 Hello, hello, and welcome to another coordinating call of DM25, a radical political movement for Europe with subversive ideas you won't hear anywhere else. I'm Merron Khalili and today we're going nuclear. This month in a controversial move, the EU said that nuclear power and gas can be considered green investments. This means that investment in these energies is set to continue in the decades to come and indeed Emmanuel Macron has just pledged a whole slew of new nuclear reactors. So while burning gas is clearly destructive for people on planet, the issue of nuclear energy is a little bit more murky and DM25 does not yet have an official position on it. As with all our positions, our members decide, and we've already started the process and had plenty of internal debates. So it's going to come up for a vote soon and what you're going to see here tonight is a political movement, the coordinating collective so that like the board of a political movement wrestling with this vital issue. Is nuclear power a dangerous relic of the past, or is it the unexpected answer to combating climate change and what should we be campaigning for. So we'll look at the technical side, safety issues and of course the politics and economic and military concerns around it. And hopefully we'll be simplifying the discussion a lot so that everyone can understand it because things can get a bit full of acronyms and so on. So you out there, if you have any thoughts, questions, comments, rents, concerns, anything you want to throw at us, then please do put them in the YouTube chat, and we will get to it. So let's start our discussion with Amir Kiyei, forgive me, who's our policy coordinator. Go for it Amir. Thanks so much Mehran, and this is indeed the important and critical issue, especially because many of us out here in our homes, wherever we are located on this planet we've seen rising rising energy costs. So we're going up by 40, 50, 60, 70% saving in some cases. At the same time we're also staring at climate catastrophe. We already headed, we're already missing the 1.5 degree Celsius targets. Even the 2.2 degrees Celsius is already being missed at this at the stage of consumption and energy fossil fuel use and so forth. And this discussion on nuclear has been very interesting in the movement because it's, you know, some members believe that we have to use all tools available at our disposal to deal with climate, the climate catastrophe. Because members, some members believe that the actual generation of nuclear power itself is has, you know, is on par with wind and to some extent solar when it comes to carbon emissions and so forth. And so this discussion is quite critical coming at a critical juncture for us as a movement as well. So let's look on, look out not only for the technical arguments around it because at a scientific technical level. Yes, we can of course judge nuclear energy for what it is now, and nuclear energy proponents have come up with, you know, ideas around what any nuclear energy will look like in 2040 or 2050 and 2060 with all this fancy technology but of course we need to deal with the climate catastrophe right now. And we only have about eight years or so of carbon budget left depending on how that calculation looks. And the other factor to bear in mind in this discussion is of course not just the technical aspect for the political and economic and social. You have to really consider is it democracy enhancing. Is it going to increase the gap between the rich and the poor. Does it pass on financial burden to future generations and so forth. And you also already mentioned the military aspect and never mind the accidents and the lack of transparency around nuclear energy globally. So we're going to probably touch on these various points but let's not get into too early and let's unpack it as we go. Thank you. Thank you Amir sorry for the delay there. Dushan. Dushan Piovic. Thanks my friend. So Srećko is not here with us today but let me give a brief overview of the article that me and him wrote. I will not go too much into technicalities but some of them have to be said so it is by the German environmental agency estimated that a nuclear power plants generate 13 times more emissions than wind turbines. Some studies say it's even more and some studies say that they generate equal emissions and wind turbines. So I will not debate that it depends whether you look at the full life cycle or or whatever but the thing is that no one can say that they are climate neutral. Of course they emit because of the transportation storage of nuclear waste and so on and so on. So but what we do have as effect without big ranges is that nuclear energy is four times more expensive than wind energy. Also it is designed to withstand a single earthquake measuring a maximum of 7.0 magnitude. But several smaller ones can damage the nuclear power plants and we cannot expect the earth to stand still during these uncertain times of climate change with rising sea levels more earthquakes because of fracking and similar. To go more deeply into the waste the big topic radioactive waste has to be maintained for some say at least 200,000 years but it's at least several decades even by the biggest. Supporters of nuclear energy they say a few decades. So the thing is that can we really trust our government with these issues. All of the future governments and all of the current governments how we will know that some of them want to just dump these radioactive waste into the sea like with Fukushima happens. So also what Sretzko said how will the future generations know that there is a nuclear waste deeply buried down. Some say I'm again arguing what even the people that are really up for the nuclear energy saying that these nuclear waste can be reused and processed but we hardly have any machines that use this reprocessed version. So even this is being stored storage for thousands of years. It also takes 10 to 19 years to build one nuclear plant. So this is not a transitioning solution we don't have time for that we are far far behind