Rosatom claims that the Temelin project will inject EUR 24 billion into the economy and create fifty thousand new jobs.



ВИА Гра

If you want to win a debate, it is clever to set the terms of the debate in ways that will allow you to win.

When it comes to Temelin, the debate has been framed around the wrong question, of who will get the business. The correct and much more important questions, of who needs it, who will pay for it and how much it costs, are rarely, if ever asked.

It is an irony that those most determined to stop Temelin are the least able to do so. The environmentalist case against Temelin may be compelling for environmentalists, but for the great majority of Czech voters and all Czech politicians, it is irrelevant. We might all be ostriches on global warming. But when it comes to nuclear power, it is the Green party that has its head in the sand.

Environmentalists would be more likely to achieve their ambition if they spoke less about the cost to the environment of two more nuclear power plants on Czech soil, and more, much more, about the cost to Czech electricity consumers.

The skill of the Temelin lobby has been to keep us all second guessing who the winner will be and to keep mum about where the money required to build two new nuclear reactors will actually come from.

CEZ shareholders and the nuclear industry itself are eager to play down the final cost to consumers. And because they stand to gain from the successful completion of the project if someone else foots the bill, their estimates of how much state aid is required, when they dare to make such estimates, should be taken with a large pinch of salt.

If the debate over Temelin set out to answer the question of how much Czech consumers of electricity shall be required to donate to the shareholders of CEZ and the winning bidder and its suppliers, the population’s enthusiasm for nuclear power would wane.

Opponents of Temelin should concentrate their efforts on making a compelling economic case against the project. No one gives a damn about such intangibles as ‘energy security’ and the ‘multiplier effect’.

If people grasped fully the fact that Temelin will mean at least ten per cent on top of their electricity bills for the next two decades, you might find a couple of politicians demanding to know what exactly are the ‘top secret’ figures being used by prime minister Petr Necas to justify the project.

Instead, we have a press release from Rosatom, referring to research by the consultancy, A.T. Kearney, which speaks of a ‘stimulatory injection for the Czech economy worth EUR 23.98 billion, EUR 2.2 billion to the state budget and the creation of 49.000 jobs.’

How wonderful! I love the unwillingness to round up the figures, to 24 billion and 50.000. Rounded-up figures sound so much less scientific! These statistics are good public relations. They are worthless as research because they have not been subjected to independent peer review, and the assumptions from which they derive are not made public (nor is the study itself, which was commissioned by Rosatom.)

Last week, representatives of the nuclear industry and their political allies gathered in parliament, at a session of the economy committee, to impress upon each other how good Temelin will be for...well, for the nuclear industry in fact. It was all very A.T. Kearney-like. Minister Kalousek did not bother to show up (he has already made clear that he thinks the project is economic nonsense), nor did any journalists, but plenty of others did, including a handful of members of parliament, and of course, Westinghouse and the Russian-led consortium with the Orwellian name of MIR 1200.

Not a single question was raised by this gathering of rent-seekers about how the project will be funded and by whom. The bidders themselves know full well that the Czech government is unable to pay for the project without legislation requiring approval at the EU level. But neither thought it necessary or wise to point this out. In fact, the whole sorry performance was nothing more than a love-in about how they will make money on the project, an exercise in mutual stimulation fuelled by statistical Viagra supplied by Rosatom via A.T. Kearney.

Much was made of the 'multiplier effect' but no one mentioned the 'crowding out effect'. No one asked how much money will be sucked out of the pockets of all consumers if Temelin goes ahead, and how this would depress consumption overall. No one thought it seemly to discuss the impact of a decade or more of under investing in public utilities, hospitals and schools that will follow as public capital is vacuumed out of other projects to build two more nuclear pyramids.

The nuclear industry has it easy here. The determination by that part of the population most vigorously opposed to Temelin to bang on about the environmental costs, and to ignore the costs to ordinary households and small businesses, ensures that the debate is dominated by self-styled realists dismissing well-meaning fantasists.

In January 2012, in a study called Temelinomika, we examined the question of whether CEZ can afford to build two more nuclear reactors. The answer was not 42. Today, it is widely accepted that CEZ indeed cannot afford Temelin, at least not without a massive ‘stimulatory injection’ of state aid.

Unlike the study by A.T. Kearney, whose fairy tale with a happy ending is being hawked around the city to justify the project, our study is freely available to all-comers. Please tear it apart. In the autumn, we shall release Temelinomika II, in which we shall examine the impact of the project on the wider economy. And once again, the answer is not 42 –or even 42.98.


PS. Could I ask A.T. Kearney kindly to send us a copy of the Temelin research? Thank you!
PPS. Here is VIAgra singing STOP! STOP! STOP!