Mexico eyes boosting nuclear power

Mexico’s only nuclear plant, the 1,600MW Laguna Verde facility, currently accounts for 4.3% of the country’s electricity load, but officials are mulling increasing that share.

“We have a large energy deficit,” energy minister Rocío Nahle said at an energy forum in Mexico City, describing nuclear power as “a clean energy.”

Output from the two GE-supplied boiling water reactors at Laguna Verde has grown from 3.3% of the country's power supply in 2016. 

Now, Nahle wants to promote nuclear more strongly. “We should consider a study” on the potential for increasing nuclear power generation, she said.

OVERCOMING NUCLEAR ANXIETY

“We in Mexico haven’t communicated well on this subject,” Nahle added. “If you say ‘nuclear energy’ it causes fear, because of the two big nuclear accidents in the world, in Russia and Japan.” She said Laguna Verde, in Veracruz state, “is well taken care of, it operates well.”

Laguna Verde has operated safely since it started up in 1990, and its form of nuclear fission is different from that of the infamous Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine.

Nahle said there have been important “technological advances precisely when it comes to safeguards,” making accidents less likely and nuclear safer as a source of electricity.

And yet, doubts remain.

“There are currently more than 400 nuclear reactors operating worldwide. We're talking about two accidents in the last 50 years, three if we include the Three Mile Island accident, which was an accident that ruined the plant but didn't significantly affect the environment,” Julio Herrera, a nuclear scientist at UNAM, told publication El CEO. “There are few accidents, but they are enough for people to have doubts.”

ATTEMPTS TO BOOST NUCLEAR

Nahle’s remarks are the latest in a series of sporadic bids to reignite interest in Laguna Verde as a source of greater energy output.

In May, the head of federal power utility CFE, Manuel Bartlett, met with Laguna Verde officials to launch regular meetings on security-related matters of operations at the plant.

Last year, Mexico and the US signed a cooperation agreement to ease transfers of technology and equipment, and spur discussions of best practices, regarding nuclear energy applications.

And in 2007, an attempt began to bolster output at Laguna Verde, but was abandoned three years later.

Currently, electric utility CFE is considering work to add 268MW of output at Laguna Verde, with US$27mn allocated for the project in the 2019 budget.