2023-12-05 20:00 update: 2023-12-06, 14:27
Photo: PAP/Radek Pietruszka
Andrzej Duda, the Polish president, has admitted nuclear energy is Poland's future but argued that energy transition is a difficult process for the country and may take up to 30 years.
In an interview for the Arab television Al-Arabiya, on the sidelines of COP28, the UN Climate Change conference held in Dubai, he explained that Poland's entire energy sector had been based on coal before 1989, when Poland was under Soviet domination.
"Coal was actually the only serious raw material from which we produced energy. We had and still have such power plants in Poland," he said in the interview aired on Tuesday.
Duda added that Poland is now gradually switching to gas as a transitional fuel for its power plants "as a slightly more climate-safe solution... but we have to move towards nuclear energy, which has never existed (in Poland - PAP)."
"The atom is the future for us if we are to fulfil, above all, the obligations regarding climate protection and decarbonisation that result from our membership in the European Union," he said.
Duda also told Al-Arabiya that Poland is currently starting construction of two nuclear power plants: one in cooperation with US companies and the other with South Korea.
But, he added, "changing the methods of power generation is a very serious problem for Poland and a plan for the next 30 years." (PAP)
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