Nuclear fission

With a share of 36% nuclear energy is the most important source of electricity in Europe. Globally, 17% of electricity is produced by around 440 nuclear power stations. As a mature technology, nuclear energy is one of the cheapest options for large-scale electricity generation. Uranium will be available for at least several centuries, has a negligible contribution to the greenhouse effect and is supplied by politically stable countries such as Canada and Australia.

To safeguard electricity production without greenhouse emissions, nuclear energy is therefore an attractive option. The advantages must be weighed carefully against the disadvantages of long‑term storage of the limited amounts of highly radioactive waste and the spreading of nuclear knowledge and technology for non-peaceful applications. Following a period of several decades, during which investments in new nuclear power stations were hardly made, the advantages seem to be outweighing the disadvantages for a number of countries. New, efficient and extremely safe nuclear power stations of the so-called third generation have been operational in Japan since 1995 and are under construction in other places in Asia and Europe (Finland). In South Africa and China, developments are underway for the intrinsically safe pebble bed high temperature reactor.

All over the world, large-scale research programmes are ongoing to increase the sustainability of nuclear power. The Netherlands plays a modest but not unimportant role in this. An important item on the agenda is the development of the Very High Temperature Reactor (VHTR), which can produce both electricity and hydrogen, along with further improvement of reactor safety, reduction of the amount and storage period of waste and the development of inherently safe breeder reactors, which would improve the usefulness of natural uranium by a factor of one hundred.