In the past week, the report of an exploratory research project about nuclear energy in Rotterdam was published. For SmartPort and her partners the port of Rotterdam, the municipality of Rotterdam, and Deltalinqs, professor Harry Geerlings of Erasmus School of Social and Behavioral Sciences and port economist Bart Kuipers of Erasmus UPT have conducted research on the current condition of the technology, the spatial integration and organisation of the decision-making concerning nuclear energy.
The most important conclusion
This research has shown that large-scale nuclear energy is not feasible before 2040 in Rotterdam. Why not? One of the reasons is the current condition of the technology and the environment factors of nuclear power stations, which lead to long-term development trajectories. Additionally, nuclear energy is difficult to spatially integrate in combination with the developments in the port region of Rotterdam.
Emission goals
The research concludes that nuclear energy will not help Rotterdam to reach the emission goals in 2030. Nuclear power stations, based on the proven technology (Generation 3+), will be available in 2035-2040 at the earliest. Further generations of nuclear reactors will not be usable before 2050. Furthermore, the realization of Small Modular Reactor (SMR) - small-scale versions of nuclear power stations which are build from manufactured modules - is still in development and are not expected to be put in production in the Netherlands before 2041.
Would you like to know more? Download and read the report down below.
Download the report
UPT expert involved
Bart Kuipers
- Email address
- bkuipers@ese.eur.nl