our schedule. And one more technicality then I will go into social stuff. The sorry for nuclear power plants we need continuous mining continuous uranium mining not just one time mining gas for the wind energy or solar energy and uranium mining comes with the whole range of mining related diseases. And let me also say that it is a form of nail colonialism. Why because it will not happen in Brussels or Berlin. It's going to happen in the global south and it is going to happen by extracting valuable minerals and destroying the planet and local communities. Now finally some social stuff. As Amir pointed out before civilian nuclear energy programs supply the necessary plutonium and tritium for nuclear weapons and have historically been used to further military goals. It is nearly impossible to develop nuclear weapons without the access to reactor energy and peaceful reactors. So cold and famous peaceful nuclear energy treaty led many many times to nuclear weapons. Finally as I'm sure Janis will explore explain this more but let me say that it cannot be made as a part of the commons except in some marginal cases. So to quote our article money plus all the surveillance that would be needed in order to keep this under control in the hands of just a few people who are able to build nuclear power stations. Full surveillance based oligarchy where could things go wrong. I will conclude with this is 10% of global energy worthy of major disaster every 30 years, and would 30% of global energy be worthy of another Fukushima or Chernobyl every 10 years. And if so, where is the line. Thank you. Thanks to Shane can I just ask you then what would you propose then if nuclear is some has all those problems that you described actually propose different taxonomy in our green deal and nuclear is not part of that because of the previously mentioned things. That's why we have, for example, wind as the best solution for now these windmills can be operated off shores. So it's the best in terms of nature preservation and in terms of the energy being produced. There is also some other solution that offer us to storage these energies and we are not that far away from these solutions as we are far away from safe nuclear energy. So we have compressed air that can store store this but I guess some someone else we go into more into details regarding this. Thank you. Thank you. I will talk about what is happening with nuclear plant issue in Turkey. Recently, Turkish and Russian officials made the foundation for the third reactor of Turkey's first nuclear power plant, which was founded in 2018. You know, it is in the coastal city of Mersin, Akkuyo, and two other plants where plants were planned. One was Sinop, but Japan's Mitsubishi pulled out last year because of the protest ongoing protest since five years. And the third one is planned in Trakya, near the border of to Greece, in Ereda. It is also being protested continuously, but it can happen. Probably it also started. The first Akkuyo plants will be operational in 2023, which is the centenary of the foundation of Turkish Republic. And this project is owned by the Russian energy company, Rosapo, while the Turkish Akkuyo is the licensed owner and the local operator. President Erdogan said it is a symbol of Turkish-Russian cooperation, and President Putin said it's a truly flagship project. Since Akkuyo project was signed, proponents of nuclear energy in Turkey have argued it would limit Turkey's dependency on foreign energy suppliers. The Akkuyo's financial model could further Ankara's dependency on Russia, a major energy provider to Turkey. Because the project is fully financed now by Moscow. The question is why Turkey enters into such depth while alternative and cheaper energy resources are coming down the pipeline. We must be aware that Turkey is not the only country seeking nuclear energy in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and Jordan are still considering establishing nuclear power plants. Egypt and United Arab Emirates are in on it, and we know that Israel has long since a long time they have nuclear power. And Iran, we know that it has a very big capacity to develop. So the danger is this region is in continuous war and terror, and people are fighting. Nuclear reactors in a shooting war can be targets. Missiles and drones could knock down the electric supplies or essential parts of the plant, and there will be a disaster. Other concern is, which is very well known, that this area south of Turkey is an earthquake prone area. And we don't know whether it is already had some earthquakes, which really was dangerous for the nuclear, because January 2021, there was an explosion in Akkuyo nuclear plant. But we didn't know the reasons, and it was covered. So already there was an experience of an explosion there. So the other issue with Turkey is that it is not only for electric energy, but it can be that Ankara may have plans to enrich uranium. Why Turkey and nuclear arm Pakistan have long had military cooperation agreements that were recently intensified. And also with Kazakhstan, there was a kind of cooperation about providing uranium. So I think when nuclear plant and politics and the power issues come together, then it is very dangerous. As a person who really admires Mediterranean culture, I am also against it, that historically and ecologically very valuable area should not have nuclear plants. Thank you. Thank you, Burrell for that view from the front line. Before we hand over to the next speaker, I just want to have a look at the chat where there are some arguments coming down on the other side of the debate. Well, actually, Clayton Wilson reminds us that China is building 150 new nuclear plants by 2035. Luke Cunningham says fourth generation nuclear is cheap, clean safe and local right now move on from Chernobyl we still built ships after the Titanic. Hash rebel says nuclear energy is fine as long as it's not privatized and David Billy says I believe ideally all technologies would be used to replace fossil fuels nuclear alongside renewables, if only to