Yolanda Moratilla: "The fourth nuclear generation can be green in exactly the same way as renewable energies"

Yolanda Moratilla, professor and researcher at the Rafael Mariño Chair of New Energy Technologies at Comillas-ICAI, was on Friday at the microphones of 'De cara al mundo' on Onda Madrid to analyse the energy crisis facing the European Union. Moratilla pointed out the lack of knowledge on the part of the political class about technical aspects of energy technology. 

In the current circumstances and on a temporary basis, do you agree with nuclear energy and gas being considered green?

For me, nuclear energy is green, the fourth nuclear generation can be green just like renewables. On the issue of gas, I do agree with the way the European Union has put it because gas obviously emits CO2, unlike nuclear which emits nothing. However, the European Union sets two important requirements: they must be necessary, a new gas plant cannot be built for the sake of building it, and it must emit as little as possible, therefore, the new plants that are built are not going to be normal combined cycles like the ones we have today in Spain, but they must be combined cycles and hybridised with renewable energies, for example with solar thermal or biomass, or even with biogas. A clear example, now that it is a current issue, with the macro farms, a possible solution is to use the slurry from cows and pigs to produce biogas that can then be consumed for our heating or for electric heating.Ç

In the midst of this crisis, perhaps the ideology of politicians should give way to pragmatism and a more scientific reality?

I speak regularly with politicians of all political persuasions and there is a lot of ignorance about the technical aspects of technology, about energy, which is my area, and then reality is very stubborn. We want to close the nuclear power stations, but then we see that we really cannot close the nuclear power stations or we close our coal-fired power stations and now we not only have to reopen the As Pontes power station, but we also have to reopen the Los Barrios power station because it is necessary. Many times the political class should shut up a little more and listen to the technicians, there are many options, but with restrictions. It cannot be whatever the politician of the day wants, things can be done within what is technically possible and economically appropriate for the country, from there, let them choose the possibility that is most convenient, but there are things that cannot be.

Do you have a recipe for tackling this energy crisis and the skyrocketing electricity prices?

Right now several things should already be being done, this morning I read that a coal-fired power plant was opening. Coal allows a lot of flexibility and reduces electricity prices, therefore, if I were in government I would already be looking at all the coal plants that have been closed to see which are closest to the possible CO2 sinks and start to see an investment in that direction, not in all of them, but in one or two coal plants to keep them with CO2 capture, making them cleaner, and not emitting CO2 into the atmosphere. We have to keep some coal in our energy mix because the problems we are having with gas make it necessary and it is getting very serious about geopolitics with Russia. On the other hand, I would be looking at how to reduce energy dependence on gas; to give you an example, in Denmark 25% of gas consumption comes from pig slurry and they intend to reach 75% of all consumption in a few years. We should already be working in that direction, looking at how to clean up those farms and those methane emissions, taking advantage of them, that would be a solution.

We have to keep the nuclear power plants we have, it is impossible to close them, reality is stubborn and they will realise that nuclear power plants cannot be closed, we will have to go to 60-70% renewables, including solar thermal with storage. It is a shame that in the next auction only 200 megawatts should go to much more and in the medium term we should look at the possibility of building new nuclear power plants to increase and that approximately one third of our production would be from nuclear energy. There are more than 30 countries in the world that did not have reactors and are going to start building them, we have France in the north, Turkey, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, in other words, many countries that did not have them are going to start having them and we are not going to be the ones that are going to eliminate the little that we have.