38 years after the nuclear accident in Chernobyl in the then Soviet Union (now Ukraine), the survival of people on the planet is still threatened by the “peaceful” or warlike use of nuclear energy. And our country imports electricity from nuclear plants and will face additional risks from new nuclear plants near us in Turkey.
On April 26, 1986, the entire planet was threatened by the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the then Soviet Union, which resulted in immediate and long-term deaths from the release of a radioactive cloud, hundreds of thousands of environmental refugees who were forced to leave their homes forever in a ray. The amount of radioactivity released was 200 times greater than the radioactivity released by the two atomic bombs of Nagasaki and Hiroshima combined. 5 million people still live in areas exposed to radiation. Ukraine, Russia and Belarus were most affected by radioactivity, but radioactive rain reached Ireland and radioactive cloud reached Greece. Even today there is a 30 km exclusion zone around the factory.
Accordingly, the accident in Fukushima, Japan, caused after an earthquake and tsunami resulted in 18,500 deaths and over 300,000 environmental refugees.
We learned the hard way that radioactivity knows no borders. And yet even today, the European Commission attempts to “greenwash” nuclear power, trying to include it in the “green” forms of energy along with fossil gas, as supposed “alternative solutions” to deal with the climate crisis!
Our country also faces nuclear threats close to its borders from the nuclear plant in Kozlodui, Bulgaria, but also from Turkey’s planned nuclear plants in Akougiou opposite Rhodes, but also in Sinop on the Black Sea and in Eastern Thrace. The problem is not only the possibility of an accident, but also that the “interest” of some in “peaceful” nuclear energy production is directly linked to the production of nuclear weapons, as the case of Israel and Iran has shown in the past. They thus acquire know-how and access to materials that can be used in the manufacture of nuclear weapons.
So there are many reasons to say no to nuclear, military or “peaceful”. It is not just the risk of an accident as we have seen tragically in Chernobyl and Fukushima, it is not the risk of terrorist act or bombing them as we now fear in the war in Ukraine. It is also the enormous political power that is handed over to a few who can turn off the switch and leave you without electricity.
The centralization of energy production goes hand in hand with the centralization of political power and authoritarian regimes. And indeed we leave ourselves at the mercy of authoritarian regimes or leaders, when and whenever they wish, to build nuclear weapons and blow us all up, or fill the planet with radioactivity!
Greece must say no to nuclear proliferation in our neighborhood, stop importing power from nuclear plants and encourage nuclear expansion in Bulgaria. The sun up there is smiling at us, we too can live with the power of the sun and the wind, with Renewable Energy Sources, small and decentralized, locally controlled by citizens and not by some big companies, without destroying nature and taking risks our survival.
*Fotis Pontikakis is a Member of the Hellenic Council of “Greens-Ecology”
