Netherlands Goes Nuclear In Massive Atomic Humanist Victory! - 2021

Nuclear Power Industry

Shellenberger reported in mid-2021 that four years ago, the conventional wisdom in Europe was that the continent was transitioning to renewable energies. The cost of electricity from solar panels, wind turbines, and natural gas had declined significantly, and lithium batteries could soon replace natural gas to provide energy when the sun wasn’t shining and the wind wasn’t blowing. And, held the consensus view, nuclear energy was going away; the main question was how soon existing nuclear plants could be dismantled.

Today, the conventional wisdom has changed radically. Energy and electricity prices are at record levels due to Europe’s over-reliance on renewables, inadequate supplies of nuclear energy, and shortages of oil and gas due to under-investment in oil and gas exploration and production. Carbon emissions in Germany rose 25% in the first half of 2020 due in large part to a 25% decline in wind, underscoring the unreliable nature of weather-dependent renewables. In response, both France and Britain have promised a major expansion of nuclear energy.

Not everything has changed. Both Germany and Belgium are moving full speed ahead with plans to shut down their nuclear power plants, and both nations, along with Austria and Switzerland, are lobbying to exclude nuclear energy from the list of energy technologies the European Union will categorize as sustainable. At the same time, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel said recently that she believes the EU will nonetheless count nuclear as sustainable in its taxonomy, resistance is growing in both Germany and Belgium to closing nuclear plants, and a new YouGov poll finds that over half of Germans say nuclear should remain part of their nation’s climate policy.

The strongest evidence yet that the conventional wisdom has changed came yesterday from the Netherlands. Its government announced that it will not only keep its existing nuclear power plant operating but also build two additional ones. To signal its seriousness, the government has allocated €5 billion for new plant construction. “We did a market consultation recently,” the Netherlands’ State Secretary for Economic Affairs and Climate, Dilan YeÅŸilgöz-Zegerius, told me yesterday, “and parties are definitely interested.”

Dutch pro-nuclear activists were ecstatic. “All year there was the suggestion that the government would merely be launching more ‘research’ into the role of nuclear,” said Joris Van Dorp, co-founder of the Nuclear Pride Coalition, “but now they have gone all the way by putting up the money needed to actually realize projects.”

The transformation of public opinion and conventional wisdom in the Netherlands is striking. “Four years ago, RePlanet Nederland was the only civilian movement to speak out in favor of nuclear energy,” said Olguita Oudendijk, director of the pro-nuclear NGO, “and we were excluded from the Climate Agreement negotiations.” Fast-forward four years later, and the demands of RePlanet, formerly known as the Ecomodernisme Foundation, are at the center of government climate and energy policy.

Explained YeÅŸilgöz-Zegerius, “Since my party, the VVD, started the discussion on nuclear energy at the end of 2018, there has been growing support for nuclear energy amongst Dutch people. While some political parties like the Greens still try to tackle climate change with ideology rather than rationality, other political parties have changed their views, based on the facts, rather than ideology. If everything goes well, the new plants will be ready by 2035.”

What happened? Why did a once-marginal cause, pro-nuclear environmentalism, move from the margins to the center of Dutch energy policy? Why did facts trump ideology? The answers to those questions matter not just to people who care about Europe, energy, and climate change, but to anybody who is interested in how social change really happens.

The proximate cause of the Dutch government’s decision to go nuclear is Europe’s energy crisis. Day-ahead electricity prices yesterday were a record for Germany and most of Europe. “The tide of the electricity crisis continues to rise,” noted Bloomberg Energy reporter Javier Blas, “and will keep rising into the winter.” And, notes Blas, “we’re just 15 days into winter, with another 75 days to go. Natural gas futures are being traded in Europe’s main hub, the TTF in Netherlands, at a price eight times higher today than a year ago, their highest levels in over a decade, and 10 times higher than U.S. natural gas prices.

High energy prices are now harming the entire global economy. Prices are rising globally. Dutch inflation rose to 5.2% in November, the highest in 40 years, with natural gas and electricity prices responsible for nearly half of the increase. In response to price rises, The Bank of England this morning became the first major central bank to raise interest rates. The Bank’s action surprised many economists but the U.S. Federal Reserve yesterday had signaled that it would make three rate increases next year.  

But high electricity prices alone are not enough for governments to go nuclear, as Germany and Belgium show. Another major factor has been the lack of good alternatives. “People have rebelled against the nuisance caused by land-based wind turbines,” explained Oudendijk, “and against the biomass plants that were to replace the coal- and gas-fired power stations.” Van Dorp agreed. “As government officials published the details about how they intended to reach 100% renewables,” he explained, “it became clear that this is not what most citizens had been imagining. The sheer scale of the challenge became clearer, and resistance to biomass, wind turbines, and ‘solar fields’ is increasing.”

