Is Europe Going Nuclear?

At present there are 441 operating nuclear power plants in over 30 countries that generate electricity for almost 1 billion people worldwide. In Europe, nuclear energy meets nearly half or more of electricity demand as nuclear power has been gaining popularity on the continent over the last few decades due to contemporary concerns over climate change, resource shortages and energy security (with Europe's main suppliers becoming less and less stable). However, many obstacles remain as there is still strong opposition to the use of nuclear energy among the European public, with fears and problems linked to nuclear waste management and nuclear proliferation. What are the advantages of nuclear power? And why do the more powerful European countries still choose to resist it? Ultimately, what are the prospects of nuclear energy in the world, and in Europe in particular?

Gaining approval

Nuclear power is becoming increasingly popular and widely used due to factors including the relatively low cost of production and low levels of CO2 emissions, which provide it with a golden niche in many industrialised countries’ economies such as Russia and the US.

Indeed, the latest relevant report, carried out under the supervision of the French Industry ministry in 1997, emphasises that electricity generated from nuclear power is the most competitive when compared to that generated from thermo stations (where power is generated through the difference in temperature; e.g. gas, coal, etc.).¹ This study even takes the construction costs into account with the total cost said to be 30 euros (30 pounds)/MWh.² As for its environmental friendliness, nuclear energy appears to have the weakest carbon intensity, having greenhouse gas emissions between 2.5 and 5.7g per kWh, whereas this figure is more than 50 times higher for thermo production, and quite often greater for renewable energy as well (can reach 76g per kWh). ³ Ultimately, scientists have concluded that the use of nuclear power would allow a reduction in the world’s CO2 emissions of 8 percent, with the figure rising up to 17 percent for the electricity sector.⁴

Further still, nuclear power offers crucial benefits as it provides users with highly prized energy security. Growing demand from developing countries, as well as shortage of energy resources and political calamities in the Middle East, push oil and gas prices up (prices reached a historical 140 US dollars per barrel this summer but have fallen sharply since). Countries with no traditional energy resources of their own feel the pressure on their economies' growth potential and often see nuclear power as the light at the end of the tunnel. Not only does it protect the countries from the price fluctuations of the world market, but it also makes them independent of the political changes and crises in oil or gas export states. Nuclear power generation can also be directly beneficial for a country’s economy, as it creates employment, helps meet energy demand and creates energy competition that might lower electricity prices.

All this can explain the recent moves of the European Commission in favour of nuclear energy, representing a break with a long-lasting politics of neutrality (as the member states’ official opinions vary on the issue). The Commission’s president, Jose Manuel Barroso, as well as Energy Commissioner, Andris Piebalgs, and Competition Commissioner, Neelie Kroes, all endorsed the benefits of nuclear power in their recent remarks on European energy security, pointing out its historical development and indispensability for European economies. What brought about the change of heart? Two reasons can be cited: one is that the EU is worried that renewable energy alone will not suffice in meeting its bold target of reducing CO2 emissions by 20 percent by 2020, the target on which its bid to champion the climate change fight rests. Another reason is the escalating challenge to European energy security and the need to augment energy independence for its strategically volatile members. Approximately one quarter of European energy demand is provided by Russia, whose status as an unstable trading partner was proven not only by the gas wars with the Ukraine in 2005-2006 (when it briefly halted its gas supplies to the Ukraine and therefore to Western Europe) and a similar incident this winter, together with the recent war with Georgia and Russia’s generally aggressive foreign policy stance.

The mood also seems to be changing in favour of a nuclear direction in some individual EU states. Traditional supporters of the atom such as France (which gets about 75 percent of its energy from nuclear sources and is the world’s biggest nuclear exporter ⁶), Finland and the Central and Eastern European countries (who possess soviet-era built plants and are heavily dependent on this energy resource) have been joined by the UK, Italy and Belgium, which have recently altered their official opinions and have halted nuclear phase-outs. In January 2008, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown gave the go-ahead to build a new generation of power plants, signalling a clear shift in policy. According to him, “Britain needs new nuclear plants to secure future energy supplies and fight climate change”.⁷ The UK already gets one third of its energy from nuclear power, but the majority of its plants face closure as they are old and no longer meet the safety requirements.

Maintaining low electricity prices and meeting environmental targets also influenced the decision of the Belgian government to stop the nuclear phase-out originally envisaged by 2025. The country’s seven plants meet more than one-half of its energy demand.⁸ Italy, for its part, recently invested in French and Slovakian power plants. The step is easier to comprehend if one takes into account that Italy imports about 85 percent of its energy and its electricity prices are 45 percent higher than the EU average.⁹ Ultimately, even Sweden, a long-standing nuclear 'opposer', has recently softened its anti-nuclear rhetoric with the Liberal Party calling for the construction of four new reactors at existing sites aimed at replacing those planned for closure. It is interesting to note that Sweden is the only country in the world that has a discriminatory tax against nuclear energy (EUR 0.67/kWh). However, an aspiring target of reducing its greenhouse emissions by 40 percent by 2020 has forced the country to rethink its planned phase-out.¹⁰

With countries all over the world (such as Russia, the US, Japan, China, Brazil, India, Argentina and South America) becoming increasingly partial to nuclear energy and with plans to augment the use of nuclear power for their energy needs and production in the next 10 to 20 years (as is stated in all of these countries’ energy policy plans), Europe seems to be on the same track. However, has it fully recovered from its nuclear blues in the 1980s and 1990s?

