Subject:  Viridian Note 00020: Energy Reform, the Swedish 
"Solution"

Key concepts:  energy politics, nuclear power, Sweden, 
German Greens

Attention Conservation Notice:  It's political analysis.  
There are over 1,100 words of it.

Source:  Austin American-Statesman, Sunday, November 22, 
1998;  Los Angeles Times wire service

Links: http://www.gruene.de/

Entries in the "Big Mike" Viridian Design Contest:
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http://weber.u.washington.edu/~r1ddl3r/bigmike.html
http://powerbase-alpha.com/bigmike
http://rampages.onramp.net/~jzero/
http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades
http://www.57thstreet.com/viridian/
http://www.ioc.net/~bini/bigmike.htm

"Sweden's nuclear plants hum despite closure vote" 

by Carol J. Williams, Los Angeles Times

(((Ms. Williams' article has been heavily edited by the 
Viridian moderator, whose comments are in the customary 
triple parentheses.)))

    "STOCKHOLM, Sweden == When Swedes voted in 1980 to 
shutter their nuclear power plants, their decision helped 
set the pace for judgements across Europe that the energy 
source, though limitless and affordable, posed too great a 
risk for the densely populated continent."

    (((One always enjoys a lead-line that blandly 
proclaims at least three highly debatable assertions.)))

   "But the environmental trailblazers have lost their 
way.  Eighteen years after the referendum that condemned 
this country's 12 reactors to the ash heap of industrial 
history, the full dozen are up and running past one 
closure deadline after another."

    (((So much for the myth of Scandinavian efficiency.)))

    "The emergence of a more leftist leadership from 
September's parliamentary elections may step up the 
pressure for fulfilling the voters' aging mandate.  But 
even the most staunch environmentalists see no chance for 
meeting the original 2010 objective for living nuclear-
free."

      (((It's really quite astonishing to see that Sweden, 
that legendarily tidy, public-spirited, well-organized, 
socialist democracy, can pass energy laws by popular fiat, 
and then retreat into utter technological impotence for 18 
years.  This abject failure is really the sort of thing 
one associates with *American* energy policy, for 
instance, the Carter-era synthetic fuels program.)))

    "Worse, say those who remain committed to the 
shutdowns, is that the phaseout plan once held up as a 
European model now stands as a can't-do precedent, 
shackling anti-nuclear campaigns elsewhere -- most notably 
in Germany, where the environmental Greens in September 
won a historic chance to share power."

    (((We are now getting to the core of the agenda here: 
namely, the Germans.  Nobody is seriously concerned about 
Swedish energy policy and energy law (least of all, 
apparently, the Swedes).   But the Germans are a G-7 major 
industrial power. Their land area recently almost doubled, 
and they just legitimated a couple of million guest-worker 
citizens.  Furthermore, the Germans have a brand-new 
Red/Green "Pink Tide"  government, run by former 60s-era 
student radicals.   This is the first time that any Green 
party anywhere has ever had its mitts on the levers of 
genuine power.   German politics are now the most 
interesting Viridian politics in the world.  We Viridians 
have a lot of worthy matters demanding our attention, and 
we do not want to hear or publish anything about the USA's 
ludicrous domestic politics, which at this point in time 
do not bear serious consideration.  However, we are 
highly open to informed commentary about the new *German* 
politics.)))

    "The anti-nuclear issue is now burning hottest in 
Germany, where a coalition of Social Democrats and Greens 
emerged from the Sept. 27 election that ended the 16-year 
reign of Chancellor Helmut Kohl and his nuclear-friendly 
conservative government.

     "German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder agreed last 
month to push the Greens' anti-nuclear agenda, with a 
promise to open talks within the next year on a phaseout 
timetable with the private operators of Germany's 19 
nuclear plants.

     "However, Schroeder hinted that some reactors will be 
allowed to operate through their normal life span == a 
caveat that could keep nuclear plants running in Germany 
for 45 years."

     (((And why stop there?  The *remnants* of those 
nuclear power plants should require careful attention 
indefinitely.)))

    "The Greens wanted an eight-year phaseout of nuclear 
energy, which supplies 30 percent of Germany's power.  
Schroeder and the Social Democrats have argued that a 
minimum of twenty years will be needed."

     (((Swift reform of thirty percent of a nation's power 
supply is indeed a bold goal.   It would be interesting to 
learn if any other  group on earth is making similar 
proposals (and meaning them).  At the Rio meeting, as a 
striking counter-example, the USA wept hot public 
crocodile tears at the scary prospect of having to live up 
to its own (very modest) Kyoto agreement.)))

      "Germany's nuclear industry warned of dire economic 
consequences from any swift renunciation of nuclear power.  
Shuttering Germany's nuclear plants and replacing their 
output will cost hundreds of billions of dollars and 
eliminate 40,000 jobs (...) 

   (((The classic argument for the status quo == as if the 
need to *rebuild* all that lost energy capacity  couldn't 
possibly *create* any jobs.)))

     "In Sweden, arguments for delaying the shutdown are 
similarly related to concerns about who will pay the tens 
of billions of dollars required to go nuclear-free. (...)"  
(((Who paid the tens of billions of dollars required to go 
"nuclear-unfree?"  It'll be the same people, you can 
pretty well count on that.  Why even bring up the matter?  
It's a red herring.)))   

      "Ceasing production of nuclear energy... would force 
Sweden to import costly wind-generated power from Denmark, 
polluting fossil-fuel energy from Russia and Eastern 
Europe, and, most hypocritically, nuclear-generated power 
from European countries with often less-reliable plants." 

    (((So much for the Swedish solution -- it leads only 
to the unspeakable horror of giving money to Danes with 
windmills.  The Viridian approach must be different. We 
must aim to cut these problem off at the knees.  Those  
"hundreds of billions of dollars" are an invested weregild 
of titanic proportions.  The twentieth century power-
generation oligarchy is a protection racket, so deeply 
embedded in society that no mere law will ever dig it 
loose.  Why imagine that you can dig yourself out by 
giving conscience money  to political action groups, when 
every month, without fail, you sign over hundreds of 
deutschmarks, pounds and.or dollars to electrical 
utilities? 

     (((The power generating and distribution structure has 
to be outflanked and technologically undercut.  It must be 
obsolesced.   Picket signs can't do this, and neither can 
parliaments.  It has to be tackled on its own ground and 
reduced to profit-free rust.  This must happen, and *will* 
happen, in much the same way that Microsoft software 
undercut IBM hardware, and Internet undercut postal 
telegraph and telephone monopolies.  New energy systems 
have to creep into society with the painless speed and 
ease of fax machines and cellphones.  That is the way in 
which techno-economic monoliths of this order and 
influence can be successfully demolished.   The political 
agitation and organization route is the Swedish route.  
You preach the sermons to an informed and concerned 
electorate, who go into the booths and vote, and the 
monoliths that run your desk lamps and electric 
toothbrushes squat there in bland defiance of the public 
will for eighteen solid years --  and counting.  Does 
anyone imagine that Sweden's nuclear plants will shut down 
until they are replaced by something cheaper, cleaner and 
better?  I proclaim unto you:  they will not.)))

Bruce Sterling (bruces@well.com)