 And we move on seamlessly now to session four, entitled Advancing the Clean Energy Transition. And we have heard over the last day and a half a lot of compelling arguments for nuclear power's advantages as part of the clean energy mix. And we've talked also about the fact that to reach our 2050 climate targets we need to boost that share in the overall world energy mix. So now we want to focus on what's standing in the way of doing that? What are the main barriers hindering greater use of nuclear power, especially in developing and emerging economies with burgeoning energy demand? What steps can countries take to reduce those barriers and how can support and cooperation with the National Atomic Energy Agency help? Those are our topics and we begin with a presentation taking stock of the major factors that countries need to consider as they seek to develop and deploy nuclear power innovations. Gloria Quang is the acting head of the Division of Nuclear Technology Development and Economics at the OECD's Nuclear Energy Agency. And she also heads the International Forum for Nuclear Energy Cooperation. She sent us this video report. Acting head of the Division of Nuclear Technology Development and Economics. Happy to be here to discuss the factors that affect the development and deployment of advanced nuclear. So to start, I would like to briefly introduce the NEA to those who may not be familiar with us. The NEA is a government-to-government organization with 33 member countries in Europe, the Americas and the Asia-Pacific region. Our role is to assist member countries in maintaining and developing the essential scientific, technological and legal basis for peaceful use of nuclear. With our members, we strive to provide authoritative assessments and support governments in developing effective nuclear energy policies based on science and innovative technologies. We function as a forum to share information and experience to pull expertise in addressing different scientific and technological challenges. So with that, let's get into our topic today. Factors that influence nuclear development and deployment. So as we have witnessed in the last few months, the pandemic has highlighted the importance of electricity security in the world. Electricity is indispensable to ensure the smooth operation of essential activities like the medical services at our hospitals, the ability for many of us to continue our work online and the continuity of other businesses so that the world economy can continue to function. So nuclear is no doubt contributing to electricity reliability. But historically, conventional nuclear power plants are capital intensive. To ensure nuclear can continue to support the global energy demand and to build a low-carbon resilient infrastructure, we need innovations. That includes innovations in technologies to lower capital costs and boost investors' confidence, innovation in developing viable business models to bring in other revenue sources, as well as the ability to attract investments in competing with other generation technologies. Now in terms of reducing capital costs, designs such as small modular reactors really offer such benefit. The smaller sizes, simplified designs, shorter construction period, lower construction risk due to factory fabrications, all of these will make financing easier to secure. Especially decoupling civil construction and reactive manufacturing not only reduces construction time, but also allows clients' owners to shift and reallocate financial risk during the construction period. The ability to add modules incrementally or because scalability reduces both the upfront investment and also allows investors to adjust to changes in electricity demand. All these can be translated to faster payback in the plant life cycle and enhance the management of investment risk faced by investors. And in the electricity sector, small modular reactors could be a good fit to replace some of their retiring coal power plants. For example, 25% of the coal generation Venus in the US are less than 300 megawatts, which can be closely matched by the current design output of small modular reactors. And in the energy sector, nuclear systems can provide thermal energy to produce consumer products such as hydrogen, which could be used to store energy on the grid, or as a feedstock to produce other products such as reactors or plastics to new synthetic fuels. The high-temperature advanced reactors can work with renewables empowering chemical plants or water desalination projects, or in energy-intensive processes such as district heating, petroleum refining, et cetera. So if nuclear systems can be leveraged to generate alternative revenue streams, the cost of nuclear can be offset. And needless to say, these innovations that help to increase the cost competitiveness of nuclear need government support, particularly well-structured governance framework and precise policies will be necessary. Next, we will look at some policy examples to see how they can accelerate nuclear development. But before we move on, I would like to draw your attention to some of our work. The NEA and other international organizations have conducted many studies on nuclear innovations, cost of nuclear, nuclear financing, role of governments in transitioning to clean energies, et cetera. Although we don't have time to go into details of these reports, I do want to point out to you that all our reports are available online. Should you be interested in our analysis or technical discussions or policy recommendations in various aspects of nuclear development, do not hesitate to download our reports or contact us. So to move on, many studies have concluded that if we are serious about reducing carbon dioxide emission, we need to consider all low-carbon generation sources, like the chart on the