studies that WISE is so concerned about.

But turn it around. Why should provinces be enthusiastic about wind turbines?

• Wind turbines cause landscape disruption on an enormous scale
• They produce intermittently — on average 25-35% of their nameplate capacity
• They require fossil backup for periods without wind
• They cause grid congestion problems costing billions
• Public resistance is enormous and growing

That provinces prefer to wait for a more compact, more reliable technology is not evidence of "distraction" — it is rational decision-making. The fact that WISE presents this as a problem says more about WISE than about nuclear energy.

The time argument: "not before 2038-2045"

WISE's strongest argument appears to be the time argument: nuclear energy cannot come online before 2038-2045, and the Netherlands has committed to climate-neutral electricity by 2035. Nuclear energy therefore comes "too late."

This argument has three fundamental problems:

1. Wind and solar will not achieve a reliable system by 2035 either. An electricity grid running entirely on wind and solar requires seasonal storage on a scale that does not exist. No country in the world has achieved this. The required battery capacity, hydrogen infrastructure or other storage technology is not available, not planned, and not funded.

2. The grid reinforcement will not be ready by 2035 either. The EUR 200 billion in grid reinforcement needed for a renewable grid will not be completed by 2035. Grid operators speak of lead times extending to 2040 and beyond.

3. It CAN be done faster — if the political will is there. France built 56 reactors in 15 years. South Korea built APR-1400 reactors in 5-6 years. The claim that it "cannot be done" is a self-fulfilling prophecy: it is precisely the endless political debate — fuelled by organisations such as WISE — that causes the delay.

1. Anti-nuclear campaigns have led to the closure or non-construction of nuclear power plants in Germany, Italy, Austria and Belgium. That capacity has been replaced by fossil fuels in virtually every case.

2. Legal proceedings against nuclear power plants have delayed or halted projects in dozens of countries. Every reactor that is stopped means years of additional fossil emissions.

3. Political energy spent on the debate about nuclear energy — for and against — is energy not spent on actually reducing emissions.

4. WISE itself devotes its entire organisation to fighting the cleanest energy source known to humanity. Every euro donated to WISE is a euro that does not go towards actual climate action.

And how successful is WISE, actually? Their petition "Not a penny for nuclear energy" had, at the time of their article, just 1,312 signatures — 77% of a modest target of 1,700. Even the Dutch public appears to no longer be buying the story.

The fossil connection

Anti-nuclear organisations rarely speak about it, but the fossil fuel industry directly benefits from anti-nuclear activism. WISE is not alone in this.

Greenpeace has been campaigning against nuclear energy since the 1970s — the same Greenpeace from which co-founder Patrick Moore later distanced himself with the words: "We made the mistake of lumping nuclear energy in with nuclear weapons." Greenpeace co-finances the World Nuclear Industry Status Report (WNISR), the most cited anti-nuclear report in the world.

Milieudefensie (Friends of the Earth Netherlands) publishes a series of arguments against nuclear energy on its website, every single one of which can be refuted — from "it takes too long" to "it is too expensive." The same arguments that this article and the nine preceding articles debunk with data.

The Heinrich Böll Stiftung — the think tank of the German Greens — published a report in 2023 by Jan Haverkamp (also WISE/Greenpeace) entitled "How the European Nuclear Lobby Undermines the EU's Energy Future." The report is not peer-reviewed and claims that the UNECE life cycle analysis of nuclear energy is "nuclear lobby" — a claim that was personally rebutted by the lead author of that study, Thomas Gibon.

The pattern is consistent: the same names, the same organisations, the same non-scientific arguments, circulating between WISE, Greenpeace, Milieudefensie and the Heinrich Böll Stiftung.

As the Clean Power for All wiki puts it:

"It suits the fossil fuel industry just fine if you keep believing that nuclear energy is expensive, dirty and dangerous, because the longer you believe that, the longer they can keep selling you coal, oil and gas."

No conspiracy, just economic logic. Nuclear energy is the only proven technology that can fully replace fossil baseload. Whoever blocks nuclear energy protects the business model of the fossil fuel industry — whether consciously or not.

France decarbonised its electricity grid in 15 years with nuclear energy. Germany spent 25 years and more than half a trillion euros on the alternative and is still 15-17 times dirtier. The Netherlands is struggling with a grid reaching capacity, EUR 200 billion in reinforcement costs, and an energy bill four times higher than necessary — not because of nuclear energy, but because of the lack of it.

Anti-nuclear activism has cost the world decades of avoidable CO₂ emissions. It has protected the fossil fuel industry, driven up energy bills, and caused climate damage that can no longer be reversed.

WISE's article is not an analysis. It is projection. They accuse nuclear energy of precisely what their own activism has been causing for fifty years.

The question is not whether nuclear energy distracts from the climate transition. The question is how much damage anti-nuclear activism has already caused — and how much more damage we are willing to accept.

Sources