Europe and Russian Nuclear Fuel

they also reflect a wider problem with the EU’s energy strategy. Nuclear power
is the elephant in the room when it comes to collective moves on energy by the
EU27. Hungary has four nuclear reactors that were installed in the 1980s by the
Soviets, and whose fuel is produced by Russia’s Rosatom. In 2014, Hungary
signed a deal with Vladimir Putin to upgrade and finance two new nuclear
reactors. Nuclear power provides half of Hungary’s electricity, and 14 per cent
of its energy overall. With so much at stake, we can understand Hungary’s deep
reluctance to stop Russian oil imports. People don’t generally like to consider
the part that nuclear will need to play in the energy future of Europe.
Particularly for the older generation, nuclear power is a legacy of Cold War
military technology which inspires fear and loathing. Germans who were young in
the 1980s remember chaining themselves to trains to stop nuclear waste being
taken from reactors to waste facilities. Spaniards who were young in the 1960s
remember the Palomares disaster, when plane carrying hydrogen bombs broke apart
in Spanish air space. On Wednesday, the European Commission published its
REPowerEU plan, a €300bn package aimed at weaning the bloc off Russian fossil
fuels before 2030. Its focus was on fossil fuels and renewables – nuclear was
left out of the four pillars that it put forward. Conversely, the UK, in its
energy strategy published earlier this year, surprised many by pledging to
build more nuclear reactors.
Reaction 19tgh May
2022

https://reaction.life/in-europes-quest-to-freeze-out-russian-gas-nuclear-power-is-the-elephant-in-the-room/