Episode Transcript
Areti: Welcome to the EU Energy Projects podcast, a podcast series from Enlighten France focusing on the clean energy transition for the European Union and the EU Commission funded energy projects that will help us achieve it. My name is Areti Daradimu. I am the editor of the EU Energy Projects podcast and your host.
Areti: Nuclear energy is considered a low carbon alternative to fossil fuels and according to Eurostat, it accounts for almost 26% of the electricity produced in the EU.
The European Commission believes there is a role for private investment in nuclear activities in the green energy transition, and therefore it has proposed the classification of certain nuclear energy activities as transitional activities contributing to climate change mitigation. The European Parliament did not object to the Commission's taxonomy delegated act, which includes specific nuclear energy activities under certain conditions on the list of environmentally sustainable and economic activities covered by the so called EU taxonomy. Although it seems as if we have a consensus, that is not the case, as the picture is not static. There is an ongoing discussion about policy choices to be made on the subject, as well as a vast difference of opinions on the matter. In this episode, we are going to explore the debate about nuclear energy as a potential solution to climate change. The two main opposing viewpoints are represented by Claude Thurmain, the luxembourgist politician who served as a member of the European Parliament. He is a member of the Green party, part of the European Green party. And on the other side, we have proponents of small modular reactors, or smrs, to set the scene. Claude Tormer will explain the urgency of our situation, as well as why, in his opinion, wind and solar energy, not nuclear, is the solution I made him during last year's european sustainable Energy week in Brussels.
[00:02:24] Speaker C: Now to plan for the end game. The end game because of climate change, we are late. We have to go fast. Fast means massive deployment of solar wind, onshore wind, offshore fast deployment of heat pumps, electric vehicles.
And in the middle of this we have the grid and we need to be zero carbon in the power system. At latest in 2030, 512 years to go. And the grid must be able and must be an enabler of phasing in the renewables and also phasing in the devices, electric devices, heat pumps and electromobility.
[00:03:02] Speaker D: But why the dsos alone? There are so many actors in the energy sector. Of course I understand what you're saying about the grid, but why the DSO specifically? Why not for example IPP's or, you know, consumers?
[00:03:18] Speaker C: I think everybody is important, but the bottleneck could be the grid. And therefore what we need to do, we need to change in a certain sense the culture of the companies. In order to change the culture, to make some more it digital, to make them more service oriented, we need to change first the culture of the regulators.
The problem today, which often the transmission system operates or distribution system operates, have, is they earn money based on a regulation by national regulators. And this is very much old school, linked to copper investments and not enough intelligent digitalization. And so we need to get to what we call a total cost methodology. And that is something which is not yet in place, and that is something which we have to speed up to get the right investments and the right culture also inside the distribution system operators.
[00:04:27] Speaker D: Speaking of culture, you are in a unique position that not many regulators are. You have been an MP at the European Parliament and you are also part of the luxembourgian ministry, sorry, government.
You have seen it, let's say, a little bit holistically.
Given the various differences in the European Union, and I'm talking geographically south and north, west and east, how easy is it to focus on digitalization and move forward?
[00:05:01] Speaker C: Bulgaria Sofia is a hotspot of digital knowledge in Europe. So it's not a question of east south north west.
Digital will be and must be everywhere in the grid companies. And for example, in Luxembourg, we allow our grid operator to have a certain amount of money to spend on research and to spend on building up startups so that we not only get new, innovative ideas, but also that we get people from all over the world to be interested to study in Luxembourg and to do startups. And we have to do that in order to attract talent to the grid operators. So Bulgaria could be a front runner. They have better solar radiation than most of european countries. They have the it knowledge. They have companies which are very active. Nuclear is dangerous.
Fukushima happened. Nuclear is expensive.
Hinckley Point, Flammonville costs instead of 3 billion, it costs 20 billion. It is not built in three years. It's built in 23 years. Nuclear is a waste of time and it is a dangerous technology. Nuclear will definitely not help us. It's too late. It's a waste of money and it's diverting attention. The only way to win the climate crisis is fast investments into solar, big, small, fast investor into onshore, fast investment into offshore wind, and then into the grid, and then in parallel, rollout of heat, pumps roll out of electric, public transport. Nuclear is a waste of time. It's really a waste of time.
