Articles

Can nuclear energy help us meet climate goals? Mycle Schneider, editor of the annual World Nuclear Industry Status Report (WNISR), which assesses the status and trends of the global nuclear power industry, says no. Interview courtesy of DW.

The issue of nuclear power has been with the European Union since the very beginning of the nuclear age. Where are operating nuclear power plants in the world? Who is building new reactors? What happened in the European region after Chernobyl and the fall of the Berlin Wall?

While many European countries are phasing out nuclear energy, either for political or economic reasons, Czechia is hoping to go in the opposite direction. Nuclear reactors are proclaimed – and also perceived by much of society – to be a clean and safe source of energy. How did this come about?

What is the problem within the construction of units 3 and 4 of Khmelnytskyi Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine? To understand the situation around this it is necessary to have clear picture of Ukrainian nuclear sector in general.

Thirty-five years ago, a few days after the Chernobyl disaster, authorities throughout Europe alerted the population to the radioactive cloud. All of them? No. In France, where more than thirty nuclear reactors were already in operation, the authorities waited several weeks before acknowledging that the cloud had passed over the country.

The Chernobyl disaster is the origin and the starting point for many green and anti-nuclear activists of my generation in Hungary. What are the dilemmas and how does the public see nuclear energy in Hungary on the 35th anniversary of Chernobyl and the 10th of the Fukushima disaster?

For the first 29 years of the country’s independence, nuclear power was not used in Belarus. It was not until 7 November 2020, the anniversary of the October Revolution, that the first nuclear power plant was inaugurated in Ostrovets, close to the border with Lithuania.

In former evacuation zones of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, although the government of Japan pronounced it safe to resume normal life, some returnees found such a life elusive. To make life possible on their once-abandoned land, they decided to tackle radiation in their own ways. 

The EU’s Sustainable Taxonomy Regulation - the list of green activities contributing to the green transition - is currently being discussed. The political debate is now focusing on two types of energy that were at first excluded: nuclear energy and fossil gas. How might these discussions undermine the taxonomy that is potentially a central tool to enhance investments in the green transition and why should they be banished from this instrument?

Currently, there is no nuclear power station that operating commercial electricity in Southeast Asian countries. However, pro-nuclear comes up with many reasons aiming to materialize the nuclear power which ranging from growing of domestic power demand to boost economic activities, reducing the electricity cost – in the case of the Philippines, to producing no Green House Gases emission, in particularly CO2.