COP26 – Look mom, I’m on the Internet! – Day 4

It’s already Thursday! How time flies. But a good Thursday. I did a nice (but also a bit strange) panel discussion that was streamed live. Why was it strange, I hear you ask? Well, we had a couple of the other presenters participating online through a video connection, and the technology failed us in a way that we could barely hear anything they were saying. But still, we soldiered through (will try to add the link when I get one).

Later, I attended the IAEA event. It is really nice to see IAEA getting their act together and seriously promoting nuclear for climate mitigation. Some of the highlights were:

• Nuclear REALLY needs to be at the table when solutions are being discussed. And even if you might not believe this (as it is simply so ridiculous) that has not been the case so far!
• The Minister of energy and minerals of Brazil stated that Brazil targets to build 10 GW of new nuclear in the next 10 years. Thats great!
• NuScale (and the White House) have singed a deal with Romania/Nuclearelectrica to potentially build a 6-reactor NuScale power plant in Romania., by 2028 To quote: ”In a joint statement, NuScale and Nuclearelectrica said they will sign a teaming agreement to ”advance clean nuclear technology in Romania. Following the partnership, Romania has the potential to accommodate the first deployment of SMRs in Europe.””
• And we had Juha Poikola from Finland stating that not only will Finland be the first country to build a final repository for spent fuel, but we can also be the first country to build a small nuclear reactor, perhaps to heat one of our cities. Why is this? Due to the high and increasing political acceptance, as our municipal politicians in several cities are already planning on finding a site for a small reactor for district heating.

Arun and Miguel from our network also got interviewed for the German media outlet ZDF. Excellent work guys! I mean, how often you can hear ”Atomkraft, ja bitte!” on German national media and get away with it! Follow this link at around timestamp 20:00 to check it out.