My baby’s babies

I spent erratic and significant energy for about 5 years trying to stop the construction of 2 nuclear reactors in Bohemia.  We lost at Temelin and two of the worst investments in the countries history were put online*.  The Czech Republic has the last great western nuclear expansion program.  Until today there had always been elaborate plans to expand the nuclear fleet in the country (which is currently at 6 reactors total), the most recent of these was that 18 additional reactors would be built by 2030 in this country of about 10 million people and which is a bit smaller than Kansas.

Those plans died today.  And the still hopeful Czechs technocrats have scaled down to a new plan of life extension at 4 existing reactors and the construction of two new reactors.  This is certainly a win and contributes to the long list of bad news stories for nuclear expansion world wide.   For me as a long time campaigner, there is quite some emotional charge around these last two possible Temelin blocks.  We split the government in the final decision on Temelin’s first two blocks.  Hopefully the will of the Czechs will prevail over these (thankfully much smaller) dangerous technophilic  fantasies.

Collapsing Towers video

And i must also say that having fought for over a decade against the proposed third block at the North  Anna reactor complex, 12 miles from where i live, it looks like our chances to stop it are better than 50%/50% which is certainly the first time the odds have been that good since we started.

*A couple of years after the Temelin second block went online the Czech utility CEZ was trying to sell itself to the French nuclear construction giant and utility EdF.  In the evaluation of the CEZ by EdF the value of these brand new reactors was negative, because so many billions of dollars had been spent on them and had to be repaid.