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 \u201cusual\u201d cost and timeline overruns associated with constructing such facilities. Instead, I will add a few lesser-known or unpopular facts about nuclear plants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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 \u201csome member states of the agency report too slowly and with too little data on accidents at their nuclear facilities.\u201d 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 \u201cdark\u201d figure\u2014the number of unreported incidents at NPPs around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The difficulties and costs of safely storing and treating nuclear waste are constantly sidelined. Eduardo Rodr\u00edguez Farr\u00e9 and Salvador L\u00f3pez Arnal, in their book Almost Everything You Wanted to Know About the Impact of Nuclear Energy on Health and the Environment<\/em>, 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, Andr\u00e9 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 \u2013 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?<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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\u2014all of which are contrary to modern concepts of democracy, open and decentralized society, and sustainable community development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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 \u201cstate within a state,\u201d an untouchable monopoly of power beyond the reach of any local or provincial government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One consequence of the expansion of nuclear power\u2014and more broadly, of large-scale, centralized, complex industrial systems\u2014is 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n People are increasingly dependent on mega-tools and mega-institutions\u2014both bureaucratic and commercial\u2014while technologically complex corporations and large centralized systems begin to dominate local politics and labor markets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Therefore, drawing from the ideas of well-known authors such as Andr\u00e9 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 (\u201cSmall is Beautiful,\u201d Fritz E. Schumacher) and for strengthening the independence, self-sufficiency, and autonomy of local communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Decentralization, on one hand, encourages local communities to rely on their own capabilities. On the other hand, meeting local needs through local resources\u2014which reduces dependence on large systems of management, production, transport, and sales\u2014undermines the authority and power of centralized institutions and leads toward decentralization. It also narrows the opportunities for markets to manipulate and exploit people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Darko Nadi\u0107 emphasizes, decentralization, understood as a political process, is a prerequisite for a sustainable society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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\u2014what we today call \u201csustainable\u201d\u2014way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Naravno! Prevod re\u010denice na engleski glasi:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Figure 1. Renewable energy sources connect production and consumption<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The photograph shows the flow of information and electric energy from the producer to the consumer in a centralized supply system.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n The photograph shows the flow of information and electric energy from the producer to the consumer in a decentralized supply system.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n Certain citizens\u2019 associations in Germany (e.g., B\u00fcrgerEnergie 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\u2019t followed their progress lately, but I hope they have achieved full energy independence and self-sufficiency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The development of modern society toward decentralization, deconcentration, and strengthening the position and role of the local community\u2014in terms of its sustainability and independence, based on energy autonomy and self-sufficiency\u2014may 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ivan Zafirovi\u0107, 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).<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":2140,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[242],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ekologija-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lobisti.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lobisti.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lobisti.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lobisti.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lobisti.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2141"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lobisti.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2144,"href":"https:\/\/lobisti.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2141\/revisions\/2144"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lobisti.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lobisti.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lobisti.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lobisti.rs\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Fotografija](\"http:\/\/lobisti.rs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/image-1.jpg\")
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