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Isar nuclear power plant was one of the last three nuclear power plants in Germany to be decommissioned on April 15, 2023 Image: flightlog (CC BY 2.0)

Mycle Schneider, image: ©NinaSchneider

Isar nuclear power plant was one of the last three nuclear power plants in Germany to be decommissioned on April 15, 2023. Image: flightlog (CC BY 2.0)

Mycle Schneider, Bild: ©NinaSchneider

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Mycle Schneider, you are the editor, project manager and one of 15 authors in the team of the World Nuclear Industry Status Report (WNSIR), which has been published annually for 17 years and presents trends in the international nuclear industry. The 2024 report is already available. Are there any clear trends in the global nuclear industry?

Mycle Schneider: There are a whole series of developments that are astonishing. Firstly, the general trend that we have been observing for many years has not changed at all. While the rhetoric and political decisions in different countries are changing, the facts are not. In the last five years, there have been 39 construction starts for new nuclear power plants (NPPs) worldwide. Of these, 26 were in China. The remaining 13 were carried out by the Russian nuclear industry at home, in Egypt, India and Turkey. Otherwise, nothing has happened in the rest of the world. Not a single construction start. If you cumulate what happened in the two decades before that, then 104 nuclear power plants were built worldwide and 102 were connected to the grid. 49 of these were in China. This means that 51 more reactors were taken off the grid outside China than were added.

So is the nuclear industry shrinking?

The situation can be summarized as follows: China is building at home. Russia mainly abroad. That's it.

If you look at the reporting or listen to political debates, however, you get the impression that new nuclear energy projects are springing up everywhere.

True, many people have the impression that construction is going on everywhere. But that is not the case. On the other hand, the fact that renewable energies are increasing enormously worldwide is completely ignored. For example, two nuclear power plants went into operation in China in 2022 and one in 2023. This means that two gigawatts of nuclear capacity were added in 2022 and one gigawatt in 2023. At the same time, however, China added over 200 GW of solar capacity to the grid in 2023 alone.

Why does the People's Republic still need nuclear power plants then?

It doesn't need them. But China has created the entire production chain for nuclear power plants within 20 years, at great expense. Not only can Chinese companies build everything, they can also manufacture Western models in China that are qualified to American standards. They could also export these parts to the USA. The industrial effort is simply gigantic. Until the accident in Fukushima in March 2011, China built nuclear power plants in series like bridges, roads and factories, like classic infrastructure projects. Fukushima was also a total shock for Beijing. The Chinese leadership then changed course and completely abandoned the second generation of nuclear plants that it wanted to build in series. Instead, only third-generation reactors were built, which are considered safer. They have trained a whole generation of skilled workers to do this. There is also a nuclear lobby in China today. And of course there is a connection to the military there, as in France, Russia and England. China is also arming itself in the military sector and also has export interests.

However, China's export successes in terms of plant engineering do not really seem to be visible.

So far, China has only exported nuclear power plants to its neighbor Pakistan, where it is at home in the civilian and military nuclear sector. China has also been trying for several years, without success, to export to South America and African countries. The main reason for this failure is that the US government has blacklisted both key Chinese companies [CGN and CNNC]. This closes the door to many countries for China.

At the COP28 world climate conference, to the dismay of many, a declaration was signed in which the signatory countries pledged to "work together to advance the ambitious global goal of tripling nuclear energy capacity from 2020 to 2050". With the intention of meeting the climate target of 1.5 degrees. What does that mean?

This is not feasible in purely industrial terms. This declaration clearly seems to have come about at the insistence of the US government, together with France and the UK. The aim was probably to get as many countries as possible to sign, including countries such as Ghana, Jamaica and Moldova, which are not particularly known for their nuclear programs. It is remarkable that the only two countries that are building plants today, namely China and Russia, have not signed. So you have to at least ask yourself whether the tripling pledge is not more of a geopolitical, anti-Chinese and anti-Russian initiative that has nothing to do with climate policy or technology policy.

Let's come back to the WNSIR2024. You mentioned several trends that are now visible. What else is striking?

The fact that in the last two years, the vast majority of gigawatts no longer come from solar or wind energy alone, but are now hybrid power plants. These are new concepts in which, for example, a solar plant is combined with storage. We first noticed this two years ago in Portugal, where a company was selling solar power at negative prices. It offered to pay a little more than €4 for every megawatt hour produced because it made a profit from selling wind power and storage. The plant was planned as a hybrid power plant from the outset. In addition to the wind turbine, the company installed floating solar panels on a reservoir, which in turn leads to a win-win situation as the panels are cooled, which increases efficiency, and at the same time reduces water evaporation from the reservoir.

Does this mean a new level of performance for renewable energies, especially in the area of reliable supply?

In the storage sector, costs have fallen even faster than the cost of photovoltaic panels in recent years. In one year, battery costs have fallen by 20 %. This makes it possible to offer electricity at competitive prices. The hybrid approach of, for example, solar and storage is already fully competitive in price with any other form of electricity generation in many regions. The OECD's International Energy Agency estimates that the combination of solar and storage will be unrivaled in terms of price in all major markets by 2030.

