A Nuclear Spring?
Why the Needed Shift Back to Nuclear Energy May Not be Easy
It started as a whisper, but now, an open conversation has begun on whether our energy mix should shift back to relying on more nuclear energy. Governments are considering building nuclear reactors or delaying the decommissioning of existing sites. What factors have led to this nuclear spring?
As the transition to renewables, egged on by an activist/banker led net-zero campaign, gathers steam, the electrical grid is fast becoming unstable.
The Iberian blackout showed how easy it was for 15 gigawatts of energy to simply vanish in a matter of seconds.
More than climate activism, the Russian invasion of Ukraine stressed the urgency to lessen the reliance in the EU on fossil-fuel energy sources.
The German term Dunkelflaute (an extended period of no wind and no sun) became the word of 2025 as Germans had to scramble to buy (expensive) energy on the open market.
Donald Trump, in his 2025 World Economic Forum speech in Davos, admitted he advised tech companies to build on-site power generators for their energy intensive data centers since the US grid is likely to become more unstable.
There is a need for a reliable, low carbon source of baseload power generation making nuclear power once again a viable and essential element in the energy mix after decades of divestment in this energy sector. Even the German government is taking a second look at nuclear power after the folly of the Merkel government’s decision to phase out nuclear power.
But this change of heart does not involve a simple flick of a switch to bring nuclear power back online. This article will look at reasons why the nuclear option, while reasonable and necessary, is also challenging and increasingly unlikely.
Harder Than it Looks
Last year the Belgian government extended the operations of two of its nuclear reactors for ten further years. This decision, while seemingly simple and rational, does not reveal the complexity of three years of hard legal negotiations between an operator who did not see a long-term strategy in nuclear energy, other energy providers with interests in the site, a government coalition that included a green party that needed reassurances and a shared responsibility for the continued investment and operation of the site, market access and eventual decommissioning costs and liabilities. In the end, three separate corporations with different levels of ownership were formed to manage these issues and to ensure continued energy security at a time of high energy prices and government commitments to carbon reduction.
Unlike a solar panel on a residential roof, or a wind turbine on a farm, a nuclear reactor (large or small) needs a cooperative agreement between a large industry or utility and a government (with added budgets or provisions for waste management, liabilities and eventual decommissioning). These are high levels of financial commitments (beyond that even of a Bill Gates or Elon Musk) thus involving high levels of risk (financial, legal, market, political and environmental) and long timeframes often extending beyond government and industrial lifespans leaving cooperative agreements vulnerable to political and market evolutions. And this says nothing yet about regulatory oversight, supply chain, market or infrastructure factors influencing long-term nuclear energy viability.
High costs and long durations make nuclear energy provision a political football. The talk of the next generation of small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs - the garden shed variety of nuclear power sites) has been interesting in their potential to redefine the energy mix, with lower budgets and shorter timelines, but the challenges in coordinating and cooperating are not avoided or side-stepped. To the contrary, it is not evident that regulators would welcome multiplying their oversight responsibilities exponentially to smaller, more remote locations or private nuclear-powered grids.
Demand for Leadership
From a rational viewpoint, extending lifespans or recommissioning existing nuclear reactors (like Three-Mile Island) makes sense alongside approvals for the construction of new small modular reactors. Markets are (eventually) rational and are already preparing for such a situation with spikes in share prices of uranium producers, nuclear reactor manufactures like GE’s spinoff, GE Vernova or NuScale, a small modular nuclear reactor company whose share price has trebled without the company having ever generated a single watt of electricity or even obtaining permission to build an SMR nuclear power site. Indeed, investor excitement does not keep the lights on.
What is required, beyond investment and cooperation, is political leadership. Nuclear power needs leaders with the courage to stand up and commit to large, long-term investments with taxpayer funds in an issue domain rife with political potholes. With a political generation in Europe raised for the last 25 years to rely on the precautionary principle to manage uncertainties rather than risk management, the likelihood of any leader taking a decision in favor of investing in nuclear energy is remote. There are several reasons:
State aid and public-private funding projects are more scrutinized as political fragmentation has become the norm in most coalitions.
Societal (post-capitalist) narratives have moved away from public support for large industry-led infrastructure projects.
With the growth of renewables in many energy transition strategies, it is becoming harder to sell the need for stable baseload power sources.
Activist NGOs like Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth, with more than 50 years of no-nukes campaigning under their belts, are now working closely with Green parties and the far right (in more frequently splintered parliaments), making any movement toward pro-nuclear policies pure political suicide.
Public fear of the risks of nuclear power (past catastrophes, waste management, security issues…) are still recognition signposts rather than legacy issues.
All things considered, as rational and necessary as investment in nuclear energy is, without political courage and leadership, investment in nuclear reactors is destined to remain merely talking points. This implies that grids will become more unstable, more investments in fossil fuels will be necessary and energy prices will likely increase as baseloads decline.
How Bad Will it Have to Get?
With governments hiding behind the precautionary principle, how expensive will energy have to become before the private sector goes it alone in building nuclear reactors (if regulators allow it)? It is not just price per kilowatt hour that is factored into the cost, but also lost business, production declines or divestments due to issues affecting the security of the energy supply. As the Trump government seems willing to let the grid infrastructure decline, access to captive power supplies is becoming a core part of a competitive business strategy.
The Firebreak examined the risks of the return to the powerhouse strategy of the early 1900s (energy produced on industrial and data center sites, off-grid and not publicly accessible). But unless there is substantial investment in grid infrastructure, in power storage facilities and long-term baseload generation, the future access to energy is looking like a world split between the haves and (considerably more) have nots. Who controls the generators controls the markets and without courage and commitment from governments to invest in, build and regulate more nuclear reactors, energy will be left to the free market alone.
Access to energy defines industrial and economic development, quality of life and financial security. As grids collapse, power generation localizes and access to energy becomes a privilege rather than a right, future generations will be paying the price for our present lack of political leadership. And that is the greatest cost of all for abandoning the opportunity for a new nuclear spring.