Brussels – The announced Industrial Alliance for Mini Nuclear Reactors should be launched as early as early 2024. This was confirmed today by the European Energy Commissioner Kadri Simson, arriving at the EU Energy Council held in Brussels.
“We believe that small modular nuclear reactors can play a role and help us achieve our ambitious goals for 2040. To enable this development and take into account the highest safety standards, we need to establish rules for EU member states, but of course we want to meet our industry’s needs as well, and that is why we are planning to establish an Industrial Alliance for Small Modular Reactors early next year,” said the Estonian commissioner.
An EU industrial Alliance on mini nuclear reactors has been talked about in Brussels for months now. The European Commission notes a growing interest by several member states in nuclear technologies in some EU countries and their potential role in achieving climate neutrality goals by mid-century and has promised the launch of a true alliance with industrial parties to fully exploit the potential of mini nuclear reactors.
Small modular reactors are nuclear reactors that are smaller in both power and physical size than conventional gigawatt-scale power plants, ranging from 10 to 300 megawatts. They are based on existing technologies, are designed to be factory-built in standard modular form, and their main advantage is that they can be assembled in the factory and then shipped and installed on site, thus even in remote areas with limited grid capacity or in areas where the use of large conventional nuclear power plants is not possible. These types of reactors use nuclear fission reactions to create heat that can be used directly or to generate electricity, and they have recently returned to the center of political debate in the EU in the midst of the energy crisis with Russia and in an attempt to diversify sources of supply. Between now and 2050, the European Union estimates it will need to invest between 350 and 450 billion euros in new nuclear capacity to replace decommissioned units and maintain roughly the same production capacity as today. A renewed interest on the part of many member states, including Italy, has been emerging particularly since the start of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine because of the need to free itself from energy imports from Moscow.
Italy “observes” the EU Nuclear Alliance
On the sidelines of the EU Energy Council held this morning in Brussels—the last under the Spanish presidency at the helm of the EU—the French-sponsored Nuclear Energy Alliance also met, attended by ministers from Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Poland, and Italy and Belgium as “observer countries”.
This is the fifth meeting in all since the initiative was spearheaded by French Minister for Ecological Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher and launched in late February. Participants at the meeting—except for Belgium and Italy, which were attending only as observers—signed a joint document urging the European Commission to “initiate a broad review of financing options, including the European Investment Bank, for projects and technologies that contribute to our goal of carbon neutrality, without any form of discrimination among fossil fuel-free alternatives,” it reads. The reference is to the inclusion of atomic energy among European funding. For the petitioners, the “Commission should take steps to simplify and broaden access to European funds and respect the mandate given to the Innovation Fund to enable funding of innovative projects using nuclear technologies, including low-carbon hydrogen production.”
