Nuclear has long been a topic of serious debate among European leaders. Most of the bloc has moved away from nuclear energy, with Germany leading an anti-nuclear charge. France, on the other hand, has remained a vocal proponent of the carbon-free energy source, and generates about 65% of its electricity from nuclear power. But even the most staunch nuclear opponents have been thawing on nuclear energy in recent years as the energy form gains traction as a win-win for energy security (and particularly European energy independence) as well as climate goals.<\/p>\n
Related: 3 Defense Stocks To Replenish America\u2019s Depleting Arsenal<\/a><\/p>\n This pivot started even before Europe \u201csleepwalked into yet another energy crisis<\/a>.\u201d Last year, the governments of Italy<\/a> and Denmark<\/a> made inroads toward overturning their decades-old bans on nuclear power production, while Spain<\/a> indicated a new openness to reconsidering the phase-out of its nuclear plants. Amazingly, even Germany<\/a> agreed to drop its opposition to nuclear power in European Union legislation, in unprecedented cooperation with France on the historically contentious topic. A German official recognized the move as \u201ca sea-change policy shift\u201d that will ease the removal of roadblocks and increase efficiency in energy policymaking within the European Union.<\/p>\n We\u2019re seeing some of the results of that shift now, with the European Commission\u2019s open embrace of nuclear energy in its energy crisis strategy. A huge part of the region\u2019s attitude shift toward nuclear, and of its outlined nuclear strategy, is the emergence of small modular reactors (SMRs)<\/a>, an up-and-coming technology that promises to make nuclear safer, cheaper, and more efficient to deploy at scale. Indeed, just this month, a \u20ac330 million nuclear energy investment package has been unveiled as part of the 2026\u20132027 Euratom Research and Training Programme, with strong support for SMRs.<\/p>\n The European Commission has announced plans to bring SMRs online as soon as the early 2030s, with the aim to scale capacity to between 17 GW and 53 GW by 2050. \u201cThe Commission has vowed to cut red tape through streamlined permitting and to provide financial guarantees to speed deployment,\u201d reads a recent Euro News report<\/a>. \u201cEleven EU member states have already endorsed a joint declaration backing the technology.\u201d<\/p>\n Europe is also increasingly investing in nuclear fusion research and development. A whopping \u20ac222 million of the Commission\u2019s funding earmarked for nuclear research will be directed toward fusion energy, \u201chighlighting the EU\u2019s ambition to bring the first commercial fusion power plant online\u201d according to an EE News Europe report. Amazingly, Germany is a frontrunner in the race for nuclear fusion \u2013 which, unlike nuclear fission, produces no radioactive waste \u2013 and may even be on track<\/a> to be the first country in the world to bring a commercially viable fusion reactor online.<\/p>\n By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com<\/a><\/p>\n More Top Reads From Oilprice.com<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nuclear energy is once again at the center of fierce debate between European leaders as a new energy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3981,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2385],"tags":[553,3994,547,256,550,855,1642,3494,920,63],"class_list":{"0":"post-3980","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-european-commission","8":"tag-energy-security","9":"tag-eu-energy-policy","10":"tag-europe-energy-crisis","11":"tag-european-commission","12":"tag-nuclear-energy","13":"tag-nuclear-fusion","14":"tag-small-modular-reactors","15":"tag-smr","16":"tag-strait-of-hormuz","17":"tag-ursula-von-der-leyen"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3980\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/book.jpg\"\/)
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