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Government-appointed Norwegian Nuclear Committee says no to nuclear power – should build up expertise that will make it easier to make such a decision in the future
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- Title
- Norwegian Nuclear Committee says no to nuclear power in Norway
- Published
- Apr 8 2026
I won't write too much on this topic, even though I could go on for hours, this is kind of expected and makes sense, for Norway.
Generally, in Europe, a bunch of countries' leaderships are completely misguided when it comes to nuclear and they stay away from it for the wrong reasons.
In Norway's case, the country has generated virtually all of its electricity from Hydro in the past 40 years, with wind taking up an increasing share in the past decade. Hydro, while not quite as reliable as nuclear, is a fantastic renewable option.
Most other countries, particularly in continental Europe, do not have this privilege.
The part about hydro is true, but all the other advice is still the same, especially these points.
TLDR:
This has been my take on nuclear for a while now. My personal conclusion: invest heavily in renewables and storage today, keep looking into nuclear/SMRs/molten salt/fusion for a possible future.
A key point that a lot of people also miss when talking about nuclear is something the committee highlighted.
It's very hard to find people with experience in nuclear power. It's an extremely specific skillet that isn't used anywhere else. Knowledge of nuclear physics and engineering is pretty much only used in power generation.
People who have that skillset are extremely rare, and you need a lot of them to have a nuclear program.
Countries with nuclear navies have an advantage there because there's a built in training pipeline but everyone else needs to build it from scratch.
For renewables, the story is much different. You just need EEs with basic DC engineering knowledge for solar, and AC for wind. Batteries are very well understood technology used just about everywhere. Every industrialized nation has tons of people that are qualified to build and operate those systems in a way that nuclear can't come close to.
Obviously that can all change, but the other factors mean there's not a really compelling reason for it to.
I'll add another issue with nuclear power that I don't see discussed much which is that uranium mining is concentrated in Australia, Canada, Russia, and Kazakhstan. While Australia and Canada would be a 'safe' supplier to Europe, the world is a topsy turvy place right now and having a large portion of your power come from imported sources (whether that's oil or LNG or anything else) doesn't seem like a good bet. Solar, wind, and battery storage are much more sovereign (and decentralizable) power sources.
The the only source that's levelised cost of electricity is lower than nuclear when accounting for at least some storage is solar. I don't currently have a source for this, but I distinctly recall this being the case.
This is incredibly low, most european countries' prices are multiple times this, meaning nuclear would be even more competitive there. As I mentioned in my original comment, Norway is a bit of an outlier in this regard.
Another point that people often mistakenly make the jump to, like you did, I'm sure not deliberately, is that nuclear is not, and should not be considered an alternative to other renewables like solar or hydro. (Wind is a bit more debatable) It should be a baseline generation that can be relied on for the next century that works even if we for some miraculous reason get 5 months without any sun. It takes little space, the cost is very stable and the production predictable.
Countries deliberately shutting down their already built, working reactors due to fearmongering is plain stupid. It is very important to make decisions and come to conclusions backed up by facts and scientific findings rather than vibe. The sensationalised title of the article doesn't particularly help either. "Norwegian Nuclear Committee says no to nuclear power". I can picture anti-nuclear activists using this exact phrase on posters and whatnot.
I agree with the conclusion, Norway, and other countries that have a similar geological advantage, need not invest in nuclear, certainly not at this point, with solar being as good as it is. But when a formidable number of countries still generate the majority of their electricity from burning gas, another centralised power plant in the form of nuclear energy that's easier to integrate into the existing grid is an option to consider.
Your point about the price of Norway is true, they have way cheaper energy than most other countries.
Your point was the main argument for nuclear was true for a long time. I deliberately argue that that is not relevant anymore though.
Nowadays, there are deployed installations of grid stabilising batteries, which solve the problem of baseload energy. Today this combined with solar (and wind to catch some of the intermittency) is just about cheaper than any other form of electricity, in ~10 years when a new nuclear plant would be finished, I predict it is way cheaper, meaning the nuclear power plant is immediately made redundant.
I agree on your second point: existing nuclear is a great co2 neutral way to create electricity, and the longer they are kept online the cheaper their energy becomes. Germany's decision to close them all was one of the most stupid decisions in the field of energy made in the last decade.
It sounds like you know quite a bit about nuclear power generation; do you know why nothing ever came of thorium reactors? I remember reading about them about a decade ago and they seemed like a strict improvement over uranium reactors, but I haven't heard anything about them since!
So, thorium is a fertile, radioactive actinide. Unlike uranium-235 or plutonium, it is neither fissile nor fissionable. You need a fissile driver to start with. The neutrons from the driver hit targets, in this case, thorium-232, which is transmuted to uranium-233, which is fissile.
In principle, you can use a thorium fuel cycle in a number of different reactor designs. In practice, it is often associated with molten salt reactors (MSRs), because those can more easily employ on-line reprocessing to clean up the fuel and minimize unwanted by-products, and because Kirk Sorenson really wanted to promote his reactor design. Their improvements tend to be exaggerated, and they have a lot of downsides over existing designs.
My understanding is that they were unprecedentedly safe because in the event of a control failure they naturally cease operation rather than runaway fission? If I recall, too, thorium cycle reactors don't have the same harmful biproducts of uranium reactors?
Most Gen III (like 90s onward) and IV designs cease operation in event of a control failure, regardless of fuel. They design them with mechanisms where a loss of power allows gravity to take over and drop the control rods.
I don't know much about nuclear tbh. I don't care much for thorium until it is proven in real world deployments, until then, solar wind and storage actually works. Would love to hear someone give an update on thorium though.