Poland's new nuclear power reactor gamble — where will the waste go?

Poland’s first nuclear power plant has been a long time coming. The new government is finally giving the project a more concrete form. But there’s a catch: that form seems to change depending on the audience.

The version sent to the European Commission looks very different from the one recently presented to the Polish public.

So why the double game?

Poland’s nuclear ambitions began in 1982 with the start of construction on its first power plant in Żarnowiec, near the Baltic coast.

Fierce public protests led to the project’s cancellation eight years later. 

Now, over three decades on, nuclear power is back on the table. Interestingly, one of the proposed plants is just 15km from the original Żarnowiec site.

Even more interestingly, to the European Commission, it is being presented as a green project, while documents just presented to the Polish public tell a completely different story.

In September 2024, Poland officially notified the commission that it intends to grant state aid to its first nuclear power plant. The plan envisaged €14bn in equity injection (30 percent of investment costs) and the rest covered by the 100 percent state guarantee with around 20 percent from private investors. 

In March 2025, Polish authorities still claimed that the plant would meet the EU taxonomy’s criteria for new nuclear projects, enabling it to qualify as sustainable and access funding on better terms through green bonds and sustainability-linked loans, explicitly linked to EU taxonomy alignment. 

Highly-radioactive nuclear waste storage

The problem is waste storage. The latest update of the Polish nuclear programme clearly states that the permanent storage for highly radioactive nuclear waste won’t be operational before 2070, 20 years later than required to be called green according to EU standards.

The EU taxonomy rules for new nuclear projects require such storage to be operational by 2050. 

As explained on page 25: “According to the experience of other countries, the need to build a repository for spent nuclear fuel will arise approximately 30–40 years after the commissioning of the first nuclear power plant, i.e., around 2070 at the earliest.”

Yet, in a government notification sent to the European Commission in September 2024, Poland pledged to meet the technical criteria of the EU taxonomy laid out in the delegated regulation — specifically points 58 and 59 — which include having a “documented plan to launch the repository by 2050.” 

Why this quantum leap?

Why the two stories, one for the Commission and the other for the Polish public?

Why do Polish authorities avoid transparency about their nuclear plans? Are they holding back information just to secure state aid? And last but not least — the question I ask as a Polish and European citizen is the following: were the EU Commission and future investors misled?

If so, this is not merely a formal issue but a potential legal and financial risk that could threaten the viability of the entire project. 

The search for answers to these questions leads us to the only three success stories of countries that fulfil the technical screening criteria for new nuclear projects in the EU taxonomy.

There is no realistic scenario in which Poland has an operational high-level radioactive waste storage by 2050

Europe has limited experience in developing deep geological repositories for high-level radioactive waste.

Finland, Sweden, France

Finland is the only clear exception, but it would be hard to replicate for Poland. Finland has a relatively uniform underground of granite. The country started screening potential sites in 1983 and decided in 1994 that all radioactive waste should be stored domestically.

Site selection in Onkalo took place in 2000, construction planning started in 2003 and  the construction permit was granted in 2015. 

Total: 41 years in the Finnish case. 

Sweden started investigations into deep geological disposal in 1975. Site selection began in 1994, leading to a preference for Forsmark in 2009 and final approval in 2022. Construction started in January 2025 with the first operation planned for the second half of the next decade at the earliest.

France initiated its site selection process in 1991, concluding in 2006. Research and public inquiry lasted until 2021. A construction permit request was filed in 2023, with operations unlikely before 2035.

Poland is clearly not Finland, nor is it Sweden or France.

There is no realistic scenario in which Poland will have an operational high-level radioactive waste storage by 2050. And it is highly likely that Polish authorities were aware of this when notifying the European Commission of their intention to provide state aid to the Polish first nuclear power plant.  

The Polish authorities claim that there are no feasible technical and economic alternatives to nuclear power plants that could provide energy security and price stability to the country's economy.

I disagree and claim the Polish government is artificially inflating electricity forecasts to try to justify the need for it, as well as underestimating the costs.

Either way, the Polish government should inform the commission that it won’t be able to meet the EU taxonomy criteria for new nuclear power, assess the economic implications of such reality and calculate the needed state aid and the strike price accordingly.

If this is the energy Poland truly needs, why deceive the public and itself?

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