right. It is extracted from an IEA report. In the scenario analysis, it was concluded that nuclear is required to contribute to global electricity in 2050 if we want to limit the global temperature rise to two degrees. Nuclear plants help keeping power grid stable. Nuclear power generation nowadays can adjust the operations to follow demand and supply shifts. As the share of variable renewables, like wind and solar rises, the need for dispatchability will increase. Nuclear plants can help to limit the impacts from seasonal fluctuations in output from renewables and enhance energy security by reducing our dependence on imported fuels. And as we have said, government support is vital in supporting innovation development. Here, we list three examples that can be effective in accelerating the development of advanced nuclear. First is policies that target stringent emission reductions, for example, carbon pricing. Carbon pricing can increase potential revenues of low-carbon technologies and ensure competition on the level playing field. Without strong policy support and in the market with low cost renewables and gas, cost of advanced nuclear will have to decrease substantially from the current estimate to make them economically competitive by 2050. So policies that value clean energy security are crucial to the future economic viability of nuclear. Next, we know that nuclear power has high capital costs and requires investment. But our existing electricity market makes investment in any unsubsidized low-carbon technology impractical. Countries that are interested in nuclear should consider providing policy incentives to aid private investment and advancing the innovation of low-carbon generating technologies. We have seen innovation-specific policies such as R&D tax credits or direct government support implemented in many industrial countries can encourage private sector innovative activities. We also know that public-private partnerships can be effective in identifying areas that need government support. Government may also consider investment policies that overcome financing barriers like price guarantees or long-term contracts or framework policies relating to trade laws which may bring influential innovations from abroad. And lastly, within policies to support effective or efficient and predictable regulatory framework are very important as that will ensure the licensing process will not lead to project delays or cost increases but are not justified by safety requirements. Perhaps the step-wise pre-licensing design review processes using Canada and the UK can be a good example here. Their approach provides early opportunities for reactive vendors to demonstrate to the investors that the reactive design technology will be licensible. Countries are working together to harmonize safety codes and standards to allow timely licensing and construction of reactors for demonstrations. These are crucial elements in facilitating the development of advanced nuclear and will support cost rejection. So before I continue with other factors that can affect nuclear development I would like to quickly explain how the NEA designed our activities on nuclear innovation. The figure on the left shows our work is designed to address different technical and economic aspects of nuclear in both law and short terms. The different focuses of our activities are summarized in the boxes, which may not be easy to see here but you can always find out more details of our work on our pages. And on the right of the slide I provided two upcoming events that are relevant to nuclear innovations for your information. We don't have the time to go into details unfortunately today as time is very limited but please do not hesitate to contact me after this meeting if you have any questions about our work. So to continue the development and deployment of advanced nuclear energy systems will require highly qualified and skilled people. Unfortunately according to some studies nearly a third of nuclear professionals are age 55 or above. The aging nuclear workforce represents a major challenge to bridging the gap between the generations. So to support advanced nuclear the industry needs to make sure that the transfer of knowledge happens between the retiring and new employees. Bilateral and multilateral partnerships already exist. Countries join efforts to conduct research sharing facilities and results. There are also international cooperation platforms like the IFNAC International Framework for Nuclear Energy Cooperation or GIF the Generation 4 Forum which facilitate information and experience sharing. These collaborations need to continue and when possible collaborations need to be deepened as nuclear technologies continue to progress towards commercialization. Both industry and government including regulators need to recognize the importance of fueling capital and workforce development and appropriate investments in information management knowledge creation and transfer as well as training for the next generation of the workforce are essential. Lastly I would like to share a few concluding thoughts here. Whether there is a pandemic or not reliable electricity is an essential need. Nuclear is able to provide that today and to support the increasing global energy demand in the future. For us to meet our ambitious climate target we need to consider all low carbon generating sources. A cost effective low carbon electricity system probably will consist of variable renewables dispatchable zero carbon technologies such as nuclear and a residual amount of gas fire capacity. Policy makers need to take actions today now to support market reform so that clean energy and energy security attributes of low carbon generating technologies are valued. To design effective policies that would ensure electricity reliability and