Japan, nuclear energy and democracy

Looking at other climate blogs, nuclear power seems to be a link between the catastrophic events in Japan and the climate debate.  For many, nuclear energy is a necessary element of mitigation strategies; at the same time, resistance against nuclear power - especially by environmentalists or Greens - tends to be labeled in-consequent and irresponsible. This is often done in nationalistic terms (German angst, for example). In this post, I want to reflect upon both the irresponsibility and the nationalistic arguments. The question of energy deeply affects our basic understanding of culture and politics, to say the least. (The picture from The New Yorker here just serves as an illustration, but there is excellent free content on Japan in this issue).

I think we should avoid using national stereotypes such as German angst, or that the French or Japanese people are not afraid of nuclear power. Or that the Japanese do neither complain nor revolt. Those are national stereotypes which are used to support political goals or to 'objectify' political arguments. None of those arguments is 'true' in a literal sense. Nobody can really measure 'angst'. There are different ways how people reconcile with things that threaten their lives, be it volcanoes, the sea, earthquakes or nuclear power plants.

God / nature is in charge of volcano eruptions and earthquakes; it is the nuclear industry/science/politics complex that is in charge of nuclear energy. Humans only can pray to God in order to ease their 'angst' of tsunamis; but people can organize democratic protest against nuclear power. Labeling protest 'angst' is ridiculing the democratic movement against this form of energy. Even worse, it is ridiculing democracy.

Why do the French not protest? Do they lack 'angst', or democracy, or something else? Just read the short description of Francoise Zonabend's book "the nuclear peninsula":

A quiet French country district is the site of a nuclear waste-processing plant. Francoise Zonabend describes the ways in which those working in the plant, and living nearby, come to terms with the risks in their daily lives. She provides a superb sociology of the nuclear work-place, with its divisions and hierarchies, and explains the often unexpected responses of the workers to the fear of radiation and contamination. The work is described euphemistically in terms of women's tasks - cleaning, cooking, preparing a soup - but the male workers subvert this language to create a more satisfying self-image. They divide workers into the cautious ('rentiers') and the bold ('kamikazes') who relish danger. By analyzing work practices and the language of the work-place, the author shows how workers and locals can recognize the possibility of nuclear catastrophe while, at the same time, denying that it could ever happen to them. This is a major contribution to the anthropology of modern life.

Japanese are not afraid of nuclear energy? The philosopher Kenichi Meshima recommends to learn Japanese and calls it 'pure ethno-centrism' to label the Japanese as not revolting and accepting things uncomplainingly.

Thus, using those national stereotypes indeed is playing semantic tricks. Consider this example: I guess, you all know the sociological term 'atomistic individual' as an expression for the isolation / singularization of people in late modernity? Atomistic is here used as a negative term, of course. Why not interpret this as a wonderful semantic strategy to hide fear of nuclear energy in shifting it on the social field (but using nuclear vocabulary)? Or consider the link between the bikini atolls as a site for nuclear testing, and the bikini as a swimming suit, and finally the German Atombusen (atomic boobs? I think there is no anglophone expression), as Fritz Kramer showed in his ethnographic study. Humans are strange animals, permanently playing tricks with language to manipulate reality.

We should also carefully consider another argument; one which was made here on klimazwiebel (and which is really worth being considered, no doubt!) concerning the German 'Ausstieg' (shutdown of the old nuclear plants).
"Many people just ignore that a major energy crisis would not only affect their personal lifestyle (which they believe to be changeable maybe) but the social, economical and political security on a large scale."

I think everybody who grew up in the eighties of the last century knows that nuclear power deeply affected "the social, economic and political security on a large scale". From mass demonstrations, police force to Chernobyl, there was a huge political, social and economic uproar. The same is true for every other form of energy, by the way. Everybody knows how deeply oil affects our political security - see only recently Iraq, Gulf of Mexico, Libya etc... And it won't be different with renewable energies: they also will affect our lives, of course (except that they are non-pollutant). Energy always means power, in the double sense of electricity and political power.

By the way, I think it's amazing to see how easily many skeptics seem to embrace nuclear energy. Compared to nuclear science, mainstream climate science indeed is a club of honest brokers. No other science was so deeply corrupted by politics and industry as nuclear science was. No other form of energy was established against so many protests as was nuclear energy; no other form of energy is enforcing so many anti-democratic means and measures for being implanted and sustained.  Nuclear energy cannot be left to nuclear science alone (and never was).

Nuclear energy is - as all other forms of energy - deeply cultural and full of emotions. To think that science alone can solve this question is merely daydreaming. Oil runs through our veins, Japanese spinach and milk is contaminated with radioactivity, and wind blows through our hair - the question of energy affects each and every aspect of our lives. Indeed, no easy challenge. Maybe it is good to have earthquakes, tsunamis and nuclear power in mind when thinking about future energy decisions. Humans will be involved in any case, as they are in Japan, right now.

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