Anna Lukaszewska-Trzetiakowska: Next winter in Europe will not be easy, but we are ready for it

Marcin Haber, Wprost.pl: Almost everything was known about the first Polish nuclear power plant almost ten years ago. We talked about the same place, the same technology partner and the same reactors. Why did it take so long to decide on the construction?

Anna Lukaszewska-Trzeczakowska, Secretary of State, Government Plenipotentiary for Strategic Energy Infrastructure: I think that it could have happened faster, but due to some inertia it turned out differently. Of course, we can talk about covid, about turbulence in the economy, we can talk about organizational changes, we can talk about the fact that some kind of research was carried out all the time, that we had investment priorities a little differently, that the social reaction in currently different, but in fact it seems to me that certain processes must mature to the point where they accelerate, which is not necessarily the result of causal force and the decision of one particular person. It just happens.

Most importantly, we as Poland are ripe for this decision and today we have a concrete, albeit incredibly ambitious plan, which we are implementing without undue delay.

You are talking about the strength of one person. Isn’t it by chance that one person held great power in this case? I’m talking about Vladimir Putin, who suddenly turned the entire energy system of Europe upside down.

This is also his great fault - or merit, depending on which side you look at. On the other hand, I would not even attribute such a causal role to Vladimir Putin, because without his friends, partners and associates he would not have been able to do this. This war has been in preparation for years, and Putin was not alone in this.

This dominance, which Russia has always aspired to - nothing has changed since the time of Ivan the Terrible - had accomplices whom Moscow could use very effectively in its actions.

The business project, which was aimed at making Europe dependent on raw materials from Russia, was carefully prepared, there were people for whom it had to pay off. All the climate policies to use gas as a remedy and transitional fuel have created this addiction. Russia acted like an experienced dealer, the first doses were cheap to make us addicted.

Europe woke up to a situation where dependence on Russian gas and other energy carriers led to the collapse of this system, and fears about energy security radically changed the opinion about nuclear energy.

Do you think the changes in taxonomy did not allow gas as a transitional fuel in the transformation, but could lead to its use for much longer?

We must speak very responsibly about transitional fuel. And in the plans of some, the transformation should have looked completely different. Europe was to be flooded with cheap Russian gas in the interests of Germany, which would be its transmitter. Germany will receive a much greater development boost than the rest of Europe, especially Central and Eastern Europe. We knew about it, we tried to prevent it. Let me remind you how strong the voice of Poland was against the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. I hope that after this bucket of cold water and an unpleasant wake-up call, we will not fall into the second addiction that is on the horizon, i.e. addiction to critical raw materials, including rare earth metals.

Doesn’t it surprise you that, despite the experience of Chernobyl and Fukushima, there are no objections at all to the fact that the government decided that we are building a nuclear power plant?