Nuclear Explained – Why Do We Need Nuclear Power?

Is nuclear power a low carbon energy source? How does it compare to other energy sources? And how can nuclear power contribute to energy security and economic development? We'll explore how this powerful technology, nuclear power, can help meet our growing energy demands while lowering carbon emissions. And it's not only used to power our homes, but we'll talk about how nuclear is used for non-electric applications like district heating and saltwater desalination. I'm Joanne Lueh, and in this episode of Nuclear Explained, I'm joined by Henri Payer, head of planning and economic studies at the International Atomic Energy Agency. Never before in history has so much hope for so many people been gathered together in a single organization. The IEA will continue to be at your service for the noble mission of keeping atoms. For peace and development. Henri, welcome to Nuclear Explained. Thanks so much for joining us. My pleasure. So there's been a shift, a growing momentum toward nuclear power. More countries are showing interest in deploying nuclear power programs and some are even expanding their nuclear power programs. But we want to find out why and why now. You're right, it's the last four or five years we've seen this shift in the interest in nuclear power and for different reasons. I would say one of the main drivers has been climate, the realization that the technologies that were being deployed massively, including wind and solar, for example, were not leading to the results that countries were expecting and the realization that maybe nuclear power as a source of a clean, base load power, and we can go into details later on, can help decarbonize and can help those countries reach their climate objectives. But there's also been another driver, which is a security of energy supply. And this was a parent, I would say, following the conflict in Ukraine where, which was followed by a restriction in gas supplies to Europe, increased in the price of gas means also an increase in the price of electricity and consumers and industry suffered. Nuclear power is not so dependent on the cost of the fuel, the uranium. So it does not fluctuate, it's not as volatile as other sources of energy. So providing that security is also a very attractive attribute that policymakers are looking at. So there are some terms that you mentioned. I mean, there seems like there are many reasons for nuclear power, but let's go back to the basic. What makes nuclear power a clean source of energy? And what are other examples of clean energy sources? Well, it's a clean source of energy in the sense that it emits very little greenhouse gases throughout its whole life cycle. So the life cycle of a technology is, for instance, in the case of nuclear mining for the uranium fabricating the fuel, the operation of the nuclear power plant and then the decommissioning and the management of the waste. That's the whole life cycle. So there have been many studies on carbon emissions using full life cycle assessments of different technologies. The latest report that I have in mind is from the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. They released a report in 2022, which compared all sources of energy. And they found that actually in nuclear power is the technology that has the smallest carbon footprint of all technology, including other low-com technologies such as wind, solar, hydro power, for example. Very interesting. And another term that you mentioned, you said that nuclear is, so we have a clean energy, low carbon, but also base load. What does that mean? Yes, base load means it produces electricity 24/7. And that's to compare with wind and solar, which generate when there's wind or when there's sun. So nuclear power is a source of continuous power, a firm power which all economic development requires. And so with this base load power, we also have that in discussions renewables and variable renewables. How do these two go hand in hand? Well, actually they do. I mean, there's always been an opposition between wind, solar, and nuclear. But actually nuclear can help integrate into the energy systems of the countries that are deploying it, can help integrate large shares of variable renewables such as a wind and solar. So they have different characteristics. Wind and solar are intermittent or variable sources of electricity. Nuclear is a firm source of power, base load, but it also is flexible. It can ramp up and down, we call this load following or flexible generation. And having nuclear in the mix can help also with the stability of the grid, which is an important quality of energy supply that we require. So can you explain more about this load following and base load source of energy? You mentioned some examples of renewables. When the sun is shining, we have more. When it's not, it's a little bit comes of issue. Well, by definition, wind and solar are dependent on weather conditions. When there's no wind, when there's no sun, we need other sources of electricity. Of course, you can store energy, you can store electricity in the days when there's a lot of sun, a lot of wind. But you can also have periods of time, like several days in a row, or even several weeks with little wind, little sun. There's an expression, doonkel-flout, which means this kind of period, where countries that would be very dependent on wind and solar