ensure a minimum production when solar and wind output is low. And I have a reminder there that solar and wind are not consistently stable sources of energy well not consistent sources of electricity. Okay, you did you did Maya. Yeah, I actually saw some studies showing that solar, the output from solar power tends to be highest when the output from wind is lowest and the output from wind is highest when the output from solar is lowest because in, let's say, European somewhere in this wind you have more sun in European winter you have more wind and vice versa. So, but actually I wanted to talk more about not not so much so much the past danger I mean, we can all argue about how common incidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima will be in the, in the future, whether it's now every 10 years or whether this we were lucky or we were unlucky or whatever. What is clear, however, is that the danger keeps increasing. So, as Dushan mentioned, we will see more earthquakes with global warming, rising sea levels. Basically, a large amount of the world's capacity for nuclear is built near oceans or other bodies of water, which makes them particularly dangerous in a scenario of rising sea levels which we know we will have. We also have a rain events, the flooding of even minor rivers like we saw in in Germany, basically nuclear needs to be built near large bodies of water for the cooling, and that is exactly what makes them unsuitable in a world of climate climate change. As Braal mentioned, nuclear power plants can be dangerous targets in case of war, even when there's not a war I mean their targets of cyber attacks. We've seen cyber attacks against nuclear power plants in Iran in Crimea in India in Germany, probably in other countries that did not reveal that their plants were targeted. But basically this is a huge danger now that our cyber capabilities are becoming so strong. I would not want to live near a nuclear power plant in a world of cyber warfare. But actually, no matter whether it's a human or natural catastrophe, what we really need in this world is resilience. That won't endanger us if they're left untended in a catastrophic event, no matter who created who's responsible for the catastrophe, whether it's a human issue, whether it's a cyber attack, whether it's an earthquake, whether it's a catastrophic flood, whatever. We need things that won't endanger us if left untended. And ideally, things that will help us withstand these catastrophic events because there will be catastrophic events and we will need help in withstanding them. So my preference, I know that that cannot be just one solution, but my preference is for solar, because solar power panels cannot get hacked. They are no danger if untended and any house that has a solar panel on the roof is somewhat better protected in the case of a catastrophe. So let's say Texas power outage last summer, a lot of households were without electricity for the air conditioning for anything else in the middle of summer. And if they had solar power panels on the roof, they would have been fine. Thank you, Judith. Yanis, what's your take? Okay. I've been reading the feed on YouTube. It would be good if we tried all of us, those of us on the panel and those of us contributing opinion on the YouTube chat. If we try to be a bit cautious with facts that we unload. You read one of them that nuclear is clean, cheap, safe, and local right now. Well, this is what the brochure says, maybe in the future, but it's not now. We know that because Britain has been investing huge quantities of money. They are 15 years behind. They have another 10 years before the new power plant in Sellafield and in other places is built. Macron, who just announced what 14 new nuclear power stations admitted that it will take 12 years when he says 12 years. This is 16 years for it to take place. It takes the lead time from the moment you decide to build one until you have it. It's just knows, you know, who think of given the rapid change technologies, what's going to be happening in 15 years. So let me, however, do two things. If I may, the first thing is I'm going to play devil's advocate because we don't have anybody on the panel who is supportive of nuclear and it's right. We should give that side its best shot. And then I'll tell you why I'm against nuclear and I would be against nuclear, even if it was the safest thing on earth. Okay, even if it was zero chance of any accident, which of course is not the case. First, the pro nuclear case. It is true. I agree with you. You did that there is a negative correlation between solar and wind power. I think we lost you for a second there. Janice has been taken offline. Let's see if Janice comes back. Otherwise we'll bring in Johannes and we'll pick it up again with the honest when he comes back. Okay. Johannes, would you mind taking the floor and then we'll come back to Janice as he reconnects in the last week in the. Ah, Janice, I think you're having some connection issues, mate. I'm back. You're back. Go for it. We heard the word wind power. Johannes, hold on a second. Could you please repeat what you said in the last 30 seconds? I'll go back. And so in the case of Britain, for instance, there was a whole winter during which wind was much lower and therefore they had to switch to gas that was imported. So there is an argument to be said about having a constant source of backup power because of the intermittency of solar and wind power. This is a strong argument and nuclear can provide that it can provide that there's no data power. Also, it produces no CO2 emissions and even if it is true, do some and stretch go and you did and everybody else that in the process of extracting the mineral from the earth and so on, you produce CO2. You could say this about car batteries as well, but that's not an argument for against Tesla and against electrifying transportation. And what we need to do is we need to have more electricity produced so that even the mining can become electrified as opposed to using diesel, for instance, or