Attempts this week by the EU to ban imports of Russian oil, blocked on Monday by Hungary, have highlighted how difficult it is to turn off Russian fossil fuel pipelines. But they also reflect a wider problem with the EU’s energy strategy. Nuclear power is the elephant in the room when it comes to collective moves on energy by the EU27. Hungary has four nuclear reactors that were installed in the 1980s by the Soviets, and whose fuel is produced by Russia’s Rosatom. In 2014, Hungary signed a deal with Vladimir Putin to upgrade and finance two new nuclear reactors. Nuclear power provides half of Hungary’s electricity, and 14 per cent of its energy overall. With so much at stake, we can understand Hungary’s deep reluctance to stop Russian oil imports. People don’t generally like to consider the part that nuclear will need to play in the energy future of Europe. Particularly for the older generation, nuclear power is a legacy of Cold War military technology which inspires fear and loathing. Germans who were young in the 1980s remember chaining themselves to trains to stop nuclear waste being taken from reactors to waste facilities. Spaniards who were young in the 1960s remember the Palomares disaster, when plane carrying hydrogen bombs broke apart in Spanish air space. On Wednesday, the European Commission published its REPowerEU plan, a €300bn package aimed at weaning the bloc off Russian fossil fuels before 2030. Its focus was on fossil fuels and renewables – nuclear was left out of the four pillars that it put forward. Conversely, the UK, in its energy strategy published earlier this year, surprised many by pledging to build more nuclear reactors.
Reaction 19tgh May 2022 read more »