nucleareurope participates in KernD Annual Conference
On 21 May, nucleareurope Director General Emmanuel Brutin participated in the German nuclear industry association (KernD) Annual Conference, to discuss evolutions in nuclear investments in Europe, recent political developments and Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). The event, organised in Berlin, brought together a wide range of key European nuclear stakeholders and political representatives.
As part of the conference, Emmanuel intervened in a panel discussion entitled ‘SMR as a European industrial project’. He stressed that SMRs, alongside large nuclear new build and lifetime extension of existing reactors, will play a key role in supporting industrial decarbonisation in Europe, and highlighted the importance of enabling policies to support the development of the technology in the Union.
“The European Industrial Alliance on SMRs is currently playing a major part in accelerating the development of SMRs in the European Union, with the objective to deploy the first SMRs in the 2030s. However, the policy framework must continue to evolve to ensure that the competitiveness of European SMR developers is not hampered” noted Emmanuel, specifically insisting on the need to support access to funds and finance for SMR technologies.
Emmanuel then discussed recent nuclear developments in the EU, beyond SMRs. He gave an overview of political evolutions, noting a positive shift in the discourse around nuclear at both European and national levels, translated in important investment plans across Europe, with installed nuclear capacity set to reach close to 150Gigawatt (GW) by 2050, compared to around 100GW today.
Concluding his intervention, Emmanuel stressed that the change in political discourse must now be translated into truly technology neutral policies, which will allow to make the most of the contributions of all net-zero technologies to decarbonisation, energy sovereignty and competitiveness. He then lauded the successful organisation of the KernD conference, welcoming the evolutions of Germany’s discourse on nuclear.