France: Leading a Movement Uniting Nuclear Energy and Climate Justice

Introduction: A Legacy of Vision and Responsibility

In December 1968, my father, William “Bill” Anders, peered out the window of Apollo 8 as it orbited the Moon and captured one of the most iconic images in human history: Earthrise. In that moment, humanity saw its home not as a map of national borders or resource deposits, but as a fragile, singular, luminous planet floating in the void. The photograph catalyzed a new global environmental consciousness, inspiring generations to regard Earth not as territory to be extracted, but as a whole to be protected. Earthrise was more than an image—it was an ethical call, a sublime confrontation with our shared vulnerability and interdependence.

My father understood that responsibility. As the first Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), he was not only an astronaut but also a nuclear engineer who spent much of his professional life advocating for nuclear safety, scientific rigor, and energy independence. Long before climate change became the defining crisis of our time, he recognized that nuclear power was not merely a technological achievement—it was an ethical necessity. It offered a way to provide abundant, clean energy without accelerating planetary collapse.

Earthrise Accord (EA) was born out of that legacy. It is named for my father's photograph and what it came to symbolize: the possibility of a planetary perspective rooted in awe, responsibility, and justice. After my father's death in 2024, I founded Earthrise Accord to carry forward both dimensions of his legacy—his principled leadership in nuclear energy and his rare ability to evoke wonder at our shared planetary home. EA exists to use the technologies my father believed in—especially nuclear power—to confront the climate crisis, to demand accountability for fossil-fueled injustice, and to advocate for a future in which clean energy sovereignty is extended to all.

From Image to Institution

EA is committed not only to climate realism, but to institutional transformation. Our work is animated by the conviction that environmental justice will not be secured by protest slogans or market abstractions, but by embedding ethical intelligence into the infrastructures of law, science, and policy. To that end, Earthrise Accord is launching its flagship initiative: Earthrise: Nuclear Realism, Climate Justice, and Other Transitional Imperatives, a multilingual, peer-reviewed academic journal dedicated to exposing the hypocrisies of fossil fuel exceptionalism, advancing legal and scientific tools for accountability, and centering nuclear energy within a just and achievable transition.

The journal will be headquartered editorially in Paris, which remains the intellectual and cultural heart of Europe and the symbolic center of international climate discourse. While our legal advocacy will be based in the Netherlands—close to the Hague and the ICC—Paris provides an unmatched setting for cultivating the intellectual seriousness and global reach our editorial project demands. France is not only the continent’s most sophisticated nuclear power—it is the only major industrial nation that has successfully decarbonized at scale. It embodies the future we are fighting for, and its institutions, public memory, and technical expertise give Earthrise Accord both legitimacy and leverage.

A European Base with a Global Mandate

Though I briefly considered a parallel 501(c)(3) in the United States, I concluded that Earthrise Accord must be wholly and symbolically European from the outset. The U.S. has become a politically compromised petrostate, unable or unwilling to provide global climate leadership. France, by contrast, stands alone as a serious model of how nuclear power can underwrite both energy security and climate responsibility. And the Netherlands, with its efficient stichting framework and proximity to international legal venues, offers a uniquely effective administrative and legal base.

Together, these two nations provide the institutional structure and strategic position for Earthrise Accord to challenge fossil fuel impunity, advance clean energy reparations, and lay the groundwork for a new transition ethics—one rooted in science, realism, and global responsibility. Our first-year priorities are intellectual: to launch the journal; to assemble a multilingual editorial board with expertise in energy policy, law, climate science, and philosophy; and to cultivate partnerships with key European institutions such as TU Delft, Leiden University, and Sciences Po.

We do not aim to replicate existing climate organizations, most of which remain wedded to a “renewables-only” ideology that ignores the urgent need for scalable, dispatchable zero-carbon energy. Nor are we another antinuclear environmental NGO seeking to delay serious transition with platitudes about circularity or degrowth. Earthrise Accord stands apart—because it stands for something specific: that the wealth created by destroying the Earth must now be redirected to technologies capable of saving it, and that no technology is more capable, or more unjustly maligned, than nuclear fission.

A Legacy Reclaimed

My father’s photograph changed the way many people saw the Earth. But his life’s work—his advocacy for nuclear power as an ethical obligation—remains unfinished. With Earthrise Accord, I intend to reclaim that legacy and give it institutional form. To make Earthrise not just a moment in history, but a principle of planetary ethics. A call to realism, to accountability, to solidarity—and to action.

At a Crossroads: The Moral Geography of Transition

The world stands at a crossroads of accelerating climate breakdown and faltering energy transition. Despite decades of warnings, fossil fuel extraction continues to expand, while “renewables-only” approaches prove insufficient to displace entrenched carbon systems at scale. In this vacuum of seriousness, bold and science-based strategies are urgently needed. Earthrise Accord (EA) proposes one such strategy: placing nuclear energy at the center of a climate justice framework that is both technologically viable and ethically grounded.

