Nuclear energy has been making a comeback recently as one of the low-carbon baseload generation options. This comeback is set to accelerate amid the Middle Eastern crisis and the oil and gas squeeze it is causing. The only problem is that nuclear capacity takes a while to build.

“It was a strategic mistake for Europe to turn its back on a reliable, affordable source of low-emission power,” European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen admitted earlier this month at a nuclear energy summit in France. Von der Leyen herself had voted for the phaseout of nuclear power in her home country, Germany. Now, as president of the EC, she pledged 200 million euro for the development of “innovative nuclear technologies.”

These innovative technologies appear to be small modular reactors, which are all the rage in the media but have yet to materialize in the physical world. Implementing the technology has proven to be more challenging than many may have expected. Luckily, there is large-scale capacity already built that can be restarted—in Japan, at least.

Wood Mackenzie recently published a piece arguing the Middle Eastern crisis will push Japan and South Korea towards more nuclear power over the long term, while coal will ensure electricity supply security over the short term. The crisis, Wood Mac wrote, was “accelerating structural shifts toward nuclear expansion, slower coal retirements and the localisation of clean energy supply chains.” It is notable that the nuclear expansion comes despite limited exposure to the worst of the fallout from the crisis for both Japan and South Korea.

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Japan has already restarted five nuclear reactors since 2022, boosting its baseload capacity by 4.6 GW, which do not depend on imported commodities. In South Korea, public opinion and political plans are both in favor of nuclear. And in France, President Emmanuel Macron has urged Europe to build more nuclear.

“Nuclear power is key to reconciling both independence – and thus energy sovereignty – with decarbonisation, and thus carbon neutrality,” Macron said at the same event where Ursula von der Leyen admitted the anti-nuclear crusade had been a mistake.

In further evidence of how nuclear is gaining popularity among the European Union’s political leadership, the Commission’s president last week reportedly sent a letter to the heads of member countries, in which she advised them to consider extending the lives of their nuclear power plants.

“Avoiding the premature decommissioning of facilities such as existing nuclear power plants, which can continue to supply reliable, cost-effective, and low-emission electricity, can also play a role,” von der Leyen wrote, as cited by Brussels Signal. It is worth noting here that back in the 90s, Eastern European countries were working to fulfil all the conditions Brussels had set for them to join the bloc, and one of these was the shutdown of some Soviet-built nuclear reactors that the central EU authorities declared unsafe despite expert inspections proving they could in fact be used quite safely. This reduced these countries’ nuclear capacity and made them lean more heavily on coal for reliable power generation.

For South Korea, extending the life of its existing nuclear reactors is a no-brainer. According to the Wood Mackenzie report, Seoul has identified 7.8 GW of capacity that should reach the end of its originally planned productive life in 2030, but will see this life extended to continue supplying electricity. Nuclear already accounts for a third of South Korea’s power generation, with total capacity at 26 GW. Even so, a former president flirted with the idea of phasing out nuclear in favor of weather-dependent energy sources considered comparable but consistently falling short of demand for reliable electricity.

Even the International Energy Agency has thrown its weight behind nuclear power, seeing as wind and solar could not shoulder the forecast surge in electricity demand on their own, even with batteries. The agency reports that there are a total of 413 GW in capacity globally, which “contributes to both goals by avoiding 1.5 gigatonnes (Gt) of global emissions and 180 billion cubic metres (bcm) of global gas demand a year.”

That last point is particularly topical right now with the disruption in Qatari gas production that the country’s energy company said would take several years to fix. However, while nuclear could take care of electricity generation, it cannot replace gas in other fields, such as fertilizer production. The supply squeeze from the Middle Eastern war is already hitting the agricultural sector, with considerable food price inflation on the horizon. While there is no quick or easy solution to this problem, countries with a nuclear fleet could at least take solace in the fact that their electricity supply is secure and reliable—and locally sourced.

As Wood Mac analyst Xiaonan Feng said, “Energy security considerations will continue to accelerate nuclear expansion, delay coal retirements and drive greater emphasis on domestic energy supply chains in both markets.”

By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com

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