On March 10, speaking at the summit on civil nuclear power in Paris, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen affirmed that the EU will officially return to nuclear energy.
The core goal is to reduce dependence on imported fossil fuel sources, which are extremely volatile. The paralysis of the Strait of Hormuz after Iran's retaliatory attacks has pushed the bloc's energy security into a state of red alert.
The highlight of this shift is the 230 million USD support package for innovative nuclear technologies. The EU is betting heavily on small-scale modular reactors (SMR), which are expected to be put into operation in the early 2030s. SMR is only 1/3 the size of traditional reactors, easier to build and safer, helping Europe shorten the technological gap with the US and China.
However, this "nuclear resurgence" wave has faced fierce resistance from Greenpeace - an international environmental protection organization famous for its decades of campaigns against nuclear energy.
Greenpeace strongly criticized France for still maintaining uranium imports from Russia despite the conflict in Ukraine. However, French President Emmanuel Macron affirmed that France is fully autonomous in its nuclear enrichment capacity to protect the economy. Greenpeace believes that holding a nuclear summit at this time is "outdated", going against the lessons from the crises in Eastern Europe.
Despite the noise from activists, the wave of returning to nuclear power is spreading across Europe. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz bluntly called the closure of previous nuclear power plants a "serious mistake".
While France, the Netherlands and Sweden are continuously approving new projects, Belgium has officially canceled the nuclear death roadmap, and even Italy is actively reconsidering its long-standing tough stance.
Although renewable energy still dominates with 47% of the bloc's electricity output, the EU is committed to putting nuclear energy at the center of its industrial strategy. Legal procedures will be accelerated to the maximum to soon stabilize the market, protecting European production from the prolonged consequences of the war in Ukraine and the crisis in the Middle East.
