INTERVIEWS AHEAD OF KRYNICA FORUM 2023

Paweł Gajda, PhD, AGH University: Decarbonisation without nuclear Energy is pretty much impossible

‘Apparently, today – in the era of the energy crisis caused by Russia and its invasion of Ukraine – the ranks of nuclear energy supporters in Europe are much stronger than its opponents. Ensuring Europe’s energy security has become paramount,’ says Paweł Gajda, PhD Eng, lecturer at the Faculty of Energy and Fuels at the AGH University in Kraków, European Nuclear Society vice-president, nuclear energy science communicator.

 
We’ve been discussing atomic energy in Poland for decades, but we haven’t seen a single power plant yet. Now we are supposed to get a few at once. What we are hearing is ‘small atom’ and ‘big atom’. What is this all about and what stage of our way to a Polish nuclear power station are we really at?

A ‘small atom’ would be a small modular reactor (SMR), which is a marketing, not technical, term. If anyone hears SMR and tries to imagine some sort of power station in your borough, that’s a mistake. A large industrial plant is still meant, even if it produces a bit less power. In the case of a ‘big atom’, over a gigawatt of electric energy from a block is the norm, whereas with various ‘small atom’ designs the idea is to generate several dozen to three hundred megawatts, although the name is also applied to a 470 MW reactor project…

Who has the technologies that lets them build a safe nuclear power plant and is Poland actually talking to the major players?

Five providers are active around the world, but we excluded – for obvious reasons – two in advance. I mean Russian and China.

Our blood brothers the Hungarians chose Russia though.

Unfortunately. We – to repeat, for clear reasons – placed our bet on Western, in a broad sense, technologies. When it comes to big reactors, the following have the technology: US Westinghouse, France’s EdF, and South Korea’s KEPCO (Korea Electric Power Corporation). The Polish government designated the first of these as the tech provider for the first planned Polish nuclear power plant – Lubiatowo-Kopalino in the Choczewo municipality by the Baltic Sea. The PGE PAK company is meanwhile interested in Korean tech as it wants to construct a power plant near the city of Konin.

Are these technologies tried and tested?

When it comes to the ‘big atom’, the latest-generation blocks are already operational somewhere. So it’s both a state-of-the-art and field-tested technology, while the ‘small atom’ we are discussing is about solution that are yet to be deployed. Two deserve a mention here. The first was developed by NuScale Power from the US – its nuclear plants are equipped with SMRs under the brand name VOYGR. Our KGHM is interested in them. GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, a US-Japan joint venture, is behind the second technology, whose BWRX-300 modular reactors were in the sights of first Synthos, then ORLEN, which is now continued by their joint venture – ORLEN Synthos Green Energy. The reactors I mentioned are quite advanced in their process of obtaining permits and approvals, or – in layman’s terms – licencing. But the building permit for such a reactor hasn’t been issued anywhere in the world yet.

At this point, a question is always asked: what time frame are we talking about? Are the early 2030s, declared by some as the date of launching a nuclear plant in Poland, doable?

I don’t think it will be possible so soon as certain statements try to make it. In the case of such projects, the first stage is of vital importance – establishing the environmental conditions. This means gruelling scrutiny whether a given place makes the cut at all. Then approval seeking for the selected location goes on, and the investor has to, at the stage of obtaining the building permit, present the initial safety report for the structure, containing all the analyses that prove the construction will be safe.

How long does it take altogether?

An efficient process takes about five years. Meanwhile, the construction itself does at least seven, eight, and sometimes over ten years, although globally the delays and going over budget have mostly come from the fact that the blocks were built for the first time. In our country, the big reactors are supposed to follow the proven technologies, so delays and ballooning costs may be avoided. But such a construction will take at least seven years anyway. Especially as there haven’t been many projects built in the West recently, so the employees in specialised businesses had no chance of honing their skills. Real-life experience is very important for building such structures.

Five years for procedures plus seven for construction gives twelve. And who in Poland is closest to breaking ground?

As for the first stage, it is really under way only in Lubiatowo-Kopalino. The procedures are more or less halfway done there. The plan to start the plant in 2033, that is in ten years, gives it a very ambitious date.

We keep hearing the SMRs will have a faster turnaround.

It’s possible, but we cannot verify this. So far, no one has built them, so there’s no way to be sure. And they certainly won’t be springing up very fast. We are talking about a potential cutting down of the construction time from seven–eight to, say, five–six, but not two. Add to this the first stage, which is going to be quite similar to that of the ‘big atom’.

