BRUSSELS — Europe’s nuclear advocates are pushing their favorite energy source as a deterrent against the type of blackout that seized Spain and Portugal last week — even if the facts paint a muddied picture.
The EU’s atomic allies are claiming that having more nuclear energy coursing through the grid can help ensure a stable power supply to back up renewable sources like wind and solar.
“If you want a lot of power and you want it to be fossil-free, then nuclear is your pick,” Swedish Industry and Energy Minister Ebba Busch said in an interview.
Specialists and other officials, including those in Spain, aren’t convinced. While they concede that having more overall power can aid in certain circumstances, they aren’t convinced nuclear energy would have prevented Monday’s outage, which was caused by a sudden loss of power in the Iberian grid. Europe’s grids, like those in Spain, need upgrades, better linkages and more storage tech like batteries to keep power stable, they stress.
Still, the instant nuclear advocacy illustrates atomic energy’s slow resurgence in Europe. Once slated for obsolescence, nuclear backers have found a more receptive audience as Europe seeks to sever Russian energy links and source more power locally. Spanish lawmakers are even set to vote Thursday on a non-binding proposal to reverse the country’s nuclear reactor phase-out.
“What is on the line is the resilience and … defense of Europe — Europe cannot be defended without a robust energy system,” Busch said.
Lights out, finger-pointing on
After starting in Spain, Monday’s outage swept into Portugal, affecting hospitals, public transport systems and manufacturing in both countries.
While investigators are still scrambling to understand what caused the problem, finger-pointing has erupted over whether Spain’s reliance on green energy is somehow at fault. More precisely, critics have questioned whether a lack of round-the-clock generators, which bring stability to the grid, contributed to the incident.
Experts are divided over whether more nuclear power would have made a difference — or if the outage is indicative of deeper issues in Spain’s power system. But that hasn’t stopped the EU’s staunchest nuclear backers from pushing their favorite hobby horse.
“All countries need more baseload,” Busch said in the interview, referencing the minimum amount of power needed to meet consumer demand for power, usually via predictable generators like coal and nuclear.
Sweden has become one of the bloc’s more vocal nuclear proponents under its current government, which is pushing to expand its atomic fleet.
“The whole of the EU should not make the Spanish mistake” of not having enough baseload supply, Busch told POLITICO.
Her comments come as recriminations circulate over Monday’s outage, which left at least five people dead. On Wednesday, Spanish center-right opposition politicians called for an independent parliamentary probe and hit out at Madrid’s government-appointed grid operator chief, Beatriz Corredor.
Jordi Sevilla, a former head of Spain’s partly state-owned grid operator, also slammed the left-wing government’s “renewable messianism” in an op-ed, arguing it had moved too fast to shutter Spain’s nuclear power stations — even as Corredor insisted solar power was not to blame for the incident.
The government, too, insists that more nuclear power would have done little to help. “Nuclear generation operated just before the outage and it disconnected, just like the other technologies,” said a spokesperson from Spain’s Ecological Transition Ministry.
“Nuclear generation was no more resilient than any other generation source,” the spokesperson added, arguing that atomic reactors also take longer to switch on after an outage than other generators.
Speaking to parliament on Wednesday, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said there was “no evidence” that a lack of nuclear power caused the blackout, accusing the opposition of acting as “amateur lobbyists” for the sector.
“We are not going to deviate even a millimeter” from the government’s plans to turbocharge green energy investments, he added. “Renewables are not just the future, they are the only way to reindustrialize Spain.”
It’s alive … again?
The discussion comes amid a broader debate around restarting Spain’s atomic power plants led by the center-right Partido Popular, an opposition party that argues Madrid’s 2019 decision to close the country’s seven nuclear reactors by 2035 should be reversed.
In Brussels, Spain is part of the “friends of renewables” grouping, which is seen as a thinly veiled rival alliance of pro-nuclear EU countries. In recent years, debates over nuclear power have spilled into discussions on legislation ranging from renewables to hydrogen to an international agreement between the bloc and Ukraine.
But Busch, a key player in the atomic alliance, insists the incident shows the value of atomic power.
Overrelying on variable sun and wind makes it “very difficult” to cordon off parts of the electrical grid that function independently and supply critical facilities like hospitals during blackouts, she said, as well as restart power supplies once an outage has occurred.
“All countries should have an appropriate amount of baseload or at least acknowledge that they are dependent [on] their neighboring countries that have baseload [nuclear power],” she said, noting Spain’s frequent imports of electricity from France’s atomic-heavy grid.
Experts, too, argue a lack of stable generators didn’t help — but point to wider problems in Spain’s electricity system. “Having more baseload … could have helped prevent the blackout in Spain from escalating as severely as it did,” said Pratheeksha Ramdas, a senior power analyst at the Rystad consultancy.
But “the situation highlights a broader failure in grid design, coordination, and investment in grid resilience,” she added, including a lack of energy storage technologies and cross-border power links.
Estonia, an observer member of the nuclear alliance, argues the blackout should prompt EU countries to invest in all types of energy technologies, including atomic power. The bloc’s push to install “renewable energy [is] absolutely necessary and also for a very pragmatic reason — that is the cheapest source of energy at the moment,” said the country’s energy minister, Andres Sutt.
“But you then need [easily controllable] energy like grids, gas turbines, more storage, nuclear,” he told POLITICO.
If a lack of stable power supply did contribute to the outage, “more nuclear could definitely stabilize the grid and the blackout might have been prevented, or at least contained to a smaller area,” agreed a diplomat from a third pro-nuclear country.
Any investigation must now proceed without bias toward any technology, the diplomat argued.
“I already heard some saying that we cannot blame renewables because it would not be politically correct,” the diplomat said. “This would be a horrible and harmful approach.”
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