ISNUCLEARPOWERAGOODSOLUTION FOREUROPE'SDEPENDENCYON RUSSIANENERGY?

By Adam Karacsonyi '25

In 2021, 83% of natural gas exported to Europe came from Russia, while the following year, until December 2022, it was below 20% Moreover, in 2021, Russia exported on average approximately 7.8 million barrels of oil a day, while in 2022, the amount of oil imported into Europe decreased to about 1.7 million barrels a day. The sudden decrease in exports of natural gas and oil from Russia resulted in an energy crisis, which is still ongoing. It became abundantly clear that Europe has been far too dependent on Russian natural gas and oil, which prompted the European Union (EU) to search for solutions

The birthplace of nuclear energy materialized with the Manhattan Project on August 13, 1942. As with most revolutionary inventions, nuclear power was purposed for war Leading the project, Robert Oppenheimer recruited several known scientists at the time, such as Edward Teller, Enrico Fermi, and Leó Szilárd. The group first achieved a nuclear chain reaction on December 2, 1942, and in the later stages of the war, the Manhattan Project group created the nuclear bomb Trinity, which was later tested on July 16, 1945. After World War II, many saw an opportunity to use nuclear fission to utilize the energy created and convert it to electricity Hence, the development of nuclear power plants started, and on the 20th of December 1951, the first ever power plant that used nuclear fission was created and; initially, it could power four 200-watt light bulbs

On February 2, 2022, the EU gave the green light for nuclear and gas fired energy plants (LNG plants), recognizing them as sustainable investments. While LNG plants have long been a well-acknowledged source of energy, due to bad media representation, the public is unsure of the safety of nuclear energy, as it is commonly believed that generating energy through nuclear fission is unpredictable, let alone dangerous. For this reason, the article will discuss whether nuclear power is the solution for the EU’s dependency on Russian energy.

Nuclear power plants exploit nuclear fission, which creates an enormous amount of heat This heat is transferred into water, which becomes steam The steam is then applied to a turbine generator to create electricity. However, the rudimentary part of nuclear power plants involves nuclear fission. Nuclear fission is the subdivision of an isotope Uranium atom (U235) caused by the application of a neutron to create an unstable nucleus (U236), which splits into Barium (Ba144) and Krypton (Kr89). This reaction further releases two or three more neutrons, producing a stable nuclear chain This releases a tremendous amount of energy 1 kg of isotopic Uranian (U235) releases about 200 MeV (Mega electron volt) or about 3.2×10-11 wattseconds. Therefore, 3.1×1010 fissions per second produce 1 Watt (W) The fission of 1 gram (g) of Uranium or Plutonium, creates approximately 1 Mega-Watt. This is slightly more than the energy release of 3 tons of coal which releases roughly 833.3 kWh (kilo-Watt hour) or 100 m3 of natural gas Therefore, nuclear energy needs significantly less energy and input to release a large amount of energy in comparison to coal power plants, or natural gas power plants.

Maintenance is estimated to cost around 26.90 Eur per mWh In comparison with other common energy sources, nuclear energy is quite cheap: Coal power plants run at 29 55 Eur per mWh, Solar plants cost about 55-75 Eur per mWh, and wind costs 30.48 Eur per mWh. Along with the cost, it is also important to note that it is important to consider the duration at which these power plants can be run at maximum capacity. Out of the power sources mentioned above, nuclear energy leads by far with being able to run on maximum capacity 92 5% of the time Solar energy had an underwhelming 24 9%, wind power 35 4%, coal with 40.2%. While nuclear power plants are costly to build, they are exceptionally efficient in harnessing energy, and can be run at full capacity nearly all times of the year

In today’s world the cost of production is often the factor that either gets a project approved or rejected. As such, it is important to discuss the economics of nuclear energy Companies which plan on building nuclear power plants indicate that the cost ranges between 5000 Eur per kW and 7500 Eur per kW. This means that building a 1000 mW (or 1000 kW×1000) power plant would cost between 5 billion Eur to 7 5 billion Eur

After making the financial calculations, it is important to evaluate the sustainability of nuclear energy. A nuclear power plant creates about 3 m3 of waste if its fuel is recycled During nuclear fission, some of the remaining neutrons which split from the U235 are used in another reaction to create Thorium (Th232) and/or an isotope of Plutonium (Pu239) Th232 is an excellent absorbent and is very fertile in absorbing neutrons to create another isotopic form of Uranium (U233) which is a superb nuclear fuel material. Moreover, Plutonium (Pu239), Thorium (Th232) among other remaining particles (such as U239) are highly fissile materials which are recycled and applied in MOX fuel. Although MOX may only contain 1% of Plutonium in total, it is responsible for 33-40% of all power in a nuclear power plant. 1 kg of isotopic Plutonium (Pu239), can produce approximately 8000 mWh

Nuclear fuel can be recycled 5 times over the life of the nuclear power plant, which is estimated to last between 30-40 years After nuclear fuel is fully used, it is stored on site in dry tasks, as these materials are highly radioactive and would cause substantial damage to the environment. Unfortunately it is impossible to give an accurate estimate of how long they stay this way, as due to the different isotopes present, nuclear waste could be harmful, from just hours, to hundreds of thousands of years.

These are the only major accidents which occurred over about 70 years of commercial nuclear power in 36 countries and the risk of accidents in power plants is low and continuously declining A couple examples include: Restricting the amount of time operators spend around the core of the powerplant, or making multiple back-up systems.

The history of nuclear power has had its fair share of incidents and disasters, such as the explosion of Reactor 4 in Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986, resulting in 3940 radiation caused cancer or leukemia deaths, or the Fukushima Daiichi reactor meltdown in 2011 causing 1 radiation related death and a catastrophic leakage of nuclear waste However, there were more factors at play, than just the dangers of nuclear fission. The incident in Chernobyl, happened during a test, in which power plants operators were examining the back up diesel engine at low power The control rods displaced the water used for reducing fission and for cooling, which resulted in increased reaction. This resulted in an uncontrolled fission chain, at which point the operators could not effectively stop in time due to delayed reaction The incident was caused by both faulty equipment and human error. On the other hand, the Fukushima power plant meltdown was fundamentally caused by a natural disaster With the combination of an earthquake and a tsunami, it led to the loss of power to the power plant. Without power, the cooling systems failed in three different reactors, leading to the overheating of the cores inside them

The European Union gave the green light for nuclear energy, as they recognised it as a sustainable investment. However, due to bad media representation, the public are unsure of the safety of nuclear energy, thus, it is important to answer whether nuclear energy is the solution for Europe’s dependency on Russian energy. Nuclear energy is an extremely efficient and utile source of energy which has minimal waste, yet can release massive amounts of power with little effort Moreover, maintaining nuclear energy is cost friendly in comparison with other uses of power. However, nuclear energy also has several flaws. Building nuclear power plants and its infrastructure is costly, ranging up to 7 5 billion Euros Nuclear energy also poses the risk of exposing dangerously radioactive materials to the public, or the environment, which could be disastrous as we have seen with Chernobyl and Fukushima Nuclear energy appears to be a much more long-term investment instead of a quick solution the EU could utilize right now. In short, nuclear energy could be a great alternative in the future as it produces minimal waste, costs little to run compared to how much energy it releases, however the EU simply does not have enough time or resources to completely commit to nuclear energy as of now.