And will the European politics harm these projects? In April, the largest nuclear reactor in Europe was launched in Finland, while the Germans – as planned – turned off their remaining nuclear plants. Our western neighbours had their fears of a new Fukushima or Chernobyl really stoked.

All the reactor designs I’ve been referring to are extremely safe. They are in no way comparable to the Chernobyl reactor, which today simply wouldn’t get the building permit. The comparisons with Fukushima, where mistakes and adverse circumstances created a feedback loop in a seismic zone, miss the mark, too. The probability of the latest constructions failing is minimal; the safety standards are unbelievably stringent. As for the policies of various states towards the atom, they are hardly predictable.

There is no unified EU policy here.

And there probably won’t be. True, Germany turned off its last nuclear blocks, but we also have a range of countries which are expanding their nuclear energy or openly declare such expansion. There is Finland as you mentioned, there is Poland, Czechia is planning to build new reactors, as is Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia. Similar ideas are voiced in the Netherlands. The French want to construct new reactor blocks, since the ones they use are now obsolescent. Belgium prolonged the use of its blocks by a decade… Apparently, today – in the era of the energy crisis caused by Russia and its invasion of Ukraine – the ranks of nuclear energy supporters in Europe are much stronger than its opponents. Ensuring Europe’s energy security has become paramount.

And how much can the spread of other technologies, especially wind- and solar-based, limit the nuclear projects? If an effective energy storage tech for renewables entered the scene…

Possibly. But we need to remember that the energy policy of a country or the whole EU should be based on the technologies that exist, not the ones which will maybe appear. Wind- and sun-powered electric energy production is, of course, proven tech. The energy storage component is, however, clearly missing. Even in an optimistic scenario, a creation and dissemination of such a technology is going to take years.

And would green hydrogen work fine as a storage medium for wind and sun energy?

Hydrogen will be needed mostly to, in a broad sense, decarbonise various high-temperature industrial processes, e.g. in steel and synthetic fuel manufacture. It seems its role in balancing the electric energy network will be much smaller. Obviously, if the hydrogen technologies or energy storage for renewables pick up steam, the proportions after the energy mix transition can change. But in my opinion, decarbonisation won’t be viable without using atomic energy. The question whether Poland in thirty years will need ten, twenty or more atom-generated gigawatts remains open, of course.

Is the AGH University prepared for the growing demand for atomic energy experts? Are other Polish universities able to educate a sufficient number of professionals on time?

In fact, as AGH we are in quite a good position, since we’ve been keeping the ball rolling in both research and education. Thanks to this, we have competent staff. Of course, it is not nearly numerous enough – from the viewpoint of ten or fifteen years. Soon, we’ll need to replace the experts who are about to go into retirement. Here, a kind of powerful stimulus is necessary for the new staff to actually start appearing.

But the soaring demand for specialists is visible in the industry today. For all the endeavours we’ve mentioned, Poland needs workforce right now after all, not at the operational stage.

That’s true. Someone has to prepare the documentation for the plants, has to write expert opinions, analyses, has to know how to verify them. Last but not least – someone has to build the thing well. We ought to first educate an adequate number of educators who will get to forming the necessary experts. And I mean not just engineers specialising in nuclear energy, as in reality even at the operational stage they are a minority of staff. A simple example: nuclear plant renovations in France suffered delays, because there was a shortage of qualified welders…

But we are not starting from zero here?

No, we’ve got a seed with which we can begin to build the whole sector. But this needs to be done stat. A support programme is indispensable for that. For universities, atom-related research programmes need to increase in numbers, as without them we can’t form a properly large and competent academic community. In parallel, we need to intensify the education of all necessary specialists, from architectural engineering to energy sourcing to mechanics and automatics. The specialisations in demand are legion.

There are companies in Poland that have gained experience by building nuclear plants abroad.

Indeed, but this is not yet enough to carry out a nuclear programme. Not unlike in education – we’ve got a seed of staff whose experience we can draw on. But in this case, too, there has to be a stimulus to share their knowledge. Polish businesses need to implement the right norms, quality standards, and so on. Nuclear industry requirements are much stricter – for the exact reason that ensuring safety is so imperative in each such investment.

The development of nuclear power in Poland and the hopes we are pinning on it will be some of the topics discussed by Krynica Forum 2023 participants. Paweł Gajda, PhD Eng, is going to take part in the debates on energy security.