EU Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy Miguel Arias Cañete and US Secretary of Energy Rick Perry both agreed that nuclear energy will continue to play an important role in energy production in the future at the first EU-US high-level forum on small modular reactors (SMRs) on Monday 21 October.
"The nuclear sector will continue to play a role in the European Union and the world’s electricity mix [...] as long as it meets the highest safety standards", the Commissioner stressed.
And his US counterpart followed in his footsteps: "We [President Trump's administration] are reaffirming nuclear energy as an indispensable source of energy for the world".
While this technology is regularly debated, particularly in light of the risks of nuclear disasters and the waste it causes, Mr Perry also considered nuclear energy to be "safe", "reliable" and "clean", while repeatedly praising the merits of innovation and technological advances in a ‘climate-sceptic’ speech.
Regarding SMRs, both sides expressed their willingness to cooperate in order to realise the "innovative potential" of this technology.
According to Mr Cañete, while citizens are urging governments to take action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it is time to bring these reactors "under the spotlight".
"Small modular reactors are a promising technological solution which can save the objective of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but could also be characterised by high cost efficiency and high levels of safety", he stressed.
According to Mr. Perry, small modular reactors have a number of advantages over traditional nuclear power plants: "they are smaller, they are more flexible, they require less capital investment and they can be placed in remote locations, unlike the larger nuclear plants". (Original version in French by Damien Genicot)