Europe’s governments are divided on the role nuclear power should play in meeting the EU’s decarbonisation targets. Some argue that nuclear is environmentally inferior to renewable energy, and should take a back seat. Others think the two power sources should be treated equally.
The balance in this argument will experience a small but significant shift with the likely appointment of Friedrich Merz as chancellor of Germany, a near certainty following the agreement of a governing coalition this week. Observers and industry insiders think that Merz’s arrival may be enough to ease an EU policy deadlock over the issue, given his positive attitude towards nuclear power.
“Merz will not drastically change the German dynamic by fully reconciliating pro- and anti-nuclear players [in Europe], but he could help unblock some dossiers,” said Phuc-Vinh Nguyen, head of the Jacques Delors Institute’s Energy Centre.
If Merz does temper Germany’s past opposition to nuclear power, “that would allow us to move forward on the texts where we need to recognise nuclear as a low-carbon energy source,” confirmed Célia Agostini, the director of technology neutral industry group Cleantech for France.
Germany’s definitive rejection of nuclear power dates back to 2011, when the then-chancellor Angela Merkel announced the closure of eight older nuclear reactors on environmental and safety grounds, and phasing out of the remaining nine. The last three reactors closed in 2023.
Campaigning before the federal elections, Merz proposed a moratorium on dismantling these old nuclear reactors. This position has since been toned down, due to uncertainties around the legal, technical and financial viability of reactivating the power plants. It remains to be seen what the coalition’s position on nuclear power will be, but Merz is still seen as more sympathetic than his predecessors.
Policy deadlock
The main deadlock at the EU level centres on the European Commission’s proposed energy and climate targets for 2040. Energy commissioner Dan Jørgensen has said that both nuclear power and renewables have a role to play, but that they should not combine to meet one decarbonisation objective.
This approach does not sit well with pro-nuclear nations and the nuclear industry. According to Jessica Johnson, head of communications and advocacy at trade association NuclearEurope, EU member states are free to choose their own energy mix and a single decarbonisation target would allow the most cost-efficient policies to win through. “It is important that the Commission puts forward goal-oriented targets rather than cherry-picking technologies,” she said.
Those opposed to treating nuclear and renewables on the same basis, such as Climate Action Network Europe, argue that nuclear power diverts public funds away from EU efforts to transition to a fully renewables-based energy system, all in the name of technology neutrality. They also insist that nuclear is costly, unsafe and the construction of new reactors too slow.
Other observers think the choice irrelevant. According to Wiktor Parol, spokesperson at the Polish Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Nuclear Physics, it is essential to boost the synergies between nuclear power and renewable energy, regardless of the EU executive’s decision on targets.
“Ensuring the continuity of economic operations requires that the power grid operator has access to capacity amounting to approximately 110% of peak demand,” he explained. Given that the ability of renewables to produce electricity is determined by nature, they can’t constitute the core of the energy system in the same way that “fully manageable” nuclear power can, he added.
At the moment, enough governments actively support nuclear power to block the Commission’s legislation. For example, 12 EU states joined a pledge launched at the COP28 summit in 2023 to triple global nuclear energy capacity by 2050. Germany was not among them.
It remains to be seen how far any change in the German position might go. Given its focus on defence spending, Nguyen expects the government to use its political power mostly to ensure the existence of guardrails for nuclear development, such as limits in the amount of financing.
Nuclear financing
How the construction of new reactors should be financed remains one of the major battlegrounds in discussions over nuclear’s role in meeting climate targets. According to Nguyen, the EU bubble has been sending signals that the door is “slightly” opening on this front. Last year, industry stakeholders read into a draft European Investment Bank strategic roadmap that the bank might be open to financing small modular reactors, although no such position appeared in the final text.
Private finance has proved wary of investing in new nuclear for some years now, and changing that stance may require public intervention if not subsidies. “It gets complex, since new fiscally dexterous mechanisms [. . .] work to de-risk private investment by squarely placing over-cost and over-time risks on the public purse,” said Paul Dorfman, the chair of Nuclear Consulting Group.
“Now, the question is to know what the position of the member states will be,” Nguyen added.
Germany is not the only nation whose position is changing. Italy and Belgium are also showing greater enthusiasm for nuclear in various forms, while existing supporters such as the Netherlands and Sweden are looking to further invest in atomic energy. Most countries in central and eastern Europe are also leaning towards nuclear, with Poland, Romania and Czechia now racing to deploy small modular reactors.
Grégory Lefèvre, a senior researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), believes that small modular reactors have “rejuvenated” nuclear research and development. Speaking to Science|Business in a personal capacity, he observed that Germany has all the infrastructure necessary to “climb on the bandwagon” if it chooses, after years of preferring to invest in nuclear fusion. “It seems that Merz wants to come back to nuclear via a more modern vision of it, so that he doesn’t directly backtrack on the Energiewende,” he said, referring to Germany’s version of the green energy transition.
Geopolitical push
Current geopolitical tensions are also likely to play a role, with EU policymakers rethinking the role of atomic energy in Europe’s energy sovereignty and transition. While Jørgensen has warned against hiking the bloc’s reliance on the nuclear industry, others see danger in a similar reliance on renewables.
For Stefano Monti, the president of the European Nuclear Society, pursuing an energy transition solely based on renewable energy sources risks locking Europe into a new dependency, this time on China and its minerals.
Agostini sees strong Chinese competition on renewables, whereas Europe’s supply of uranium for nuclear power is more diverse, coming from suppliers such as Kazakhstan, Niger and Canada. “That’s what we need to consider when making our strategic energy choices: link them to what that implies for the industrial chains, and whether we are able to control them,” she said.
Monti also pointed out that energy-intensive industries in the EU were already facing higher investment costs than their rivals. “The situation is going to exacerbate further, along with the need to achieve deep decarbonisation,” he said. “Additionally, all the recent studies have shown that the energy transition without nuclear would be much more expensive.”
For Agostini, the current context is likely to spur everyone to step out of their ideological positions and look at Europe’s strengths anew. “If tomorrow, we want to build an energy system in which we are sovereign and independent of external fossil fuel supplies, there are no two ways around it, for us, it will be nuclear power and renewables.”
Source: Science Business
