Nuclear Power: Energy Security, Sanctions, and the COP27 Ahead

By Marina Lorenzini, Fletcher School Alumna (January ’22)

Marina Lorenzini is currently a project coordinator at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She is a recent graduate of the M.A. in Law & Diplomacy program, and wrote her thesis focused on Russia-Turkey energy trade, and in particular, the $22 billion Russian-built, owned, and operated nuclear power plant in Akkuyu, Turkey. Through the support of the Russia and Eurasia Program, Marina attended the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference (commonly known as ‘COP26’) in Glasgow as a member of the Tufts University delegation led by Dean Rachel Kyte.

At the moment, the net-zero imperative is meeting the geopolitical stage. As the energy market, and by extension global trade, adjusts to the steep rise in the price of a barrel of oil and disruptions of the flow of natural gas, the lack of energy source diversification across Europe has become the subject of renewed debate. Headlines have focused on how several European countries have shut down their nuclear power plants while importing Russian natural gas to feed their baseload needs for the electric grids over the past decade.

Electrification is a critical step to decrease a country’s carbon footprint. But while electrification received a great push across the transportation sector at COP26, the priority agenda did not analyze the means by which countries may supply their electric power and transition to more sustainable sources of electricity production. Based on studies from the International Energy Agency, nuclear power and other non-intermittent low-carbon sources can ease both the technical challenges of integrating solar and wind capacity to meet demand as well as lowering the cost of transforming the electricity system in the coming decades.

Nuclear energy had an unprecedented presence at COP26 in comparison to previous conferences. Early on, Grossi set the tone with panel discussions emphasizing the Agency’s October 2021 report, ‘Nuclear Energy for a Net Zero World’. The Canadian Nuclear Association sponsored the first-ever nuclear-focused pavilion, ‘Nuclear for Climate,’ populated by young professionals from the Nuclear Institute Young Generation Network. On the industry side, Rolls-Royce presented its development program for the world’s fastest all-electric aircraft, Hitachi’s electric buses ferried delegates around Glasgow, and ScottishPower was a principal sponsor of the conference. At COP26, nuclear energy entered the climate conversation, and it is only likely to continue to gain steam.

In the wake of the 2011 Fukushima-Daiichi crisis, several countries committed to phase out existing nuclear power plants or pause plans to build new facilities. Today, market access, emissions, and price points of natural gas have several countries reviewing nuclear as an option for energy security and stability again. Moving towards COP27 in Egypt, official discussions are likely to deepen the electrification push and incorporate nuclear energy within climate change mitigation efforts. In recent weeks, reports have shown that the United States is considering sanctions on Rosatom, Russia’s state-controlled nuclear energy company. In 2015, Egypt signed an agreement with Rosatom to construct a $30 billion 4.8-gigawatt nuclear power plant; the project is ongoing with the IAEA’s cooperation. In December 2021, IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi pledged to Al-Sisi the IAEA’s full support for COP27 and the country’s low-carbon future.

At first glance, sanctions on Rosatom, a strong source of income for Russia, seem to align with the current U.S. defense strategy to isolate Russia from international markets. But, Richard Nephew, former U.S. sanctions official, remarks that at this moment it is critical to avoid creating an escalatory spiral that could damage other interests. In his view, Rosatom is a central part of the global nuclear industry and its provision of services — including nuclear fuel — to existing reactors should be exempt from sanctions to avoid deepening a global energy crisis.

Further, nuclear energy is also integral to several countries’ energy security and net-zero targets. Rosatom’s construction in Egypt is still in its early stages; however, Rosatom has further-along investments in several other countries. In India, for example, Rosatom built two reactors (Kudankulam 1 and 2), which are currently connected to the electric grid and a desalination plant. Rosatom continues to provide the enriched fuel for this site, and an additional four reactors on the site are in progress. In Turkey, construction for a nuclear power plant has been underway for several years and the first reactor is scheduled to be online by 2023. With this context in mind, such sanctions could lead to these sources of critical infrastructure becoming stranded assets.

Directly connected to the U.S., imports of Russian uranium accounted for 16% of uranium purchases for U.S. nuclear power plants in 2020, according to the Energy Information Administration. Placing sanctions on Russia’s nuclear activities could impede the energy mix development not only in the U.S., but also in partner countries abroad that depend on diversity of supply to deliver stable supply to their population, as well as contribute to their de-carbonization initiatives.

At COP27, it is likely that nuclear will become even more prominent, given the geopolitical and energy circumstances as well as the host country of Egypt. However, due to the long lead times to construct and regulate nuclear facilities, it is unlikely that nuclear power will play a significant role in reducing current energy price volatility, as U.S. shipments have quickly dispatched LNG vessels to Europe.

Nonetheless, in a perhaps similar and opposite fashion as the Fukushima-Daiichi disaster, the current sanctions targeting Russian petrochemical products and financial institutions have spurred countries to evaluate their level of dependence on Russian energy products. These dramatic circumstances may also allow for a higher political and environmental risk tolerance to accept indigenous nuclear supply and set countries up to incorporate nuclear power into their net-zero goals.