Sarkozy: ‘Help poor countries go nuclear in energy crisis’
His vision won over international energy officials from India to Brussels, and French executives eager to market their expertise abroad, at a Paris conference. But some experts said Mr Sarkozy’s push was opening the door to risks of deadly technology getting into the wrong hands, and warned consumers to pay attention to the staggering price tag of potential nuclear energy growth – up to £2.6 trillion worldwide by 2050.
“We need nuclear energy” to meet international goals set for slowing global warming, Mr Sarkozy said.
His recommendations come at a time when the Obama administration has called nuclear power a key part of comprehensive energy legislation in the United States, where reactor building has been halted since the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in 1979.
Mr Sarkozy wants France, which is reliant on atomic reactors for a large majority of its electricity, to lead the way. France has long marketed itself as a nuclear pioneer globally. But it hit a recent setback – the loss of a lucrative deal to build reactors in the United Arab Emirates to a South Korean consortium – that has raised questions about the French industry’s prospects in a nuclear renaissance.
The international Nuclear Energy Agency estimates that global electricity demand will increase 2.5 times by 2050. It forecasts that, between 2030 and 2050, the world will need between 23 and 54 new reactors a year both to replace plants to be decommissioned and to increase nuclear power production.
Overall, the NEA forecasts the number of reactors worldwide to grow to between 600 and 1,400 by 2050, from 430 today, said NEA chief Luis Echavarri.