would need to have a very massive energy storage capabilities or import from other regions. I said nuclear power was a base load, source of energy, meaning it can produce 24/7 at a constant level. But it is also flexible in the sense that it can adapt to the load, that means the energy demand, or to the supply. So there's actually a history of nuclear operating very flexibly in France, for example, that deployed nucleomassively in the '70s and '80s. So much so that the fleet had to adapt to the demand, a lower electricity demand at night, for example. So the reactors were designed to be able to ramp down their production during the night. So that's adaptation to the demand. But you can also operate flexibly to adapt to the supply. So as you introduce more and more renewables in your energy system, you have more variability, wind and solar. So when a wind and solar produce a lot, perhaps there is no need for nuclear to produce as much as it does when there's no wind and so and no sun. So we say that it's a dispatchable source of electricity, meaning that when we need it, nuclear power can deliver. You mentioned a good point storage. Well, what about batteries for renewables? Well, I think the deployment of renewables needs to go hand in hand with the development of storage capabilities. And batteries are obvious and rather low cost solution. The price of battery storage has gone down. But to cope with these periods of very little sun and very little wind that I just mentioned, you would need massive storage capabilities and that would drive the cost of your energy system. So renewables, batteries, but having a firm source of clean power like nuclear really helps you design a robust, resilient and low cost energy system. So we have a lot of ways to describe nuclear power. Dispatchable, base load, flexible, and a lot of reasons for nuclear power, for energy security to address climate concerns and emissions. What about the cost? So, nuclear is perceived as a costly solution and to be honest, from the point of view of the levelized cost of electricity, that means the cost of generating electricity at the boundaries of the power plant, nuclear is more expensive than wind and solar, whose costs have been driven down in the last decade, due to massive deployment and learning effects, which we haven't seen in the new nuclear deployment, because of limited constructions, I would say. But the levelized cost of electricity is only one metric and there's an important consideration, which is the cost to the overall system or the system cost. When you introduce wind power and your energy system, you might need energy storage. We talked about that. You might need also to build the grid infrastructure. So you need to add all these costs as well to the cost of the overall energy system. What we have found and what a lot of research organizations or other institutions, such as the International Energy Agency, is that having nuclear in your system means that you don't need to overbuild wind and solar capacity. You don't need to overbuild energy storage, because you have that dispatchable source of energy, and you also limit the amount of grid infrastructure buildouts that you need. And this reduces the overall cost of the system. So to put it very simply, a system with nuclear and wind and solar would be less expensive than a system which would rely exclusively on wind, solar, and batteries and so on. So it's very much an overall. Yes, and this will translate into lower energy prices for consumers for industry. This growing shift, this growing momentum for nuclear power, and like you said, it's driven by energy security concerns, climate concerns. Are there any other reasons what's going on? Well, I would say there's an increased understanding and acceptance from policy makers, from governments that nuclear is part of the solution. It's, it meets a lot of sustainability criteria. It's low carbon, it has a low land footprint compared to other sources of energy. And it uses also fewer critical minerals than other types of technologies. And I think this recognition was exemplified, if I can say that word, at COP28 in Dubai in 2023, where for the first time, this was the 28th COP conference of the parties on climate. It was the first time that nuclear was included in a negotiated outcome. So the, the negotiate outcome at COP28 was the first global stock take, basically taking stock of progress made since the Paris Agreement in 2015. And as I said, the realization that there is not enough progress towards decarbonizing our energy and that we need, we need all solutions. And this was mentioned in the global stock take a call to accelerate all sources of low carbon technologies, including nuclear power. So that's a recognition also from the climate community that a nuclear should be part of the solution. And how long has nuclear been around? Well, over 60, 60 years. And, and it's contributed greatly to the, the avoided emissions. We call them avoided emissions. We estimated that over the last five decades, about 70 gigatons of CO2 were avoided thanks to nuclear power. And nuclear power is only used in 31 countries. So that's quite a limited number of countries in the world that are using nuclear power, but it has a big impact on, on the, the world's emissions from the energy sector. 