Tag Archives: Three Seas Initiative

New “CEE Nuclear Energy Network” holds 1st policy consultation with Polish officials & experts.

On 4 April, in Warsaw, the first meeting of our new CEE Nuclear Expert Network (a policy network) was held to consult with Polish officials and experts. The network organizers include:

Below, I explain: i) Our event, who attended and such, and ii) our other planned 2024 Nuclear Expert Network events for Poland and the 3 Seas Region.

i) 1st “Chatham House” Nuclear Expert Network meeting

Attending were representatives of the Ministry of Climate and Environment, the Ministry of Technology and Development, the Prime Minister’s office, National Development Bank of Poland (BGK), Industrial Development Agency (ARP), Polskie Sieci Elektroenergetyczne S.A. (PSE – the national electric grid operator or TSO), a consultancy advising the ministry, and others. (See also Kamil Lipinski’s LinkedIn Post’s list below.),

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My Kongres590/Warsaw talk: “Building a Joint Three-Seas-Initiative Nuclear Energy R&D-and-Training Center” [Polish & English]

Note: The Polish Interpreter’s voice dominates; however with headphones I could follow the English. Apologies, there’s no separate English audio.

“Cooperation in energy transformation and trade to increase the economic strength of the Three Seas Region …”

Kongres590 – Warsaw – 14 October 2021

  • Moderator: prof. dr. hab. Zbigniew Krysiak, Chairman of the Program Council of the Institute of Schuman Thought
    Panellists:
  • Dr. Thomas W. O’Donnell, (PhD Nuclear Physics; Lecturer in Berlin & Energy & Geopolitical Analyst),
  • Julius Zellah, (President of the Light for Africa Online Foundation)
  • Paweł Kotowski, (Deputy Director of the Department of Economic Cooperation, Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
  • Jarosław Malczewski, (President of the Polish Dairy Group),
  • Dr. Krzysztof Malczewski, (President of the B-2M Company)

Key points of my talk:

1. Poland has no previous experience in nuclear energy; and this is a difficult problem that needs to be tackled starting now. Also, any institute needs a sufficient scale to guarantee both high standards and employment security to those trained for industry, academia, safety, and planning.  It is for this reason that nuclear training in Poland’ should be done jointly, together with all 12 of the Three Seas Initiative members (i.e., the eastern EU member states, and this may soon include also Ukraine – many of which countries already have established nuclear programs). And, as part of the Three Seas Initiative, this means also in conjunction with the USA, in particular its Department of Energy with a vast network of nationl laboratories and obviously decades of nuclear experience to draw on. Continue reading

Reply of IEA’s Dr. Fatih Birol to my critical questions on Germany’s “100% renewables & no nuclear” at P-TECC in Warsaw

Video is set to Dr. Fadi Birol’s interesting answers to my two critical questions. However, I recommend going back and watching his entire talk – and others.

I was quite happy with the answer of IEA (International Energy Agency*) director, Dr. Fadi Birol, to two critical questions I posed, first on how the European Commission should include nuclear power in its “green financing taxonomy,” and secondly, against German over-reliance on variable renewables (I termed this “renewable fundamentalism”) which I said produces high “organizational entropy,” that is, unworkable and unaffordable, completely “reinvented” so-called “smart grids” with “grid scale stage” whose technology is not sufficiently developed all to cope with the problem of unavoidable wind and solar energy fluctuations, which become more massive as the percentage of installed renewables increases. This is a significant contribution to Germany’s (and the EU’s) present crises of energy supply and price security. (The video above is set to start at my two questions.)

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