we can use hydrogen in order to power the machinery. And hydrogen as we know when burns produces water, and you can produce hydrogen with renewables and with nuclear energy. Okay, so there is nuclear technology, it's with us. Mostly doesn't blow up. Okay, yes, we can bet it there are huge problems ethical problems to about betting it but you know we're like children putting it on the cover but nevertheless, it is possible to do without killing lots of people. So, you know, this is a solution, it is a solution. What it is not, it's not cheap. France produce 70% of its electricity from your clear. And if you look at prices of electricity today in Europe, which are hugely elevated because of the energy crisis that we're facing, as it is out of the, the lockdowns and the supply chains disruption and so on. France is more expensive than other countries that don't use the clear. So, let's forget about that it's not going to be cheap right if anything is going to be hugely expensive. So now let me tell you why I would reject why I'm thoroughly and enthusiastically fanatically opposed to nuclear power to the idea that we need to build nuclear power stations in order to ameliorate climate change. My reasons for that are, first, it is too bloody expensive. The fixed cost of building a power station that relies on nuclear power, whether it is these new smaller, more modular designs or the old ones. The cost of doing that is at least to the power to a factor of 20 times the equivalent of renewables, or even of coal fired power stations, not that we want to produce those. The variable cost is also very high. So you have a very high fixed cost, the cost of building it to safety standards that are required, but it is also the variable cost. Once you build it, the cost every day of running it, not just the uranium, but the cost of running it is gigantic and and comrades know this, the cost of decommissioning it is even larger than the cost of building it. Today, as we speak, there are crews working in Britain and the United States decommissioning, continuing to decommission power stations, nuclear power stations that shut 25 years ago, because you don't just close it down and forget it. You have to have crews of people working on the sites, even after the material has been removed, the worst of radioactive material for decades afterwards. It is from an economic point of view a complete disaster. Right. Secondly, it is useless for our purposes. What is our purpose? Remember the argument is that we want to shift from gas and coal fired produced electricity to something that does not produce CO2. Now, today, we are running out of time. We need to do it today. Right. The whole point is to if we can go to a significant level of reduction of CO2 emission within the next couple of years, we already know that 2030 is too late for achieving the Paris targets. So it was something now. Now we know there's no doubt about that. No one can dispute that. Not even our good friends on the chat on YouTube chat. Nobody can dispute that takes at least 12 years to build one. So even if we were prepared to forget about safety issues and, you know, but the huge fixed cost, the variable cost, the decommissioning cost, and we were to order like China has done 150 power stations for Europe. It wouldn't solve our problem. The problem is what do we do today in the next couple of years, the next five years so that we don't go beyond the point of no return. In 15 years time, there will be other solutions. So by the imagine the tragedy, putting all our eggs or many of our eggs in the basket of nuclear. Okay. Failing to meet our targets before 2030. And then we end up 15 years from now with power stations are the extremely, extremely expensive to run. And which by that time, there will be alternatives, much, much cheaper alternatives and alternatives that do not involve poisonous materials and radioactive materials. Okay, so that's my second reason that it is useless. The third reason, of course, is that it is poisonous. That it is there is an ethical issue about this generation, bearing stuff on the ground that will destroy ecosystems for, you know, for hundreds if not thousands of years to come. And besides that and setting aside the danger. I'm now going to home in and finish off with the last and maybe the most serious objection to nuclear power stations for progressives like us. It is totalitarian nuclear power is by construction totalitarian. It can never be democratic. But you need huge quantities of money to build it. Right. Who has huge quantities of money? All you guys. Right. The, there are five companies in the world that build them. You know, some are Russian, some are Chinese that if you are. It is one Swedish and a couple or actually one French, right. So by definition, if the Greek state, the Turkish state, the whatever the Moldovan state, the British state, if they want to build a lot of those, they will have to make a deal with a devil with five oligarchs for a large quantity of money. Okay, that's point number one. In other words, it needs to be top down hugely hierarchical in terms of financing. It will involve lots of loans from big banks and big finance. So effectively the city of London, Wall State, as well as some oligarchs will be empowered massively by taxpayers. That's point number one point number two. Once you build it, you will need a whole security force to ensure that doesn't fall in their own hands. Just guards, you know, with machine guns, AK-47s and walkie-talkies will not do. It will not do because if you really have such a lethal force inside the building somewhere in your countryside, you better make sure that it's not taken over by terrorists. Which means you need a CIA. You need a security surveillance spying network to try to predict, you know, who might attempt to take over this lethal factory. Okay, even if DM 25 was in government everywhere. Right. We would not be able to prevent such a security apparatus from becoming a state within a state. And therefore, the whole business is highly totalitarian. It's