Environmental organizations deny that small nuclear reactors are an energy solution in Portugal, warning that they are expensive, slow and risky, and say that any option for nuclear energy in the country makes no sense.
In connection with a renewed investment in nuclear energy worldwide, Lusa questioned environmental organizations Geota (Group for Studies of Territorial Planning and Environment), Quercus and Zero, all of whom agreed that the bets should be on renewable energies and condemned nuclear as a solution to the energy shortage.
“In Portugal, talking about replacing renewables with nuclear simply does not make sense. The real challenge is to better manage a system that is predominantly renewable, through storage, pumped hydro, batteries, strengthening grids and interconnections, demand management and greater flexibility,” says Miguel Macias Sequeira, vice-president of Geota, who regards it as an “irrational choice” and difficult to justify the option of small modular reactors, the so-called SMRs.
Miguel Macias Sequeira stresses that Portugal has excellent renewable resources and solutions that can be implemented now, so “it would be hardly rational” to divert investment, technical resources and administrative capacity to a technology whose potential commercial deployment could only occur many years later.
For Zero it would also not make sense to spend time and money exploring the nuclear path when there is something Portugal “already knows how to do well and faster”, namely accelerating renewables, storage and energy efficiency.
And in Quercus’s view, nuclear should continue to be investigated, notably for health, but not for energy production, with a focus on restoring ecosystems and supporting energy communities, with production in urbanized areas, such as on the roofs of buildings and industries, for example.
Even globally the association says it is against betting on modular reactors, which are not currently a valid alternative, adding Zero that they are not an alternative at least “in a time window relevant to the climate crisis”.
SMRs are still too expensive, slow and risky, says Francisco Ferreira, president of Zero, pointing to references from the German radiation protection authority on the risks of SMRs due to greater geographic dispersion and the multiplication of locations where radioactive waste must be managed.
Miguel Macias Sequeira adds that per unit of electricity produced, SMRs may generate larger quantities of certain wastes than large reactors. “At this moment, SMRs are largely a technological promise, not a solution available for the energy transition,” he asserts.
But is there more political support for nuclear today? If Quercus and Geota do not value it, Zero regards it largely as the result “of a well-crafted narrative by the nuclear industry” linked to the geopolitical framing of the war in Ukraine and the discourse of “energy sovereignty”.
Apart from policy, nuclear, large or modular, is systematically the most expensive source of electricity among the technologies available, emphasizes Francisco Ferreira. And it produces waste, currently more than 448 thousand tonnes of irradiated fuel stored worldwide, according to data from the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Quercus also speaks of radioactive waste, to be stored “for thousands of years,” notes safety, recalls Chernobyl and Fukushima, which counter the “safety narrative,” adds “the enormous environmental problems worldwide” of mining, including in Portugal, where former miners died of cancer and others have health problems.
And Geota, which also discusses the problem of radioactive waste, concludes that in Portugal, with sun, wind, hydro, storage capacity and a huge potential to explore in energy efficiency, “there is no rationality in abandoning or delaying that path to begin now a costly, slow and unnecessary nuclear adventure.”
