Bellona nuclear digest. March 2024
A survey of events in the field of nuclear and radiation safety relating to Russia and Ukraine.
News
Publish date: November 18, 2010
Written by: Lorelei Limousin
News
The urgent enhancement of energy efficiency and the increase of renewables in the energy mix result in new needs for the electricity systems by notably requiring long-distance transport and storage capacity to respond to the high volatility of renewable power generation. New infrastructure is consequently a condition of the transition towards the low carbon power sector.
Priority infrastructure plans aim at connecting isolated countries to the European energy markets, by establishing needed cross-border interconnections and integrating at the same time renewable energy into the network.
The European Commission identified four ”electricity highways” and three priority corridors in the gas sector:
The EC communication seemingly allows an uneasy combination of fossil fuels with renewable energy, which would consist in a sustainable energy system only if CCS was deployed. The strategy plans transport infrastructure for CO2 after CCS technology should become commercially viable around 2020. But as energy commissioner Oettinger said at the Friends of Europe summit on November 18th, ”2020 is immediate and we’ve got to think beyond that, regarding energy infrastructure.” It means CO2 transport infrastructure should start being planned to enable CCS development around Europe. The fact that potential CO2 storage sites are not evenly distributed across Europe will thus require regional co-ordination of such plans. The EC will therefore prepare a public European CO2 Storage Atlas to help national authorities plan future CO2 infrastructure.
The overall infrastructure project will require an overall estimated investment of €200bn in power grids and gas pipelines by 2020, amongst which only half will be provided by the private sector, leaving a huge financial gap to be filled by public support.
Mr Oettinger proposes to boost EU energy infrastructure spending immediately by delivering €800mn annually over the five next years and will in 2012 announce the first key ”projects of European interest.”
A survey of events in the field of nuclear and radiation safety relating to Russia and Ukraine.
Russian president Vladimir Putin has told the United Nations atomic energy watchdog that Russia plans to restart Ukraine’s embattled Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, currently occupied by Russian troops and technicians, fueling worries about a serious nuclear accident on the front lines of a grinding military conflict.
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Recent attacks on Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant "mark the beginning of a new and gravely dangerous front of the war," the UN atomic agency's director general said last week.