Sufficient uranium to triple nuclear generation capacity, but infrastructure a challenge: WNA

The world has sufficient uranium resources to successfully reach a nuclear industry goal of tripling nuclear generation capacity by 2050, but uranium industry infrastructure is a "challenge," the director general of the World Nuclear Association, Sama Bilbao y Leon, said at the S&P Global Commodity Insights London Energy Forum Feb. 27.

In December at the UN Climate Change Conference in Dubai, representatives of more than 25 countries and 120 companies pledged, as part of efforts to reach net zero global emissions by 2050, to triple installed nuclear capacity from the present level of around 400 GW to 1,200 GW by that year.

Bilbao y Leon said in her speech that while the world had "sufficient uranium resources to meet this goal, there is a need for infrastructure investment." In particular, she highlighted the need for investment in uranium mining and global uranium enrichment capacity.

Bilbao y Leon also said that existing spent fuel resources could be better utilized through more use of mixed uranium and plutonium oxide, or MOX, fuel.

"Around 95% of used nuclear fuel is fuel, this is key," Bilbao y Leon said.

She noted that nuclear power currently provides around 25% of the European power mix, adding that "most countries in Europe have or are looking at nuclear power. They either have projects in operation, units that are under construction" or are considering using nuclear power. Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia, among other countries, were all either looking at new nuclear construction or building their first reactors, she said.

Bilbao y Leon also said that small and advanced modular reactors are "not very different" from conventional large units, but that the "difference is in delivery." Such units are factory-built and provide a "flexible and modular delivery platform," she noted.

The first SMRs in the world "are now being built," with the "first demonstration projects" for such reactors likely to be in operation this decade, she added, but emphasized that SMRs would likely not be more affordable than large units until "Nth of a kind," or fleet production, is established.