ATHENS COUNCIL: Arab world - Middle East peace - nuclear energy
01-02 JULY 2011

Dear comrads and friends!

In my opinion the lessons learned of Fukushima are obvious:
- nuclear power technology is insecure
- even at highest technical standards  
  no Nuclear Power Plants are unbreakable
- this energy is not sustainable,  
  not CO2 neutral
- is not cheap, as often promoted and not clean

Let´s have a look at the Ukraine: 25 years after the disaster of Tschernobil the country pays roughly eight percent of its GNI to manage the harm of the nuclear accident and it will continue to pay that amount for the next centuries to come.

Or look at Germany, where the taxpayer spent 50 billion DM to establish its nuclear power infrastructure some decades ago, but private enterprises gained the profits.

And let’s have a closer look at Japan: Few days after the collapse of Fukushima the operating company was crying at the doorsteps of Japanese government, confessing they of course are not able to pay for all the damage – which will summarize to about 36 bio Euros – as we know so far.

It’s the same story as everywhere in the capitalistic system:
It is the state, the tax payers, our people who pay for the disaster and it is the private enterprises which made the big money before – some of them even without paying taxes. With a fully financed nuclear power plant you can make one million Euros a day!

For our planet there is only one nuclear power plant that is really safe, more or less everlasting and, above all, sustainable: It is the sun.

With a security distance of around 150 million kilometers it provides us with 7000 times more energy, as we use all over the earth every year.

All the men-made nuclear power plants we’d better close, our earth will not survive the collapses directly on its surface, even not if they take place „only“ every 25 years.

In Austria more than 30 years ago people decided against this technology. Yesterday – at the energy summit in Vienna, invited by our chancellor Werner Faymann, was decided, we will stop any imports of electricity that comes from nuclear sources until 2015.

Both facts may be prerequisites why the Austrian Socialdemocratic Party in good cooperation with our German comrades and in close collaboration with environmental NGOs and civil society will campaign for a European citizens’ initiative in 2012 to stop that dangerous, unsustainable and extremely expensive technology within the European Union.

We want that that the owners of nuclear power plants take all the risks of accidents, take the liability for all the costs of the storage of the nuclear waste for the next thousands of years – and that real costs will drive nuclear power totally ineffective.

With this goal of re-defining the liability for this technology and of stopping nuclear power we as Social Democrats and Socialists are in line with the great majority of people worldwide.

I am convinced our campaign in Europe will be successful – if you want to join the campaign, let me know! I hope that a renewed, strengthened, and focused Socialist International can become the vanguard, the spearhead and the backbone of the global change towards Renewable Energies, Energy Efficiency and intelligent grids.

I am sure that the future of global energy systems will avoid energy-poverty, will be an egalitarian one, a sustainable one. And for sure it will be nuclear free!