Mr. Cillian O'Donoghue:

I thank the Senator for her three questions, which relate to nuclear, to uranium and to offshore wind. I was quite open and honest when I said that I see this crisis lasting. I think we need to be clear. We must communicate to citizens that it is something which will probably last at least 18 months.

The Senator asked about nuclear power and the outlook in Europe. Nuclear is a very sensitive issue across Europe. It is very different among member states. In the past year, we have seen something of a renaissance in terms of the pro-nuclear countries. Before the election in France, Mr. Macron said that he wants a big build-out of new nuclear plants. Sweden has recently said the same thing. A new nuclear plant in Finland was finally inaugurated and opened last month. I expect there to be an uptake in demand for nuclear, depending on the member state. We need to be conscious that large-scale nuclear new builds are quite expensive at the moment. At Hinkley Point C, the strike price was £92.50 per megawatt hour. I think that was in 2011, although I might have the dates a bit wrong. It was about ten years ago. With inflation, that goes to over £100. That is quite expensive. The issue we see is that new-build nuclear is quite expensive. When it comes to base load sources of decarbonised power, you basically have nuclear or hydro power, and hydro power is based on geographical endowments. Hydro has to be located close to certain geographical endowments. Wind and solar with battery is another option but, again, that is an intermittent supply which needs to be balanced out. We expect nuclear to increase in the role. It is important to understand that electricity demand in general is going to increase dramatically. We expect an increase in demand by 2050 - it will probably double - which means that even if the share of nuclear in the energy mix stays the same, the quantity of nuclear that we will produce will increase.

I will speak on small modular reactors, SMRs. This is a new technology but it has some potential. I am oversimplifying here but the idea is that it is a bit like an iPhone. By mass-producing this product - the nuclear SMR - you make it much cheaper. I was recently at the international electricity summits which were attended by representatives from USA, Japan, Canada and Australia. There was a big focus on SMRs and the potential we see there. We have to see how it develops but I think it has a lot of potential. That is something which is the subject of a lot of interest in the industry.

The uranium market is relatively diversified. The biggest producer is now Kazakhstan, which has overtaken Russia. The market is largely diversified. The only issue is for countries that are reliant on Russia. Certain plants in eastern Europe are reliant on Russian fuel and on what are called cakes, or nuclear rods, from Russia. It is hard to transition to non-Russian sources, particularly in countries like Slovakia and in the case of one of the reactors in the Czech Republic. There is about three years of supply there, but being able to switch to non-Russian sources is a bit of a challenge. They have three years to find a solution but it is a challenge. For new builds, however, there are many uranium sources. That is not an issue.

I am not an expert on the offshore wind situation in Ireland but I would say that offshore wind tends to make a lot of sense. In Ireland there is a target of 7 GW of offshore wind. It makes sense to support that strategy. Many member states cannot go for offshore wind projects. The two big obstacles are permitting and supply chains. We need to speed up permitting. At EU level, we are trying to pass legislation which will basically come with go-to areas for nuclear builds. This will ensure that projects can only be slowed down for a maximum of two years. We are in a strange situation because projects take seven to ten years to get planning permission and less than two years to build. That is not correct. We need to find a solution there. The second thing is supply chains. A lot of the big companies that supply wind components are not doing very well and some are losing money. I refer to companies like Siemens and Vestas. We need to find solutions so that we have the components because they are getting very expensive. That is also linked to raw materials. The prices of the raw materials we use for windmills - steel and copper, etc. - have gone up. Although we should definitely go for offshore wind, we need to find solutions to those two challenges.