Thirteen Member States with nuclear power produced almost 25 per cent (683,512 gigawatt-hours) of the total of the European Union’s electricity in 2020, reports Eurostat.
While France remained the most reliant on this source of energy and produced 67 per cent of all its electricity from nuclear, the Member States of the CEE region generated a substantial share of their power from nuclear as well.
Slovakia for example produced more than half of its electricity from it (54 per cent). Hungary came second with 46 per cent and Bulgaria with 41 per cent.
Slightly lower on the rank stood Slovenia which produced 38 per cent of nuclear electricity, Czechia followed by 37 per cent. The smaller producer was Romania that generated 11 per cent of nuclear power.
The thirteen Member States in the EU’s nuclear camp had altogether 109 reactors in operation but in the course of 2020, three of them were shut down permanently – two in France and one in Sweden.
Already at the start of 2022, the European Commission began consultations with experts on the taxonomy of nuclear and gas to consider labelling them as green.
Earlier in September, the EU nuclear alliance comprising of 10 Member States, led by France and including Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Romania, asked Brussels to classify nuclear as sustainable.
They argued that as some of them are still heavily based on high carbon-emitting coal, labelling nuclear and gas as green translates into meeting the EU’s energy transition goals much faster and without facing price volatility on the consumer end.
