New funds for nuclear energy, as well as for wind turbines and solar energy: around twenty ministers meeting on Thursday in Paris, invited by the French government and the OECD, launched an appeal to international finance to accelerate the reactivation of the atom in the race against climate change.
Managers from around twenty countries participated in this important working meeting together with the industrial giants of the sector, from the French EDF to the American Westinghouse, including the Korean KHNP and the Japanese Mitsubishi, with the aim of drawing up “a roadmap ” to support the relaunch of nuclear energy. power at a global level, at a political and industrial level.
Among the countries represented, Japan, Canada, the United States, South Korea, the United Kingdom and members of the European Union (Czech Republic, Poland, Romania, Sweden, etc.)
industrial window
As an “industrial window” opens for the nuclear sector, “we must be practical, but we must act quickly,” advocated at the beginning of this conference the director general of the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA), William D. Wizard Wood.
In addition to mobilizing an entire industrial sector, it is also about finding financing for this tool, which requires long and expensive investments. How to do? The ministers launched an appeal urging “development banks, international and regional financial institutions (…) to consider financing nuclear energy taking into account priorities in terms of energy access, energy security and climate” , according to their declaration, signed by all the countries represented except Italy and Belgium.
It also involves “encouraging financial institutions to classify nuclear energy, where appropriate, with all other zero- or low-emission energy sources in international financial taxonomies.” Before the conference, European Commissioner Thierry Breton estimated that “the European Investment Bank (EIB) should consider supporting nuclear projects.”
The signatory countries described their role in the energy transition as “vital” thanks to their low CO2 emissions per kWh like those of solar and wind energy.
“Nuclear energy is an important asset both for our energy security and for our climate commitments” of carbon neutrality by 2050, stressed the French Minister of Energy Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, co-organizer with the AEN, at a time when The atom is experiencing renewed interest in several countries, in a context of climate crisis and energy tensions exacerbated by the conflict in Ukraine.
Industrial challenges
Shortly before the start of the conference, a dozen Greenpeace activists displayed a banner on the roof of the OECD building to denounce “climate drift”, before being calmly removed by the police.
France, the most nuclearized country in the world per capita (56 reactors for 68 million inhabitants), has become the European spearhead of the relaunch of the atom, at the head of a “European nuclear alliance” to influence the negotiations on reform. of the EU electricity market.
Triple capacity to meet carbon neutrality goals
In 2022, 7.9 GW of nuclear capacity came into service, which represents a 40% increase in new installations compared to 2021. Most of the construction starts in recent years have come from China, for its domestic market, and from Russia, for several countries.
According to the NEA, global nuclear capacities would need to triple by 2050 to meet carbon neutrality targets, combining existing reactors, new generation reactors and also small modular reactors (SMR).
But reactivating the atom, which fell out of favor after the Fukushima catastrophe in Japan (2011), implies many challenges for countries that have not built power plants “for a long time”, and financing is not “more important than the others.” “. : “Skills, supply chain, experience, management, all this must come together” to be successful in projects, stressed William D. Magwood.
The ministers committed to “promote international collaboration” and “the exchange of good practices” on issues such as uranium supply, spent fuel recycling and radioactive waste management.
Source: BFM TV