[00:06:44] Speaker D: Forgive me for insisting a little bit, because this argument can also is also placed from the other side that they're saying that renewables like solar, wind, et cetera, might not be enough, might not take us to our target because of the problem of storage, for example.
[00:07:00] Speaker C: Yeah, but you look to the figures today, there is no problem with storage at all, because we have a european grid which goes from faro to Vilnius or to Tallinn. Perfect storage, no problem.
We will have to care about. And then we have not even exploited the flexibility resources. The american power market has 15 times the volumes of demand side management. And the european one, why don't we do that? So we do it now and then that will, let's say, bring us to the end of this decade. And then we need storage. And therefore today I called for european storage strategy with three or four main points. One is an obligation on the car industry to have battery, so vehicle to grid ready batteries in 26 or 28, a complete ban of diesel black starters in the data center industry, because then they will go to batteries and that will be good. And then linking the rollout of the charging stations we need for the trucks with also batteries.
And the fourth is we need now the grid operators, especially the transmission grid operators, to do tenders for zero carbon entry services.
What is an entry service?
So 50 hz, that is the norm in the european grid. Why is there a company called 50, not 47 hz or 53 hz? Because the system is balanced at and has to be stable very closely around 50. Therefore, you need also you will lose in the system, you will lose these big rotating machines from the gas and the coal and from the nuclear. And that has to be replaced. And we have to plan for that. And for example, we have done, Luxembourg has done a study on catenar, which is the nuclear reactor, which is next, close it and then use the on site generators who can be black, start rotating machines, so be we can phase out nuclear and use some of the infrastructure of the nuclear industry. Also to help us in going to this 100% renewable power system, we need to be zero carbon in 2035. Otherwise it doesn't make sense to electrify other parts of society if the grid is not 100% zero carbon. And the only way to be zero carbon in 2035 is renewables.
We can build it out nuclear. Even if you decide a nuclear reactor today, it will not feed any electricity in 2035. That's at least the experience we have from the last three or five reactors, which were planned to be connected in Europe over the last 20 years.
[00:10:00] Speaker D: Fair enough. However, if we see the grid infrastructure right now, how it is, and if we, let's say, connect renewable energy resources more than what the grid can take, we could actually end up with a huge problem in our hands. So when you say that we can wait a little bit about storage, how can we wait? We don't have the infrastructure to connect renewables in our grid. And what also you said about north and south, when you mentioned Bulgaria, maybe Bulgaria is a good example. But let me bring into the table Greece that doesn't have smart meters at this point.
How can we help? Enter, let's say, into the grid infrastructure, renewables, when Greece does not have smart meters.
[00:10:49] Speaker C: Luxembourg has 99% rollout of smart meters, and we are under the same EU regulation. So Greece, when the new government, whoever that will be, will take up, it has to bring digitalization to its grid.
Digitalization allows us to buy time to do also the physical upware of the hardware of the grid and storage. When I say we don't need storage now, I'm a bit fed up by these articles I read of Dunkelflaut Europe. There will be no wind and no sun. And the system will reply, that is not the case the next ten to twelve years. So we have to plan for the storage now.
And in order to promote the storage, let's regulate at EU all cars in Europe. Electric cars in Europe. Batteries from 2026 on must be vehicle to grid ready, so that they can feed into the two directions. All dental centers from 25 on, no black start anymore with diesels, only with batteries. And let's plan. And that's something which commission is now doing, speeding up the decarbonization of the trucks in Europe, which is central to our climate policies. And let's combine that with the rollout of fast charging stations. And that has to be combined with batteries, because otherwise we cannot integrate it into the the grid. And these batteries will also be an arbitrage, so that they will buy. These batteries will be filled at moments when the power prices are low. And that will help also the competitivity of the trucks, electric trucks. And through that, the competitivity of european industry.
[00:12:41] Speaker D: Hand to heart. Do you really believe that all this planning will be implemented within time, so that the European Union will reach the goals in 2030 and 2050?
