With natural gas prices soaring as never before and the clock ticking in terms of climate change mitigation targets, attention is currently being focussed on low carbon electricity and heat production. All credible models show  nuclear playing an important role in climate change mitigation. Nuclear technologies offer several advantages which could lead to a larger uptake in the coming years. Nuclear power plants produce non-greenhouse gas (GHG) emitting electricity production whilst guaranteeing relatively constant outputs (in contrast to intermittent renewable sources) thus contributing to balancing or baseloading of future power systems. However, nuclear plants can also play a significant role in directly contributing to other processes including hydrogen generation, ‘power to x’ fuel synthesis and water desalination. These would run alongside the nuclear energy generation which in turn would run alongside a credible waste management system as part of the nuclear fuel cycle operations.

Today, nuclear energy supplies approximately 10% of the world’s electricity from 444 nuclear power reactors in operation worldwide providing 394 GWe of capacity. Nuclear energy is the largest source of non-GHG emitting electricity generation in OECD countries and the second largest source worldwide(after hydroelectric power). The recently published OECD’s NEA report proposes different scenarios and analyses possible technology improvement to unleash the nuclear energy potential for decarbonising the global energy system.