Ten nations, led by France, have asked the European Commission to include nuclear power among the energy sources useful for the transition.
A group of ten European Union countries, led by France, have asked the European Commission to recognise nuclear energy as a low-CO2-emission source and therefore include it among the forms of energy useful for the transition in order to achieve climate neutrality.
The request came, alongside the Paris government, from those of Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Romania, at a historic moment in which commodity prices have skyrocketed, with natural gas leading the way. Nuclear plants generate over 26 per cent of the electricity produced in the European Union, while 90 per cent of the natural gas burned by the EU comes from foreign importers, with Russia topping the list of suppliers.
This dependence on extra-European suppliers has been cited by the proponents as one of the main factors behind the rise in energy prices. By increasing nuclear energy production, the signatories argue, greater energy independence would be achieved and electricity prices would be stable and lower than current levels. In short, the ten countries are urging the Commission to include nuclear energy in the EU's green taxonomy — that is, the classification of economic activities considered sustainable.
Ever since the taxonomy was defined, an intense debate has indeed flared up around nuclear power. In the classification, however, the entry relating to nuclear power is absent. At least for now. Included instead are solar energy, geothermal energy, hydrogen, wind energy, hydropower and biomass.
The arm-wrestling match in Europe is between two opposing blocs: leading the anti-nuclear cause is Germany, which plans to shut down all its reactors by 2022, together with Austria, Denmark, Luxembourg and Spain. On the other side is France, which obtains over 70 per cent of its electricity from nuclear power plants. And alongside Paris, the states of Eastern Europe, which have already allocated millions of euros to launch new nuclear expansion projects.
Many observers argue that nuclear energy cannot be taken into consideration for the energy transition. If we limit ourselves to considering the net CO2 that nuclear emits into the atmosphere, it is true that new third- and fourth-generation plants emit far fewer emissions than coal, gas and oil. Even less than large-scale solar energy. But there are forms of energy production that are far more "lightweight", ranging from photovoltaics to wind power, through to geothermal.
Furthermore, the question of radioactive waste disposal remains unresolved: we currently have around 3.5 million cubic metres of waste to manage in Europe, with a cost estimated by the European Commission itself at 556 billion euros. Moreover, management costs are perpetual, given that among the waste there are hazardous substances whose radioactivity takes thousands of years to decay. That of plutonium, for example, requires 24,000 years.
The high management costs also concern both the costs of building new plants and raw materials. In the case of power stations, we are talking about billions of euros to carry out new projects that meet the high safety standards required following the Fukushima disaster, so much so that several nations have abandoned the idea of building them.
Among these is, paradoxically, France itself, which has halted research into fourth-generation nuclear reactors due to the high safety-related costs. For the Flamanville project in Normandy, costs have ballooned from an initial estimate of 3.3 billion euros to over 9 billion. A situation not unlike that of Finland, where the completion of the Olkiluoto plant has been awaited since 2005: after various delays, which caused the construction company (the French firm Areva, the same one behind Flamanville) losses of around 4 billion euros, the next opening date has been set for February 2022, 17 years after the project began.
The cost of maintaining fuel is also extremely steep: over the last ten years, a megawatt-hour produced from nuclear energy has risen by around 26 per cent, going from 105 to 130 euros, while the cost of photovoltaics per megawatt-hour has fallen by 89 per cent, dropping from around 300 euros to 30. And it continues to fall.
Despite all of this, the "nuclear advocates" argue that renewable energies would not be sufficient to meet the targets that the Paris Agreement has set for 2030 (a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of at least 55 per cent). Recently, the International Energy Agency (Iea) declared that investment in renewable energy must triple by 2030 in order to honour the commitments made on climate.
This demonstrates that the goal is achievable, provided that talk of fossil fuels (including nuclear energy) is abandoned as soon as possible and serious focus is placed on renewables. The transition requires an effort that France and some Eastern European countries must resign themselves to facing.
