Climate and nuclear: Europe without a strategy

2023-09-17 10:00:00

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Small SMR reactors might quickly contribute to decarbonizing industry or replace coal-fired power plants in the East. But Europe, torn, is stalling…

Par Geraldine Woessner

After having favored large-scale reactors for a long time, nuclear countries around the world are once once more interested in the virtues of these smaller reactors, but Europe is struggling.
© JAKUB PORZYCKI / NurPhoto via AFP

Published on 09/17/2023 at 12:00 p.m.

Lhe images, at the beginning of September, made people cringe in the corridors of Brussels… Welcomed with great fanfare at the Three Seas Summitan initiative bringing together twelve countries from Central and Eastern Europe in Bucharest, the American special envoy for climate, John Kerry, arrived draped in his costume of “savior of the planet”.

In his bag, envelopes of dollars, and turnkey contracts to help the heavily carbon-intensive economies of the east of the Union to move away from fossils, thanks to a tool full of promise: small SMR nuclear reactors (for Small Modular Reactor), capable of supplying a factory with low-carbon electricity or replacing a coal-fired power plant.

The feasibility studies, naturally conducted by an American design office, will be…

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#Climate #nuclear #Europe #strategy