How the energy crisis pushed the EU back toward the atom — and how far the revival has actually gone
Energy independence is again at the centre of European politics, and nuclear power has returned with it. After Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and a later shock to oil and gas markets from conflict around the Strait of Hormuz, governments that spent two decades closing reactors are now extending plants, rewriting laws and, in a few cases, pouring concrete. The shift is most visible in France, which is extending the life of its existing fleet and has approved a new construction programme.
The case is no longer only climate. Nuclear is being sold as baseload power that cuts import bills. The European Union still meets more than half of its energy needs with foreign oil and gas. How hard a gas spike hits households depends on what sits on the domestic grid. France generates around 65 percent of its electricity from nuclear plants. Italy’s power prices still move with gas. Spain, with a large wind and solar fleet and less gas-fired generation at the margin, has recently posted far lower wholesale prices than Italy.
A “strategic mistake” — and who said it
At the Nuclear Energy Summit in Paris on 10 March 2026, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called Europe’s retreat from nuclear power a “strategic mistake.” In 1990, she said, nuclear supplied about a third of Europe’s electricity; today the share is close to 15 percent. That drop, she argued, left the continent more exposed to “expensive and volatile” fossil-fuel imports.
The line was widely read as a swipe at Germany’s post-Fukushima phase-out. Von der Leyen was labour minister in Angela Merkel’s cabinet in 2011, when that decision was locked in. She was not the minister who designed it. The last German reactors closed in April 2023.
The Nuclear Alliance
The political vehicle for the revival is the EU Nuclear Alliance, a coalition first assembled by France at an informal meeting of energy ministers in Stockholm and expanded to 14 members. On 11 March 2026 those governments signed a Declaration of the Nuclear Alliance in Paris: Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Finland, France, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden.
The Alliance has turned nuclear from a Brussels taboo into a voting bloc that can push back against anti-nuclear governments, above all Germany. The 2026 declaration asks the Commission to treat nuclear as a net-zero technology on the same footing as wind and solar — “technological neutrality” — in climate law, state-aid rules and the next Multiannual Financial Framework. It points to the Net-Zero Industry Act and the revised EU Climate Law as existing legal hooks, and presses the Commission and the European Investment Bank to open tools such as InvestEU to both large reactors and small modular reactors (SMRs).
The older Alliance target, still cited by members, is roughly 150 gigawatts of EU nuclear capacity by 2050. Reaching that would require on the order of 30 to 45 new large reactors as well as lifetime extensions of the existing fleet. Nuclear, the signatories argue, is not a rival to renewables but the firm power that keeps a high-renewables grid stable and cheaper to balance.
✍️New declaration from the Nuclear Alliance
(11 countries among the signatories, including 🇧🇪 which used to be an observer)They want the clean industrial deal to support the deployment of new nuclear prod. capacities by encouraging private investment & state support frameworks pic.twitter.com/DgDKOpbBTg
— Anna Hubert 🇪🇺 (@AnnaHbrt) February 21, 2025
Who is actually building
The ambition is uneven. Only one Alliance member has poured first nuclear concrete in 2026.
France
France remains the industrial core. EDF plans six EPR2 reactors at Penly, Gravelines and Bugey. The third Multiannual Energy Programme (PPE 3), adopted by decree in February 2026, writes that timetable into national law. A final investment decision is due by the end of 2026, subject to EU state-aid approval. Site works at Penly are under way. EDF still talks of first nuclear concrete in 2027, though some industry briefings now slip that to 2028. First commissioning is not expected before 2038. Programme cost estimates have risen to around €73 billion.
Hungary
On 5 February 2026 crews poured first concrete for the foundation of Paks II Unit 5, a Russian VVER-1200 being built by Rosatom. It is the first nuclear construction start inside an EU member state since Hinkley Point C Unit 2 in 2019 — and the first Russian-design plant begun in a country that is already in the Union. That fact sits awkwardly beside the Alliance’s talk of cutting dependence on Moscow.
Poland
Poland is building a nuclear fleet from scratch at Lubiatowo-Kopalino on the Baltic. Polskie Elektrownie Jądrowe filed its construction-licence application on 31 March 2026. Bechtel took over the site in August 2026 and earthworks have started. The regulator has up to 24 months to decide. First nuclear concrete is planned for 2028; commercial operation of the first AP1000 unit is targeted for 2036.
Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden — and Greece
Italy’s Chamber of Deputies has approved a delegation bill that would let the government write the rules for a return to nuclear power, four decades after the 1987 Chernobyl referendum and a second no vote in 2011. The Senate had not finished the bill by mid-summer; implementing decrees would follow within a year. Ministers talk of SMRs rather than a return to the old large plants, and a further referendum in 2028 or 2029 is already being discussed.
Belgium has reversed years of hesitation and is extending its existing reactors. The Netherlands has likewise frozen closure timetables. Sweden has dropped a four-decade political commitment to phase out nuclear power and is planning new capacity. Greece, long wary of the technology because of seismic risk, has opened a public debate on advanced reactor designs.
Central and eastern Europe
For Czechia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, Romania and Bulgaria, new or extended nuclear plant is framed as the realistic path off coal and away from Russian gas. Finland and Sweden also give the Alliance technical weight: Finland’s Onkalo repository is the first deep geological waste store in operation; Sweden has approved a similar facility at Forsmark.
Germany: closed at home, invested abroad
German power prices no longer sit at the crisis multiples seen in early 2026, when May baseload futures briefly traded at about four times the French contract after the Iran-related gas shock. The gap has narrowed, but it has not closed. On recent year-ahead contracts Germany has still traded well above France. Berlin’s 2023 phase-out left energy-intensive industry more exposed to gas. Some German institutes, at the height of that shock, cut their 2026 growth forecasts to around 0.6 percent of GDP, citing high gas prices. Chancellor Friedrich Merz has called the nuclear exit a strategic error. Reopening plants is not on the table: the law is in force, and public opposition remains deep.
What has shifted is Germany’s line in Brussels. The government has eased its block on EU-level support for nuclear and SMRs. German private capital, corporations and technology firms are already financing nuclear projects abroad, including SMRs, even though domestic policy still forbids new plants at home.
A Pinsent Masons/Censuswide survey of low-carbon funds and developers found 44 percent of German respondents had financed or developed advanced fission — SMRs or molten-salt designs — in the previous year, above the international average. Treat the sample with caution. Dr Sönke Gödeke of Pinsent Masons’ Düsseldorf office reads the numbers as a shift in investor sentiment, not a reversal of German statute.
Fusion is the domestic substitute. The federal government has committed more than €2 billion through 2029 under its Fusion Action Plan and High-Tech Agenda. German firms have raised on the order of €600 million in private fusion funding, a large share of the EU private total. Darmstadt-based Focused Energy aims to build an experimental commercial prototype by 2037, with a first commercial plant talked about for the early 2040s, according to co-founder and TU Darmstadt physicist Markus Roth. Roth has said the company spends €150–200 million a year and that a pilot plant will need several billion euros and state support. Commercial fusion power remains a 2040s bet, not a 2020s grid asset.
SMRs: strategy first, licences later
The EU’s SMR strategy (COM/2026/117), published in March 2026 alongside an updated Nuclear Illustrative Programme, sets nine actions aimed at first European SMR projects in the early 2030s. The PINC puts possible EU SMR capacity at 17–53 GW by 2050 and estimates about €241 billion of nuclear investment — mostly large new-build and lifetime extensions — to meet member-state plans.
In the United Kingdom, Environment Secretary Emma Reynolds has backed regulatory approval for Rolls-Royce’s bid to become the first developer to build SMRs there. The UK is outside both the Alliance and the EU. No EU country has issued a final construction licence for an SMR. National regulators are still in pre-licensing, design assessment and environmental scoping.
Water is a constraint, not a footnote
Hot, dry summers already cut nuclear output. Low water on the Rhine and the Danube has threatened cooling systems and forced deratings at plants in France and Hungary. Romania has had to take emergency steps to keep cooling water moving at Cernavoda. New plants can be designed with alternative cooling. The existing fleet cannot be redesigned in a summer. Any 150 GW roadmap has to budget for climate as well as concrete.
What has actually changed
Since March 2026 the Alliance has moved nuclear from the edge of EU climate politics toward the centre of the investment argument. It has not yet built a new European reactor fleet. Hungary is pouring concrete with Russian technology. France is preparing a six-unit programme that will not generate a kilowatt before the late 2030s. Poland is years from first concrete. Italy is still writing the law. SMRs remain paper reactors. Germany will not restart its plants.
The revival is real as politics. As engineering, it is a handful of sites, a contested budget in Brussels, and a long wait.
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