The Netherlands has also been moving away from natural gas, the drilling for which can cause earthquakes and other disruptions to residents. In its announcement, the Dutch government said that it would stop producing gas from the Groningen region “because the safety of Groningen residents is paramount.” The Dutch government also expressed wariness at becoming overly dependent on foreign gas imports. But none of this fully explains why The Netherlands went nuclear. After all, it could have done what Belgium and many other European nations are doing, which is to simply import more natural gas from Russia, promise to reduce emissions sometime in the future, and burn more coal in the short-term. That strategy has worked politically for Germany, Belgium, and other European nations.

Part of the explanation is cultural. The Dutch are different from Germany and Belgium in being highly practical. One-third of the nation is below sea level and some parts a full seven meters below. Adapting to life below sea level resulted in the valuing not just of rationality but practical rationality, namely engineering. This culture allowed the The Netherlands to become a dominant naval and trading power and eventually very wealthy. When Shellenberger asked Oudendijk about the difference in attitudes between the Dutch and the nation’s famously romantic, anti-nuclear German neighbors, she said, “We Dutch are basically very rational people. We just want to solve the problem.”

Despite their great wealth, the Dutch, who number just 17 million, have also retained a psychological toughness that some nations lose as they grow wealthy. In its national museum, the Rijksmuseum, there is a room of large, action-oriented paintings of Dutchmen in gunboats at war with their enemies, while in a neighboring room there are paintings of tranquil family life. The sense I had was that the Dutch understood that peace requires security.

That sense was reinforced later the same day when Shellenberger met a Dutch friend for tea. He told him about his visit to the Reiksmuseum and the emphasis that YeÅŸilgöz-Zegerius’s husband, Rene Zegerius, a social worker, put on “tough love,” and using carrots and sticks, to improve behaviors among mentally ill and drug addicted people. My friend smiled and nodded. “We have an expression,” which he said in Dutch. “It means” —here he paused and looked up —“‘Soft doctors make wounds stink.’ Does that make sense?”

“Do you mean doctors who are so afraid to hurt their patients fail to properly clean wounds, and they become infected and stink?” Shellenberger asked

“Yes,” he said. “Do you have that expression in the US?” Shellenberger told him we didn’t but that perhaps we should.

Shellenberger first visited Netherlands in 2018 to convene pro-nuclear activists from across Europe to create the Nuclear Pride Coalition. I returned in early 2019 at the invitation of YeÅŸilgöz-Zegerius, then a member of parliament, to give a talk at the Delft University of Technology. Afterwards, while driving back to Amsterdam with Dilan and Rene, he explained to me why there were so few unsheltered homeless people in Amsterdam, and how the city had, in the 1990s, shut down an open drug scene nearly identical to the ones that now plague San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, and other liberal American cities. Our conversation helped inspire me to write San Fransicko, and I returned that fall to do more research.

During all three of my visits the national news media covered me and my speeches more than the news media in any other nation. Favorable coverage by mainstream Dutch media included long segments (in English) by two of the nation’s most influential TV journalists. Arjen Lubach, the John Oliver of Dutch TV, in late 2018 did a 20-minute segment that educated viewers on nuclear power’s necessity and safety while making sly, sexual puns. (The segment was translated into English.) By contrast, when Shellenberger arrived in neighboring Belgium in 2019 to give a speech on nuclear energy, all three national newspapers attacked him, including personally.

It wasn’t all positive. Upon arriving in The Netherlands for Shellenberger's second visit, in 2019, an anti-nuclear group wheat-pasted posters of me across Amsterdam. They said, “Schellenberger [sic] is a fraud! Do Not Feed! He is Dr. Strangelove. Do not trust him!” The posters quoted me saying, “I’m very successful in preventing premature closures of US nuclear plants” and, with a mushroom cloud in the background, “To save nuclear power we have to love the bomb.”

But if anything the attacks only drew attention to his visit, and for the most part the Dutch policymakers, journalists, and others Shellenberger met with were open-minded, particularly after Shellenberger assured them that he do not think The Netherlands needs to acquire nuclear weapons, since the nation is already well-protected under the nuclear shield provided by the U.S., France, and Britain.

Shellenberger attributed part of the Dutch media’s greater open-mindedness to Oudendijk and Van Dorp, who would not only telephone and email reporters before Shellenberger arrived, and urge them to speak with him, but have also aggressively laid out the cold hard facts of energy to policymakers and on social media. “As a result of the rebellion [against renewables], expert calculations, and civilian movements that applied political pressure, and knew how to reach the media,” said Oudendijk, “nuclear power increasingly made the news in a more positive manner.”

