EU Nations Getting Serious About Nuclear Energy
My latest at IWF.
A 12-nation pro-nuclear alliance is calling for the European Commission, the European Union (EU) executive body, to unleash nuclear energy and approve small modular reactors (SMRs).
Current members of the European Nuclear Alliance, launched in 2023, include Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden—with Belgium and Italy acting as observers. This alliance has called for the new European Commission to prioritize nuclear energy projects across the next five years. They just recommended nine SMR projects.
“Nuclear energy, alongside renewable energy, is a cost-competitive solution to meet the growing demand for fossil-free electricity and mitigate climate change, thanks to its low-carbon footprint. Nuclear energy is the ready-available fossil-free technology able to produce consistent baseload dispatchable power, ensuring both our collective security of supply and the necessary flexibility in our electricity market,” the alliance declared in March of 2024.
This momentum follows a Nuclear Energy Summit held in Brussels earlier this year, where signatories agreed to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)’s Declaration of Nuclear Energy:
We commit to work to fully unlock the potential of nuclear energy by taking measures such as enabling conditions to support and competitively finance the lifetime extension of existing nuclear reactors, the construction of new nuclear power plants and the early deployment of advanced reactors, including small modular reactors, worldwide while maintaining the highest levels of safety and security, in accordance with respective national regulations and circumstances. In this drive for more clean energy and innovation, we commit to support all countries, especially emerging nuclear ones, in their capacities and efforts to add nuclear energy to their energy mixes consistent with their different national needs, priorities, pathways, and approaches and create a more open, fair, balanced and inclusive environment for their development of nuclear energy, including its non-electrical applications, and to continue effectively implementing safeguards, consistent with Member States’ national legislation and respective international obligations.
Currently, 103 nuclear reactors operate in 13 EU member states, supplying 25% of its electricity. While not formal members of the ENA, the Baltic countries—including Estonia and Lithuania—have also expressed interest in SMRs to reduce their reliance on energy imports.
But this starkly contrasts with Germany, a European nation that’s taken the opposite approach. The country lauds its decade-long “nuclear phaseout” as a “great success but still a lot to do.” The last operating nuclear plants – Emsland, Isar II, and Neckarwestheim II – closed in April 2023. The nation demolished their oldest power plant, Grafenrheinfeld, this past August. This reliable energy source has powered upwards of 10 million homes in the Western European country. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the “uber green” country has, ironically, pivoted back to coal.
Europe, like the United States, is banking on nuclear energy—particularly SMRs—to help meet the growing electricity demand that part-time sources, like solar and wind, can’t adequately fulfill.
As I noted here at IWF recently, the allure of SMRs is manifold. They’re prefabricated units that are “factory-assembled and transported as a unit to a location for installation” and a more cost-effective option for nuclear project construction. Both the EU and U.S. recognize that SMRs “only need to be refueled every three to seven years compared to large reactors which need to be maintained every one to three years.”
Nuclear energy runs nearly 24/7, has a 93% capacity factor, and only uses one square mile to generate 1,000 Megawatt (MW) of electricity. Currently, nuclear energy is responsible for 18.6% of utility-scale electricity generation in the U.S.
Let’s hope the EU, like our nation, can succeed in onboarding more nuclear projects.