support the global energy growth while protecting the environment we need a good understanding of the relative cost of electricity generation sources and the good assessment of system cost. A lot of this work is already ongoing on the international platform. Innovation is certainly essential in ensuring nuclear continues to support the increasing global energy demand. Collaborations and then countries not only progress in innovative technologies effectively but also can enable cost and knowledge sharing. Lastly, nuclear development can be a long process so all involved stakeholders need to consider knowledge management experience transfer and training to prepare the next generation for workforce. For that I conclude my talk with a few questions. Thank you. And we will come to a Q&A session a little bit later on at the end of this session. We've heard from several speakers about the importance of a holistic view that takes into account the entire energy life cycle and the interface between its different components be they different stages of the cycle, odor or different sources of supply. Our next presentation provides an example of that systemic perspective exploring different scenarios for integrating nuclear power into an overall low-carbon energy system. We hear from the general coordinator who's responsible for elaborating Brazil's national energy plan and its decennial energy expansion plan. He works with the Brazil's Ministry of Mines and Energy. It's a pleasure to welcome Rodolfo Zamian Danilo. And you may speak from the podium. Great to have you with us. Thank you, Melinda. Good morning. And good morning to all. I thank the IAEA for the invitation and opportunity to contribute with this year's scientific forum. I'm very glad to be here. My presentation will cover the national energy plan which is one of our main instruments for energy planning. It's a long-term impact on an exploratory basis of different energy policies we can adopt today. One of the initial messages from the P&E 2015 report is that Brazil has abundance and diversity of energy resources. This includes several non-emitting options such as nuclear, wind, solar, hydrogen, biofuels. Therefore, our goal is to best manage this abundance. The second stage is that we will face challenges in the energy sector that are different and more complex than the ones from the past. The objective of our planning is therefore to assist decision making for public policy. The national plan consists of three stages, strategy design of the P&E report that has now been released for public consultancy. The second stage is to debate whether or not the P&E monitoring stage is performed continually since the P&E report in this cycle will be repeated every five years. This is the key our goal for the P&E public consultancy documents. We believe that this interaction with society occurs in a timely manner, especially due to the difficult circumstances caused by the global crisis of the new coronavirus. Regarding specifically nuclear energy production, we are one of the three countries of the combination of large uranium reserves, operating plants and to dominate the fuel cycle fabrication. At the same time, there are also strategic motives to promote technology. Energy demand can increase 2.5 times until 2015. And due to demand electrification, power consumption can increase up to 3.3 times. So we need to take advantage of energy sources to maintain energy security. Also, the possibility to be close to the load centers is positive in a continental country and because renewables are strongly site dependent. Lastly, and very important, there are strategic spill overs for other industries from expanding nuclear energy capacity. They relate to nuclear medicine, agriculture, hydrogen production, disalienization and defense as it was well covered yesterday in 2002. Considering this context, the National Plan designed 12 scenarios focused on nuclear energy among a total of 64. They are scenarios that estimate the effects of expanding 8 and 10 new gigawatts of nuclear storm capacity until 2015. We also designed circumstances where nuclear expansion grows further as a consequence of a small-packs reduction. So this graph represents 6-4 scenarios showing the results for the net present costs for consumers in billion dollars and the total emissions during the final year in million tons of CO2. The scenarios where there is actual expansion of nuclear energy capacity are highlighted with yellow axis. We can visualize they are within the group of scenarios regarding the trade-off between costs and emissions. In fact, the most aggressive scenario of nuclear expansion yields lower emissions. So we observed that nuclear energy contributes to maintain a clean energy mix in Brazil in a complementary manner with other clean energy sources. But beyond a matter of minimizing only costs, they are the benefits to society regarding all the sectors. As I mentioned and as also did the minister yesterday the technological positive externalities are significant. So the energy policy can benefit a lot from estimating the spillover value created by nuclear technology. In the second graph we have the results for electricity generation share for each source. They are represented in relative terms and for the entire range of the 64 scenarios. So for nuclear, it is possible to see an indication of maintenance or expansion of its share. It is also possible to observe that other sources can be very representative especially renewable ones. And so maybe you can also coin an expression of the Brazilian low-carbon future. So nuclear energy can contribute significantly with the power sector and with other industries without reshaping the sector altogether or causing dependency or requiring significant adaptation. And finally on a qualitative basis the National