only totalitarian regimes or governments, democratically elected governments that are prepared to surrender a state within a state to an oligarchy that can build these power stations. No wonder, you know, China is very happy to produce 155 power stations or where the land is prepared to do it. Okay. And let me just say that this last insight was I owe this insight to a certain Mr. Tony Ben, whom I had the great honor and pleasure to have met back in 1979 at Essex University. And he told me the story. He told me he related to me something I didn't know back then when I was an 18 year old boy then. For those who don't know who Tony Ben was, he was the, you know, the best, the most effective leader of the late that the Labor Party never had. He was a minister of the Labor Party. He was a stalwart of the Labor Party. He almost became deputy leader of the Labor Party didn't get it for a couple of votes or one vote or something like that. But he was the leading light intellectually and politically and activism wise of the left wing of the Labor Party. Now Tony Ben participated in in two governments of the Labor Party in the late 60s and early 70s. And as a young radical socialist, he was very much in favor of nuclear power, because for him it was it demonstrated the capacities of the human mind to conquer nature and to turn it into a servant of humanity. So he was very ganho about it was clean. Remember this conversation. It was snazzy. It was modern. It, it was top down which, you know, went well with his original socialist Marxist idea of planning of a powerful state creating a big factory that produces wonderful energy from the best technology can offer. And then he became the minister responsible for nuclear power stations. And that's when he realized that he was not in control of the ministry, because the ministry was infected by the security apparatus, which was necessary to build around nuclear power stations. This is my debt to Tony Ben. So even if you convinced me, you've come as the good people on the on the YouTube chat that it's clean. It's safe. It's beautiful. It's wonderful. It's all singing all dancing. This last point that it is totalitarian makes it impossible for a progressive movement like ours that believes in the dispersing of ownership and power across society away from the very, very few to the many. It is impossible and unsustainable for the M25 or any progressive movement like the M25 to support nuclear power. Thank you, Janice. And on that note, in terms of the politics and economics, I've had a few comments from the chat. Dungu Kamau says rather than a focus on banning particular technologies for the production of energy, there should be a focus on creating a dynamic regulatory system that combines scientific discovery and innovation with democratic choice in the technologies used. And another comment is that... Hold on. Where was it? Yes. Well, it's kind of what you said that nuclear energy may only be run by monopolistic companies or the state. In any case, it implies huge centralized power. But then someone else comments to that gentleman's comment. What about the wind oligarchs, Vestas, Siemens, Amitha, General Electric? Janice, do you want to respond to that? I'm dying to answer that. There is no doubt that oligarchies will want to monopolize anything from marmalade to wind power to, you know, Suvlaiki or, you know, Yeros or Kebab. There's no doubt. There's no doubt. But some technologies are amenable to oligarchic structures and others are more democratic by nature. So yes, you can see that what's going on here in Greece, for instance, we have oligarchic large companies, mostly German, that are coming here and they are selling, they are peddling these very large windmills, which they go and, you know, 200 meter tall windmills, they go and they bury on top of the mountains of Greece and they are awful to look at. They make huge quantities of noise. They destroy the environment because you need to build roads through the forest to service them. And they are made of non-renewables. Once they die, once they are gone, they cannot be recycled. So these oligarchs, what they want with these multinational companies, they want to create large windmills out of cheap plastic that cannot be recycled. In other words, they are destroying the whole concept of renewable energy. They are abusing it. It's a kind of greenwashing, right? But that doesn't mean that it's the only way it can be. The new design of wind farms, the ones that, for instance, are going to be built very soon, already there's been tenders, the Scottish government and the Nicola Sturgeon has received 700 million pounds from companies that bid for these new floating wind farms in the middle of the North Sea. They are made up of a plethora of small turbines, wind turbines, very small ones made of recyclable aluminium, very lightweight. Similar technologies can be used on rooftops, as Judith said, with solar panels, and they are, by nature, decentralized. If you've got many small windmills and many small solar panels that are dispersed in the community, you know, every neighborhood can own its own, and then they can be connected through a public-owned grid that optimizes the distribution of electricity. This is a dream come true for socialists like us who want a cooperatively owned, non-oligarchic network, which is neither controlled by the state nor controlled by any monopoly or oligopoly or oligarchy. The fact that the oligarchy can and have succeeded in infecting and molesting wind power generation doesn't mean that wind power and solar power is not inherently more democratic by virtue of their decentralized nature. Thanks, Janice. Another comment from Adrian here, which is something we haven't touched on. Shouldn't the question be asked, why is there such a need for such a high intensity of energy consumption? So perhaps we can also speak to degrowth in our proposals in that direction. Johannes, enlighten us. Johannes Fair. Thank you, madam. I want to go a little bit into the German story of nuclear energy, and