Contribution short abstract:

Contradicting truths about post-fossil futures are often at the root of political conflict over the energy transition. This paper analyses how state and resistance are engaged in a political struggle that produces both truths on nuclear power and new demarcations between state and non-state.

Contribution long abstract:

In the Netherlands, a combination of right wing politics, political turmoil around wind parks and the hope for a painless solution to the climate crisis, have opened up new avenues for nuclear power. The Dutch government is now planning to add two to four new nuclear power stations. This has led to a revival of the anti-nuclear movement, both locally by inhabitants who fear the nuclearisation of their surroundings and nationally by environmentalists.

Contested truths play a very important role in the present political fight over this project. This paper analyses how the political fight over these straddles both sides of state and non-state politics. On the one hand the state tries to use participatory decision making to depoliticize citizens, making them part of the state while denying them statehood. On the other hand, the resistance links the personal and intimate lives of local inhabitants to the political of the anti-nuclear movement. Local inhabitants fear the everyday realities of their rural land being industrialized and their village being overrun by workmen and trucks. The national anti-nuclear movement sees the building of new nuclear power stations as bad climate policy next to their old worries about nuclear waste and safety. Linking the two in a number of different ways repoliticises local concerns and provides statehood to local inhabitants in a prefigurative strategy for democratic decision making. As such the political struggle over nuclear energy shows how state and non-state are intimately related and the constantly changing result of politic contestation.