Using “Chernobyl” to justify closing down nuclear power stations is part of the recipe designed to kill the patient.

About twenty years ago (April 26, 1986), the “Lenin Atomic Energy Station” exploded. Sort of. Anyhow, a lot of radiation escaped (Hiroshima x 400!) and the remains of the plant had to be capped — like a decayed tooth — with a “crown” of concrete.

At the time the event caused quite some surprise. The greens, meaning the reds with an ecological agenda, were undisturbed by the facts since that time, claiming that capitalism not only equals “fascism” — their euphemism for national Socialism — but also ecological piggishness. The “movement’s” rather successful high-wire act of defying facts failed to fit the theory of choice.  Undaunted its partisans persisted to equate Socialism (elegantly dismissing the case of 20-40-100 million victims) with humanism, clean water, pure air, unspoiled landscapes and undisturbed nature. Somewhere the Greens – called “watermelons” here in Europe because they are green on the outside, red on the inside — have a point. The pre-industrial age’s underdevelopment was, ecologically mostly OK. Unless, of course, it deforested regions or turned gardens into deserts. That the old economy produced perennial poverty and starvation when things went badly shall be skipped out of politeness.  Real life socialism, however, had little to do with the bucolic, as it represents an industrialization policy whose locomotive went off the tracks.

Undeniably, the modern (capitalist) economy created pollution. As a “retired” ox-cart driver on a state farm, the writer can testify that the exhaust of oxen is inferior to that of tractors. Even if this point is conceded, pollution is unlikely to be overcome by eliminating capitalism. Transferring the capital of individuals to the custody of the sate will hardly civilize in any realm the newly created monopolist becomes active in. Nor will centralization improve the system’s economic efficiency. While the “state” is not always the “enemy” – think of security here – it is proven to be no panacea either.

An excellent example for challenging the theology of Green-Greens and Red-Greens that proclaims Socialism is at least ecologically sound, is a banner product of socialist practice. It is the Trabant car that most of the readers have the privilege of not having experienced. The “Trabi,” as it was called, had a 26 h.p. three-cylinder two-stoke engine hidden under a card-board body that rated as sleek if compared to a shoe-box. It consumed over ten liters per hundred kilometers — 5-8 would have been expected from a real car produced by the “wrong” system. The vehicle’s top speed, with the wind blowing from the rear, topped out around 85 km/h (under 60 miles).  Its price, counted in months of salary, shall be withheld in order to escape the suspicion of bad-mouthing something. To many before the official collapse of the Soviet system, the Trabi, when compared to a real automobile, served as proof of the “system's’” inferiority. Indeed, the contraption has something typical about it.

The Trabant represents more than the contemporary's conviction that “they are not getting it.” Below this surface the contraption stands for the inefficient misuse of resources such as raw materials, labor and capital. What Socialism built was heavier, more expensive, inferior in performance and of lower durability at a higher cost of operation. Regarding the term “labor:” more is meant than requiring more man-hours for operations than advanced economies. A part of the real abuse of “labor” is the GULAG system. The millions held by the forced labor system and the masses worked at starvation rations to death there, are a symptom of having to compensate for the inefficiency inherent in the system by using more “raw material” to operate it than the international standard required. In this economic context, resorting to slave labor simply meant that inferiority had to be compensated by cheap labor. (Ultimately slave labor helped the USSR in its struggle with modern systems no more than slavery could the Confederacy against the Union in the American Civil War.)

“Chernobyl,” meaning the reactor, its operation, the accident and the management of the aftermath, has driven a nail into Soviet Socialism’s coffin: the event’s components were descriptive of the system which created them. As with most Soviet products, her reactors were made on the cheap by reducing safety features. “Tinny” projects were  badly executed. This was a consequence of the pressure to “overfulfill” the (irrational) norms set by central planning. The related “ideology of tons” meaning countable quantity and not subtle quality, decided whether the worker has fulfilled his duty of Socialist toil. Typically, reactor 4 went on line — again the arbitrary production quantity plays a role – before the sloppily finished questionable design could be completed. Then came the safety test to be performed without interrupting the unit’s delivery. The rest of the accident is, without being fully accidental, history.