This could be used to counter the argument that nuclear power is cheaper.

This has long been nonsense. Above all, it invalidates the simplistic argument that the wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine. The new hybrid power plants are designed in such a way that they are at least as good and as reliable as a gas-fired power plant in terms of grid security and meet all the technical criteria for grid stability.

In Germany, fears are constantly being stirred up that there could be a blackout and that our industry could be left without electricity because we have phased out nuclear power. Would the new generation of hybrid power plants be the answer?

Firstly, the claim here is already factually incorrect. You only have to look at what the Federal Network Agency publishes every year on grid security in Germany. Grid security is very high in Germany today, despite the fact that well over 50 percent of the energy generated comes from renewables. In Germany, the grid downtime per customer is significantly lower than in France, for example. We increasingly have the problem in the electricity debate, not only in Germany, that facts are no longer taken into account and propaganda is driving the discourse. Especially when it comes to nuclear energy. This misleads the public. It is pointless to argue about what is good or bad when the object of the debate is based on fantasies.

The CDU and FDP in particular have been calling for the nuclear reactors that have been shut down to be restarted and for a return to nuclear power. The AfD is particularly confused about the issue because no other party has it in its program. Is a return technically feasible?  

(Laughs) That's like saying that the Ford Model A should be put back on the road. These claims are really nonsense. This option no longer exists at all. Simply because there are no more operators. All the companies that have operated nuclear power plants in Germany have clearly stated that they are no longer available for this.

Wouldn't the operators, for example RWE, be lured by the prospect of good profits?

The idea that you could simply press the start button on these nuclear power plants is simply absurd. The whole thing is not a question of political will. Even with the most determined political will and all conceivable financial resources, it took France 17 years to build and commission a single new nuclear power plant. This is because there is no prospect of good profits, as the operators are well aware. In addition, the companies have changed their strategy and the operating staff are no longer available. There are also no more fuel elements, as you can't order them from Amazon. In addition, the initial technical dismantling measures do not allow the plant to be put back into operation in the near future. Of course, it would theoretically be possible to recommission an old power plant if the costs incurred and the restart time were completely irrelevant. But there is no economic argument for this and certainly no climate policy argument.

The AfD in particular propagates nuclear power and demonizes renewable energies. They don't even mean restarting the old nuclear power plants. They are promising the construction of many small decentralized reactors, the so-called Small Modular Reactors, or SMRs. Is that realistic?

(Laughs) I always say the "M" in SMR stands for "miraculous". These are supposed to be the miraculous small reactors that suddenly solve all the problems of the large reactors. The crazy thing about this propaganda is that the history of nuclear power began with small reactors. They then got bigger and bigger, and not by chance. People tried to use the economies of scale to pack as many kilowatts as possible into a plant in order to make it economically viable. Anyone who fantasizes about small reactors now wants to scale back history. The economy of scale is immediately lost.

According to media reports, however, experimental SMR reactors are to be built in Romania and Rwanda.

They do not exist. Nobody is building in Romania and nobody is building in Rwanda. This is announcement politics. In the western world today, there is not even a certified design. Only when you have a certified design can you submit a building application. The concept being discussed in Romania is the NewScale design, which is the most advanced in the western world. It was started in the USA in 2000. The cost estimates then got steeper and steeper, so the designer made the module concept bigger and bigger. Sounds like something we've heard before, doesn't it? Since the US authorities didn't accept it, the work started all over again. This model was to be sold to a community association in the USA. However, it turned out that the kilowatt would be significantly more expensive than the most expensive European pressurized water reactor ever built. In November 2023, the US community association pulled out and the project was buried. The design has not been certified anywhere.

Small reactors could one day be certified. Then, like China, we could go into serial and therefore more cost-effective construction. Is that conceivable?

Then the next question is who should build. There are only a handful of companies in the world that have built anything at all in recent decades, mainly from China and Russia. The Swedes started building their last nuclear power plant in 1980 and commissioned it in 1985. Since then, they have never built anything again. In France, there was a break in construction for eight years. No new nuclear power plant went into operation for 25 years. You can see there how difficult it is to build again after long interruptions. And then there is the issue of nuclear waste. Scientists have calculated in an academic paper that SMRs would produce even more waste. Many small plants contaminate more than one large one, namely up to 30 times more volume of waste per unit of energy than large power plants. This makes the whole thing even less attractive.

If nuclear energy is so unprofitable, what makes the AfD and parts of the CDU make these demands?  

Polarization can only work if you take an extreme position. And this extreme positioning then makes the difference to others. Geopolitically, this seems to be catching on at first. The propagandists can say that everyone else is doing the same now. Sweden wants to get back in, so does the Netherlands and the Czech Republic. Hungary now wants to build a Rosatom power plant in the middle of Europe. This false impression based on declarations of intent to build everywhere can be exploited. It is simply irrelevant to the global trend whether Hungary builds a new nuclear power plant or not. In the meantime, hundreds of times more capacity in solar, wind and storage capacity is being built.

