The energy puzzle needs nuclear power. The book by Testa and Zollino

By a curious coincidence, just as the Senate gave its final approval to the enabling act on nuclear power, the latest book by Chicco Testa and Giuseppe Zollino, "Il pezzo mancante. Il nucleare nel puzzle dell’energia" (il Mulino), hit the bookshops. The volume serves as an effective guide to navigating an increasingly tangled web of opinions: is nuclear power an energy source of the past or the future? Does it pose an unsustainable risk, or is it a safe form of energy? Will it save us money or cost us even more?

Testa and Zollino’s argument is divided into two parts: the first deals with the energy context in general, whilst the second focuses on nuclear power and Italy. This division serves to ensure a rigorous approach. The authors begin by addressing the global energy issue: as the global population and per capita income grow, ever-increasing amounts of energy will be required. However, the threat of climate change imposes a constraint: while they acknowledge that fossil fuels will remain essential for some time to come, their use must be limited as much as possible. To achieve this objective, two strategies must be pursued simultaneously: on the one hand, the electrification of consumption, that is, the gradual replacement of existing technologies (for example, with electric cars or heat pumps). The other challenge is to generate ever more electricity from emission-free sources, thereby reducing and ultimately eliminating (or almost eliminating) the role of fossil fuels. This explains the focus on renewables, which have seen spectacular growth in recent years, and on nuclear power, which remains one of the most important low-carbon sources globally. Of course, the situation in developing countries – characterised by rapid economic growth and rising energy consumption – differs from that in industrialised nations, where consumption and emissions have long since stopped rising; yet there is a clear interest in finding common solutions, and it falls primarily to the most prosperous economies to invest in the research and development of clean alternatives.

This is where the second half of the discussion begins, which takes a closer look at our country. Testa and Zollino adopt a secular approach: although their positions are well known, they strive not to take sides and to base their opinions on the facts, not the other way round. Moreover, there is an autobiographical element to this journey: both admit to having voted against nuclear power in the 1987 referendum, but to having changed their minds after examining the issue in greater depth in the years that followed. After outlining the characteristics of nuclear power stations and discussing their historical safety record, they present the results of various scenarios. The book focuses on Italy: it analyses the characteristics of our energy system and applies various scenarios. To do so, it takes stylised examples – such as the installation of a data centre in Lombardy or in Puglia – and assesses what would change if, in one case, only renewable sources (wind and solar) were used, and in the other, a mix of renewables and nuclear (alongside a variable proportion of gas). Furthermore, they show how the scenarios change as natural gas prices fluctuate. Since renewable energy production varies with the seasons and is not entirely predictable, the more we accelerate the transition, the more necessary it becomes to oversize the system, upgrade the grids and add storage systems. The authors also consider the cost of nuclear power over the entire life cycle of the plants, showing how the weight of the initial investment affects the comparison with other technologies depending on the time horizon considered.

Testa and Zollino do not dispute that, in theory, wind or solar power are cheaper than nuclear power, but this is only true ‘if we compare each technology individually, disregarding variability, seasonality and the simultaneous nature of generation’. Consumers want energy when they need it, not when weather conditions allow: therefore, we must focus on the system as a whole, not on the individual sources that contribute to supplying the required power. The total cost of electricity, in other words, does not correspond to the average cost of production of the individual technologies, but includes the expenditure required to have energy at a specific time and in a specific place. And this depends not only on generation plants, but also on energy transmission infrastructure, batteries and any incentives. This is why “variability, seasonality and simultaneity take on enormous significance”. The conclusion is that it would be wrong to think we can solve all our problems with a single technology (or by using only some and excluding others). Nuclear power can make a vital contribution to minimising costs and reducing emissions: Testa and Zollino do not see nuclear power as some mythical ‘silver bullet’, but – as the book’s title suggests – as the missing piece in a jigsaw puzzle that is already complicated enough, without us making it impossible in the name of some prejudice.