Energy Plan sets out a number of challenges for each subject and energy source along with recommendations to address them. For nuclear energy, we have identified six challenges for the next 30 years from a public policy point of view. They encompass the following categories communication institutional adjustments coupling with the broader Brazilian nuclear policy maintaining safety continuing to prepare for the end of plant's lifetime and mineral resources. To address these challenges we've identified 10 recommendations the objective is to create a basis to debate with society and construct a roadmap. I would like to highlight four of them for a matter of time although I'll go through them very quickly they're well detailed in the report. So first we need to create a broad communication with society. It is important to engage all stakeholders to demonstrate the opportunities that nuclear represents in terms of energy and technology. Second it is interesting to quantify the externalities that nuclear power will offer on the other industries so that you can construct a better cost benefit analysis. Another recommendation I highlight is to seek project standardization to obtain gains in economy of scope also economies of scale can be pursued by planning two plants at the same site and to be built in sequence. The next three recommendations I highlight relate safety and security as this is a subject that has to remain a priority for us. In conclusion we have seen this week many calls from many countries and international organizations for deep decarbonization. We strongly believe in importance of long term energy planning to achieve our goals of energy supply and sustainability. We are also looking closely on how nuclear energy helped us designing a low carbon future. Thank you. Thank you very much Rodolfo Damian Dango and you may please take this seat here and then we'll write that one right there please and then we'll come back to you shortly for a brief Q&A. So our final presentation now ladies and gentlemen comes from a newcomer country that has been working closely with the IAEA to realize its nuclear energy ambitions. Collins Gordon Juma is the CEO of the Nuclear Power and Energy Agency in Kenya and has wealth of experience overall in the energy sector. He joins us by video. Let me take this opportunity to thank the agency for giving me opportunity to present in this scientific forum of the IAEA General Conference. My name is Collins Juma I'm the National Liaison Officer for Kenya and also the Chief Executive Officer of Nuclear Power and Energy Agency. My presentation is on the IAEA role in fostering peaceful uses in nuclear energy and especially to my country. On my first slide I want to give the roadmap of how we've moved with the nuclear power program in the country and this started sometime in the year 2010 when we formed the National Economic and Social Council Forum to advise the government on the projects that would lead us to a middle income economy and this is when we realized that energy being unable we would need different sources of base load generation and nuclear energy was included in the energy planning for the country and around 2012 of the committee which was formed by the National Economic Council was converted to Kenya Nuclear Electricity Board with the same mandate of fostering the nuclear power program in the country and it moved with this mandate and the first task was to knock at the agency's door and get the guidelines on how member states from the agency in developing the nuclear power program and this is how we came to learn about the milestone approach which will be in my next slide and from the previous ability study which we started in 2012 to 2014 we had some recommendations on the quick wins that we could we could maybe get first results and we got a lot of support from the agency especially when we were developing the when we were carrying out the previous ability study the board was transformed in 2019 under the energy act to nuclear power and energy agency to include the mandate of research and capacity building all of us are aware of the milestone approach and we also started like any other country that starts with the program to develop the first nuclear power plant and as I said that after the 2012 of when we started the previous ability study which ended in 2014 we picked the recommendations that the study had given out and one of them was the grid analysis site characterization and capacity building we also started the public buy-in on stakeholder engagement and I would say that after that we call for an inhibition in 2015 of which also I'll give what came out of the inhibition in the next slide but from this screen I would comfortably say that we should be in phase 2 because the recommendations that were given in the inhibition most of them have been completed and our any follow-up permission was scheduled for March 2020 but because of Covid we had shifted it into December we hope to complete it by that time the previous ability study majorly covered the 19 infrastructure issues and we identified issues in consideration and the preparatory steps to introduce the first nuclear power program and I said earlier stakeholder participation involving international partners and Kenyan government was one of the key inputs to this study I also talked about inhibition which took place in 2015 and this one was with the involvement with the national participation from all relevant institutions and the finding was that Kenyan has made significant progress in its preparation to make knowledgeable decision about introducing nuclear power program and an innate action plan was developed and has been implemented since that time as I said earlier the follow-up mission was scheduled for March 2020 but was postponed to quarter 4 of 2020 and we