Fado for fission
A dispatch from Lisbon about the nascent movement for nuclear power in a country where it’s long been a taboo. Plus some other stories from the past month.
Last week, I flew to Lisbon to attend the WebSummit, one of Europe’s largest tech conferences, where I was invited to moderate a couple panels on energy. I made plans to stay in Portugal for a few days afterward to do some extra reporting. As I reached out to various sources at the University of Lisbon, someone introduced me to the physicist Bruno Soares Gonçalves. We were due to talk about something totally unrelated when he mentioned to me that he is a big supporter of nuclear power, and that, coincidentally, he would be hosting a seminar on the future of atomic energy at the school later that evening. He invited me to come.
I have made a habit of reporting on the various nuclear energy programs in countries I have visited over the past two years. I made no such plans in Portugal. Despite various attempts over the past 69 years since the country created a nuclear regulator in response of then U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s famous Atoms of Peace speech, Portugal has never generated its own energy from fission. In fact, no one has even bothered to refuel the nation’s only research reactor in four years. In 2016, Portugal’s newspaper of record declared that “nuclear is dead and buried.”
But can something that was never born ever really die? It’s that metaphysical question that the physics students at the Instituto Superior Técnico sought to answer that Tuesday evening when they convened eight experts to speak about what it would take to get a nuclear energy program going in Portugal.
It’s not that Portugal does not use nuclear power. Its grid is connected to Spain, where seven reactors generate upward of 20% of that country’s electricity. That steady baseload power served as a vital backup for Portugal when its own hydroelectric dams ran low amid recent droughts. Portugal is building another giant dam, but it’s coming at a time when research shows the country is experiencing its driest climate in 1,200 years. Wind and solar have helped Portugal make up the difference, but it’s a small country with limited land area and opposition is growing to offshore turbines. Not to mention that those weather-dependent renewables require natural gas as backup when the sky is dark or the air is still.
All the while, Portugal is the energy-poorest country in Western Europe, where nearly one-in-five said in a 2018 survey that they could not afford to adequately heat their homes in the winter. And that was before inflation and the war in Ukraine sent energy prices skyrocketing across the continent.
The students’ seminar last week wasn't the only sign attitudes toward nuclear energy are changing. The leading engineers’ guild held a conference on atomic power in September. The top industrial trade group is organizing its own confab in January.
Portugal, meanwhile, is in the midst of political chaos following a corruption scandal over some renewable energy projects. Two of the parties set to make gains in the snap election called for March support nuclear power, even if the two largest parties traditionally do not.
And one of the country’s longest-serving former energy ministers told me that if Spain carries out its plans to begin shutting down its own nuclear reactors, starting in 2027, Portugal may have some tough decisions to make about its energy future.
You can read more in the story published today here on HuffPost.
Atoms For Peace 2.0
If Portugal decides to build a nuclear power plant, it can probably expect some help from the United States.
The Biden administration is assembling a coalition of more than 10 countries who have signed onto a pledge to help triple global nuclear energy production by 2050.
The pledge, which a White House official confirmed to me last week, is set to be unveiled at the U.N.’s COP28 climate summit in Dubai next week. It features a lot of atomic energy stalwarts: the United Kingdom, France, Sweden, Romania, South Korea, Japan. But it also includes some newcomers: Poland – and, mostly excitingly for those of us tracking the story of atomic energy in Africa – Ghana and Morocco. There will likely be more names on the list by the time it’s announced.
This is a major shift in the U.S., which has previously focused its attention on renewables and gas at the global climate talks, all while virtually ceding control over nuclear exports to Russia and, increasingly, China.
It’s not the only such pledge. The U.S. is also pushing similar pledges on renewables and carbon capture technology. But this one is particularly significant in that it will put pressure on the World Bank to end its ban on financing nuclear reactors.
You can read more about that story here on HuffPost.
Democrats Divided On Nuclear At Home
Don’t mistake America’s global pledge for a sign everything is going swimmingly at home.
Yes, the U.S. has finally brought the first of its long-awaited AP-1000 reactors at Georgia’s Plant Vogtle online. But the startup NuScale’s plan to build the country’s first small modular reactor plant in Idaho went bust earlier this month as costs soared.
Read that story here on HuffPost.
Meanwhile, the Democratic governors of Illinois and North Carolina vetoed legislation to allow for construction of new reactors in their states. The Tarheel State’s Republican legislature, backed by a handful of Democrats, overrode the veto. Rather than override Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s veto, the lawmakers in the Land of Lincoln are going another route, passing a new pro-nuclear bill.
Read that story here on HuffPost.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, on the other hand, is poised this week to not only sign a series of bills meant to set her state on one of the most ambitious decarbonization pathways anywhere in the American industrial heartland. Her clean-energy standard allows for construction of new nuclear reactors – a dramatic reversal in the state that most recently shut down an atomic power plant.
Read that story here on HuffPost.
But building new reactors won’t be easy, not least of which because the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is charging companies $500,000 for a six-month process that the government itself admits is basically pointless. So-called mandatory uncontested hearings – required by law, but a holdover from the era before the NRC existed – actually came up at a recent such hearing, where, according to a transcript, officials from the agency mentioned my story as evidence that the usefulness of these events was in question.
Yep, you guessed it. You can read that story, too, here on HuffPost.
Wishing you all a happy Thanksgiving, Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Black Friday and whatever else you might find worthy of celebration. I’m grateful as ever to you, dear reader, for your time and attention. I hope you felt this update on my work earned it. If not, maybe this music recommendation will. It’s called “Fado Bailado” by Manuel de Almeida, a classic fado singer from Lisbon who is remembered in the Museu do Fado near the city’s waterfront.
The lyrics are beautifully over-the-top romantic. In the first verse, he says something about how, though he’s “not an atheist,” he thought he “found heaven in your eyes.” I spent hours driving winding mountain roads in Portugal’s rural north listening to this album, none of which I could understand, but I liked the sound.
If you enjoyed this newsletter, please consider subscribing or sending it to someone else who might.
Signing off from sunny Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where Democrat Justin Brannan this month trounced his Republican rival Ari Kagan who had sought to capitalize on voters’ anti-migrant fervor by holding rallies in our neighborhood falsely claiming the city planned to house newcomers here.