BRUSSELS — Europe’s nuclear advocates are pushing their favorite energy source as a deterrent against the type of blackout that seized Spain and Portugal last week — even if the facts paint a muddied picture.
The EU’s atomic allies are claiming that having more nuclear energy coursing through the grid can help ensure a stable power supply to back up renewable sources like wind and solar.
“If you want a lot of power and you want it to be fossil-free, then nuclear is your pick,” Swedish Industry and Energy Minister Ebba Busch said in an interview.
Specialists and other officials, including those in Spain, aren’t convinced. While they concede that having more overall power can aid in certain circumstances, they aren’t convinced nuclear energy would have prevented Monday’s outage, which was caused by a sudden loss of power in the Iberian grid. Europe’s grids, like those in Spain, need upgrades, better linkages and more storage tech like batteries to keep power stable, they stress.
