The long-term operation of nuclear power plants in Europe needs to be a strategic decision taken to maintain the future stability and resilience of the electricity grid as the bloc moves towards a dominant share of intermittent renewable energy sources in its generation mix, a conference heard.

Marc-Antoine Eyl-Mazzega, director of the centre for energy and climate at the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), told the nucleareurope 2023 annual conference in Lyon that a decision is needed because at a time when European electricity demand will be increasing, the region may have its lowest level of available baseload capacity, particularly as baseload plants such as coal are shut down.

“The resilience of the energy system matters,” he said, adding that renewables and interconnections are “decisive”, hydro power will be increasingly non reliable while keeping coal plants in reserve may help.

Eyl-Mazzega said the benefits of small modular reactors (SMRs) lie not only in their electricity generation uses. He said: “Noone seems to understand that while we need much more electricity, we also need much more heat and steam to limit pressure on new grids. SMRs will be so important in tackling that.”