The European nuclear industry appears to have persuaded the European Commission that untested small modular reactors (SMRs) can help solve Europe’s energy and climate problems. Environmental activists are not convinced.
In a report to be published on Tuesday but shared exclusively with Euractiv, Climate Action Network Europe aims to rebut the headline claims, arguing that SMR development would face similar cost overruns and major delays to those that plague traditional nuclear power plants. And they won’t put an end to the problem of nuclear waste.
But the nuclear industry faces another challenge, the NGO argues: the economics of power prices.
As Europe builds up renewable energy capacity as quickly and as much as possible, any new nuclear power plants, big or small, could be forced to run at limited capacity to make way for cheaper green electricity. Low nuclear production could mean a slower return on investment, pushing up the price tag of electricity they produce.
No lock-in
CAN Europe argues that public money shouldn’t be used to subsidise uncompetitively high nuclear power prices by locking the EU into contracts-for-difference (CfDs) that could work as “backdoor subsidies”.
CfDs incentivise investments as the state guarantees a minimum price to power producers, making up the shortfall if the market price falls below the agreed threshold. The state is reimbursed for the difference if the price rises above that level instead.
If this guaranteed price is set high enough to justify investment into SMRs today, and then ample supplies of renewable energy drive down electricity prices tomorrow, EU taxpayers could find themselves paying the premium for overpriced nuclear power, CAN Europe said.
The green group is similarly cautious about state aid that could favour costly nuclear over cheap renewables.
“Every euro given towards new nuclear energy is a euro taken away from more realistic solutions such as renewable energy, energy storage, demand side response, energy efficiency and electrification,” the report reads.
Proof first
To avoid delays and cancellations, CAN Europe argues that no public money be put into the fledgling technology until developers of SMR start generating electricity. It also calls for cancellation, waste, decommissioning and accident costs to be borne by project developers rather than financed by citizens and companies through levies on energy bills or taxes.
The report remains silent, however, on the potential role that SMRs could play when directly connected 24/7 to energy-intensive industrial facilities, such data centres, electrolysers for hydrogen production, or clean steel plants, instead of feeding the grid and competing in the wholesale market.
Report author Thomas Lewis, CAN Europe’s energy policy coordinator, said his organisation’s analysis demonstrated that investing in SMRs would be a “costly mistake for Europe”.
“Diverting funding away from more realistic, lower-cost solutions such as renewables, storage, and demand side solutions risks derailing the energy transition, keeping our emissions and energy prices high,” he said.
(rh, aw)