Von der Leyen: “Reducing the commitment to nuclear energy was a strategic mistake for Europe” | Economy | EUROtoday

Nuclear vitality has been declining within the EU for many years as a supply of electrical energy era and that, for the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has been “a strategic error.” The German defends, within the present context of very excessive volatility within the costs of key fuels akin to oil or liquefied pure fuel, that atomic vitality “is a reliable, affordable source with low emissions”, as acknowledged this Tuesday on the nuclear vitality summit held in Paris, capital of a rustic, France, which has made the event of this expertise a State dedication and a method to obtain vitality autonomy.

“We are completely dependent on volatile and expensive imports of fossil fuels. The current crisis in the Middle East reminds us starkly of the vulnerabilities this generates. But we have low-carbon energy sources of our own production: nuclear energy and renewables,” Von der Leyen had launched somewhat earlier in his speech, given earlier than the French president. The reference has a double rationalization: along with polluting much less, each sources of electrical energy era are cheaper than fossil fuels simply when the EU has made vitality costs the workhorse to beat to realize—or, a minimum of, not lose—competitiveness towards the United States and China.

But, the president of the Commission defined, the evolution of atomic vitality and renewables has been divergent. “In the last decade, we have made great progress in renewables. Solar and wind energy have surpassed fossil fuels in the mix [de generación] electricity of the EU,” he described. “The nuclear story, unfortunately, is different. In 1990, a third of electricity in Europe came from nuclear sources, today only 15%. This reduction in nuclear prominence was a choice, I believe that for Europe this has been a strategic error,” he noted.

These words have a lot of symbolism coming from someone, Ursula von der Leyen, who participated in almost all of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s governments. With the latter, Germany decided in 2011, after the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan, to set at the end of 2022 the moment when it was going to dispense with nuclear energy as a source of electricity generation (the energy crisis caused by the war in Ukraine delayed it a few months, to April 2023).

The European Commission chaired by Von der Leyen has long shown signs of considering nuclear energy as a key source of electricity generation in the process of economic decarbonization. When the energy taxonomy was drawn up in 2022, nuclear energy was already assigned the label of a key energy for the transition to an economy free of polluting emissions, despite the fact that it does generate waste that must be treated. That, for example, kept open the possibility of building new plants in the coming decades.

Now, however, Von der Leyen’s position is even clearer in favor of nuclear energy, as made clear in her speech at a very favorable forum for this fuel: “In current years, we have now witnessed a world renaissance of nuclear vitality. And Europe needs to be a part of it. Last 12 months, we modified our state support guidelines to increase help for nuclear fusion and nuclear fuels. We launched the primary world industrial alliance for small modular reactors and proposed investing greater than 5 billion euros of our subsequent funds on fusion analysis.”

His phrases got here hours earlier than the College of Commissioners addressed a gathering by which vitality, its value and the event of nuclear vitality have been very current. In closing, the Commission has printed three paperwork that define methods for the EU to advance “clean energy solutions, increase resilience and reduce energy prices.”

One of those paperwork is the one which seeks to advertise small modular nuclear reactors, one of many EU’s technological commitments. It is about constructing any such mini-plant that may have much less energy, might be inbuilt a manufacturing facility and transported to the place it will be used. The Commission itself, in its doc, conscious of the novelty of those reactors, factors out that they can be utilized to provide vitality to an information heart, the heating of an city district or a producing facility.

But this expertise isn’t but developed. The calculations provided by Brussels recommend that it’ll not be prepared till “the beginning of the next decade.” And as has already occurred with different applied sciences, the Commission needs the EU to not miss this prepare and search for methods to stimulate analysis. This is the place the doc printed this Tuesday suits in, which proposes growing the cash allotted to analysis on this area within the EU funds by 200 million or encouraging alliances between nations. And this with out dropping sight of the reindustrializing goal that the EU Executive additionally pursues.