Friday 15 September 2017

Nuclear industry ‘needs to step up deployments’

The world needs to do more to ensure nuclear energy can reach its maximum potential.

That's according to World Nuclear Association (WNA) Director General, Agneta Rising, who has called on governments, expert bodies and the nuclear industry to increase new build rates, showcase environmental and safety credentials and pursue compensation for the grid reliability nuclear provides.

She said the growth of the sector is vital to help provide society with its clean energy needs for the future.

Although in recent years around 10GW of new nuclear capacity has been added to the grid annually, the WNA expects the pace of growth in nuclear generation to slow without further action.

The nuclear industry has set a goal to supply 25% of the world’s electricity by 2050, which will mean installing 1000GW of new nuclear capacity - Ms Rising suggests current rates of deployment will not achieve this.

She said, as the only low-emission generating resource that can be scaled to meet demand, nuclear energy must be treated the same as all other low carbon technologies.

She added: "We need harmonised regulatory processes to provide a more internationally consistent, efficient and predictable nuclear licensing regime allowing for standardised solutions, to facilitate significant growth of nuclear capacity, without compromising safety and security."