nuclear power is better than coal, what it said and why the green front splits- Corriere.it

“Even Greta defends nuclear power”. The title on the first page of Free reminded me of the public meeting a few weeks ago, at the always stimulating Food & Science Festival in Mantua, around the book Overwhelmed by an atomic destiny by Silvia Kuna Ballero. The author and Marco Cattaneo, director of National Geographic Italia and of The sciences (Italian version of Scientific American which was born in 1968 on the initiative of Felice Ippolito, father of Italian civil nuclear power) did not exclude that the “Greta generation” may have a more “secular” position towards nuclear energy, compared to that of the generations of environmentalists who ‘preceded. For which it is undeniable that the initial Bomb-atomic energy association weighed heavily (we talked about it in the Review of July 28), even before the fears aroused by films such as Chinese syndrome and by events not at all imaginary like the Chernobyl disaster and the incident of Fukushima due to tsunami.

In 2019, the founder of the Fridays For Future movement said she was “personally opposed” to nuclear power, but now she seems to have changed her positions. For the activist in the first phase of the energy transition, nuclear power plants are a better solution than coal

Listening to Ballero and Cattaneo I happened to think: what would happen if Greta Thunberg, the most famous environmentalist in the world, now 19 years old, openly sided with nuclear energy? Would it change the global attitude on the atom? Or that of the guys from Fridays for Future? Having read that title, the question became: did it happen then? Did Greta “clear customs” the nuclear power plants? To read what Sandro Iacometti writes on FreeYes.

And it would not be a sudden turning point, but meditated and matured over time. “In 2019, while acknowledging that the UN considers it” a small part of a new zero-carbon energy solution “, it said it was” personally opposed “to this type of energy, which is” extremely dangerous, expensive and requires time”. In short, the sudden conversion to the atom appears to be the most classic of the “counterorder comrades”.

In reality, that the “head” inside Thunberg was growing could also be understood from some revelations, suitably silenced by the environmentalist world, made in November 2021 by Francesco Giavazzi, the now former economic adviser of Draghi. “When we met Greta,” he explained, “she had to agree with us that it would take twenty years to complete the transition at top speed. And during this transition what do we do, do we use coal? Answer: No, nuclear energy ““. Interviewed on Tuesday on the talk show Maischberger of the German network Ard, when asked if you consider it a mistake, in the midst of the energy crisis, to close the German nuclear power plants (the stop, decided by Angela Merkel after Fukushima, was expected at the end of the year, even if for a couple of of the three still active, it should be postponed by 3-4 months) Greta replied, as Deutsche Welle reports: «It depends. If you already have them in operation, it seems to me a mistake to shut them down and focus on coal. Personally I think it is one bad idea to focus on coal when [l’energia nucleare] it’s already present”.

And, when the host Sandra Maischberger asked her if the nuclear power plants should still be closed as soon as possible at the end of the energy emergency, she replied: “It depends, we don’t know what will happen next.” More than a “customs clearance”, it seems the choice between the lesser of two evils. All the more so since the Swedish environmentalist has strongly reiterated the importance of not slowing down the transition to renewable energy due to the war in Ukraine. And, again in early July, on the eve of the EU decision on the so-called “green taxonomy” he tweeted: «Tomorrow the European Parliament will decide whether fossil gas and nuclear will be considered” sustainable “in the EU taxonomy. But no amount of lobbying and greenwashing will ever make them “green”. We desperately need real renewable energy, not false solutions ».

But, all in all, Thunberg’s “new” position should not come as a surprise. For a champion of the fight against climate change, preferring an energy source that does not emit CO2 rather than one that emits most of all would seem logical. The lacerations that coal and nuclear are causing in the German Greens shows, however, that the nerve is still uncovered. Greta herself said she knows that the topic provokes “a very heated debate”. And indeed. As Politico Europe reports, for the former president of the German Greens Simone Peter, who today works for the German Renewable Energy Federation, Greta Thunberg’s comment “makes no sense”, because German nuclear power plants are no longer useful and use Russian uranium . The reaction of other German political parties is quite different. “I welcome the support of Fridays for Future founder Greta Thunberg for our position on keeping our nuclear power plants networked. In this energy war, everything that generates electricity must be fed into the grid. The reasons speak for themselves: from an economic and physical point of view »tweeted the leader of the Liberals (Fdp), and Minister of Finance, Christian Lindner. While, from the opposition, it was Markus Söder of the Bavarian CSU who posted the passage on nuclear power of the interview with Greta with the comment “Interesting …” (both plants that should remain open after December 31 are in Bavaria). His party colleague and deputy Florian Hahn was even more explicit: “If even the patron saint of the Greens supports the extension of the operation of nuclear power plants, one can understand in what amateur ideological work [il ministro dell’Economia verde] Robert Habeck and his party are committed ».

Of course, it would take a lot of footnotes to what Greta said. The situation of those who already have nuclear power plants is different from that of those who should start from scratch to build them, given the time and costs of construction. Vladimir Putin’s nuclear threat and the bombs around the Zaporizhzhia power plant risk resurrecting the conditioned reflex of the association between atomic bombs and nuclear power plants. The role of existing nuclear power plants in the ecological transition period is different from that of the next generation nuclear power plant. However, if nothing else, the signal of a possible transition, on the theme of the fight against climate change, from catastrophism to realism and pragmatism should be welcomed: “I am realistic because if we do the things we have to do, we can avoid this catastrophe – he Greta said again in the interview with Ard -. If we don’t, we will have to suffer the consequences. It is up to us ».

From today’s Review, the Point on: War and armistice, grasshoppers and politics, the silent massacre of the homeless, the Bolivia of the last Quechua (Here to subscribe).

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