Germany’s Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management (BASE) has rejected plans by the European Commission to classify nuclear power as “sustainable” in its taxonomy and warned against recognising investments in its as “green”, according to a dpa report carried by Handelsblatt. In a BASE analysis presented on Wednesday, the Office said labelling nuclear power investments as sustainable was “incomprehensible”. The European Commission is “guided exclusively by the supposedly positive contribution of nuclear energy to climate protection” and disregards the view that it is not sustainable, BASE wrote. The EU assessment gives far too little attention to significant criteria, such as the risk of nuclear accidents and the difficulties involved in disposing of nuclear waste, the Federal Office stated. There are also many unanswered safety questions about new types of reactors and possible extensions of the service life of existing nuclear reactors that the Commission has not answered, it added.
Clean Energy Wire 13th Jan 2022 read more »
Ambiguities and misunderstandings contained in a draft EU proposal could block nuclear power plants from claiming a green investment label under the bloc’s sustainable finance taxonomy, the industry has warned. The European Commission is currently in the process of putting together a rulebook, known as the sustainable finance taxonomy, to define which investments can be labelled as climate-friendly in the EU. As part of this, nuclear energy has tentatively been categorised as a “transitional” technology making a “substantial contribution to climate change mitigation” under draft EU plans circulated by the European Commission on 31 December. To qualify for the transitional label, new nuclear plants must be built before 2045 and show detailed plans to have a disposal facility in place by 2050 for high-level radioactive waste. However, issues with the draft criteria mean no nuclear power plant would currently be able to claim the coveted green label, the nuclear industry body Foratom told EURACTIV. This is because of a requirement that power plants must fully apply “the best-available technology and accident-tolerant fuel” to qualify. That fuel is still in the research phase and is currently not available or licenced, Foratom says. “As it currently stands, no nuclear entity is covered by the taxonomy because of this,” said Jessica Johnson, communications director at Foratom. “If the text does not change, then we do have problems, particularly in relation to accident tolerant fuels – they don’t exist on the market today,” she told EURACTIV.
Euractiv 14th Jan 2022 read more »
Nuclear waste from nuclear power plants remains an unsolved and highly dangerous problem, as spent fuel must remain isolated from the environment for a million years. In an attempt to solve the nuclear waste problem, an EU-wide regulation was introduced in 2011, the “Council Directive 2011/70/Euratom establishing a Community framework for the responsible and safe management of spent fuel and radioactive waste”. This Directive tried to force EU member states to address the issue seriously, after this had been neglected for decades – thus immediately proving that nuclear waste has never been effectively dealt with. The national waste management policies of the EU member states are still inadequate in many respects. The European Commission concluded in its latest report in 2019 that more needs to be done; this is also reflected in the high number of infringement proceedings. In the Assessment Report, we not only address shortcomings in transparency and participation, but also problems in the inventory data, unsolved issues in the multinational repository search, incomprehensible cost estimates and lack of financing. The Onkalo repository under construction in Finland is often presented as a game changer by the nuclear lobby, although the safety of the technology used is questionable due to new findings.
Don’t Nuke the Taxonomy 21st Jan 2022 read more »
The EU is considering whether to label nuclear power “green.” That could make atomic energy eligible for investments aimed at making the future carbon-free. And today is the last day for countries to object to the plan, which has been controversial from the start. Overall, thirteen E.U. countries use nuclear power, generating just over a quarter of the bloc’s electricity. But there are huge differences between countries. In recent years France got almost 70 percent of its electricity from its 58 reactors. The share in Germany was down to 11 percent in 2020, and the government is shutting down the last three nuclear reactors this year. Belgium says it wants to phase out nuclear by 2025 and Spain by 2035. Meanwhile, France plans to ramp up, adding six new reactors. Slovakia and Finland are also building new facilities, and Poland has long said it wants to build its own. The issue has exposed a fault line between the EU’s major powers. Germany’s position is largely that the risks of nuclear accidents outweigh the benefits of climate friendly and reliable energy production. But the French and others say nuclear power must be an essential part of transitioning away from carbon-based fuels like coal.
Deutsche Welle 21st Jan 2022 read more »
Experts advising the European Union on its green investment rules will warn Brussels not to go ahead with draft plans to label gas and nuclear energy as sustainable, according to a document seen by Reuters. The advisers are due to give feedback on Friday to the European Commission on its draft plan for the EU’s “sustainable finance taxonomy”, a list of economic activities that can be labelled as green investments. In the document, the experts said the rules proposed by the Commission would give green labels to investments that fail to significantly help fight climate change, and said it should scrap part of its proposals for gas plants. The chair of the group of advisers declined to comment on the draft. On nuclear power, the advisers said the rules proposed by the Commission “should not go forward” because they do not ensure nuclear plants would not significantly harm the environment, citing concerns about nuclear waste disposal.
Reuters 21st Jan 2022 read more »
The European Commission wants to designate nuclear power as a climate-friendly energy source, but several nations remain opposed. Austria has said it’s willing to fight the notion of “green” nuclear power in court.
Deutsche Welle 21st Jan 2022 read more »
The Czech Republic is pushing for the European Union to scrap proposed deadlines for investment in nuclear energy, a Czech newspaper reported on Friday, as the EU tries to come up with a plan to transition to fully renewable energy. In a proposal on Dec. 31, the EU Commission allows gas and nuclear investments to facilitate an eventual transition to fully renewable output, but suggests deadlines beyond which investments in existing and new nuclear projects would not be allowed.
Reuters 21st Jan 2022 read more »
Opinion: Nuclear energy too costly for humans — and the planet. Nuclear power will soon be classified as environmentally friendly under the new EU taxonomy. But nothing about it is green or safe, says DW’s Jeannette Cwienk. The EU Commission is completely ignoring the costs of nuclear energy. Quite apart from the funds required to build new nuclear power plants, even smaller ones, there is the far more important and apparently overlooked question of who would foot the bill in the event of an accident. In Germany alone, the federal costs attached to the consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe have been estimated at around €1 billion ($1.1 billion). Worldwide, the immediate economic ramifications of Chernobyl are estimated to have been more than €200 billion — and that doesn’t include the cost of widespread related illness. Health costs were also not included in the €177-billion bill linked to the consequences of the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, as estimated by the Japanese government in 2017. Most of these costs have since been covered by Japanese taxpayers, because the operating company, TEPCO, was de facto nationalized after the disaster to avoid insolvency.
Deutsche Welle 21st Jan 2022 read more »