This vision begins with geography. Earthrise Accord will be headquartered administratively in the Netherlands, near the Hague and the International Criminal Court, where it will pursue legal and policy-based forms of fossil fuel accountability. But its editorial soul will reside in Paris, a city that not only represents the epicenter of European climate diplomacy but also the continent’s intellectual engine. The Earthrise journal—Earthrise: Nuclear Realism, Climate Justice, and Other Transitional Imperatives—will be edited in Paris and published in English, French, Dutch, and Japanese. It will serve as EA’s flagship initiative, assembling the scholarly, legal, and technical arguments required to dismantle fossil fuel impunity and articulate a path forward built on real solutions—not fantasies.

The argument this essay makes is simple: France—the most nuclear-forward nation in the world—is the ideal home for Earthrise Accord’s editorial and intellectual operations. No other country has done more to prove that nuclear energy can be the backbone of an industrial economy committed to energy sovereignty, climate protection, and technological excellence. France’s unparalleled leadership in reactor safety, waste management, fuel reprocessing, and public engagement makes it not just a model, but a foundation. For a journal and nonprofit seeking to reshape global discourse on energy transition and planetary justice, no base is more symbolically or practically appropriate.

But Earthrise Accord does not merely seek to elevate France’s nuclear example. It aims to leverage that example to build a new moral architecture for transition: one in which the wealth extracted through fossil fuel exploitation is redirected into the clean energy infrastructures of tomorrow. EA’s concept of clean energy reparations asks petro-states and fossil fuel corporations to finance nuclear and other scalable, ultra-low-emission energy deployments in communities devastated by extractivism and climate chaos. France’s unique standing—as both a nuclear powerhouse and a respected international actor—gives this idea the technical and diplomatic platform it needs to gain traction.

In what follows, we explore why France’s nuclear legacy makes it the strongest candidate to anchor Earthrise Accord’s editorial hub and lend legitimacy to its vision. We trace the contours of France’s nuclear history, its unmatched safety record, its complete fuel cycle mastery, and its growing public support for civil nuclear energy. We also outline the strategic partnerships EA must forge—with Indigenous communities, Global South states, and nuclear-forward nations like Canada and China—to build a global alliance for transition realism. The goal is not just to advance nuclear power, but to turn fossil-fueled injustice into climate justice through a vision of energy that is just, abundant, and grounded in the planetary ethics of Earthrise.

Proof of Nuclear Safety and Reliability: From Paris to the Pacific Fleet

If France stands as the global exemplar of safe, industrial-scale nuclear energy, the United States Navy provides a second, often overlooked, proof-of-concept: the operational success of small modular reactors (SMRs) under the most demanding conditions imaginable. For over 60 years, the U.S. Navy has deployed compact nuclear reactors aboard submarines and aircraft carriers—essentially mobile nuclear power plants operating in dynamic, corrosive, and high-risk environments. This “nuclear navy” has accumulated over 5,400 reactor-years of operation and traveled more than 130 million miles without a single reactor accident or any instance of radiation exposure above safety thresholds (Duke Energy).

That record is not just remarkable—it is paradigm-shifting. If small reactors can run safely for decades under conditions of saltwater exposure, mechanical stress, and strategic threat, they can certainly be engineered for stable, passive operation on land. The USS Nautilus, launched in 1954, pioneered the very SMR model now being adapted for civilian use, and today’s advanced reactor designs only improve upon that legacy, integrating passive safety systems that make catastrophic failure virtually impossible.

France, for its part, is no stranger to nuclear reliability in complex environments. Its sole aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, is nuclear-powered, and the country has begun exploring microreactor applications for modular and remote energy needs. Taken together, the records of France and the U.S. Navy form a coherent and compelling answer to one of the last cultural obstacles facing nuclear energy: fear.

Earthrise Accord is committed to confronting this fear not with ideology, but with evidence. The global public has been subjected to decades of fossil-funded misinformation campaigns portraying nuclear as dangerous or unmanageable. As early as 1970, oil executive Robert O. Anderson—then CEO of ARCO—donated $200,000 to help launch Friends of the Earth, an organization that would become a leading voice of anti-nuclear environmentalism (Forbes). Such campaigns were never about public safety; they were about market protection.

It is therefore a form of poetic justice that nuclear energy—relied on by navies, refined by nations like France, and increasingly embraced by climate scientists—now stands as the very solution fossil interests sought to discredit. By citing both the impeccable safety record of France’s nuclear program and the long-standing reliability of naval SMRs, Earthrise Accord will expose the falsity of anti-nuclear narratives and assert with clarity: nuclear power is not only safe, it is essential to the survival of the climate system.

