Likhachov said experts from European Union countries had this year proved that nuclear energy throughout its entire life cycle is one of the main carbon-free energy sources.

Today, nuclear energy plays a critical role in the fight against climate change.

Nuclear has a reliability factor of 80-90% (with many plants above 90%), compared with wind at 30-40% and solar at 10-25%.

The new fuel will make nuclear power plants both safer and more cost-efficient.

Ensuring that these energy systems are efficient and reliable, integrating larger shares of renewables coupled with nuclear energy, which is a significant part of today’s electricity production in both our countries, will be crucial to accelerate energy transitions

Nuclear fusion power plants will require out-of-this-world conditions — temperatures exceeding 100 million degrees Celsius to achieve high enough particle density for the reaction to take place.

Overall, nuclear energy is riskier and has a worse environmental impact than wind energy, while wind is enormously less costly.

The new system, known as a ‘Super-X divertor’, would allow components in future commercial tokamaks to last for much longer; greatly increasing the power plant’s availability, improving its economic viability and reducing the cost of fusion electricity.

To start, Spain plans to phase out both coal and nuclear power generation.

In the UK today, nuclear energy generates roughly 20% of the country’s electricity, but almost half of current capacity is to be retired by 2025.