Leaders tout nuclear power as a climate change tool

MORE than 30 countries – including European nations, the US, Brazil and China – took part yesterday in the firstever summit held by the UN’s atomic energy agency to promote nuclear as a “clean and reliable source of energy”.

“This is a fight where we have to use all the available, dispatchable, CO2-free energy sources for the common challenge,” International Atomic Energy Agency head Rafael Grossi told the gathering at the Atomium in Brussels – a modernist landmark built for the 1958 World Fair.

The approach is anathema to a number of other European countries, including Germany and Spain, and to many environmentalists, who see the drive for nuclear as a harmful distraction from the need to invest massively, and immediately, in renewables.

The summit follows on from last year’s COP28 UN climate negotiations, at which 22 world leaders backed a call to triple the world’s nuclear energy capacity by 2050.

Grossi said the focus was on “what we still need to do”, including crucially on the question of financing.

Nuclear accounts for just under 10% of global electricity generation, with 438 plants operating across 31 countries. More than 500 plants are at various stages of planning and development, with 61 under construction according to World Nuclear Association data.

“I see around the world, nuclear is making a comeback. A very strong comeback,” said International Energy Agency chief Fatih Birol. He attributed the shift chiefly to the quest for carbon-free power sources but also the search for secure and stable energy following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

He said there was “a key role for nuclear”, while also acknowledging that the “major part” of carbon-free electricity needed to come from renewables – solar, wind and hydro power.

While nuclear plants generate almost no greenhouse gases, critics highlight that compared to renewables they can take decades to build, are expensive and generate hazardous waste.