The International Energy Agency's (IEA) Net Zero by 2050 study, issued Tuesday, says that nuclear energy would make a “significant contribution” to their Net Zero Emissions model, and therefore will offer an “important foundation” in the transformation to a net-zero energy system.

The IEA's Net Zero Emissions scenario puts far too much trust on technologies that are unclear, unproven, or unreliable, and fails to account for both the scale and scope of the contribution nuclear technologies may provide.

The IEA's appraisal of nuclear's role is very unfeasible if we are to replace fossil fuels in less than 30 years.

According to the IEA's Net-Zero by 2050 study, nuclear energy will make "a considerable contribution" in the Net Zero Emission (NZE) scenario and will "offer an important basis for transformations" to a zero-emission energy system.

Failure to make timely judgments on nuclear energy would also “increase the price of a net-zero emissions route and increase to the risk of not attaining the goal,” as per the research.

“The IEA makes it obvious that nuclear energy would be a crucial component of a worldwide net-zero emissions energy transition,” said Sama Bilbao y León, director-general of the World Nuclear Association. Governments also must act to guarantee that nuclear energy could play a significant part in the green energy transformation to which many have already committed.”

The quantity of energy provided by nuclear power would grow by 40% by 2030 and double by 2050, as per the IEA's net-zero emissions (NZE) scenario. In the early 2030s, new nuclear capacity additions will exceed 30 GW per year.

Extending the operations of present nuclear reactors, which the IEA describes as “one of the most cost-effective generators of low-carbon electricity,” will be an essential component of nuclear power, especially in the brief period.

The paper also emphasizes the importance of nuclear development, citing small modular reactors and other innovative reactor designs that are “moving toward full-scale presentation, with scalable designs, reduced upfront costs, and the ability to increase the versatility of nuclear power when it comes of both operations and outputs, e.g. electricity, heat, or hydrogen.”

Amid this recognition, the NZE scenario's prediction for nuclear expansion would reduce nuclear energy's contribution to the global power mix from 10.5 percent to 8 %.  Considering that more than 60% of the world's electricity is now produced through fossil fuels, the IEA's evaluation of nuclear's role is extremely unfeasible if we are to eradicate them in less than 30 years.

Nuclear energy is now the world's second-biggest source of clean power, the first in industrialized nations, and the only one with a solid track record of a decarbonizing generating mix. Nuclear energy has the potential to provide far more than what is indicated in the IEA study.

Despite the uncertainty surrounding the availability and cost-effectiveness of alternative low-carbon technologies, particularly those that have yet to be demonstrated, and the impossibility of introducing substantially different human attitudes and behaviors, the IEA study should be significantly more aspirational in terms of the contribution that nuclear energy must contribute to meeting global net-zero targets.

The worldwide nuclear industry has set the Harmony target of providing at least 25% of the world's electricity by 2050. To attain this aim, about 1000 gigatonnes of new nuclear capacity would have to be supplied, at building levels no greater than those attained by the nuclear industry in the 1980s.

The aim would also need to maximize the contribution of existing reactors.

Nuclear energy may create zero-carbon heat in addition to electricity and hence can improve the decarbonization much beyond electricity generation into other difficult-to-abate industries.

That's a possibility that the IEA report just briefly mentions. Existing reactors are already producing steam for district heating systems and generating fresh water.

New reactor designs in the works might produce heat and feedstocks for industry (chemicals, steel, concrete, cement), fuels for heavy transport (shipping, aircraft), or directly produce hydrogen.

By failing to include the contribution that nuclear energy may provide with sufficient ambition, the capacity to execute on the IEA's Net Zero scenario faces a far higher chance of failure.

The situation heavily relies on alternative low-carbon energy sources, mainly wind and solar.

While the basic cost of wind and solar has declined significantly in recent years, the percentage of generation forecast for these intermittent technologies would necessitate backup production or energy storage, and total grid management on a far larger scale than has been proved in terms of price, stability, or practicability.

Wind, solar, and battery development might put a huge strain on the availability of minerals that they require.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) just recently produced a paper emphasizing how a mismatch between the world's climate objectives and the availability of crucial minerals might result in a delayed and more expensive energy transformation.

In contrast, the International Energy Agency (IEA) ranked nuclear as one of the low-carbon technology with the lowest mineral concentration and smallest land footprint.

The IEA's NZE scenario also calls for a major contribution from human behavioral change, with individuals becoming more constrained in what they eat and how they move.

This restriction is worsened in part by the comparatively low global energy demand envisaged in the IEA net-zero scenario, with global final energy consumption much lower than the average in the IPCC 1.5°C Report scenarios.

It is far from certain that this amount of behavioral transformation is achievable, especially given that hundreds of millions of people do not currently have exposure to a contemporary energy service.

A fundamental UN Sustainable Development Goal that must be realized is the provision of cheap and clean energy for everybody. A more aggressive nuclear energy objective than that put out in the IEA study will aid in meeting both the UN Sustainable Development Targets and global climate goals.

We welcome the IEA's efforts to present a road map for attaining net-zero energy by 2050. We must achieve this goal.

By relying so heavily on such a vast increase of intermittent wind and solar, and thus depending so strongly on as-yet untested at scale contemporary bioenergy, battery storage, and hydrogen to compensate for this intermittency, the IEA's NZE situation involves a large degree of unneeded risk.

“Validated nuclear energy technologies have shown their capacity to play a significantly greater part in electricity decarbonization in many nations throughout the world, and they can lead decarbonization in several other energy industries.”

“We encourage the IEA to investigate in greater depth the potential for nuclear energy to make a considerably higher contribution to global decarbonization, and to assist governments in determining what actions ought to be taken to unleash nuclear energy's contribution to a net-zero future.”