Climate and nuclear: Europe without a strategy

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Small SMR reactors could quickly contribute to decarbonizing industry or replace coal-fired power plants in the East. But Europe, torn, is stalling…

By Geraldine Woessner

Lhe images, at the beginning of September, made people cringe in the corridors of Brussels… Welcomed with great fanfare at the Three Seas Summit, an initiative bringing together twelve countries from Central and Eastern Europe in Bucharest, the American special envoy for the climate , John Kerry, arrived draped in his “savior of the planet” costume.

In his bag, envelopes of dollars, and turnkey contracts to help the heavily carbon-intensive economies of the east of the Union to move away from fossils, thanks to a tool full of promise: small SMR nuclear reactors (for Small Modular Reactor), capable of supplying a factory with low-carbon electricity or replacing a coal-fired power plant.