31 countries today, but perhaps a lot more in the future. We have about 30 countries, and you will call them newcomer countries expressing interest in, in nuclear power. Some of them are already constructing their, their first nuclear power plants. So this number of 31 might, might reach 32, 33, 34 in the next two years. And I think it'd be interesting, because you mentioned nuclear power and the electricity. But it's not just for electricity, is it? No, it's not. And, and, and actually you, thank you for asking that question. We know that, to, to meet our carbon objectives or the objectives of the Paris Agreement, we need to decarbonize our energy system. Actually electricity represents something like 40, 40, 5% of emissions from the energy sector. But we have emissions from, from, from the, from the use of energy in the, in the industry. In transport, in buildings, heating buildings, for example. And most of the energy that's used there is fossil fuel. So the, the challenge is to find alternatives to fossil fuels for, for that part of the energy system. One way is to develop low carbon fuels like hydrogen. Or another, another way is to use heat, low carbon heat. And this is one, one feature of nuclear power that it, before being a source of electricity, it's a source of heat. A nuclear power plant is a boiler that generates heat. And that heat can be used to provide heating to buildings. We call it district heating, nuclear district heating. And there are countries that have been using nuclear district heating for 30, 40 years. Switzerland, for example. And there are new developments in China related to the use of nuclear district heating. Which also has another advantage. And not only does it heat with no CO2 emissions, but it also limits air pollution. And having clean air is also a benefit of using nuclear power. That's for district heating. We call it low temperature heat. But industry sometimes requires heat at much higher temperature, processed steam at 700, 800 degrees. And for that, there are other types of nuclear reactor technologies. Like high temperature reactor that can develop that deliver that heat. And there are a number of projects in the world looking at exploiting that. And for me, it could be a real game changer for the nuclear industry too. I would say to expand into the heat market. So heat, hydrogen, also desalination. We know that water is going to be a crucial resource for the future. And we will need to generate fresh water from desalination of sea water, for example. That's an extremely energy intensive process. Most of the desalination plants in the world use oil or gas. So they emit a lot. But if you could use energy from a nuclear power plants, heat or electricity or a combination of heat and electricity, then you can have a low carbon desalination process. Wow. So it sounds like nuclear power plants. It's a multi-purpose facility that's creating heat, electricity, or desalinating water, producing hydrogen. Very impressive. And I think now we're also hearing more about nuclear energy and interest from artificial intelligence. Yes. That's a great question. And I would say a recent development in OECD countries. So Western Europe, the US, Japan, Korea. Basically in the last 20 years, we've seen a flat energy demand. And this has been also at the expense of investments in the energy sector. But what we're seeing with data centers and artificial intelligence is that there is an increased demand for energy and for clean energy. A lot of the big tech companies that are investing in AI and data centers also have decarbonization objectives. Data centers and artificial intelligence require a lot of electricity, require 24/7 electricity and the big tech companies that are operating these facilities. They also require clean energy to have decarbonization objectives. So they're looking at nuclear as a source of electricity to power their data centers and the artificial intelligence systems. And we've seen different developments, investments into existing nuclear power plants, investments to restart a nuclear power plants that have been shut down for economic reasons, or investments in new technologies like small modular reactors. So definitely nuclear power is part of the options that big tech companies are looking at. Alright, well Audrey, thank you so much for sharing so much information about why we need nuclear power. Thank you, it's my pleasure. When you think of a nuclear power plant, you might imagine tall towers with puffy white clouds coming out. Do you know what those clouds are made of? Hint, it's not smoke, not pollution, and definitely not radioactive emissions. Those clouds are made of water vapor, which forms when warm, moist air from the cooling tower cools and condenses. They represent something quite positive, clean energy production that helps power our world. We hope you enjoyed this episode and subscribe to Nuclear Explain. In this series, we'll explore how nuclear science and technology benefits our everyday lives and we'll also learn how the IAEA helps foster global peace and security. If you have any comments, questions, or interesting facts to share, email us at [email protected]. And if you want to learn more about nuclear science and technology, check out our resources and explainers on IAEA.org and follow the IAEA on social media. I'm Joanne Lu. Thanks for listening to Nuclear Explained, brought to you by the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency. (soft music)