hope to complete that exercise one of the pull-outs in the inhibition recommendation was the establishment of a comprehensive nuclear regulatory regime and we've worked this journey since 2015 trying to put a regulator in place and this came to fruition in December 2019 when the bill was enacted and we created a nuclear regulatory authority through an act of parliament in terms of the assistance that we are getting these are some of the major areas that we are getting assistance from the IEA in terms of citing of the nuclear power plant especially the preliminary studies we always exchange notes with the IEA we did the same when we were carrying out the preliminary electric grid study strategic environmental assessment the reactor technology assessment human resource and capacity development and international nuclear review missions in terms of concluding my remark I would say that we've reached this end because of the partnership we've had not only with the IEA but other our development partners like the countries we signed the MOUs with like Russia the United States Korea the Slovak Republic Ghana and China this has come a long way because of the government input and the government support in terms of financing the NEPU thank you very much and that ends my presentation thank you very much and we will now go to a Q&A with our speakers and I would like to begin while our time is short so we're going to get them up on screen while I'm going to begin with the room and ask who in the room has a question for our speakers no hands going up yet then perhaps I will start out by going to Jeff to see if we have some online questions coming in we have a few, thank you Melinda we have a couple regarding our speaker from Brazil one question is Brazil has ambitious plans for nuclear power my question is two-fold, what is the level of public acceptance in Brazil for expanding nuclear power and what plans are being considered for financing these projects thank you for the question what is the level of public acceptance is a very important point in our energy planning we are studying on how to engage society as a whole we have a very good example from where the Angra complex is situated in Angra dos Hays with two power plants operating in one under construction and society around this complex is very acceptable we have a very good example of how to recreate the same level of acceptance for other regions and also for the country as a whole regarding financing we are currently designing the bidding process that includes the financing and selecting the private partner for the Angra 3 project and we hope that this same design will be used for the following nuclear power plants so we are in very close talks with electro nuclear that is the national nuclear company in Brazil and also the development bank so the development bank was hired by the ministry to design this model on how to hire and finance the Angra 3 project and also for the next power plants thank you I will pick up on the message we heard yesterday from Agneter Rieseng saying standardization just do what you know works and then keep repeating it just a brief follow up question if I may on two things that struck me as a little bit paradoxical in your remarks Brazil already has a great deal of hydro power so why do you need nuclear and combined with that there is a real trend of centralised generation yet you say it's good to locate nuclear plants near load centres so again that seems to go in a different direction I appreciate this question because talking about the electric sector is difficult without mentioning hydro we do have a very big share of hydro we have nearly two thirds of the current electricity production coming from hydro and I would like also to state that our power sector is 84% renewable today and intends to keep it in the next ten years very close to this level but although hydro capacity will increase in the future we do not increase in the same pace as other sources so we have 64% of its share in power production it will reduce 57% by the end of this decade and so we are looking on how this interacts since it's a clean and base load technology the nuclear power plants we believe perform the same services that other technologies other clean technologies are also very important do not perform and this centralisation is also a very strong trend for instance over the past 12 months solar production Brazil has doubled although it has a small share doubling in 12 months I think is significant and we may multiply by manufacturers for the next 10 years and lots coming from households that want to implement their own energy system they want to build solar panels but I would like to answer this point pointing out that Brazil being very large each region has a kind of vocation for some energy sources for instance the north east part where solar radiation is very intense and winds are very good they have this vocation for this variable renewable sources the south east has a lot of oil and natural gas production so it's still very important for Brazil the south region where you have coal and winds and the north with the remaining sites for hydro so although our transmission system is very well interconnected we need to be sure what level of stress this regional differences will put on the transmission system and nuclear on the other hand the site selection is being conducted by eletronuclear but we have a very good indication that we have many fable sites throughout the entire territory of Brazil which can help us a lot also from the transmission point of view thank you very much so again geographical particularities as one of the factors determining the right energy mix is very interesting let's go back to Jeff and more questions perhaps also for Kenya yes thank you we have a couple here for Kenya first question