Brad Plumer
For years at global climate summits, nuclear energy was seen by many as part of the problem rather than the solution.
Sama Bilbao and Leon has participated in the annual UN climate change talks since 1999, when he was a nuclear engineering student. For most of that time, she said people didn’t want to discuss nuclear energy at all.
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“We had anti-nuclear groups saying, ‘What are you doing here? Get out!’” she said.
Today, the story is very different. A sample of this can be seen in COP29the 29th United Nations Conference on Climate Change, taking place in Baku, Azerbaijan.
The movement began in climate conference last year in the United Arab Emirates, when 22 countries promised, for the first time, triple or global use of nuclear energyr by mid-century to help contain the global warming. At this year’s summit in Azerbaijan, six more countries signed the commitment.
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“Today it’s a completely different dynamic,” said Bilbao y Leon, who now leads the World Nuclear Association, an industry trade group. “A lot more people are open to discussing nuclear energy as a solution.”
The list of countries pledging to build new nuclear reactors, which can generate electricity without emitting planet-warming greenhouse gases, includes long-time users of the technology such as Canada, France, South Korea e USA. But it also includes countries that currently do not have nuclear capabilities, such as Kenya, Mongolia e Nigeria.
In recent years, interest in nuclear energy has grown steadily, accompanied by concern about global warming. This shift is evident in the UN climate talks, known as COP29. Along with the chants of vegan activists and solar power tents that have animated previous summits, countries like Türkiye e Great Britain they are now hosting panels on how to finance new nuclear plants or how small reactors could generate the heat needed for various industrial purposes.
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Nuclear energy still has many detractors, including environmentalists who point out the high technology costs and radioactive waste. Yet many politicians at this year’s climate talks seem eager to give nuclear energy a second chance.
“This gives me hope that nuclear energy is becoming increasingly popular around the world,” said Prime Minister Petr Fiala of Czech Republicin a speech to other leaders this week. “I firmly believe that nuclear energy is essential to meeting climate goals.”
Interest has been driven by several factors. In Britain and the United States, politicians and businesspeople who want to eliminate fossil fuels say they need a constant source of carbon-free electricity to supplement solar and wind power, which are not available at all hours. In Eastern Europemany countries have sought alternatives to Russian gas.
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Elsewhere, some developing countries see nuclear power as crucial to cleaning up air pollution while meeting growing energy demand.
Turkey is increasing its use of renewable energy and improving energy efficiency, but “it’s not enough,” said Abdullah Bugrahan Karaveli, chairman of the country’s nuclear energy agency. Electricity use in the country is growing at about 4% per year, and “we can’t do that without nuclear power in our long-term plan.”
Although Turkey has no currently operating nuclear power plants, construction of the first plant is underway on the southern coast, and officials are in talks with Russia, China and South Korea to build a second and third plant.
However, the obstacles are enormous. Over the past 20 years, the amount of electricity generated by nuclear power plants around the world has practically stagnated. Many countries have been discouraged by the delays and exorbitant costs that often plague efforts to build new reactors. Others, such as Germany and Japan, have closed reactors due to public opposition and fear of accidents.
Critics have called the commitment to tripling nuclear capacity “nonsense,” doubting that it can be done affordably or safely.
“We need to be practical and work on real issues,” said Shinichi Kihara, a senior official at Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. “In particular, nuclear projects often face uncertainty about future cost overruns.”
The administration Biden has been particularly active in promoting nuclear energy in conversations. On Tuesday, the White House released a detailed roadmap for how the country could triple its nuclear capacity by 2050.
Later in the week, the administration signed a letter of intent to provide a loan of approximately $979 million for a project in Poland which would build three large new nuclear reactors designed by Westinghouse, a US company.
Jake Levine, senior director of climate and energy at White Housesaid the United States is interested in expanding the use of nuclear energy in Eastern Europe to help countries avoid dependence on Russian gas.
Nuclear power, he said, provides “clear energy security value to many of our partners and allies.” And although the president Joe Biden leaves office in January, Levine said efforts to promote U.S. nuclear technology abroad have “strong bipartisan support” in Congress.
A US ally in Eastern Europe, the Romaniagets a fifth of its electricity from two large reactors. The country is now in talks with Western nations about revitalizing two other reactors that were partially built on the same site but never completed.
At the same time, an Oregon-based startup called NuScale plans to build six smaller reactors in Romania, backed by a loan from the US government. Some experts believe a new generation of smaller reactors could be easier to finance than traditional large reactors, although the technology is still unproven.
One obstacle for Romania: Many of the country’s nuclear workers have gone to the United Arab Emirates, which recently built a huge nuclear plant and can pay higher wages.
“Still, there is a clear push for nuclear power,” said Andrei Covatariu, senior research associate at the Energy Policy Groupone think tank Romanian. “It’s not a topic that will just go away.”
Leon y Bilbao said financing is still a major challenge for nuclear projects. The World Bank, for example, has not financed a nuclear project since 1959. But pressure is growing.
“It’s one thing if I tell the World Bank they should support nuclear energy,” she said. “But if there are dozens of countries, including emerging nations, saying we’re interested in this, that’s a little different.”
Outside the closed negotiating rooms in Baku, where diplomats and experts were trying to reach an agreement on providing climate aid to developing countries, there were demonstrations for and against nuclear energy this week.
On Thursday, a group of several dozen protesters protested against nuclear energy. “Nuclear energy is not clean if you take into account all the mineral production and the pollution it sometimes causes,” said Ivonne Yanez, president of Ecological Actiona non-profit environmental group based in Ecuador. “We need to stop nuclear energy.”
Elsewhere at the event, a group of young nuclear professionals called Nuclear for Climate held a protest of its own. Two of them dressed up as polar bears and danced while holding an atom symbol, while others handed out bananas to a curious crowd.
A banana contains the same amount of radiation as a person would receive from living next to a well-maintained nuclear power plant for a year, one said.
The group has existed since the 2015 climate summit, where the Paris Agreement was signed. “Initially we were very small,” said Hugo Bernat, 27, a nuclear engineer based in Brussels. “But the movement is growing.”
This article was originally published in The New York Times.
c.2024 The New York Times Company
