Rutte’s suggestion that gasless Groningen could become home to nuclear power station ridiculed

Dutch Prime Minister Rutte has incited the anger from both politicians and residents in the province of Groningen. During an election debate Sunday evening for RTL, he said that it would be interesting for the Netherlands to consider a new nuclear power plant. Rutte, the leader of the VVD and sitting on polling figures predicting his party may win 40 seats, claimed that the province of Groningen has no objection to hosting such a plant.

But, as the GIC reports, in Groningen significant numbers of people jumped to note that this is not the case.

Among others, the Deputies of the Province of Groningen Mirjam Wulfse (VVD) and Nienke Homan (GroenLinks) immediately announced that Groningen does not want a nuclear power station at all.

Rutte made his suggestion in a debate about the climate. The VVD party leader wants to use nuclear energy to achieve the climate goals in the short term. “We need nuclear energy,” he said. “One could build one in Borssele in the province of Zeeland and there is also a place in Groningen that people say they would like to do there.”

“Groningen would like to be the ‘energyprovince’. We will stop using natural gas, but Groningen also wants to be the place for the energy transition and there are also enormous opportunities there”, says Rutte.

At the moment there is one nuclear power station in the Netherlands, in Zeeland, that provides about four percent of the countries energy needs.

Image: the nuclear power station in Borssele, Zeeland, in 2011. BY Wikimedia/Flickr user Taco Witte. license here.