While the term “accident” is being questioned, the management of the calamity also demonstrates typically “Soviet” traits. At first there was (bureaucratic) inaction, then Communist denial. The ultimate human costs are unreconstructable. The (secret) Soviet data disappeared when the régime exited history. Even so, the system of secrecy and denial (voluntary in the case of the die-hard western fans) has massively augmented the human costs. Its best expression is wrapped in a post-Soviet joke: “ninety percent of us die early from being perfectly healthy.”

What you have read amounts to this: nuclear power stations can be dangerous if misused, mismanaged and malconstructed. Some built reactors ignoring dangers and used them as though none of the foregoing would be true. Chernobyl is the dot at the end of the sentence. With that it is suggested that the social-political context in which reactors are built have a lot to do with their safety. That is the reason why, driving every two years or so on I-5, when passing San Onofre (South of LA and North of San Diego), the writer can keep totally calm. Unfortunately, things are not quite as simple as that. A flawed reactor, a worse-than-expected crisis plus bad management are not sufficient to put the Chernobyl matter into the file "Interesting."

The underserved problem of the moment is that Chernobyl, a product that is ultimately inseparable from Soviet Socialism, is being put to contemporary use. It is done by those who have always been, and chronically are, infallibly committed to preventing western civilization from surviving and especially from "scoring." To these people nuclear reactors are not like knives that can be used to trim turnips off to kill people. Nuclear power plants and nuclear energy are to this group simply evil. (So are internal combustion engines, refrigeration and whatever. My oxen that I “directed” as a forced laborer while involuntarily “building Socialism” while transporting manure would, on the other hand, be OK.)

One lesson suggested by “Chernobyl” is to emphasize safety when applying a technology that happens to be — like all others – potentially dangerous. So is, by the way, all medicine. Note: “caution” does not equal “avoid.” The latter is, however, exactly what the left-green alliance is using Chernobyl for.

It is at this juncture that the term “revenge” used in the title slips into the picture. Today’s Reds and Greens are rather effectively misusing the “lessons of Chernobyl” for a purpose the case, if soberly interpreted, does not justify.

First to the context: independence from oil and especially from fossil-derived energy originating from unstable sources is on everybody’s tongue. All alternatives depend on more electric energy. It is best gained from nuclear generators. If these can be prevented, the crisis of developed societies that is predicted by the favorite doctrine (Marx) of modernity’s enemies would at long last materialize. Thereby the issue becomes “the inevitable demise of capitalism” or the “survival of modern economic systems.” The Left-Green tendency is hoping for the latter’s demise and is prepared to bring it about through a conduit that Marx had not foreseen. Just “prevent energy from flowing and the rest is inevitable” says the recipe. In tune with this endeavor — given the fact that all other approaches have failed – it is the energy spigot that needs to be turned off. Consequently the Left (and its surrogates) derive conclusions for the benefit of the public from Chernobyl that might not be supported by its facts but are very much supported by a political agenda.

Using “Chernobyl” to justify closing down nuclear power stations is part of the recipe designed to kill the patient. Preventing new (and implicitly improved) construction is a measure designed to reinforce the flanks. In preventing modernization and by cutting off the means that the progressive economy of the future requires, the politically pleasing condition of ever less for a growing number in the context of rising expectations has a chance of becoming reality. To the extent that referring to the past’s Chernobyl to illustrate the dangers of a future to be feared works, the foreseeable crisis of the future grows. Playing the fake “Chernobyl card” might just work as a political break preventing the preparation of the economy for the predictable future. If so, through Chernobyl Communism might have created the crisis that helped to ruin the USSR. At the same time, misrepresenting Chernobyl's causes and implications, the cause of Socialism might ultimately have found a means through which it can exercise revenge against the modern world.