The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) affiliated with the United Nations (UN) affirmed over a recent report that nuclear energy plays an important role in avoiding emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and fighting climate change.
The committee's report revealed that employing nuclear energy throughout 50 years led to reducing emissions of CO2 across the world by 74 Gigaton which is equal to two years of the carbonic emissions.
Only electrohydraulic energy played a major role in preventing carbonic emissions during that period.
Experts believe that nuclear energy should be considered as a part of comprehensive measurements that aim to implement the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the 2030 Plan for Sustainable Development.
They indicate that nuclear energy could be used along with other lesser or non-emitted sustainable technologies to remove carbon from the world system of energy.
Because nuclear plants produce both electricity and heat with lower emissions, they also provide chances to remove carbon from the waste of factories in the world.
It is worth noting that the ECE runs now 292 nuclear plants in Europe, where nuclear energy is an active part of the energy system.
Nuclear energy in Europe provides 20% of energy in eleven Europe; Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, and Ukraine.
Nuclear plants work now in 20 countries in the world and new plants are still under construction in the other fifteen countries.
The EESC report revealed that seven member countries of the group are working now on developing programs of nuclear energy for the first time in history.
On the other hand, the 106 nuclear power reactors (104 GWe) operating in 13 of the 27 EU member states account for over one-quarter of the electricity generated in the whole of the EU. Over half of the EU’s nuclear electricity is produced in only one country – France.
The 57 units operating in three non-EU countries (Russia, Ukraine, and Switzerland) account for about 15-20% of the electricity in the rest of Europe. Norway and Switzerland are effectively part of the EU synchronous grid (see later section on Interconnection: European Transmission Infrastructure). Nuclear energy in the EU is governed to a large extent by the Euratom Treaty, which was one of the founding treaties establishing the EU.
All EU member states are party to it by default. The European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM) was established in March 1957 and associated with the Treaties of Rome in 1958 to form a common market for the development of the peaceful uses of atomic energy.
It initially comprised Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and The Netherlands at a time when energy security was a prime concern. The Euratom Treaty originally envisaged common EU ownership of nuclear materials. Politically it was both a counter to US dominance and a means of cooperation with the USA by providing guarantees of peaceful use, being the basis of the first multilateral safeguards system.
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