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Paper short abstract

In the Netherlands, the anti-nuclear power movement is confronted with a government depoliticising nuclear power as inevitable. It seeks ways to politicise the discussion without losing its credibility through radicalisation, both in its local-national collaborations and in its framing.

Paper 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 build two or more new nuclear power stations, claiming this to be inevitable. This has led to a revival of the anti-nuclear movement.

This paper analyses how the anti-nuclear power movement navigates realities and imaginations of polarisation and depoliticisation in its strategies. It builds its argument on ethnographic research of the resistance against nuclear power at two levels: at the national level where an environmentalist group protests how the development of nuclear power interferes with more effective climate policies, and locally, where local inhabitants experience living in a sacrifice zone where both nuclear and renewable energy infrastructure are planned. They fear the everyday realities of their rural land being industrialised and their village being overrun by workmen and trucks.

The paper shows that the state uses a citizens’ assembly to depoliticise discussions on nuclear energy, thus pre-empting both local and national resistance. The anti-nuclear movement counters this through different polarisation strategies. On the one hand, it seeks politicisation by redefining greenness at the national level. On the other, it downplays its radicality by choosing not-too-activist strategies and framings at the local level in order to be acceptable there. The paper end by briefly reflecting on the role of the anthropology researcher-lecturer in these strategies of polarisation.