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How the war in Ukraine and climate change are shaping the nuclear industry


The Vogtle Units 3 and 4 sites, built by main contractor Westinghouse, a Toshiba business unit, near Waynesboro, Georgia, are seen in an aerial photo taken in February 2017.

Georgia Power | Reuters

Climate change and global security are driving each other in shaping the future. That’s especially evident in this week’s events around nuclear power.

Nuclear power plants generate energy that does not emit carbon dioxide, providing an alternative to fossil fuels that are warming the atmosphere.

“Coal and other fossil fuels are choking humanity” United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said on Monday after the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its most recent report. “The current global energy mix is ​​broken.”

In the same week, Russian military forces attack Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine. A building on the site of a nuclear power plant was set on fire.

“We are giving a warning, no country has ever fired on nuclear blocks except Russia,” the Ukrainian president said. Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a video statement, according to a translation. “For the first time in our history, in human history, the country of terror has turned into a nuclear terrorist.”

Late Friday, The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that the nuclear power plant continues to operate and that no radioactive material is released. However, the security incident caused a global wave of terror.

“There will be confusion about this,” said Kenneth Luongo, founder of the nonprofit. Cooperation for Global Securityoperate based on security and energy policy.

Watching Ukraine’s nuclear reactors come under attack is new, and especially alarming for “the majority of the population that considers nuclear weapons and dangerous, as well as concerned about the launch of nuclear weapons.” radiation and health.”

At the same time, countries are slowly realizing that they cannot meet their climate goals with only renewable energy, such as wind and solar power. Luongo said there had been a “sea change” in views on nuclear at last year’s COP 26 climate conference.

China and Russia dominate

“Certainly, China has the most active new nuclear construction program,” John Kotek says of the Institute of Nuclear Energy.

China has “the fastest growing commercial or civil nuclear power industry in the world. They’re building at roughly the same rate as what you signed in the US in the ’70s, or France in the 70s and 80s,” said Kotek.

Some of China’s focus in building new nuclear power reactors is in response to the rapid increase in energy demand from a rapidly growing middle class.

Russia has what Kotek calls “a fairly steady program” of new nuclear production. Currently, three new nuclear reactors are under construction in Russia.

But Russia is also the world’s top exporter of nuclear technology.

A popular Russian reactor design, known as the VVER design, which stands for vodo-vodyanoi enyergeticheskiy reaktor in Russian, or water power reactor in English, is currently under construction in many countries. other than Russia, including Bangladesh, Belarus, India, Iran, Slovakia and Turkey.

According to Luongo, as Russia and China rose to fame, the United States lost its “muscular memory” to build conventional nuclear reactors. Nuclear power became discredited in the United States after the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear accident in Pennsylvania, and globally after the accidents at Chornobyl in Soviet Ukraine in 1986 and Fukushima in Japan in 2011.

But the tide is starting to change.

The Biden administration’s solution has been included Bipartisan Infrastructure Lawwhich signed into law in November, and really a big subsidy. The law includes a $6 billion program aimed at preserving the United States’ existing fleet of nuclear power reactors.

At the state level, there are currently 75 to 100 nuclear-related bills in state legislatures across the country, Kotek said. A decade ago, the average number of nuclear-related bills in state legislatures was a dozen, he said.

“While certainly not every bill will pass, it’s a sign that real interest in nuclear is growing,” Kotek said.

Most of the surge in interest in nuclear energy is due to concerns about climate change and is often strongest in states where coal economies are shutting down.

Kotek found the “coal-to-nuclear transition” has “concern in communities and states that are considering the prospect of coal plant closures and want to make the best use of a highly trained workforce.” depth and property exists there he said.

For example, in February, West Virginia overturns ban on the construction of nuclear power plants, has been carried out since 1996.

At the same time, the Russia-Ukraine war gives the US leverage to open up more of its footprint in the global market. While the war is going on tragically, “it will bring more opportunities for US nuclear companies when Russia really humbles itself,” Kotek said.

Dangerous Russian attack on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine and China decided not to vote in favor of the IAEA resolution Luongo told CNBC.

“The question is whether the US and other democracies will be quick to make these points and take advantage of the opportunity.”

America is focusing on new nuclear

Nuclear plants are expensive to build and in many places, become more expensive than other basic energy alternatives such as natural gas.

However, the US is stepping up research into what could become the next generation of nuclear weapons.

“The United States has made the decision that it doesn’t want to allow Russia and China to dominate the next phase of the nuclear market. And so the United States is pouring billions of dollars – in an astonishing way – every year. billion dollars into developing what is called a small modular reactor,” said Luongo. Specifically, the government is using the Idaho National Laboratory as a test site for these reactors.

These smaller, advanced reactors aren’t necessarily new – some variations of the technology have been around since the 1950s – but now they’re having a renaissance, according to Luongo.

They can be built with more standard parts, as opposed to custom built, allowing for faster and cheaper construction.

However, while the US is establishing itself to be technologically competitive, it is unprepared from a policy standpoint, Luongo told CNBC. Conventional reactors use uranium enriched to about 5%. Advanced reactors use uranium enriched to about 19%, just below the threshold that the IAEA has determined to be weapons-grade uranium, which is 20%.

“We haven’t really begun to understand what that means from a nuclear security and non-proliferation standpoint,” Luongo said.



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