Nuclear Energy Renaissance in Europe?

By Chung Hyunhwa

There was a Nuclear Energy Summit in Belgium in March 2024. A lot of Korean news media interpreted this as meaning that nuclear energy is surging as a solution to reduce fossil energy and secure the energy supply in Europe. This news excited the supporters of nuclear energy. I became curious: Had the countries really changed their attitudes about nuclear energy, especially after the energy crises due to the Russia–Ukraine war? In 2022, they had even included nuclear energy in the green taxonomy as a transition energy.

I read that the UK would build two new reactors. It has nine old ones now, generating 14 percent of their total energy, but most of them will be retired by 2028. One in Hinkly Point is being built, but there have been 7,000 changes in the design in over 10 years, so although this project was scheduled to be finished in a decade, by 2019, its completion will still take several more years, if things go right. In the meantime, the total cost is growing. There is skepticism about building another one that is in the plans because the Hinkly Point construction has been far from smooth. This perspective may be reasonable because a nuclear reactor takes very long to finish, but other technologies keep improving fast, so when it is finished, it just might not seem so new anymore.

France has 56 reactors, generating almost 70 percent of their total energy. In 2022, France experienced extreme power crises, and the reason was the combination of a cooling water shortage caused by drought and hot weather, and old facilities that needed repairs. Their power generation capacity decreased by more than 50 percent, and the price of electricity went up eight times despite the expectation that France would be free from a high electricity price caused by a natural gas shortage during the war. France had been an exporter of electricity to other countries, but not that year. There are always things that cannot be predicted in advance. Global warming or boiling is not good news for nuclear reactors in the long run.

Supporters of nuclear energy say it creates almost as little carbon emission as hydropower. Some people talk about small modular reactors (SMR) because they are supposed to cool without water. However, more careful scientists say they should be limited to only very specific purposes in very remote places where the access to the power grid is difficult because smaller reactors are even less economical and still not fully proven to be safe. Although small, the construction also takes more than 12 years. The price calculation of the generated power never includes waste control costs, so it cannot be as cheap as people may think. The truth is that we do not even know how much is needed to handle the waste permanently because Finland is the only country that finished an ultimate 500 meters deep storage just recently. China is working on it, but hasn’t complete theirs yet. France has not convinced the local people who live at the potential construction site. The U.S, which has 98 reactors, hasn’t completed deep storage either, but it seems less of a concern for them because of its large territory.

What happened to Germany, which phased out nuclear energy in 2023? In 2024, the industrial electricity price is still 61 percent higher than pre-pandemic, but it is 23 percent lower than last year, and also the price indicators show it will continue to fall. The price for households was 8 percent lower than last year. It aims to phase out coal-fired power facilities at the latest by 2038 as well, and it has already closed 15 coal power plants during Easter this spring. Their energy mix in 2023 was 37 percent fossil energy and almost 60 percent renewables. Their energy production dropped last year, and they also have things to deal with. Yet, they seem to be going forward with their decision because they consider nuclear energy unsafe and unfeasible without huge public subsidies. They also have radioactive waste temporarily stored at their plant sites without a plan for ultimate storage yet, so they don’t want to increase the amount of radioactive waste.

Portugal, Denmark, and Austria strongly oppose nuclear energy because they see it as greenwashing. Italy phased out nuclear energy completely in 1990, but it attended the Nuclear Energy Summit this March as an observer, probably because of the pressure from the French alliance of Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech, Finland, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, and Sweden. Italy may look pro-nuclear, but because of the already mentioned obstacles of money, time, and safety, we will see. The Netherlands announced their intention of building four reactors by 2040, but the financing, planning, and construction all seem to be challenging, especially in such a short period. Spain confirmed its phase-out at the end of 2023. Belgium decided to extend two reactors and Switzerland also may. These countries made different decisions for different reasons.

According to the European Environmental Bureau, the biggest network of environmental citizens’ organizations in Europe, the extension of old nuclear power plants is not needed if the efficiency increases in energy management, if the lower cost of renewable energy deployment speeds up, and if the European Super Grid develops more quickly as shown in the graphic from its website.

We are living in an era of high electricity demand. Digital innovation, including AI, is adding speed to increase the demand. AI is already on the market, and it is being absorbed in every sector in the industry. We are still wondering whether it is a blessing or a curse. Of course, technologies to reduce the amount of energy that AI requires will also follow. Without them, benefits will be limited to the rich only. However, if AI develops along with energy-efficient technologies to support it, who knows if it will provide us with breakthroughs. I hope AI can be used to optimize our production and consumption in the world so that we can have enough supply but neither surplus nor shortage. We will thereby not need conflicts between countries to secure resources out of fear; each country can have optimal energy mixes to reach the carbon net zero goal in time so as not to reach the unrecoverable state. The key lies in international collaboration, not wars, for the survival of the human race.

The Author

Chung Hyunhwa is from Gwangju and currently working for a horticultural business. She led Gwangju Hikers, an international eco-hike group at the GIC in 2020 and 2021. Previously, she taught English in different settings, including Yantai American School and Yantai Korean School in China and, in recent years, has worked for the Jeju school administration at Branksome Hall Asia. She holds a master’s degree in TESOL from TCNJ in the U.S. and a license to teach the Korean language. She loves plants, birds, and making useful items out of things that lose their original purpose.