On nuclear power

This resolution calls for phasing out the use of nuclear energy in Europe and beyond.

Danger and Health

• Nuclear energy plants are highly susceptible to human error, interruption of energy supply, natural disasters and terrorist attacks.
• The catastrophes of Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima demonstrate how the technology of nuclear power is uncontrollable, can at worst be poisonous and even deadly.
• The safe and secure disposal of nuclear waste has never been solved and endangers present and future generations. Spent fuel of nuclear reactors is deadly and will be for thousands of generations.
• Mining of uranium, the fuel for nuclear power plants, results in damage for landscapes, long term problems connected with stabilization and restoration of the mining site and disposal of the uranium mill waste, and health risks for employees and (mostly indigenous) inhabitants of such areas.
• Nuclear power plants increase the risk of proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Cost and Investment

• The calculated cost of nuclear energy excludes the cost of nuclear hazards, now and in the future.
• Nuclear energy from old amortized reactors is a highly profitable business, only because environmental and health costs largely remain a public burden. Moreover, the business case for new nuclear reactors turn out to be financial disasters, as the projects in Flamanville, Olkiluoto and Hinkley Point C testify. Without state support and other support measures, costs for new nuclear are too high compared to renewables.
• Nuclear energy investments also mean massive amounts of scarce energy investment capital being bound to a highly cetralised technology of the past, instead of more flexible renewables.

We call European governments and the European Union to:

• Immediately reduce tax deduction possibilities for nuclear energy companies and redirect respective funds into green energy and into a green energy grid;
• Stop developing nuclear energy with taxpayer’s money;
• Secure currently running nuclear power plants against terrorist attacks;
• Build no new nuclear power plants;
• Phase out currently running nuclear power plants, beginning with old nuclear power plants, those in earthquake-prone areas and all nuclear power plants not designed to withstand terrorist attacks or airplane crashes; foremost Tihange and Doel in Belgium, Fessenheim and Cattenom in France, as well as Beznau in Switzerland or Dukovany in Czech Republic. Stop the building of generation IV reactors in Flamanville (EPR), China and Hinkley point.
• Cut off financial resources which support research on nuclear fusion, transmutation and generation IV nuclear reactors;
• Support research on clean and green energy for individual households, trade and industry, and develop programs and raise awareness about the necessity of reducing energy consumption;
• Implement tools of foreign policy to phase out nuclear energy on the planet while remaining within carbon budgets compatible with the Paris agreement;
• Secure spent fuel rods and nuclear waste;
• Not to fund construction of nuclear power plants nor research in nuclear energy by EFSI or EIB;
• To promote a campaign to expose the lies that are used to manipulate population in to accepting nuclear energy as a necessity;
• Stop import and use of nuclear energy from neighbouring or other countries;
• Stimulate divestment from nuclear energy by public and non-public parties and organizations.