Gas crisis renews Europe's interest in nuclear energy (News Feature)

By Siegfried Mortkowitz Jan 16, 2009, 12:20 GMT

Paris - The dispute between Russia and Ukraine which has cut the flow of Russian natural gas to Europe has so alarmed governments that even German politicians are openly discussing the advantages of nuclear energy.

'It's increasingly becoming apparent that we have to lay greater emphasis on resources available in Germany,' German Economics Minister Michael Glos said earlier this month. 'I want to draw attention to the fact that we still have a number of nuclear power stations in Germany which, unfortunately, are going to be turned off in a few years just for political reasons.'

On Monday in Brussels, he was seconded by one of his state secretaries, Peter Hintze, who told a meeting of European Union energy ministers, 'We need to take another calm look at the atomic energy issue, which is currently on hold.'

The German government is bound by a 1999 agreement to shut down the country's nuclear power stations by 2020, but the cessation of deliveries of Russian natural gas to Europe because of gas crisis has provoked deep concerns regarding over-dependency on a single source of energy.

'What we are experiencing in supply breakdowns did not occur even during the many decades of the Cold War,' Heintze complained.

The gas crisis has struck a particularly sensitive nerve in central and Eastern Europe, especially in those countries dependent on Russian natural gas for most of their energy needs, such as Slovakia and Bulgaria.

Leaders of both countries have now vowed to restart old, unsafe Soviet-style nuclear reactors if gas deliveries did not resume soon.

'We consider restarting (the reactor) as extraordinarily actual and acute. When a critical moment occurs we will make the step,' Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said.

Bulgaria and Slovakia had shut down their old nuclear reactors as part of their EU accession agreements.

The Slovak declaration provoked outrage in neighbouring Austria. And on Wednesday the European Commission threatened to launch an infringement procedure which could lead to fines.

However, the Czech Republic - which is less dependent on Russian gas than its neighbours - appears to be planning to expand its use of nuclear energy, despite the moratorium on the construction of new nuclear reactors that was part of Prague's EU accession agreement, the daily Hospodarske Noviny reported on Friday.

This is a policy turnaround by the Green Party-ruled Environment Ministry, the paper writes, as the ministry had previously opposed any move in this direction. One of the reasons is the gas crisis.

France, which derives nearly 80 per cent of its energy from its 58 nuclear reactors, is looking prophetic now. The French chose atomic energy after the oil crisis of the 1970s.

'The French must be delighted that the country didn't bet only on gas when we see what is happening with the gas,' the head of French energy supplier EDF, Pierre Gadonneix, said on French radio last week.

EDF and other European utilities, notably the German energy giants E.ON and RWE, are investing heavily in nuclear energy in Europe, with projects in Britain and Finland.

However, Susanne Nies, a senior research fellow with the energy program at the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), said that nuclear energy was not the best response to the gas crisis.

'Nuclear energy could play an important part of a diversification of energy sources in Europe,' she said.

According to the EU's latest Strategic Energy Review, nuclear energy accounted for 14 per cent of the EU's overall energy consumption in 2006, compared to 37 per cent for oil and 24 per cent for gas.

Nies said it was far more important to improve Europe's energy infrastructure. 'In some areas, such as south-eastern Europe, there are few pipelines within the region and few pipelines going to the region,' she noted.

She said energy interconnections within Europe must be upgraded. 'We need to use reversible pipelines so that the oil or gas could flow in two directions, the way it now exists between the Continent and Britain,' she said.

Nationalism kept European countries from opening up their energy supplies to their neighbours in the past. Nies said this must change. 'It is important to have a united Europe, in case of a blackout, for example.'

For a model, she pointed to a project agreed last year for France and Spain to set up a join electricity grid company to share high-speed voltage across the Pyrenees Mountains.

The project will give Spain better access to France's electricity grid, which is very reliable - because of its reliance on nuclear power.