Opposition remains strong

Two of the EU’s biggest member states remain strongly opposed to nuclear power generation, namely Spain and Germany, and countries including Austria, Portugal and Ireland reserve their official opinion on the issue but stay rather nuclear-sceptic. Although Germany gets more than one-third of its energy from nuclear plants, a complete phase-out was agreed to in 2002 by the government, that for the first time in German political history included the Green party (which beyond any doubt influenced the drastic decision). All nuclear plants in Eastern Germany are already closed due to their non-compliance with the safety regulations, while every other plant reaching the age of 32 will be closed according to the agreed compromise. ¹¹ The government of Angela Merkel has not yet broken away from the decision despite escalating lobbying and opposition from the business sector.

In Spain, the decision to stop construction on new power plants was agreed upon as early as 1983. None of the subsequent governments have changed that policy course, with the current cabinet of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero still envisaging a complete phase-out. Nevertheless, the country actively participates in various research projects and other nuclear initiatives, notably European. ¹²

These countries remain hostile to nuclear power on a number of grounds. Firstly, nuclear power plants could provoke a highly damaging radioactive catastrophe, as was the case with the Three Mile Island accident in the US in 1979, the Chernobyl catastrophe in the USSR in 1986 and a more recent one in Tokaimura, Japan in 1997. Other harmful risks are connected to mineral extraction and the cooling of nuclear plants.

The main worries are related to nuclear waste management, storage and transportation. According to a recent poll, 79 percent of Europeans find radioactive waste the most dangerous problem related nuclear energy. ¹³ This is notwithstanding the fact that a coal power plant releases 100 times as much radiation as a nuclear power plant of the same wattage (since coal is the most impure fuel, the main sources of radiation released from its combustion include not only uranium and thorium but also daughter products produced by the decay of these isotopes, such as radium, radon, polonium, bismuth, and lead ¹⁴); whereas no evidence of any increase in cancer mortality among people living near nuclear facilities has been found to the present day.

A more feasible and understandable danger is that of nuclear proliferation. Nuclear reactors could be used for weapons-development purposes as the operation of a nuclear reactor converts U-238 into plutonium, which can be used in atomic weapons. In addition, the technology used to enrich uranium for energy production is the same as that used to obtain the purer level of enrichment required for weapons-grade material. As a consequence, there have been constant concerns about the possibility of using reactors as adual-use technologydual-use technology, whereby apparently peaceful technological development could serve as a stepping stone to nuclear weapons capability. Thus, as leading states appraise the merits of nuclear power and while energy demand is steadily swelling in the developing world, many controversial questions arise. Should countries have the right to produce nuclear power, especially those with unstable, undemocratic or corrupt governments such as Iran and North Korea? And if not, what criteria and requirements should be set for states who aspire to an increased use of nuclear power? The issue is of particular relevance to the African continent, where the greatest uranium resources may be found, but where no small number of unstable regimes holds power.

The future will show

Will nuclear energy suffer a defeat in the face of these public fears? Or will it reinvent itself, having overcome those challenges? The latter seems more likely. The international community and the leading nuclear powers in particular, are actively working on Generation IV nuclear reactors, which will possess the latest technology. Six different types are under way at the moment: gas-cooled, lead-cooled, molten salt, sodium-cooled, supercritical water-cooled and very high-temperature gas reactors. ¹⁵ Most of the six systems employ a closed fuel cycle to maximise the resource base and minimise high-level wastes to be sent to a repository, which should diminish the worry regarding nuclear waste management. France, the largest nuclear energy power, has already set out as the leader in this field, followed by Finland and some Eastern and Central European countries.In January 2006 then-president Jacques Chirac announced that the Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) was to embark upon designing a prototype Generation IV reactor to be operating in 2020, bringing forward the timeline for this by some five years. ¹⁶

As for the danger of nuclear proliferation, here too it could be argued that inherent problems should lead to positive solutions, rather than the wholesale scrapping of the technology. With many countries seeing nuclear energy as a way of boosting their economic development and meeting internal energy demand, it would be very difficult, and indeed unjustifiable, for Europe and a few other countries to maintain a monopoly over it. What can be improved is the supervision under which countries develop their nuclear capabilities, including international monitoring of reactor construction and technologies used. Further still, the International Atomic Energy Agency should be given more powers to oversee nuclear development in various states; whilst the states who possess nuclear weapons, such as the US, Russia and China, should forget their trivial squabbles when it comes to the danger of nuclear extermination and combine their efforts in order to be able to put more pressure on the ‘bad boys’ from Iran and North Korea. It would also help if controversies such as the recent lifting of a 30-year ban on sales of nuclear fuel and technology that was imposed after India tested and developed a nuclear bomb, would not be reversed so that there are no double standards on the international stage.

As for Europe itself, it should see the bigger picture. At the moment it gets a quarter of its gas from Russia and the proportion is set to rise sharply.¹⁷ Not only does the Kremlin use its monopoly of east-west pipelines to bully its European neighbours, and is not a reliable supplier; it also uses the policy of divide and rule to block European efforts to liberalise its markets. Russia is pushing ahead with its South Stream to bring gas via the Black Sea and Balkans to Central Europe. Surprisingly, Germany, Hungary and Italy have already expressed their interest in public whereas the European projects such as Nabucco and White Stream (European pipeline projects bypassing Russia) ¹⁸ seem to garner little political support. Bearing this in mind, nuclear power might be the only saviour for Europe on its quest for energy security, not to mention its ambitious targets of CO2 reduction.

Ultimately, for Europe’s environment and security nuclear energy might prove more vital than previously imagined. And the atom will save the day … again. ⁵

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