A European Nuclear Supply Chain for 2050 - Beyond Decarbonization: The Strategic Rationale for Continental Consolidation - Questo lavoro è anche disponibile in Italiano

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:Provides a novel application of system-cost methodology and institutional design for nuclear supply chain consolidation.

🏛政策担当者:Offers a concrete roadmap and decision framework for nuclear energy policy, emphasizing timing and institutional preconditions.

European debate on nuclear power is currently framed as an issue of electricity-sector decarbonisation. This framing places technologies with very different deployment cycles in artificial competition — rapidly deployable renewables versus nuclear with multi-decadal industrial timelines — and obscures the strategic reasons why a European nuclear supply chain remains relevant. This paper proposes to disentangle the two questions. Decarbonisation through 2040 will rely on renewables, storage, interconnections and transitional gas; new European nuclear capacity will operate at scale only between 2042 and 2080, with a role better understood as continental autonomy, industrial policy, price stability for energy-intensive manufacturing, and continuity of know-how toward fusion. The paper sits within the technical literature initiated by MIT (2018, 2024), IEA, OECD/NEA, BloombergNEF, Clean Air Task Force and Bruegel, and adds three original contributions. First, it applies the system-cost methodology of NEA «Full Costs of Electricity Provision» to the Italian case using TERNA 2025 data (mandated by ARERA Resolution 392/2024), quantifying the structural infeasibility of seasonal storage (LCOS at 4,000 €/MWh in 2050), the winter generation gap (115–130 TWh over four months), and the residual programmable-capacity requirement (at least 30 GW for adequacy). Second, it proposes a concrete five-pillar institutional architecture (ENFCA, ERPF, ENRA, Compact, Skills Programme) built on existing mechanisms (URENCO, Orano, ENSREG, IPCEI, EASA model). Third, it treats nuclear as industrial policy and sovereignty rather than as system-cost optimisation. The paper combines analytical rigour with explicit acknowledgement of trade-offs. It applies the NEA system-cost methodology to quantify integration costs beyond LCOE; differentiates by Technology Readiness Level among Gen III/III+ fission (commercially deployable), SMR Gen III+ and IV (still to be validated industrially), and fusion (research stage); estimates the cost of Italian non-decision in orders of magnitude (€175–380 bn cumulative 2030–2060); proposes a two-tier ENRA design (Lite by 2030 with voluntary mutual recognition of Generic Design Assessments, Full from 2032 with binding certification powers, modelled on EASA); and structures the implementation roadmap probabilistically around three scenarios (Consolidation, Variable Geometry, Persistent Fragmentation) with trigger events and robust policy choices identifiable under deep uncertainty. Counterarguments are addressed symmetrically: nuclear is presented as transferring risk from the market to the public balance sheet rather than eliminating it; SMRs’ principal bottleneck is identified as the not-yet-validated industrial-economic model rather than technology readiness alone; ENRA’s main internal failure mode (incomplete implementation) is named and disciplined in the proposal; and a non-monocausality caveat acknowledges that nuclear is not the only solution to any single problem but is the only technology contributing simultaneously to all six identified problems. The paper concludes that the Italian decision window is 2026–2028, that postponement is itself a costly choice, and that effective participation in the European architecture is conditional on the domestic institutional preconditions developed in the companion paper.

• semanticscholar https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.6724859first seen 2026-05-15 20:39:20