If I had had the opportunity to write about energy policy in Serbia and beyond a quarter of a century ago, I would have certainly dedicated the article to the use of renewable energy sources (RES). As an enthusiast and optimist at the time, I would have written in superlatives about wind farms. I would have given slightly less attention to photovoltaic panels because they were still expensive and unprofitable for average households back then.
In fact, in the early 2000s, I actively participated in an attempt by the City of Pančevo and the local community of Vojlovica to build one or more wind turbines in their territory. It seems that, under our conditions, this was too early, as USAID did not want to support such a project—which was probably too ambitious for them—even though we had a written agreement from the director of Elektrovojvodina to connect a small wind turbine to the grid. On the other hand, the City of Pančevo only managed to install a meteorological mast and collect the necessary data on wind characteristics in the city’s territory.
Now, after so many years, my stance on wind farms has changed. From a passionate supporter, I have become a cautious and skeptical evaluator. Many of the advantages of using wind energy (through wind turbines) have turned into their opposites through massive, uncontrolled exploitation. I will not repeat myself, so interested readers can refer to my brief professional paper on the subject presented at the XXV Eco Conference held from September 22–24, 2021, in Novi Sad and published in the conference proceedings, as well as a newspaper article at: https://www.danas.rs/dijalog/licni-stavovi/nauciti-iz-tragedije-u-cernobilju/.
I will elaborate more on my stance toward nuclear power plants (NPP), as hinted at in the title of the mentioned article. I will skip all the commonly cited arguments regarding the high risks of NPP operations, as well as the “usual” cost and timeline overruns associated with constructing such facilities. Instead, I will add a few lesser-known or unpopular facts about nuclear plants.
Most advocates of NPPs claim high safety levels, typically referencing only three major accidents (Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima). However, as far back as 30 years ago, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna warned that “some member states of the agency report too slowly and with too little data on accidents at their nuclear facilities.” The agency estimated that, considering the number of nuclear plants in the 1980s, around 200 incidents occurred worldwide each year, but from its founding in 1982 to the late 1980s, only 250 such reports were submitted. In other words, the public should be far more concerned about the “dark” figure—the number of unreported incidents at NPPs around the world.
The environmental impact of nuclear power plants under completely regular conditions should not be ignored either. According to an older estimate, the normal operation of 2,000 reactors (a number once targeted for the year 2000) would have increased radiation levels by 4% to 5%. Possible incidents and accidents would further raise radioactivity levels.
The difficulties and costs of safely storing and treating nuclear waste are constantly sidelined. Eduardo Rodríguez Farré and Salvador López Arnal, in their book Almost Everything You Wanted to Know About the Impact of Nuclear Energy on Health and the Environment, emphasize that the United Kingdom, for instance, needs to invest $125 billion USD in dismantling its oldest nuclear plants and managing the waste over the next 125 years. Long before this, André Gorz vividly described the unsolved problem of long-term nuclear waste disposal. According to him, just 0.01% of nuclear waste accumulated over a century would equal the fallout of 10 thermonuclear bombs, each with a yield of 5 megatons (by comparison, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima had a yield of 0.0016 Mt – note by I.Z.). Are nuclear waste storage facilities around the world really so reliable that they will never leak even 0.01% of their contents?
Finally, the two aforementioned Spanish professors warn that any attempt to fully replace fossil fuels with nuclear energy for electricity production would be doomed to fail due to physical limitations: it would require the construction of one nuclear power plant every two days for the next 25 years, and there would not be enough uranium to fuel the reactors.
I would like to focus primarily on the potential negative consequences that operating NPPs could have on society and local communities. Serbia, let me say outright, is institutionally underdeveloped and excessively centralized in political and legal terms. The current government’s intent to build one or more nuclear power plants will only solidify this lack of structure and centralization.
We can already see the drawbacks of a highly centralized system in the organization and operations of EPS (Electric Power Industry of Serbia): lack of transparency, resistance to alternative initiatives, routine (rather than innovative) behavior, closed and rigid decision-making, and detachment from local communities—all of which are contrary to modern concepts of democracy, open and decentralized society, and sustainable community development.
I would reference Fred Hirsch, who long ago expressed concerns that, due to the extreme centralization of energy system management and the self-perpetuating and bureaucratic tendencies of so-called high technologies, the gap between decision-making and public participation would only widen. He believed that highly centralized systems are, by their nature, intolerant of alternative configurations (e.g., various autonomous and alternative energy sources), prone to rigidity, and incapable of quickly adapting to change. He especially noted that sensitive energy facilities such as nuclear reactors exhibit a peculiar “tendency” toward centralization and alignment with state interests.