It is also claimed by interested parties that there are new technologies that allow nuclear waste to be simply recycled. Is that true?

This is another example of how far we've come in nuclear la-la land. Even reputable newspapers write that there are now nuclear power plants running on nuclear waste. Behind this is the idea of fast breeders - as old as the use of nuclear power[1] - which ultimately failed. The fast breeders failed because the system failed. What we read in the media, namely that the small reactors would eat up nuclear waste, is complete humbug. The basic physical principle works. Just like fusion. But to say that you can generate electricity intelligently, sustainably and permanently on a large scale is nonsense. It has been tried with reprocessing plants in Karlsruhe and La Hague in Normandy and breeder reactors in Kalkar and Creys-Malville, but the system failed partly because uranium, which was to be replaced by expensive plutonium, never became scarce or particularly expensive. And it is great nonsense to claim that there are now nuclear power plants that do not produce waste or even eat it. Incidentally, a large proportion of the waste we have has been reprocessed or otherwise conditioned. This means that there is a large proportion of residual waste that nobody talks about any more. People only talk about spent fuel elements. But a large proportion of the waste that is stored in Germany is not even theoretically recyclable. And these small nuclear power plants, which supposedly eat up the waste, would produce additional waste that cannot be reused.

Could it be that many countries really want nuclear power plants for military reasons, but can't say so publicly?

If building new nuclear power plants makes no sense in terms of climate or energy policy, is a disaster economically and a huge challenge industrially, but you do it anyway, there must be other drivers. It is obvious that for some countries the military option is a driver. There is no doubt about that. I just warn against looking for a quick and generally valid explanation. Because every project is unique in itself.

Is it easy to militarize civilian nuclear facilities?

That's how the Indian bomb was created. The nuclear power plant is simply operated differently. A normal reactor can be misused to produce plutonium for weapons purposes. This will only be noticed immediately because the reactor is then not being used to optimize power generation, but in a completely different way. The military background is certainly one of the drivers for several countries, especially for the nuclear weapons states. Today, there is a clear motivation for the nuclear weapon states to keep the civilian nuclear industry alive because it is fed to a large extent from civilian budgets and cross-financing for the military seems indispensable. Just imagine: if all nuclear power plants are shut down in a country with nuclear weapons, who will pay for the training of nuclear physicists, nuclear engineers and technicians? Who pays for all the research facilities? Who pays for the development facilities? In France or England, it is all financed via the civilian budget and electricity prices. Cross-financing is clearly a motivation for the continuation of "civilian" nuclear programs.

If all the facts speak against nuclear power, how do you explain the fact that this idea is catching on with the population?

My thesis is that a great deal of general knowledge about nuclear power has been lost. There has been a social rupture in general education. The younger generation no longer has any idea of the various dimensions of nuclear energy use. This means that we are also starting from scratch in the public debate, which is why it is easy for these propagandists to gain an audience with fictitious, fantastic fairy tales. Of course, nuclear power is not the only phenomenon of this kind. But decisions in this area have particularly expensive, drastic and long-lasting consequences.

To collect all the facts again. Where do we stand? What is the status quo in Germany's energy mix?

A comparison of the pre-phase-out year 2010 with 2023 shows that it is not only nuclear power generation that has been eliminated as a result of the phase-out. At the same time, the generation of electricity from hard coal, lignite and gas has declined.[2] In total, more kilowatt hours have been saved in these areas than kilowatt hours from nuclear power have been lost. This is possible because renewables have been massively expanded and because electricity is being saved overall. Of course, this is also because industrial consumption has fallen in recent years. This brings me back to the new hybrid power plants. They are not a miracle cure, but require a better energy policy overall. When we talk about hybrid systems, we have to talk about grid restructuring. We don't necessarily need more power lines, but different grids. Because if we want millions of electric cars driving around, for example, then we need to create the infrastructure for this. We simply don't have the right networks for this today.

 

The WNSIRis a collective work and is produced by experts around the world -2024 by interdisciplinary experts from nine countries and four continents, from universities and other research institutions  from Vancouver, Canada, to Nagasaki, Japan, from Johannesburg, South Africa, to Berlin, London and Paris. The WNISR2024 provides a comprehensive overview of the status and trends in the international nuclear industry on 513 pages. The WNISR has been published annually since 2007 and has been published by Mycle Schneider Consulting in Paris since 2012.

 

[1] The first nuclear power plant to ever generate electricity (for a few light bulbs) was the Experimental Breeder Reactor (EBR-1) in the USA, a breeder reactor.

[2] According to the Working Group on Energy Balances (AGEB), the production of electricity from lignite fell by 40%, hard coal by 65% and natural gas by 12% between 2010 and 2023.