Politicians are highly responsive to the media, which often reflects as much as it shapes public opinion, and that was the case in The Netherlands. “This [news media coverage] eventually caused the left-wing party, D66, to change its views,” explained Oudendijk. “And that in turn finally made this fine agreement to build three nuclear power plants (two new ones and one to replace the old one) possible.” Said Van Dorp, “There has been a steady increase in support for nuclear from influential figures in the Netherlands.”

It helps to be disagreeable, a personality characteristic Shellenberger share with my Dutch friends. Rene, Dilan, Olguita, and Joris are blunt in their views, telling me directly when they dislike or disagree with something I have said or done, and they do the same with others. “We have been criticizing anti-nuclear politicians and influencers,” explained Van Dorp, who is one of the most aggressive pro-nuclear voices on Twitter, “and supporting the pro-nuclear ones with facts and figures. We will continue to do this as long as the anti-nuclear lobby has not buried the hatchet.”

There are disadvantages to being disagreeable, but the advantages, in the case of the nuclear and The Netherlands, outweighed the disadvantages. Insecure, passive-aggressive, and conflict-averse people are time-consuming. Our blunt manner meant we could address conflicts, scrub wounds, and trust each other quickly, across borders and cultures. Our disagreeableness meant we weren’t intimidated by anti-nuclear activists, who frequently bully their opponents by resorting to ad hominem attacks. And it meant we did not take no for an answer.

And engaging each other with candor meant we could openly debate important technical and policy questions, such as whether The Netherlands should pursue small, futuristic reactors, such as those that use chemicals to cool uranium or thorium fuels, or whether the nation would be better off going with the same, tried-and-true, water-cooled nuclear plants that nations, including The Netherlands, have used successfully for over 60 years.

As a result of those open conversations, the Dutch government appears headed in a sensible, rational, and practical direction. “My guess is that the government intends to run the program like the British and the French,” said Joris. “They appear to intend to run it by having the government put up part of the investment money in order to crimp financing costs.”

Given that nuclear plants are ultimately just large building projects, like highways and bridges, one key to reducing the cost of construction is through low-cost financing from governments or, say, pension funds seeking highly-secure, low-interest, long-term returns. “What we have done is keep putting positive pressure on the nuclear debate,” said Joris, “and stressing the need to escape from the ‘never-ending research carousel’ that the Netherlands has been sat on for 40 years by indecisive governments.”

The world is plainly in a moment of significant change, one that was accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic. Nowhere is that more evident in Europe, where the energy crisis has reminded the continent of its dependence upon the outside world for its survival. With the energy crisis, Brexit, and the departure of Angela Merkel from power, France and President Macron are becoming the de facto leaders of Europe. It is Macron who has pushed for nuclear to be counted as sustainable in the EU taxonomy, and who reminded his countrymen of the technology’s grandeur in a remarkable Twitter video, “The Dream is Possible,” which showcases nuclear as the crown jewel among France’s other technological marvels, including its high-speed rail system and Mirage fighter jets.

The renewable energy dogma is not dead but wounded, gradually losing credibility as real world events overtake ideology. The strongest pro-nuclear movement in Europe is, surprisingly, in Germany, where Bjorn Peters and Rainer Klute of Nuklearia have been leading protests against the closure of three nuclear reactors this December, and three more next year, at a time of record high electricity prices. The power of the German pro-nuclear movement is mirrored in the US, where the strongest movement to save nuclear power is currently in California, and being led by a Brazilian model, Isabelle Boemke, a close friend to rock star Grimes, whose partner is Elon Musk, who recently tweeted his support for keeping nuclear plants open.

And the decision by the Dutch government has revived the debate in neighboring Belgium over nuclear. Both Dilan and Olguita pointed me to a viral tweet by Zuhal Demir, Belgium’s Minister of Justice Enforcement, Environment, Energy and Tourism. “They have a totally different system from us,” said Dilan, “so there is another minister [the anti-nuclear Tinne Van der Straeten] in charge of nuclear. But Demir doesn’t agree” with the Belgium nuclear phase out. “Immediately after the [Dutch] government announcement yesterday,” said Olguita, “a twitterstorm broke loose in Belgium. They will reconsider what they have done.”

What’s emerging is a deeper understanding of energy and the environment among elites and the public alike. Reliable energy makes electricity cheap and unreliable, weather-dependent energy makes it expensive, no matter how cheap solar panels become. Energy density determines environmental impact. It is dangerous to be too dependent on foreign energy imports. And, not only are most nuclear plants not going away, their lives are being extended, and new ones are being built. The atomic humanist future is at hand.

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