Page 22 - bne IntelliNews 26th May

Opinion
May 26, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 22
National security
For Petr Zavodsky, director of CEZ's nuclear power plant development unit, the picture is clear: renewables need backup, and there’s only one realistic choice.
The Czech Republic will close 3,000MW of gen- eration capacity over the next decade due to environmental and mining limits, he stated. That leaves the country needing to develop as much as 5,000MW in new capacity. “Industry 4.0 is coming, and will likely boost demand for electricity,” he suggested. “Or should we simply close down our industry?”
Nuclear will need to be around for at least the next 35 years or longer, Lechner agreed, noting that “you never know what is going to happen”.
The panel persistently made the point that the dif- ficulties of predicting the future are a driving point for sticking with nuclear. Critics, on the other hand, make the same argument against such mega-projects. Quite where renewables technol- ogy will head in the 70 years or so project life of new nuclear is impossible to say. Progress will be quicker with funding put into renewables, rather
than diverted to the older nuclear technology, they claim.
Nuclear – which currently produces 50% of clean power in the EU – clearly trumps gas as a backup, Zavodsky insisted. “Gas produces higher emis- sions than nuclear, and must be imported,” he pointed out. “That makes it a threat to the Czech budget and national security.”
The CEZ man was quoted last year as suggest- ing that it would make his company’s life easier if Prague sealed an inter-governmental agreement with Moscow or Beijing to build the new nuclear units. It is not clear to many why Russian gas presents more of a security threat than Russian nuclear technology.
A delegate from the Austrian environment minis- try – a staunch opponent of nuclear projects in the EU – noted that the fuel for nuclear power plants is also imported. “Maybe we could build a new lignite plant that would produce power as a 100% Czech-made product,” Zavodsky retorted, without referring to gas again. “But that’s it – everything else requires external dependency.”