we have actually now also been speaking about democracy in terms of what energy form helps us and helps the people to be in charge of their electricity and energy production. And in Germany, some people have asked me in the past, why does Merkel go out of nuclear energy in Germany? And I want to tell you that this is already a wrong framing because it wasn't Merkel. This is a grassroots movement that has been built up since the 70s. Many local initiatives against the dangerous technology in their neighborhoods, so power plants or storage places in old mines. There was the first green election lists in that time that later led to the foundation of the Green Party in Germany. Big demonstrations with hundreds of thousands of people over that time against the dangerous material and power plants in their area or the transports across the country with that material. And in 1989, the Green Party made it into parliament in Germany, and in government with the Social Democrats, they prepared a first proposal for a phase out. Very slow, in good contact with the big energy companies, but at least they made that step. And Merkel's government, which came in later, conservative and liberal, reversed this decision in 2010 and prolonged the runtime of nuclear energy power plants, because they're good friends obviously with these big companies that make a huge profit while the state takes over the risk. If you would have to ensure a nuclear power plant, the electricity price would be much, much bigger. Then 2011 also to the comment on the chat from earlier that we should forget about Chernobyl. 2011 Fukushima, I hope everyone remembers, right? That led to demonstrations, some of the biggest demonstrations Germany has ever seen with 250,000 people in Berlin, demanding that we go out of this dangerous technology, and only this pressure led Merkel to reverse her decision. So it was actually a victory of a broad coalition of farmers, citizens, activists, ecologists that was built bottom up by many organizations over many years, that pressured Merkel to make that decision to finally leave the nuclear energy in Germany. Also, of course, by giving some money away for the big companies that was very unnecessary and so on, I don't want to go too much into this. What still will stay us, and now speaking from a German's perspective here is we will have radioactive waste. We will have to take care of it for a million years. Even no storage place found. There has been these old mines that they were exploring, but almost all of them by now you can literally see that water is coming in. They have been dumping some nuclear waste in a place called Asse in Germany. It's an old salt mine and already it's clear now they have begun to dig out everything again, which is a huge cost. And there's just no place in the country where this stuff can stay. So concluding, I think, just wanted to contribute with that story to give a little bit of a clarification that in Germany this is a broad movement, a democratic movement that decided no nuclear energy is not a safe energy production for us. And exactly as it has been mentioned before also it's very central power structures that are needed to make this very central energy system that relies on big power plants, big players that own them. Whether it's the state or privately owned and this is relying on extractivism elsewhere and renewable energies when they are managed well which also depends of course a lot who's in government and you know making the loss and on how to build up renewable energies. So I think that that should be, yeah, in my opinion also the solution for the future and owned by the many very centralized structure owned by the many. Thank you, Johannes we've been running a poll in the chat asking whether people think that nuclear energy could play a large role in solving climate change and currently know is winning at 59%. And then a savage asks in the chat how many people here in this chat would be willing to live within five kilometers of a nuclear power plant. I don't see many answers to that yet. And then Eric, sorry, Ivana Nenadovich and then Eric, go for it. Thanks, my friend. As we are also agreeing on this panel and obviously a poll is saying no to nuclear energy and as we are coming to an end of this call. It will be interesting for me because I am no expert on this topic, but what logic tells me. Okay, all of these alternatives that we mentioned are not ideal, because we would still need mining for solar panels we would need silver for batteries with for electric cars and we need lithium. And what wind turbines are also destroying ecosystem and so on. So there is no perfect solution obviously, and what would interest me would be a next debate on these renewable energies. And of course, what is conclusion, as I heard from all of the interventions, is that what we need is the growth and less consumption. And because as long as we keep up in this speed, we will never have a perfect source of energy. And I do remember Chernobyl, and I wouldn't make it a child game. You know, that it's been a long time ago and now we are so technologically advanced that it won't happen again and as Janis said, even if that wouldn't happen again, it costs terribly to maintain that kind of facility. Thank you. Thanks, Savannah. Eric Edmund. Yeah, me too. I if I had to choose between living next to 1000 wind turbines and one power plant, I'd choose the wind turbines, even if it's the only thing I can see from my window and I think that's really what it comes down to right that. Okay, nuclear there are some arguing arguments for nuclear. It's not like this without arguments that chat in the YouTube which which I've been following proves that there are many arguments, but when there are so many alternatives. If I take any of those risks. That's really what this discussion really comes down to if we had no alternatives, then maybe was it would be worth the risk it would be worth the investment would be worth all of it. But it isn't when we have so many other options. So I wanted to take a bit