Is nuclear energy resilient enough to triple capacity?

Pamela Largue (0:12)

This summer, low river levels and rising temperatures affected the availability of several nuclear power plants, raising questions about how resilient the existing nuclear fleet is in a changing climate. At the same time, demand for reliable low-carbon electricity is growing, driven by electrification, energy-intensive industries and the rapid expansion of data centers. So how well-equipped is the existing nuclear fleet to meet these challenges? To answer that, I spoke with King Lee, Head of Policy and Industry Engagement at the World Nuclear Association.

King elaborates on what changes are acquired in the way we design, site and operate nuclear plants. He also looks at government ambitions to expand nuclear capacity and how supply chains, skills and investment must keep pace with these ambitions. I'm Pamela Largue, and this is the Energy Transitions Podcast.

King, thank you so much for joining me today. Europe recently had a noteworthy heatwave, which directly impacted nuclear power plants due to the lack of cooling water. And it raised some important questions and concerns about infrastructure resilience and climate change. So my first question to you is how significant a threat is climate change to the existing nuclear feed?

King Lee (1:42)

Yeah, thank you very much for the question. Obviously, we are seeing the effect of climate change. And I would just say that first, nuclear power plants are designed against what we call natural hazards and extreme weather conditions, weather assignment, volcano, floods, tsunami, including extreme event. And also nuclear power plants have planned for climate change adaptation to changing environmental conditions. We have recently seen some nuclear power plants because of changing shortage flow affected its availability of the plant can be run and capacity. So some plant might have to reduce its output, be given of the extenuament. However, this does have not affected its safety of the plant. So I don't want to clarify that. And also one before we can go to a little bit deeper. Obviously, these condition, the only effect nuclear power plant, as these are in these some of the cases, because of reduced water flow in rivers are really for cooling. So this affects all thermal nuclear power plant, which require cooling as part of its normal operation.

And the other point I would highlight, extreme weather conditions and climate adaptation could affect all energy source, whether, in this case, we're talking about reduction in water flow or cooling water in rivers, but it could lead to including in some country, extreme storm, heat wave, wildfire, or in some case, a typhoon. And these could affect different energy sources in different way and in different time. So for this specific cases, particularly in Europe, we've seen cases where because of the recent heat wave and drought have resulted a reduction in the flow of assistant rivers. And this have affected nuclear power plant operations, okay, as nuclear power have in those conditions have used this for cooling. So that have, as I said, have affected the availability and the capacity of some power plant have reduced its output to adapt. So we anticipate one, as climate change is having this impact, it may increase one, the occurrence of such an event and potentially its severity.

However, as we note now and prevent other event, the measure can be taken to both reduce the engineering. A measure can be taken, for example, the water flow you see in Hungary. They are now looking at ways of making sure that there's sufficient water flow into the plant because of the recent drought and reduction of water flow.

They have affected where the normal inlet to water into the plant is. So now the operator are looking at ways or potential ways of doing, have some other engineering solution to make sure there's sufficient cooling water and by having a different inlet point.

Pamela Largue (5:32)

There's clearly strategies that can be employed to ensure that the current fleet is more resilient in terms of perhaps where new nuclear plants are sited. How should we approach that in terms of looking at where they are sited or whether or not we should employ new reactor technologies to ensure that they are really resilient to a changing climate?

King Lee (5:58)

As I mentioned before, nuclear power plant, current siting or a previous and current siting arrangement, look at different environmental conditions that have been pre-practiced for siting of nuclear power plant and will continue to do so. And the only environmental conditions are designed against extreme weather condition. Now, increasingly, we are not for siting of nuclear power plant, not only looking at historical data. Nuclear power plant, we are now looking at anticipating about potential climate change impact into the potential future conditions. OK, so we were seeing that siting of nuclear power plant will look at those potential future conditions and taking that into consideration.