[00:12:54] Speaker C: 2050 is too late. So we have now a good target for 2030, which is 42 to 45.
I was recently in Ostend with a lot of prime ministers from the North Sea, so offshore wind will be big and we have to work to make it quicker in the baltic states. We are, for example, now discussing with the three baltic states the idea of, I don't know 1520 gigawatt of offshore wind, which the baltic states have because they have a large sea area. They don't need that for their own industry, even if they would double their industry. And that with the cable to Germany and western Europe. So this kind of big projects will also do. We have thought and then digitalization, digitalization service orientation from the grid so that citizens have an easy access and a fast response from the grid operators to connect pv, their ev, their heat pumps.
[00:13:54] Speaker B: In November 2023 and during enlit Europe in Paris, I had the opportunity of following a panel hosted by the sustainable nuclear energy technology platform. During the discussion, various EU funded projects explain why nuclear in their opinion, its part of the solution to our energy issues and how the projects themselves help create safe and green nuclear energy. Let us hear first from Claire Valljo Godar, who is representing Project Tandem, an EU funded project that focuses on how nuclear can help create a european safe and decarbonised energy mix.
[00:14:35] Speaker E: Tandem stands for small modular reactor for european safe and decarbonized energy mix. Small mole radar reactors are reactors with a low power, that is to say thermal power, below 1000 megawatt thermal, that is to say more or less 300 megawatt electric. And what about the technology? Here we speak about light water technology. So more or less the same technology as the current nuclear industrial fleet, in particular in France. But the difference is that the design is more compact. So what about the tandem project? The tandem project is in line with the achievement of energy sovereignty, security and affordability in Europe as soon as possible, and also the greenhouse and net zero emission by 2030. Considering that we do not need only electricity, of course electricity demand will double by 2050. But decarbonization of the electricity sector is not enough. Today, heating and cooling represent about half of the total energy demand in Europe. And we also see that the hydrogen use is expected to increase strongly.
Generally speaking, of course, we need to have the transition as soon as possible and to accelerate the deployment of low carbon energy services and carriers. So what is the contribution of the tandem project regarding the answer to these needs? The Tandem project aims to develop an integrated vision of the energy systems, including nuclear, including smrs. And that's why we speak about hybrid energy systems. And we will define that just a little afterwards. We also bring the development of tools and methodologies to study energy systems in the tandem project. And the third point is that we want to really demonstrate the role and benefits of multipurpose smrs integrated into these energy systems for the energy transition.
The main question addressed by the tandem project is the following. How can we combine all low carbon energy sources, that is to say renewables and in particular intermittent renewables, but also nuclear? How can we also combine these low carbon energy sources with thermal and electrical storage systems and with the production of energy carriers, that is to say electricity, electricity, heat hydrogen to meet the energy demand in the future. Sustainable and affordable energy mix so now we can speak about hybrid energy systems in tandem. Multiple smrs, small modular reactors for electrical and non electron application may be well suited to operate flexibly in tandem with other energy sources, resources and energy storage systems to provide electricity, heat and hydrogen. Thus, SMRs can be hybridized with other energy sources, storage systems and energy conversion applications. They are integrated into hybrid energy systems. So we need to address new topics, new R and D topics. In fact, due to the development of these integrated vision of the energy mix, we need to address the topics about nuclear safety. Because we do not only have a reactor connected to the power grid, but we have a reactor connected to the full energy systems. We have to address flexibility of energy production, techno economics, environmental impact and suicidal acceptance. And through the tandem project we initiate the thinking, the thought about all these topics. So we have three high level objectives addressed in tandem. The first one is to assess the safety compliance of smrs to be integrated in the future european energy peaks. The second one is to provide guidance in the deployment perspective of the future integration SMR into well balanced hybridization energy systems. Here we speak about, of course, safety, but not only techno economics, operationality of hybrid energy systems, but also social acceptance, citizen engagement and we want in this project to create an enabling environment for the development of hybrid energy systems based on smrs.
