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| Fig. 1: Distributions of reactors across Europe. Colored countries are EU members. Of those, orange indicates existence of a nuclear program. (Image source: M. Beleznay from Wikimedia Commons) |
Nuclear energy has been a source of hot debate since its inception and nowhere is this more starkly clear than in Europe. In this work, we will explore some case studies within the European Union (EU) to understand the different policy approaches of governments for how they balance energy production, safety, cost, and political uncertainty in the 21st century. EU neighbors, like Russia, the United Kingdom, Ukraine, Switzerland, Belarus and Turkey will be discussed briefly. The goal of this work is to compute the per capita energy that could be sourced from nuclear for each country to gauge reliance and/or enthusiasm for this means of energy production.
This article discusses EU countries that currently have, have had, or plan to implement nuclear power into their grids. The countries that currently have operational nuclear plants on the grid are: Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czechia, Finland, France, Hungary, the Netherlands, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden. Germany and Lithuania have shut down their nuclear plants and Poland plans to have nuclear power starting in 2033. France and Slovakia each have one reactor under construction; Bulgaria, the Czechia, Finland, Hungary and Romania have new reactors planned; and several others have proposals for new reactors as of April 2023. All other EU states have no history or future currently set in nuclear. Fig. 1 shows the number of reactors in the countries that have them.
Our central question is to assess how heavily the countries discussed above depend on nuclear energy. One method to contextualize aggregate numbers is to assess the fraction of energy produced by nuclear compared to total energy consumed. Fig. 2 shows the results of this calculation. [1,2]
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| Fig. 2: EU members' dependence on nuclear energy, 2021. [1,2] (Image source: M. Beleznay. |
These results are in agreement with the general trends. For example, France relies most heavily on nuclear according to these results and, indeed, around 70% of its electricity comes from nuclear reactors. [3] Belgium, due to proximity to France, also relies on nuclear. Countries like Czechia, Hungary and Slovakia have few reactors (for example, 4 in Hungary) that are responsible for the generation of 30-40% of the electricity in those countries. From this exercise it can be clearly seen that countries that prioritize nuclear are successful in implementing it into their grids. It is also evident that countries that want to phase out nuclear, like Germany, are easily able to do so.
© Maya Beleznay. The author warrants that the work is the author's own and that Stanford University provided no input other than typesetting and referencing guidelines. The author grants permission to copy, distribute and display this work in unaltered form, with attribution to the author, for noncommercial purposes only. All other rights, including commercial rights, are reserved to the author.
[1] K. M. Brouwer and L. Bergkamp, eds., "Road to EU Climate Neutrality by 2050," Renew Europe, January 2021.
[2] D. Jones et al., "European Electricity Review 2023," Ember Climate, January 2023.
[3] G. Maguire, "France's Clean Power Clout to Be Tested Again This Winter," Reuters, 8 Nov 23.
