Despite low running costs once a reactor is built, the high cost of capital remains “a very big problem” for the European nuclear industry and for nuclear construction on the continent, according to Jessica Johnson, communications and advocacy director of Brussels-based nuclear industry trade association NuclearEurope.

Johnson told NucNet in an interview on 23 January that while the “financing of all large infrastructure projects is challenging”, this was particularly the case in new nuclear construction due to the “high upfront costs.”

The high initial costs of nuclear energy are particularly impacted not just by state funding, but by the rate of interest that nuclear operators borrow at from private investors, Johnson said. If reactor developers “have to borrow at high costs, that impacts profits”.

However, once new reactors are in operation, they tend to operate very efficiently, in contrast to renewable generation assets such as wind and solar, Jonson emphasised.