Europe’s attitude towards nuclear energy has varied between promoters and opponents, with each country setting its own targets on the technology. Raphael Hanoteaux, senior policy adviser at E3G, said France is the continent’s largest supplier of nuclear energy and wants to export its technology to other countries in Europe. The Hungarian government, desiring to ensure a stable energy supply in the country, also signed Transactions sponsored by Russia to build two nuclear reactors, in addition to the country’s four existing reactors. The Czech government also plans to build in at least two new nuclear reactorswhile the Polish government wants to build the country’s first nuclear reactor in an effort to break away from its heavy reliance on coal.
But even countries once enthusiastic about nuclear energy are running into problems with aging reactor fleets and delayed construction. At the end of 2021, 17 out of 56 of France Nuclear reactors have been halted because of technical problems or planned maintenance, forcing the country – which is usually an exporter of electricity – to buy from neighboring countries. In the UK, nuclear power production last year fell to its lowest level since 1981 as aging plants retired and stopped working, according to an analysis of Carbon Summary. The shortfall in UK nuclear production is due to electricity from gas-fired thermal power plants and imported electricity from Europe.
The problem is that there aren’t enough new nuclear reactors being built to fill these gaps. And the stuff that’s coming online isn’t built fast enough. The UK will decommission six of its nuclear reactors by 2030, but the country has only one power plant currently under construction: a two-reactor facility under construction in Somerset . The UK government is hoping to strike a deal for another similar plant at a site in Suffolk. But even if this is passed, the two plants combined would only fit the existing capacity of the UK’s nuclear fleet. Meanwhile, France’s newest nuclear reactor is scheduled to come online in Normandy in 2013, but frequent delays have pushed reopening date 2023.
This long time scale means that building new nuclear power plants may not be the best way for countries to decarbonize rapidly. Britain and Germany both aim to end electricity generation from fossil fuels by 2035, a period too short to add substantial amounts of nuclear power. “You can’t build a nuclear plant in that timeframe,” said Dries Acke, energy systems manager for the European Climate Organization.
And while the construction of new plants is sluggish, wind and solar have been deployed at a faster rate than expected. Antony Frogatt, Chatham House’s deputy director of environmental and social programs, and co-author of a nuclear power industry critical annual report. In 2000, 860 terawatt-hours of electricity was generated from nuclear power in the EU, but by 2020 this has dropped to 685 terawatt-hours. During the same time period, wind generation alone increased from 21 to 396 terawatt-hours. Meanwhile, the cost of renewable energy fell sharply compared to nuclear energy.