the opportunity to bring you to Brussels where I am currently, and where essentially the greenest thing in the city is the shirts that I'm wearing, because this whole discussion that we're having comes as the results of this ridiculous taxonomy from posed by the European Commission that would like to basically label both nuclear energy and hold on to your socks. Natural gas as green sources of energy right this is how this whole debate has started in Europe. And this is also where we're having this discussion. Now, if you really take a hard look at why this taxonomy is happening it's not that people in the European are complete idiots. I mean, they are idiots because they're putting us all at risk with this very, very short minded and very dangerous taxonomy. But it is essentially because the taxonomy is meant to serve the interests of the countries that are essentially dominating the European structure, the European Union structure as it is now. And that is France and Germany, you know, I mean France on the one hand we're talking about a country that is dependent on like 70.6 or something like that percent of France's energy comes from nuclear power plants 70% right. And Germany is the biggest importer of natural gas, not in Europe in the world. And that is before Nord Stream 2 is even turned on, which is going to bring about 55 billion cubic meters or whatever it is of natural gas into Germany and then Europe per day. Right. So when you look at this taxonomy it's impossible not to spot the horrific hypocrisy behind it and what this is really about, which is basically the unwillingness of France and Germany to really to to to foot the bill for this huge green transition needs to happen. I'm not really foot the bill because if you'd read there are green new deal for Europe, you'll see that it doesn't need to come from them to the bill or these doesn't need to be paid by them. But this unwillingness basically to to adapt and that is putting us all at risk and that is making us have these kind of conversations, which are important, but have underlying it essentially massive European scale hypocrisy and not that serious discussion about whether or nuclear and gas is a transitionary sort of stepping stone for green energy. Thank you Eric, we're coming close to the end of our hour so if any of you out there have any final comments or questions and I would ask, please keep them away from the technical side so we're not just throwing scientific proof points at each other and focus perhaps more on the politics and the economics and security concerns that would be great. And there are some more questions on degrowth in the chat perhaps you can you can take them and discuss what DM 25 has on that topic. Gladly, I will gladly talk about that and about some of the events points. So yes, definitely we need the radical degrowth high income countries are much more responsible for green greenhouse gas emissions so 10% of the poorest people and meets as much as green green house gas emissions as the poorest 50%. Also, world's richest 1% cause double CO2 emissions of the poorest 50% by the research by ox one. So those countries high income countries have to make mobility energy and land public. And let me say something that's maybe problematic but I need to get this out of my system. We are very well aware that neither solar or wind are perfect. We are going to need mining for some time for both. So what's ours. What's my stance not our no one voted on this so all of the comrades don't have responsibility for what am I going to say moratorium on all mining until these resources are not public energy mobility and land. And also until we implement radical degrowth on energy or less energy consumption and mining can be put in motion only when it is for green energy that is part of the commons. So no more for Tesla, but for electric train trains that have dividends for citizens, for example. So these issues are going to be the would need to be debated on people's assemblies from that community that lives near the mines together with scientists and activists and then they all collaboratively decide whether to do mining there and for how long and for what purpose. So this is my stance and I'd like to hear more from you on that maybe some other live stream more now. Thank you to Sharon. I'm going to also start saying something that's not going to be very popular. Yes, to the growth. Yes, we have the West need to, you know, win ourselves off trying to find our lost humanity in more and more stuff. But humanity is going to need more energy, not less, less. Even if we have to growth, because let's face it, the global south needs a lot more energy. We're not going to achieve justice simply by the West, the North, reducing our consumption. People in Africa need a lot more energy than they have they do not have access to zoom because they don't have electricity, so we need a lot more energy guys. Okay. At the same time, in terms of a military climate change, we must all become vegetarians. I'm not a vegetarian, but I should be. So I'm confessing here, because this is a huge quantity of greenhouse gases. There's a lot of stuff we need to do. But we need to also, if we do believe that that the emission of greenhouse gases is a clear and present danger for humanity. We need to decouple this from other concerns. So yes, we all have a concern for mining, but this is independent of climate change. Right. We've been mining the world for, you know, five, six thousand years, but climate change is due to the meat to the burning of fossil fuels, not mining. If you want us to talk about moratoriums of mining and so on, let's begin with moratorium of every single coal mine. It's absurd that we're still mining for coal. Then we can talk about lithium, right. But if we have not banned every single coal mine there is. It is ridiculous to even be talking about banning lithium mine. Let's first walk and then we run. The urgent technical technological question that we should be aiming at if we care about the emergency that is climate change