Multiple authors have observed that due to the rigid operational requirements of nuclear power plants (location selection, fuel production and processing, waste storage, integration with major industries producing reactor parts, etc.), and their specific operational regimes (specialized training, staff verification and control, strict codes of conduct and accountability, constant monitoring of entry and exit, fuel delivery and waste removal, stringent oversight, centralized commissions and regulatory bodies, ties to military interests, a strong role of police and security forces), civilian nuclear programs and industries are closely intertwined with the state. In our case, I fear that nuclear power plants could become a “state within a state,” an untouchable monopoly of power beyond the reach of any local or provincial government.
One consequence of the expansion of nuclear power—and more broadly, of large-scale, centralized, complex industrial systems—is the increased risk of hazardous situations faced by citizens. Individuals are said to have a choice about participating in potentially hazardous conditions. In reality, however, individuals have little say over whether they participate in such risks, as many are predetermined and not open to meaningful public debate, thereby undermining freedom of choice.
People are increasingly dependent on mega-tools and mega-institutions—both bureaucratic and commercial—while technologically complex corporations and large centralized systems begin to dominate local politics and labor markets.
Therefore, drawing from the ideas of well-known authors such as André Gorz, Jeremy Rifkin, Arne Naess, Murray Bookchin, Fritz E. Schumacher, and others, I advocate for the decentralization of economic and political structures through the development of small businesses using light, simple technology (“Small is Beautiful,” Fritz E. Schumacher) and for strengthening the independence, self-sufficiency, and autonomy of local communities.
Decentralization, on one hand, encourages local communities to rely on their own capabilities. On the other hand, meeting local needs through local resources—which reduces dependence on large systems of management, production, transport, and sales—undermines the authority and power of centralized institutions and leads toward decentralization. It also narrows the opportunities for markets to manipulate and exploit people.
As Darko Nadić emphasizes, decentralization, understood as a political process, is a prerequisite for a sustainable society.
Renewable energy sources, if kept in the hands of local communities, could become their key resource and an optimal alternative response to the technologically complex, highly centralized, and closed (nuclear) energy system and its supporting industry. Careful, controlled exploitation of RES could act as a catalyst for community empowerment and societal change. According to Gorz, the use of geothermal and solar energy enables the development of light technologies that do not require centralized planning and investment, that can be easily operated and managed by small municipalities and individuals, and that do not require energy transmission (especially solar), meaning large units offer no advantage over small ones. No organization, bank, enterprise, or government body could monopolize such technology, which would enable a high degree of autonomy for local communities and non-industrialized countries to develop in a different—what we today call “sustainable”—way.
The crucial difference between a massive, centralized energy production system based on conventional energy sources (fossil fuels and the first generation of renewable energy) and nuclear fission, and a decentralized renewable energy system, was clearly illustrated by Professor Manfred Miosga of the University of Bayreuth:
Naravno! Prevod rečenice na engleski glasi:
Figure 1. Renewable energy sources connect production and consumption
The photograph shows the flow of information and electric energy from the producer to the consumer in a centralized supply system.
The photograph shows the flow of information and electric energy from the producer to the consumer in a decentralized supply system.
Certain citizens’ associations in Germany (e.g., BürgerEnergie Berlin) are actively fighting to gain control and ownership over the electricity distribution grid, and thus participate in shaping energy policy in their communities. Nevertheless, the brightest example of good practice in building a sustainable, energy-independent, self-sufficient local community that I am personally familiar with is the municipality of Garching in the Munich district. According to their Municipal Integrated Climate Protection Concept and Action Plan, this municipality was expected, in 2020, to meet 91% of its local heat energy demand from its own sources (geothermal energy, biomass heating plants), and to cover 70.5% of electricity demand from local production (solar panels, biomass CHP plant). I haven’t followed their progress lately, but I hope they have achieved full energy independence and self-sufficiency.
The development of modern society toward decentralization, deconcentration, and strengthening the position and role of the local community—in terms of its sustainability and independence, based on energy autonomy and self-sufficiency—may be disrupted, restricted, or even endangered by the attempts of the most developed global powers, influential multinational corporations, authoritarian regimes, and powerful interest groups to monopolize certain renewable energy technologies or to develop them based on the proven model of large-scale, centralized, technologically complex, capital- and resource-intensive energy systems (e.g., giant solar farms, vast wind farms), which, unfortunately, I have personally witnessed.
Ivan Zafirović, a graduate sociologist, specialist in eco-management, Master of Environmental Policy, environmental activist, and founder of the Green PEG (an environmental group established in the former SFRY).