German MP uneasy about Ukraine’s energy plans

German Greens lawmaker down on Ukraine's plans to build new nuclear reactors

Rebecca Harms, a 49-year-old lawmaker in the European Parliament who represents Germany’s Greens/European Free Alliance Group, says she was shocked when she heard Ukraine was planning to build 11 more nuclear reactors by 2030. Harms, who is in Ukraine for an international conference scheduled for April 25-27 and called ‘Chornobyl+20: Remembrance for the Future,’ thinks Europe should help Ukraine develop a stronger position toward Russia with regard to fossil-fuel imports. The conference is being held to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the April 26 Chornobyl nuclear disaster.

Q: What will be the main message you deliver at the conference on Chornobyl next weekend?

A: I will present a new report on the health and environmental effects of Chornobyl, which was compiled by British specialists on my request. The figures in this report challenge the ones provided last year by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which said the number of possible deaths directly caused by the [1986] accident was only 4,000 people. Our report acknowledges up to 60,000 casualties caused by Chornobyl worldwide, revealing ongoing extensive social and economic damage to Ukraine.

We would like to use the Chornobyl anniversary to make IAEA withdraw their figures, as they have no scientific basis.

But the broader message of the conference will be that a new thinking about Chornobyl and Ukraine’s energy policy should be adopted by Ukraine itself and the international community.

I really hope that now, after the Orange Revolution, is the best time to have a real debate on the consequences of Chornobyl and a better energy future for Ukraine.

Q: What exactly do you mean when you say a “better energy future”?

A: We still pretend in Ukraine, as well as in Germany or in France, or in Great Britain, the USA or Russia, that we have enough resources forever, but this is wrong. We know that coal, oil, gas and uranium will run out very fast, and that we have to use those resources much more efficiently.

Better energy, for me, starts with efficiency as the priority of priorities.

Estimations show we could save up to 50 percent of our consumed energy. As far as I am aware of the situation in Ukraine, I know that quite often you just waste your energy.

In addition, I am very much in favor of an ambitious program for development of renewable energy, such as solar, wind and biomass. It’s a pity that Ukraine has not started such a program yet. In the EU, we just agreed that, 20 percent of our energy resources will be renewable by 2020, and Germany will certainly reach this target.

For example, in Germany, years ago, we saw that in northern parts of the country we had enormous capacities for wind power. We developed a political plan on how we want those capacities to be used for energy production. We developed a certain law, which entitled anyone who produced electricity with a windmill to receive subsidies from the state to feed this electricity into the system. This was the basis for quite a successful development of wind-generated energy production, and now we’ve replaced several nuclear plants with it. We’ve also developed a whole industry alongside this, which produces wind turbines both for Germany and for export, creating thousands of jobs.

A lot of farmers in Germany who are now getting into biomass proudly tell us: “In former times, we only produced meat, but now we also produce energy and biogas.”

Q: What do you think of Ukrainian state nuclear energy company Energoatom’s May 2005 announcement that it would build eleven new nuclear plants by 2030 to reduce its energy dependency on Russia and become a major electricity exporter to Europe?

A: It was a shock for me to learn that there are plans in Ukraine to build another eleven or twelve nuclear power plants.

By 2016, Ukraine will have incurred $200 billion worth of damage caused by the Chornobyl disaster alone. This is an on-going catastrophe on the social, environmental and economical levels. And I cannot really imagine that a country facing this will opt for a nuclear future.

I think you should rethink this strategy when you are importing all the risks connected with nuclear plants to your own country and then exporting the energy to other countries.

You should organize a clean-up of Chornobyl and solve all the problems with the nuclear waste there first. If you look just at the problem of nuclear waste, you will find that it isn’t easy to solve anywhere in the world.

My view is that it’s better to invest in sustainable development of your energy sector, which would help protect the climate and overcome nuclear risks instead of building new plants.

For this conference, we will bring in some of the best experts from Germany and the United States to explain how this process works, for example, in Germany or Denmark. Our main job at the conference will be to show that another energy strategy is possible, but you’ve got to start working on it now.

Q: But some European governments are currently considering building new nuclear plants as part of their attempt to fulfill their commitments to the Kyoto agreement (a 1994 international convention designed to reduce greenhouse gases globally).

A: Well, we’ve got one new plant in Finland, we have specific plans for building one plant in France, and we have a debate over construction of one plant in the UK. But even if Europe really wanted to reach Kyoto targets with the help of nuclear energy, it would not be able to replace all the plants that need to be phased out with new ones to meet the Kyoto requirements in time.

What I fear, frankly, is that the nuclear industry may be prepared to go east, because they hope they can build plants in Ukraine or Russia at cheaper costs and with lower safety standards. This cannot be supported.

Have you ever asked your government who will finance the construction of those eleven or so plants that your country said it would build by 2030?

And who will build them? And what kind of reactors will they have? Will they be the latest models, which are very, very expensive – well over $2 billion each?

In Finland, they managed to build a new plant only thanks to cheap loans from the Bavarian state bank, and they got a lot of state money from Sweden and France, because these countries are interested in someone else building a new reactor.

Q: How do you view close ties between Germany and Russia in the gas industry, in the light of recent gas deals that could possibly affect all of Europe?

A: The Russians have delivered gas to Germany since the 1970s, and they were always well trusted partners. But now I think we should start thinking not only about ourselves, but also about developments in Ukraine or Belarus, or Moldova, as well.

The peace and security of Europeans are dependent on developments in countries around us, and so Europeans have to make sure that (Russian gas monopoly) Gazprom offers fair conditions to all countries.

Q: Will Europe assist Ukraine financially in developing the new energy policy you are talking about?

In the next year, there will be a new arrangement on the EU’s Neighborhood Policy, and I think that the energy situation in Ukraine should be the focus of this policy. My stand is that Europe should help Ukraine develop a stronger position towards Russia.

The EU has a major interest in Ukraine being a stable and democratic country. Therefore, the EU should not only keep saying: We see you as Europeans. It should also develop an economic policy to actually bring Ukraine closer to the EU. And from this point of view, energy policy is a basic one.I was ashamed when last winter I saw that a lot of my colleagues in the [European] parliament saw Ukraine only as a country of interest to EU as a safe gas transit area. I think there is much more to it, and I am one of Ukraine’s advocates in the European parliament.