is why is Kenya looking at nuclear power wouldn't it be cheaper and easier to expand renewables thank you I mentioned in my presentation that there was a committee called social council which advises the government on the priority projects that we need to become a middle income economy and I also said that they identified some of the projects which needed energy as an enabler I took out the long story short we identified that our over dependence on hydro had made us vulnerable to energy shortages and that's why we started considering the sources that we have and we realized that we have a potential of the geothermal of certain capacity but we're looking forward maybe by the year 2030-2035 and assuming that the base load we have in geothermal is exploited and we can't over stretch our hydros reach the limit we need other sources and that's how the discussion of nuclear and maybe LNG came on the table that we explore for a long time the possibility of having nuclear in our energy mix well I know when we talk of renewables we would also talk about wind and solar but if we are trying to become industrialized then I think the discussion of wind and solar side for the time being and we talk of the base load generation that's the main reason why we are considering for a long time the nuclear power generation thank you thank you very much Jeff and there was a follow up to Kenya the question being can the country afford nuclear without a strong government state to state loan did you hear that question Collins did you yeah okay great thank you please whether the country can afford whether the country can afford a nuclear without a state loan but I think this depends on maybe the kind of reactor we will be considering whether we are going for the small modular reactors and or whether we are going for the big reactors but I think the model that the government would choose with a lot of models that can be chosen to be a G to G arrangement where you can have the plant and you will recoup your investment you can have the loan so we will have to choose the best that is good for the country thank you and we are just about out of time but let me just ask also one more follow up question and that would be your main piece of advice Collins for other countries possibly embarking on a path toward nuclear power what is the single most important thing they need to keep in mind in working together with the agency with the IAEA from our experience for the last eight years so we realized that I mean developing a nuclear power program is not like making instant coffee so you have to be patient enough to follow the great approach of the agency in terms of the milestone approach and this is the way to go I would say for other newcomer countries there's really no shortcut the patience has to be there because you have to grow in steps in terms of the infrastructure issues thank you very much and perhaps we'll use our last half a minute to just come to you Gloria with the request if you would for a short answer please there's been a good deal of talk during the forum about the role of the private sector and I wonder if you could just tell us very briefly how governments can best support private investors in nuclear power sure can you hear me okay great I think I quickly touch on that in my presentation is government support in terms of perhaps considering policies like policy incentives to aid private industries or private investors in terms of ways to encourage them to conduct R&D for example because in my presentation I mentioned the importance of innovations as suggested R&D tax credit perhaps or sometimes in some cases countries have received direct government support and these are very successful examples that countries have shown us but of course policies can come in all ways or forms many different combinations that governments can support but I did provide a couple of examples in my talk thank you very much and Jeff any other question for Gloria before we close our session there was a specific question about carbon pricing what the main hurdles were for carbon pricing to be implemented in what the NEA's position was on this mechanism Gloria so good luck answering that one quickly okay we certainly see that carbon pricing is one way probably a very effective way to make the market more fair and of course that is something that it has to be negotiated and it has to be planned out by the governments different countries they have their own policies their own priorities so I don't want to go into details because this could be a very long discussions but definitely we see that as one effective way that we can have policies to really value to design the market to value clean energy and the security that nuclear can provide carbon pricing combined with life cycle assessment would of course make determining the right clean energy makes a great deal easier thank you very very much to all of our speakers for this very interesting discussion also to everybody online who's submitting great questions and also to our audience here in the room for your contributions and your attention that brings to a close our last technical session at the scientific forum but we have the closing session with the director general to very much look forward to and we have several other exciting speakers joining us for that as well but first we're going to take a one hour break to disinfect this room according to the hygiene rules here in Austria that's important for us to do so we do ask for everybody's understanding that we will now take an hour break but please don't go away dear online audience take your own break and rejoin us in one hour from now and same to all of those in the room we hope to see you back here shortly thanks again for your attention and thanks to our speakers let's give them a good round of applause