We have two ambitions in the project. The first one is to promote versatile smrs integrated into hybrid energy systems as wearable, resilient and affordable clean energy option in Europe. And we would like to become a pioneer initiative in gathering efforts and expertise around the development of SMR integration into hybrid energy systems in Europe. We have the same kind of initiative, in fact all around the world, in particular in the US.
[00:19:54] Speaker B: According to Fulvio Maskari, who represents Project Saspam, there is a growing interest in Europe for the deployment of small modular reactors as a safe technology for nuclear energy.
[00:20:09] Speaker F: As you probably know, there is a big interest on the deployment of small model reactors, that they are the more attractive solution for the safety for the near term deployment of nuclear technology. And there is a growing interest in Europe for the deployment Osmol modular reactor and in particular light water integral PWR, the reactor design that start from a well proven large water reactor technology experience and incorporate the safety feature that increase the inherent safety of the plant. Therefore, in some way, there is a big interest to deploy this reactor. And as all in the safety process, there is a big activity or research and development related to the tool that we are going to use to study the safety of the nuclear power plant. And therefore all the experiments and the knowledge that we need to provide. Considering that this is a research and development project, looking at the current initiative that there was, when we prepared the proposal, we saw that the part related to the accident, that they are more severe, was not investigated. And therefore, the main target of this project was really to investigate this part of the safety assessment of the plant. And therefore, we decide to focus this project mostly on the part related to severe accident. Osmol modular reactor but since this reactor comes from the experience that comes from a large, large scale water reactor, the main target of the project was to consider whatever what we can get from the current experience that we have from decades of operation of nuclear reactors, and also from all the research and development that we have done for large water reactors and then what is applicable for small modular reactors. And therefore, the target of this project was really to get all the technical background that we need for the licensing process, Osmol modular reactors and in some way to assess this background, assess the tool that we want that we are going to use in the licensing process of the reactor, and in some way speeding up the licensing process of small modular reactor in a way that all the knowledge is ready for this licensing process. Therefore, the main target of the project was really to try to understand what can be get from the experience from large water reactor in terms of knowledge that we produce with experiment. That the experiment I used to characterize the reactor intransient in accident condition and assess this knowledge in terms of experiment, code in the computational tool and identify what is the new research and development need and in particular the short term research and development need. This is in some way identifying this priority in some way with speeding up this process. And the knowledge produced from this project will be fundamental along the regulatory process for the licensing of this reactor. When we build the project, we try to put together all the main element of the community. Therefore, the element from the knowledge, experimental knowledge, the element from the computational tool and the industry that give the right direction to the project and built the consortium. The project started one year ago and we are starting to have the first insight from the project that we will see in the next action. This is mostly the consortium of the project, and the project has been funded in the Horizon 2020 project program. And here you can find more information on the project. And maybe we will speak later when we speak about safety of the key element of the project.
[00:24:29] Speaker B: Michel Pasquier from Project Gemini 4.0 focused on high temperature reactor systems that can provide a competitive and safe solution for the decarbonization of industrial activities.
[00:24:45] Speaker G: So the main objective is to this is for high temperature reactor. And we want to demonstrate that this reactor can provide safe and economic energy, which we call here cogeneration, so we can provide electricity, heat and hydrogen.
This project was previously led by Polish Research center, which was NCBGI. It was called Gemini plus and they designed a reactor. So now we have to demonstrate the safety of this reactor in the Gemini project Gemini 4.0.
And we will save Gemini 40 carbon, of course, and also to demonstrate the licensing readiness of this reactor. Just a point. This type of reactor was operated in the past, in the 18 and 19 in US and Germany. So it is a demonstrated technology up to temperature about 8800 degrees celsius. I will show what our target today. We also want to demonstrate that it is cost effective in the energy mix. And we want also to develop for reactor we need fuel. So we want to evaluate the development of a fuel which is a specific fuel for this type of reactor, which is not the same as for light water reactor. It is a high performing fuel which can go to up to 1600 degrees celsius. An accidental condition. So we want to evaluate the development of this fuel. In Europe, Poland and UK have this type of program for HDR and also they need fuel. So we want to develop this fuel manufacturing for this fuel. Of course we have a communication and dissemination for the politics, for the industry and for the public to promote this type of energy production. We are supported by the European Nuclear Cogeneration Industrial Initiative, which is called NC two I which want to demonstrate that we can provide cogeneration for low carbon energy.
