Crusading Against the Atom

The demonstration was part picnic, part protest march and part folk festival. Nearly 10,000 people, carrying accordions, flutes, guitars and a fluttering forest of posters and signs, gathered for a "festival of life" at the small Italian town of Montalto di Castro, 80 miles north of Rome, the site of two projected nuclear-power plants. The protesters were an improbable mix: elegant members of the Italian nobility, radical students in American Indian garb, middle-class citizens and Christian Democratic and Communist politicians. They were determined to halt construction of the 2,000-megawatt nuclear complex that would be built near an ancient Etruscan cemetery. Other protests have been held at the sites of 18 additional reactors that are planned for completion in Italy in the next decade.

All this is part of a growing and quite possibly ruinous European crusade against nuclear power. The crusade is being fought by Europe's oddly mixed environmental groups, which are rapidly becoming a significant political force. Ex-Premier Olof Palme of Sweden attributed the 1976 election defeat of his Social Democratic government, in part, to public opposition to his nuclear-power program. In the first round of French municipal elections last month, ecology-minded groups gathered 10% of the vote in Paris and up to 30% in some suburbs, cutting into the totals of losing moderate candidates backed by President Valery Giscard d'Estaing.

Monumental Crisis. Since the 1973 Arab oil embargo, economists have warned that the failure of industrialized nations to develop alternative power sources will result in a monumental energy crisis by the mid-1980s, involving widespread industrial shutdowns and a perilously declining growth rate. In Spain, for example, the economy is already suffering from the impact of a $4.5 billion oil import bill last year.

Opponents of atomic energy are unmoved by the economic dilemma. The issue is invested with such emotion that few anti-atom groups are pressuring for research into effective alternatives to nuclear power. They emphasize that nuclear accidents at reactor sites could unleash incalculably dangerous radiation. The environmentalists fear that radioactive wastes will be improperly disposed of, thus posing a threat to mankind for thousands of years to come. There is also widespread worry that atomic weapons will be fashioned from plutonium obtained from nuclear-energy plants. Says Pierre Strohl of the OECD's Nuclear Energy Agency: "Peaceful application of nuclear energy seems to be inseparable from the nightmarish images of the atomic bomb." Many people, especially the young, regard the nuclear reactor as a symbol of a "hopelessly technocratic, centralized, hierarchical society implacably destructive of natural resources and human values." As a consequence, says Strohl, the debate is degenerating into sterile confrontation between dogmatic opponents and intransigent defenders of the atom.

So far, the atom's opponents have succeeded in delaying or halting nuclear programs in much of Europe. The nine member-nations of the European Community are expected to draw only 7% of their energy from nuclear power in 1985, well below the goal of 13% set three years ago. The governments of Denmark and Norway have been pressured into putting off plans to build their first nuclear reactors. In The Netherlands, where a recent poll showed that 53% of the Dutch have doubts about nuclear energy, construction of three new reactors has been postponed. In Switzerland, a round-the-clock sit-in at a nuclear construction site near Basel has caused long delays. Belgium, Luxembourg and Austria have been obliged to postpone nuclear development. The battle is fiercest in West Germany and France. West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt's ambitious program, involving 17 new reactors, has been halted by outraged citizens' groups, while France's program has been delayed for a year--thanks largely to protests backed by left-wing labor unions.

Busy Environmentalists. For a people whose respect for authority is legendary, the West Germans are now, remarkably, Europe's busiest environmentalists. Their organizations are called B.I.s--for Burgerinitiativen, or citizens' action groups. About 15 million Germans have joined the action groups to oppose not only the construction of nuclear-power plants, but the destruction of forests, vacation lands, historic towns and churches as well. Last fall 6,000 West Berliners staged a dramatic march to save their famed Berliner Luft, which they claim is the cleanest urban air in Europe. They held a nightlong meeting in Spandau forest to protest the felling of trees for a planned coal-fired power plant.

Other groups have successfully stopped autobahn construction that would have cut off the idyllic town of Eltville from the Rhine, and have put pressure on local officials to spare landmarks in Luebeck, Hamburg, Munich, Heidelberg and other ancient cities. The B.I.s' slogan--"Better to be active today than radioactive tomorrow"--has also proved effective in rallying hundreds of thousands of people to the antinuclear-energy cause. Says Scientist Peter Menke-Gliickert: "Environment has become the Viet Nam of the middle class."

In France, where the expression of citizens' grievances is practically a way of life, there are now hundreds of new pressure groups devoted to nuclear energy and consumer issues. The Paris phone book carries five pages of citizens' group listings. One such lobby is the Association of Telephone Users, which is dedicated to curing the problem best illustrated by a well-known axiom: "Half the people in France are waiting to get telephones while the other half are waiting for a dial tone." Campaigners for more green spaces in the cities often join opponents of nuclear power in occupying reactor construction sites. In Lyon, ecologists broke into a nuclear-research office and stole the company's contingency plans for a major nuclear accident. Publication of the document, which outlined the medical aid and evacuation plans that would be needed in case of radioactive contamination, sent voters scurrying to the polls last month to vote for the ecologists.

Green Peril. Such is the political strength of the French Friends of the Earth and other ecology groups that they are now known as the "green peril." Both right-and left-wing parties are now busy wooing the ecologists, who could well be a deciding influence on next year's parliamentary elections.

The environmentalists, meanwhile, are launching an illegal "Green Radio" network on FM bands in Paris this month. Although the government maintains a rigid monopoly on all broadcasting, the ecologists will operate individual 20-watt transmitters, just powerful enough to reach each arrondissement (district). Even if police track down the transmitters with radio direction finders, the ecologists are prepared. Their antennas will be nestled, appropriately, in the luxuriant springtime foliage of Paris treetops. Transmitters will operate from nearby autos. When the police close in, the ecologists' cars will merely move on to other trees and beam new radio broadcasts from them.

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