(Dubai) The director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, calls for unblocking international public funding for the atom. He also believes that disqualifying this energy due to the errors of certain projects would be “an error”, in an interview with AFP at COP28.
A number of large countries are due to call on Saturday at COP28 to triple global nuclear production capacities by 2050 to limit global warming.
Its promoters see in this energy, which is modular and which emits almost no greenhouse gases, an incomparable means of producing virtuous and abundant electricity. An argument which seems to be gaining ground, since nuclear power now has a strong presence at the COP, the major annual meeting on climate under the aegis of the UN.
But how can we ensure the financing of these pharaonic and risky projects, whose lifespan extends over decades? Especially at a time when the costs of renewable energies continue to fall.
“There is work to be done,” recognizes Rafael Grossi. He cites the financing needs of developing countries that would like to continue in the atom sector (notably Brazil, Argentina and South Africa) or those who are interested in it, from Morocco to Senegal, from Kenya to the Philippines.
“There are statutory provisions, sometimes in certain international credit institutions, which exclude nuclear power. I think that’s completely obsolete. It does not correspond to any scientific or technological criteria. It’s more, I think, things from the past,” he believes.
The World Bank, for example, has not financed a nuclear project since… 1959.
“So I think and I hope that there will be an evolution” on this public funding, argues Rafael Grossi.
Then it remains to be able to build reactors, while certain projects are sometimes delayed by more than ten years due to industrial setbacks. These delays will make them arrive too late to respond to the climate challenge, judge some environmental defenders.
But these setbacks do not disqualify nuclear power as a whole, for Rafael Grossi.
“The problem is war”
“Look, we are talking to the Emirates now. What happened here? There was zero nuclear a decade ago and today, there are four reactors there” and which produce a quarter of the electricity consumed here, underlines the Argentinian.
Using the mistakes of certain projects to devalue the atom would be “a mistake”, he says.
The industry is betting a lot on small modular reactors (SMR), of lower power and easier to build, to ensure the development of production capacities in new countries.
But will certain less developed countries have the means to protect these installations in terms of safety and non-proliferation?
“It’s a legitimate question, but that’s what we were created for,” replies Rafael Grossi, pointing to his agency’s flag, representing atoms on a UN-blue background, in an anonymous white office in COP28.
“A country that wants to develop a nuclear program must… go through a whole process, have a comprehensive safeguards agreement with the agency. This means that in principle the risks of proliferation should not exist,” he explains.
Example: the Emirates, which had to follow a 19-step program to regulate its civil nuclear program. This development involves, for example, the creation of an independent supervisory authority in the country.
The diplomat also does not think that the tensions around Ukrainian power plants, since the Russian invasion, speak against nuclear power. “The problem is war, not nuclear power,” he judges without hesitation.
However, he does not hide his concern as winter approaches on the ground.
“The terrain is hardened, the armored vehicles can move, the river freezes so, we see a lot of (military) devices on both sides. Yes, and that obviously doesn’t concern us,” he says.