How EU wrested the nuclear initiative. Issue 03
Apart from the two major blocks of US and Asia, the EU plays a significant role in determining how and where technology & wealth moves during globalisation. The EU has some great advantages and disadvantages which makes it unique. It has not only technology and wealth but a huge diversity that appeals and reaches across the globe. It has England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the Dutch and the Belgians all of whom have had their own distinctive colonies which are still their major export markets. So when it comes to globalisation the colonial links of the EU nations and the relationship, the trust, the cultural exchanges all matter in the long run. Besides the EU countries were all manufacturing powerhouses till the late sixties, before the rise of Japan & Korea and subsequently China and India in the global markets.
Of course it has lost its competitiveness thereafter, especially after it created a very high profit and vivacious domestic market for the countries within. The market within the EU is actually so lucrative that it has made European companies loose there cutting edge unlike the Asian and American companies which are still grimly fighting it out in the market place without which they will not survive. However it has made EU companies highly quality conscious and helped improve their R&D because they are not so much dependant on competitive markets of the US or Asia. And with the Norwegian Oil & British Oil explorations it has tremendously improved its wealth.
Even in the Technology field EU is the early leader in the few extremely critical areas like the energy industry. As also discussed in our previous issue (002) France wrested the initiative from the U.S. in nuclear power as the American manufacturers started jacking up their prices phenomenally Riding on restrictive Intellectual Property Rights the American Oligopolies like GE and Westinghouse created consortiums and build and supplied custom built nuclear plants charging the utilities exorbitantly for patented designs in each field and creating a lavish redundancy and unquestionable safety factors that required hundreds of miles of special electronic and instrument cables, state of the art three layer automation, high response electronic circuits, multiple super computers and 100% redundancy in the plant and equipment. The costs spiralled and were eventually passed on to the share holders and the ultimately the energy consumers who did not mind
Soon there were no takers for these custom built technologies. Utilities around the world realised quickly once these plants operated for a few years that these redundancies that were built in would never be used in the lifetime of the plant and were added only to jack up prices and not give added security as was tom-tom med while selling. Westinghouse’s advanced passive reactor was then introduced at almost half the price of previous designs, but by the time the words had spread of the companies pricing practices due to which even this design bombed in the market. General Electrics Prism and MHTGR considered totally fail-safe by experts also did not have any takers as American public had themselves lost faith in the profiteering GE designs.
In stepped the French and Germans with their standardised low cost modular designs and they have dominated the global market for more than thirty years. The French build over 100 nuclear power plants all at a moderate cost and with excellent safety record over the last four decades and became the undisputed market leader proving that patented custom built designs and excessive safety margins of American companies had little use or value
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