The European Commission to invest up to €500B in nuclear energy
 

In the coming weeks the European Commission is expected to publish its report highlighting that, in order to secure energy supply across the 28-nation bloc, investments of between €450B and €500B are needed in nuclear power by 2050.
 
This move by the European Union highlights the growing role that nuclear will play in powering Europe’s clean energy future. The EU currently imports over 90% of its uranium from countries such as Niger, Chad and Kazakhstan.
 
This growing demand for uranium comes at a time when China and India have committed over US$227 billion to the development of their own fleets of nuclear reactors. China currently has 24 reactors under construction, with six reactors commissioned last year and eight reactors a year expected to be commissioned for the next five years. Just last week the Indian government set an expansion target of generating 14,600 MW a year from nuclear power plants by 2024, which is almost double the current usage.
 
Berkeley Energia’s Salamanca project located in Western Spain has recently commenced development and when in full production it will be by far the largest supplier in Europe and one of the largest in the world.
 
At a time when security and the provenance of supply are increasingly becoming cause for concern for utilities as they look to re-contract for 2018 onwards the Salamanca project is ideally placed to be provide security of supply to a continent that depends on nuclear power for more than one-quarter of its electrical power generation.