The target of this type of reactor is temperature around 500 degrees c. We have. This is for semicolon, petrochemical and refinery system, which represented in 2017 and maybe more now 87 gigawatt thermal energy. This is the first target. Also you can see that hydrogen production could be a target around 700,000 degrees C here. We need more R and D for material to sustain this type of temperature and more. We have also a big market for cement, tree and steel making industry. But for now the target is around 550 degrees c. So we have a design which is the reactor, which is about 180 megawatt per mole with a primary circuit we have a steam generator and a second circuit for the end user. We can provide steam at 540 degree c. So industrial application can be connected on the right side to a reboiler to provide the steam needed for the industry application. And also as there is two circuits, we can also avoid any radio contaminant dispersion in the third circuit. I just want to finish my speech on the partner. So we have partner EDF industrial partner Cintos in Poland which won't provide green energy.
We have also not safety authority but technical support of safety authority as ISN. And in Germany the Tuf air, the tuft of Ryland.
We have also nuclear research center. In Poland we have a tractable also and we have startup like USNC and also energy and VTT. We have also associated partner the Korean, the Japanese and the UK.
Yes, I want to say also that there is two reactors, high temperature reactor which are operating in the world. It is in Japan and in China. And just to finish my speech, if you want to know more on high temperature reactor, we will organize a summer school in September in Poland in 2024. Thank you for your attention.
[00:30:18] Speaker B: The european hydrogen Strategy and repower EU plan have put forward the framework to support the uptake of renewable and low carbon hydrogen to help decarbonize the continent in a cost effective way as well as to reduce its dependence on imported fossil fuels. Nuclear is potentially an actor in the production of clean hydrogen. Let us listen to Sanet Serin from project NpHo explain how.
[00:30:49] Speaker H: NPH stands for nuclear powered hydrogen cogeneration. It's an european research project dedicated to the production of hydrogen by nuclear power. The European Union hopes to fully decarbonize its economy by the year of 2015, and one of the solutions being put forward is hydrogen.
Nevertheless, to date, most of the hydrogen produced comes from fossil fuels in Europe.
So the question is how to ramp up the production of low carbon hydrogen to meet the demand of its hard to decarbonize sectors such as industry.
That's why we are now looking at the project goals of NP Hico. So NP Hico is focusing on the potential for developing large scale low carbon hydrogen production facilities linked to nuclear power plants. And we started by assessing the feasibility to producing hydrogen near an existing nuclear power plant in Europe. We are also analyzing potential offtakers and the transportation routes to these off takers such as fertilizer or steel industry or petrochemical industries. So what is our main message after almost one year? The technical feasibility is not in question for us, the off taker interest is reliability of supply at a competitive price. We have concerns regarding the point's safety, legal framework and profitability.
The last point, the profitability, is highly dependent on, first of all, the price of electricity, the price of CO2 like tax relaxations, the categorization of nuclear powered hydrogen and related fundings.
Still not clear if nuclear powered hydrogen is green hydrogen and the transport possibilities of hydrogen to the off takers, the points that I listed are highly dependent on the european and national framework and decisions, and without european and national decisions. So without finalized decisions, studies show positive or negative results based on assumptions. So what we need is a quick and clear national and european decision to develop our business plan based on these decisions.
[00:33:29] Speaker B: While the promise of clean energy is undeniable, concerns over safety and waste remain. Same goes for concerns over storage when it comes to wind and solar energy, of course. But the role of nuclear power in our future seems to me to depend on our ability to address the issues effectively. What do you think?
[00:33:50] Speaker A: You've been listening to the EU Energy Projects podcast, a podcast brought to you by Enlit and friends. You can find us on Spotify, Apple and the Enleet World website. Just hit subscribe and you can access our other episodes too. I'm Areti Daradim. Thank you for joining us.
