Laying nuclear industry’s ghosts to rest

Date: 17/04/1997

By Michael Mann

AS THE world seeks new ways to fend off the growing threat of global warming, nuclear power must play a central role in the EU's future energy mix.

That is the view of French nuclear generator Framatome's EU representative Daniel Chavardes, who stresses the key importance of maintaining the Union's commitment to nuclear research.

“The Union's domestic energy resources are limited and nuclear energy should continue to play a basic role for a balanced energy mix corresponding to future European needs. For this reason, it is important to maintain a research and development budget for nuclear energy,” he insists.

Eleven years on from the Chernobyl disaster, the industry finally appears to be emerging with a renewed confidence, arguing that the nuclear sector is alone in promising a reliable and price-stable source of energy.

“The industry has been on the defensive since Chernobyl. But since the United Nations panel on climate, the bigger risk in the future is that of climate change due to the release of greenhouse gases,” says Chavardes.

Environment ministers agreed last month that the EU should go to December's Kyoto climate change meeting with a commitment to cut greenhouse gases by 15&percent; by 2010. Chavardes says his industry can play a key role in this, claiming current nuclear capacity “avoids the annual release of approximately 700 million tonnes of carbon dioxide”.

Despite research programmes being undertaken in a number of member states and by the private sector, Framatome is pushing hard for the maintenance of EU-funded research on at least the same scale as under the Fourth R&D Programme, which comes to an end this year and has provided 150 million ecu in direct finance for the nuclear fission programme.

“We want to inject the nuclear part of the R&D programme with a dynamism orientated towards technological innovations that will improve safety and reinforce the industrial competitiveness of the European Union,” he says.

One of the most important facets of EU involvement is the programme's ability to encourage research in countries which have decided against the nuclear option. Italy is involved in the sector's 'Michelangelo Initiative' on future research priorities, for example, even though no nuclear power is generated on its soil.

Chavardes is confident that this will keep alive the kind of expertise to allow future developments “in those member states which will rediscover the merits of nuclear power”.

This confidence is borne of what Framatome claims is a growing acceptance of the industry in its home country, France, where the population no longer sees the 56 existing units as a threat.

Despite the recent decision to phase out nuclear energy in Sweden, Chavardes points out that eight EU member states still rely on nuclear fission to meet part of their power needs, and that nuclear energy meets 33&percent; of the Union's total requirements and provides “highly qualified jobs for about 400,000 European workers”.

But investment in research is not merely important for Europe's domestic industry, according to Chavardes, who points to the construction of two new generators at Ling Ao in China, a particular growth market.

Contracts signed by the reprocessing sector with Japan will also contribute billions of dollars to the balance of EU trade, he adds.

Precise Union research objectives will “ensure the preservation and competitiveness of European leadership in nuclear energy, faced with the emergence of very aggressive American-Asian competition”.

Funding will allow Framatome and its partners to look again at high-temperature reactors, which Chavardes claims “appear to have a particularly high safety level with a potential increase of energy efficiency”.

It is this efficiency which Framatome believes will persuade EU policy-makers that nuclear power is the common sense option for the future.

“Production costs are stable and relatively insensitive to variations in the price of uranium, unlike the cost of electricity produced by fossil fuels,” stresses Chavardes.

While the priority for the Fifth Framework R&D Programme remains research into advanced fission projects, he believes Europe has a leading role to play in the development of nuclear fusion technologies.

“Europe has accomplished very brilliant research. The US and Japan are envious of our nuclear programme,” he says, stressing that the EU must forge ahead in those areas where it is already leading the way.

Much depends on whether the ghosts of the past can be laid completely to rest.

“No Chernobyl-type accident could occur here,” insists Chavardes, concluding: “Safety and competitiveness cannot be separated. Without safety, there is no future for nuclear energy in Europe and without competitiveness, there can also be no future for the European nuclear industry.