French anti-nuclear group wants lower standard of living

The energy blogs have been seeing a lot of discussion about the leading French anti-nuclear group Sortir du Nucleaire which  thinks that France could easily phase out all nuclear power in 5 to 10 years. OK, not so easily... Still, this is the first honest report of an actual non-nuclear future and some of it’s consequences.

The full report should be read by everyone who is interested the planet’s energy future, and the different visions of it.

The World Nuclear News web site stated this in response:

The pressure group's recently published 100-page report, Nucleaire: Comment en sortir?, presents a highly detailed plan of far-reaching energy saving measures that it says could enable the country that famously relies on nuclear power plants for 78% of its electricity to close them all down. It then advocates an energy efficient vision of France which uses other generation options - including fossil fuels.

The group's vision of electricity generation in a nuclear-free France relies chiefly on wind power, with aims to build 11.8 GWe of terrestrial wind power and 10 GWe of maritime wind power facilities in five years, rising to 24.3 GWe and 15 GWe respectively in ten years. At present France has only 2 GWe of wind powered generation, although the report points to Germany's current example of a wind fleet with the capacity to generate 20 GWe.

The burden of saving energy would have to fall heavily on French businesses and the public. The report suggests measures to replace incandescent light bulbs, refrigerators and freezers with energy-efficient models, reduce the amount of energy wasted by electrical appliances left on standby, and fixing a maximum energy ceiling for industrial processes using electricity. It also calls for an end to the use of electricity for space and water heating, the prohibition of air conditioning in private homes and the imposition of a 19 degree C limit for room heating.

What we have here is one of the first groups in the world in the anti-nuclear movement that openly states it wants to lower the standard of living of the people. Imagine living in the US South East with NO air-conditioning? I write these words not to shame this group but to praise them! Here you have an amazingly HONEST forecast for a world without nuclear energy.

Sortir du Nucleaire should be applauded for this, seriously, so then the discussion can go forward in this honest way. Nuclear power advocates, generally, see the eventual bannign of all fossil fuels as the way to control pollution, lesson health risk by getting rid of particulate creating hydro-carbon fuel and by developing what is basically limitless energy based on fission.