The IAEA issued this report looking at the contribution that nuclear can play in keeping power going in a highly climate stressed context. This is a context that we know is coming: harsher climate events that can totally destroy a solar farm and take out or disable wind turbines. Not only is extreme weather intensity a growing factor but increasing percentages of intermittent renewables on the grid have dire implications for the reliability of the world’s energy systems. The IAEA looked at the kinds of weather events that have impacted nuclear power generation and found that, not only are climate-related disruptions to nuclear relatively minor, they are of a diverse nature to those that disrupt wind and solar, thereby providing better protection for the safe and reliable operations of grids as the climate crisis unfolds.
“Two forces — both growing exponentially — will require a complete rethink of how to ensure continuous operations of the world’s energy system. Increasingly frequent extreme weather conditions and rapidly growing shares of renewable energy generation introduce an unprecedented level of volatility and uncertainty in power markets.
Concurrent climate change induced threats escalating at pace and in intensity have growing implications for the supply, demand and infrastructure of the world’s energy system. Climate change will impact every aspect of the energy sector: the output of each energy generating technology, the volume of energy demanded and the combined physical and nonphysical infrastructure that ensures safe and reliable operations during extreme weather events.
Together these two forces place a growing premium on the concept of climate resilient energy, or the ability of an energy technology to consistently meet demand amid a fluctuating energy supply. Extreme heat conditions, heavy precipitation, droughts, coastal and river floods, and tropical cyclones will make the design and the implementation of climate resilience plans for the global energy system even more complex, but all the more necessary. Ensuring climate resilience of energy systems will require both actions to mitigate the impact of climate change — deploying climate resilient energy technologies to act as a stabilizing mechanism — and adaptation measures like technological improvements to support operations in a climate volatile future. Nuclear power has the potential to support decarbonized, climate resilient energy systems.” (From page 4.)
SOURCE:
IAEA: Nuclear Energy in Climate Resilient Power Systems, prepared by the International Atomic Energy Agency, November 2023. (Identifier: IAEAL 23-01626, 24 pages).