EU lacks bold political leadership on nuclear fusion

Euractiv

4 days ago

An influential member of the European Parliament's industry committee has warned a gathering of politicians and stakeholders at a nuclear fusion event that a lack of political leadership at the European Commission is causing the EU to fall behind in a potentially game-changing energy technology.
'There is a lack of political leadership when it comes to nuclear energy in Europe - fission is not exempt from this,' said Christophe Grudler, a French MEP from the Renew Europe group, which also counts French President Emmanuel Macron as a member. Only 2% of the global amount of fusion investment is currently going to Europe, while 75% is going to the US, he said at the event.
Grudler welcomed the Commission's intent to develop a European fusion strategy but said he still sees resistance and foot-dragging.
'We lack leadership today. In the current Commission, the responsibility for fusion lies somewhere between Euratom, the Commission's [research department] and its [energy department] - between one DG dealing with many files and another whose commissioner is not the most enthusiastic supporter of nuclear energy. This is why we need strong political ownership. That should be led from the very top by the president of the Commission herself, or an executive vice president.' Capital investment
Stéphane Séjourné, the Commission's executive vice president who is also from Emmanuel Macron's French political group, has complained that seven times more private capital is available for fusion in the US than in the EU and has been pushing for a dedicated fusion strategy.
France has been one of the countries pushing for more of an EU focus on nuclear energy but has faced resistance from other countries, including Germany and Austria.
'The strategy should promote public-private partnerships, provide a clear and stable regulatory framework distinct from nuclear fission and at the end create a European-level legal architecture rather than 27 fragmented ones,' said Grudler.
No 'eureka' moment
Grudler was speaking at a conference last month in Barcelona organised by Fusion for Energy, an organisation of the EU managing Europe's contribution to the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project in Southern France, the largest fission demonstration in the world.
Though research into nuclear fusion's potential has been going on for decades, it has yet to reach the 'eureka' moment which would make it viable like nuclear fission.
Fusion is the same process that powers the sun, and the most common way to make it happen is by combining deuterium and tritium, two isotopes of hydrogen, to form helium and release energy according to Einstein's mass-energy equivalence principle (E=mc²).
If it can work, it would be a much more efficient and clean way to produce energy than nuclear fission, which produces long-lived radioactive waste and relies on hard-to-source uranium. Fusion promises a cleaner and virtually limitless source of energy if it can be successfully harnessed on Earth. But reproducing what the sun does is very complex.
The promise is immense, but so is the challenge.
Speaking at the conference, Massimo Garribba, the deputy chief of the Commission's energy department, said the intent is there for fusion, but there are obstacles, and that's why there needs to be a larger strategic focus that goes beyond just financing.
'[Energy] Commissioner Jorgensen and [Research] Commissioner Zaharieva work together, and they are fully in favour of delivering this strategy,' he said. 'We have to see, there are another 23 commissioners and a president that will have to agree to this. But those two I can tell you, are quite committed to arriving at this point.'
More money?
'Don't believe that if you just throw money at a problem, it will solve itself,' he added, noting that the Commission has spent €10.7 billion on ITER since 2007.
'So, what's the problem? You have all this money, all these wonderful people working on this. Well, I personally believe the problem is the approach has been a little bit haphazard. We have ITER, which is absolutely fundamental because without it you cannot do the rest, but you don't have an ecosystem of facilities which actually drives toward having a functioning system at the end of the day.'
Garribba said he agreed with Grudler that the strategy has to have very specific goals to deliver financing, noting that there will be a lot of competition for funds in the new multiannual financial framework for the EU's budget over the next seven years that will be negotiated starting in mid-July.
'If we come out with a strategy that is convincing, where we explain what needs to be done and by whom in all the different areas, then we may have a discussion for the financing which would be easier than what we would otherwise have,' said Garribba.
European leadership
Several speakers at the conference emphasised that Europe is well-positioned to lead globally on fusion but it needs a clearer long-term strategy.
'I am optimistic, here in Europe we have unique conditions to build on the existing industrial ecosystem around ITER which is great, but we need to go beyond to address the needs of commercial fusion, so the supply chain needs to adapt to that.'
'Our leadership must prepare us for what comes after ITER, because ITER isn't an end it's a beginning,' said Grudler. 'Europe needs a roadmap from research to commercialisation, and here F4E can play a key role.'
'Fusion is long-term a high-risk endeavour,' the MEP added. 'But public-private partnerships allow us to share those risks while accelerating progress by combining public interest with private incentive in creating a predictable, stable framework for private investment. Europe already has successful models of such cooperation, such as the Hydrogen Joint Undertaking and the Battery Alliance. Fusion deserves the same level of ambition.'
[Edited By Brian Maguire | Euractiv's Advocacy Lab ]