Climate Accountability: Legal Precedents and the Case for Energy Reparations

If France supplies Earthrise Accord with its technological and moral foundation, recent legal developments in the United States offer a blueprint for holding polluters accountable. In September 2023, California Governor Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a sweeping lawsuit against ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips, alongside the industry’s top trade group. The claim? That these corporations knowingly misled the public about the dangers of fossil fuels, and should now pay for the climate damages they caused (NPR).

The California suit seeks to establish an abatement fund to help cover the costs of wildfires, floods, sea-level rise, and other climate-driven disasters. But its importance transcends local recovery. It sets a powerful legal and rhetorical precedent: that those who profited from climate harm owe a material debt to those who suffered it.

Earthrise Accord intends to take this logic global. While California’s lawsuit demands damages, EA calls for energy reparations: a systemic framework in which fossil fuel companies and petro-states fund the deployment of carbon-free energy—especially advanced nuclear—in regions disproportionately harmed by climate change and historical extraction. The goal is not merely retributive. It is reparative: to redirect the wealth accumulated through environmental destruction toward building the infrastructures of survival and justice.

Just as California demands that Big Oil finance climate resilience in the state, EA will press for an international commitment to clean energy deployment as restitution—particularly in vulnerable communities across the Global South, Indigenous territories, and low-income fossil-dependent regions. Energy reparations extend the principle of polluter accountability into a positive obligation: those who fueled the crisis must now help power the solution.

France, once again, is the ideal platform for launching this idea. As the birthplace of the 2015 Paris Agreement, and a country with a sophisticated legal tradition and internationalist diplomacy, France offers both the normative authority and institutional reach to help elevate energy reparations from a moral imperative to a codified international policy agenda.

Clean Energy Reparations: Centering France in the Fight for Climate Justice

At the core of Earthrise Accord’s mission is the call for clean energy reparations—a framework in which the fossil fuel industry and high-emitting petro-states are held accountable for the damage they’ve caused by financing the deployment of zero-carbon infrastructure in the communities they’ve harmed. Unlike traditional reparations, this model is forward-looking: the payment is clean energy—with nuclear at the center.

France, more than any other country, proves that nuclear power can reliably decarbonize an industrial economy. Its unmatched safety record, public expertise, and technical infrastructure make it the natural home for a movement committed to replacing fossil fuels—not just supplementing them.

Earthrise Accord, headquartered in the Netherlands and editorially based in Paris, is building a global framework to turn this vision into policy. Using our Climate Change Liability Coefficient (CCLC), we assign quantifiable responsibility to major emitters—state and corporate—and demand that this debt be paid in durable, clean energy systems. From Nigeria to the Philippines, from Bangladesh to Venezuela, reparations will take the form of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), advanced grids, and localized clean power—backed by the same technological ethos that France has pioneered.

By launching this initiative from Paris, we aim to place France at the diplomatic forefront of a new climate ethics: one that doesn’t just promise transition but funds it, not in words, but in watts.

France’s Moral Authority and Nuclear Leadership: Why SEA’s Editorial Office Belongs in Paris

Why is Stichting Earthrise Accord (SEA) headquartered in The Hague but editorially anchored in France? Because France offers an unparalleled combination of moral credibility, technical expertise in nuclear energy, and cultural and diplomatic influence—all essential for advancing SEA’s mission: to make clean energy reparations a central pillar of international climate justice.

France is uniquely positioned to lead this effort. It is not a major fossil fuel exporter, nor is it beholden to petrostate interests. Instead, it stands out as the only major industrial power to have decarbonized its electricity sector primarily through nuclear energy. Its per-capita emissions from electricity generation are among the lowest in the developed world. This gives France the moral and empirical standing to speak on climate policy not just with ideals, but with proven results.

From Paris, SEA’s editorial office will shape and disseminate the intellectual and policy agenda for clean energy reparations. With the journal Earthrise: Nuclear Realism, Climate Justice, and Other Transition Imperatives based there, Paris will function as SEA’s cultural and diplomatic voice—a natural fit for a city that has already hosted the landmark Paris Agreement and countless global climate dialogues. SEA will amplify the message that nuclear energy is not an afterthought in the clean transition—it is the backbone.

France’s nuclear sector also lends SEA critical technical legitimacy. French institutions—EDF, Orano, Framatome, the ASN—have decades of experience in nuclear operations, safety, waste management, and export collaboration. This legacy allows SEA to advocate for nuclear energy in vulnerable regions with the backing of the most seasoned professionals in the field. France has done what it now proposes the world must do—and that lends weight to every policy SEA publishes from Paris.