concerns energy storage. This is connected to nuclear power because what the supporters of nuclear power saying are saying is effectively this to support intermittent sources of renewable energy like solar and wind. To produce independently of solar and wind. The independent independently of the intermittent ones we need to produce electricity by other means nuclear. Now, the alternative to that in order to have backup for the the infamous windlass nights where neither solid or wind works. The alternative to that is to store the electricity produced by wind and some during very sunny windy days. Right. That's what we need to do. Our capacity to do this to this day at this moment with batteries is very limited because battery technology is far behind it's improving, but it will take a long time. There are other technologies though. One is hydrogen hydrogen is going to be the diesel of the future. And green hydrogen that is produced through massive rows upon rows upon rows of small aluminum built wind farms in the middle of the ocean. This does not harm any environment, any ecosystem. It's in the middle of the sea, you know whether the fish don't care whether there is something floating on top of them. Okay, the birds don't care. They don't fly that low in the Atlantic in the Pacific. So, and imagine if all this was using to catalyze water and create hydrogen which then burns and produces water that that it. Now I agree with do some that this should be all publicly owned or communally owned or socially owned, but nevertheless, there is a question for us progressives. What do we want first, the socialist revolution that will make sure that all of this happens as part of cooperatives. How can we wait for this, and we should be pushing for it, regardless of the kind of ownership I'm torn on this, because I feel that unless we take care to move away from oligarchy and to socialize this process it won't happen. Then there are opponents who say it will only happen if you forget about socializing and you just get out there and do it with a quinoa and whatever other companies are prepared to provide the technology. My green you deal kind of mentality tells me that we need to go somewhere down the middle of the road. We need the state to contract these large companies that can actually do it tomorrow to do it to pay them to do it because they can do it quickly before we develop socially owned collectors that can do it, but for the ownership of these grids to be public. Thanks, Yanis okay we're coming to the end of our hour just some some final comments from the chat. Well, degrowth seems like political suicide and idea that the right would love to pedal against progressives advocating for it on the internet is oxymoronic. Let's all be honest to someone else, all our energy actually goes into our social media vanity projects. Fair enough, and his one supposing that the oligarchy has had the same insight as Yanis how could we oppose their attempts to exert totalitarian control over energy production. We can be against it in principle but what about in practice what I think there's a simple answer to that and that's join dm 25 if you haven't already the email address email address web address is dm 25.org slash join. I'm going to hand it over now to Amir to summarize some of the discussions that we've had today. Amir go for it. Before I climb onto that, let me just quickly talk on one or two key points that were touched on in the comments that we just have to flesh out. Very important for viewers and also members to bear in mind that some of the technologies mentioned like fourth generation SMR and so forth. There's very few of them actually are working or the prototypes will only come online in about a decade or so from now. So we have to also bear in mind that these technologies are not tested. That's one thing to is around transparency around the nuclear power industry. Some of the viewers might know that accidents involving nuclear power stations and also the supporting enrichment facilities and and and are supposedly told to the IAA. And if you look at the IAA website, the only list the previous 12 months of data, whereas there's about a thousand accidents on record from level one to level seven, level seven being Fukushima Chernobyl and so forth. So there's a significant lack of transparency on the nuclear power issue and people are not aware of the the hundreds if not thousands of accidents that have occurred and we just don't know about it. And there was also a comment on insurance and nuclear power stations in the US, for example, are insured for 450 million dollars, but Fukushima cost of it is around almost a trillion. So there's a definite and the insurance. Of course, if this is insured, probably the cost will rise up and nobody will demand for it because the price is too high. So let's use this opportunity. And again, from a personal point of view, uses opportunity to dismantle one of the key tools of capitalism. Right. And this is one of them. Nuclear power is one of the significant tools of capitalism. We know this. We know that it takes funds away from the renewable energies. We know that it is a military dimension to this. And as a progressive movement, our political goals and ecological goal does come first. But then to summarize and how we're going to go as the next steps on this for our members is that all the feedback gathered here today from the chat from the discussion and also an internal forum will be put together to was preparing an all member vote and will hopefully have an announcement about that soon on our website with the results. Thank you. Thank you, Amir. And as Amir just said, all the discussion that's happened today is going to feed into a vote text which will be voted on by our members. And if you would like to become a member and you're not already again the web addresses dm25.org slash join and you can be part of this democratic process to decide what our position should be on nuclear energy as a political movement. Thank you for watching. Thank you for all your comments.