The nuclear power renaissance has some way to run

When France first hosted a nuclear power trade fair about a decade ago, in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, it was a low-key affair. Two years ago, organisers’ main worry was to avoid anti-nuclear protesters marring proceedings. 

This week, the buzz at the vast salon on the outskirts of Paris was unequivocal. Miss America 2023, a nuclear engineering student, was on hand to help the event court the limelight, and champagne flowed on the stands displaying radioprotective gloves and designs for cutting-edge small reactors. 

The message was clear: nuclear power is back, and France, Europe’s atomic power champion with its 56 reactors, intends to be at the heart of this revival.

“We’re coming out of a period of taboos [over nuclear],” said Sylvie Bermann, a former French ambassador to China and Russia who heads the Paris show.

The industry and its low-emission technology would also have its moment for the first time at the COP28 climate summit in the United Arab Emirates, with a dedicated event, she added.

After years in the doldrums, mindsets over nuclear have shifted, spurred by climate worries and an energy crisis last year when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and cut gas supplies to Europe. Even Japan, home to the Fukushima meltdown of 2011, has restarted idled reactors, while a host of other nations are considering new plants, giving suppliers reasons to feel more optimistic.

What is less obvious will be the move from aspirations to reality, in a sector where building reactors is costly and slow, especially after decades without projects drained the industry of skilled workers. 

Part of the promotional push by France and other pro-nuclear nations is aimed at solving some big obstacles. Chief among them, according to the head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog Rafael Grossi, is the financing, including from multilateral bodies. 

Paris, which is riding high on recent EU wins to gain some subsidies for its existing plants, originally opposed by staunchly anti-nuclear Germany, has campaigned for instance for the European Investment Bank to help fund the construction of new reactors.

“Nuclear has been constructed very fast when the money’s there,” said the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Grossi, citing the United Arab Emirates, which had gone from “zero to champions” in roughly eight years with a $20bn-plus project for four Korean-built reactors. They are almost all now online. 

There’s also a lot to prove on the industrial front. France’s state-controlled nuclear power operator EDF aims to build roughly one 1.6 Gigawatt reactor a year once it gets going with its new orders for at least six new ones in France by the mid-2030s, according to chief executive Luc Rémont. 

Considering its prototype in northern France known as Flamanville 3 has been 16 years in the making, it is an extremely ambitious goal. Rémont argues that parallel projects (the state-owned group is bidding for projects in India and the Czech Republic) would help EDF become better and faster. 

There are other challenges. Many nations have long been dependent on Russian nuclear fuel, including the US reactor fleet, and finding sufficient alternative supplies could take years. 

Meanwhile, the IAEA forecasts that over the next 20 years the industry’s share in the global energy mix — roughly 10 per cent of the world’s electricity generation today — will remain flat, if not decrease slightly, unless there are even more ambitious construction plans.

Developers argue, however, that the hardest battle is getting political buy-in to give them the visibility they need. Judging by the upbeat messaging coming out of Paris this week, that part of the complex nuclear equation at least is some way towards being solved.