Furthermore, France’s long engagement with global justice, from post-colonial solidarity to multilateral diplomacy, aligns with SEA’s reparations ethos. The values of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité find a new expression here: freedom from fossil fuel dependence, equity in energy access, and solidarity among nations to restore climate balance. Hosting the editorial work in Paris not only affirms SEA’s cultural fluency and credibility—it connects the story of Earthrise to the global story of justice.

The Hague as Legal Base: Where Ethics Meets Enforcement

While Paris gives SEA cultural resonance and editorial gravitas, its legal structure is rooted in The Hague—the world’s center for international law, environmental accountability, and human rights enforcement. From this seat of legal infrastructure, SEA will pursue the codification of clean energy reparations through actionable mechanisms.

The Hague anchors SEA in Europe’s most serious legal ecosystem. It allows SEA to work alongside courts, NGOs, and international legal scholars to define and defend a climate ethics that goes beyond ambition and into obligation. SEA’s Climate Change Liability Coefficient (CCLC)—its analytical framework for quantifying responsibility—will be developed and deployed from The Hague to identify which corporations and governments must finance clean energy deployment in the regions they helped destabilize.

Together, Paris and The Hague form SEA’s dual spine: Paris for ideas and influence, The Hague for law and leverage.

Poetic Justice: A Nuclear Future Funded by Fossil Profits

SEA will communicate a clear and compelling message: the fossil fuel era must end not with collapse, but with accountability. There is a profound poetic justice in compelling fossil fuel companies—those that obstructed nuclear energy for decades—to now fund its global expansion. France, which once escaped the grip of fossil dependence by investing heavily in nuclear, now has the opportunity to help others do the same.

The symbolism is powerful: the country that chose energy sovereignty over oil imports in the 1970s can now lead a global effort to free vulnerable nations from energy poverty and carbon dependency. Each SMR deployed in sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, or island states—financed through legal penalties or redirected fossil revenues—becomes a monument to restitution, a reversal of the harms that fossil capitalism inflicted.

This is the shift SEA is catalyzing. From fossil fortune to nuclear future. From carbon denial to decarbonized dignity. And France, through its leadership in nuclear energy and its embrace of multilateral climate ethics, is the ideal platform to tell that story—and to make it real.

From Earthrise to Earth Repair: The Time for SEA Is Now

When William Anders captured Earthrise from lunar orbit, he did more than take a photo. He changed how humanity saw itself—small, interdependent, and vulnerable. Stichting Earthrise Accord, based in The Hague with its editorial voice in Paris, exists to honor and activate that vision. It insists that fossil fuel harm must be met not just with outrage, but with infrastructure. That reparations must be measured in clean megawatts, not just money. And that nuclear energy—led by France’s unmatched expertise—must form the heart of that transition.

Let Paris be where we publish that mandate. Let The Hague be where we enforce it. And let the world rise from its fossil past toward an energy future worthy of the Earthrise perspective.

Sources

World Nuclear Association – Nuclear Power in FranceFrance generates approximately 70% of its electricity from nuclear power—more than any other country in the developed world. The policy launched in the 1970s provided France with a high degree of energy independence and ultra-low carbon electricity. France also recycles spent nuclear fuel and earns billions annually as the world’s largest net exporter of electricity, thanks to low generation costs and stable baseload supply.Source: Nuclear Power in France, World Nuclear Association

World Nuclear News – Public Opinion in FranceA 2021 national survey found that 53% of French respondents considered nuclear power “essential” for energy independence. The percentage viewing nuclear as a “handicap” dropped from 34% in 2019 to just 15%—evidence of rising public confidence in the country’s nuclear strategy.Source: Survey Shows Growing Public Support for Nuclear in France, World Nuclear News

French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs – Peaceful Nuclear DevelopmentFrance supports the development of nuclear energy as a clean, CO₂-free solution that meets the highest standards of safety and non-proliferation. French nuclear expertise spans the entire fuel cycle—from uranium mining and enrichment to fuel fabrication, reactor design, and spent fuel management—positioning France as a mentor nation for global nuclear deployment.Source: Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy, Ministère de l'Europe et des Affaires étrangères

Statista – Global Nuclear Reactor Construction (2024)As of 2024, 59 nuclear reactors are under construction globally, with China leading the effort at 25 units. France, while not currently building at the same pace, remains a global leader in operational experience and nuclear diplomacy.Source: Nuclear Reactors Under Construction Worldwide 2024, Statista

Atomic Insights – Historical Funding of Anti-Nuclear ActivismIn 1970, ARCO oil executive Robert O. Anderson provided seed funding to launch Friends of the Earth—one of the most influential anti-nuclear organizations. This early alliance between fossil capital and anti-nuclear activism underscores the historical suppression of nuclear solutions by carbon interests.Source: The Fossil Fuel Industry Has Had No Better Friend Than Friends of the Earth, Atomic Insights / Forbes