The future of the nuclear power industry is “hardly assured” and key tasks lie ahead if the sector is to make a substantial contribution to climate neutrality objectives, including the main one of securing new investments, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has said.
In a speech to the inaugural Nuclear Energy Summit in Brussels in which she backed nuclear and outlined the role in can play in the energy transition, Von der Leyen said the reality today in most markets is “a slow but steady decline in nuclear’s market share”.
She said nuclear accounts for 9% of the world’s electricity mix, down from 18% in 1988.
In the EU, nuclear power is still the largest single source of electricity generation with a 22% share, she said, but that share is substantially below the levels reached in the 1990s, when nuclear power generated one-third of Europe's electricity.