Never let a good crisis go to waste, they say.

And maybe… finally… something constructive will come out of this one.

For three decades, Europe treated nuclear power like a drunk uncle at Christmas. Tolerated in France. Banished in Germany. Forbidden in Italy. The Watermelons (Green on the outside, Commie red on the inside) cheered. Gas traders bought yachts.

Then the missiles started flying over the Strait of Hormuz. And suddenly every energy minister in Europe remembered a word they'd been trying hard to forget.

Atom.

Expensive Tuition

I’ll lay it out plainly.

In 1990, nuclear power made up about 33% of Europe's electricity. Today, it's around 15%. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen now calls that halvening a "strategic mistake." Thanks, Ursula… What would we do without you?

When the 2011 Fukushima earthquake and tsunami hit Japan, her former boss, Angela Merkel, canceled nuclear power in Germany. Germany gets a big quake (magnitude 6 or higher) every few hundred years. It was an asinine decision made to appease her Greens. Unfortunately, it made Germany vulnerable. Ursula said nothing then, of course.

That mistake pushed Europe deep into the arms of Russian gas, Qatari liquefied natural gas (LNG), and whatever tanker happens to be sailing past Iranian missile range this week. The Iran crisis yanked gas prices up again. Industry screamed. Households screamed louder. Politicians, who cannot tolerate screaming voters, started brushing up on something they never thought they had to study: energy.

What they learned was simple. You can't run a modern economy on hope and sunshine. You need baseload. Something that hums along at 3 a.m. in January when the wind dies, and the snow piles up on the solar panels.

Nuclear does that. Gas does that too, but gas costs what Vladimir Putin, or the 4x markup Americans give Europe for shipping its LNG across, says it costs.

France Leads Europe

France never left. About 65% of French power still comes from reactors. Now, Paris is building 6 new European Pressurized Reactors (EPRs) and eyeing 8 more. That's not a pivot. That's a victory lap. EPRs are Generation III+ pressurized water reactors (PWRs) designed to improve safety, efficiency, and lifespan over older PWRs. 

Belgium, which planned to shut down its reactors, has quietly extended their lifespans. Poland is buying American reactors. The Dutch are back in. Even Greece, sitting on a fault line, is debating small modular reactors (SMRs) in public without anyone fainting.

The European Commission has launched a full SMR strategy. They're putting up a €200 million guarantee to attract private capital, plus a €330 million Euratom research package for 2026 and 2027. The goal is to have small modular reactors running somewhere in Europe by the early 2030s.

Italy is part of this parade, sort of. Rome wants to overturn its old anti-nuclear referendums and talks about 8 to 16 gigawatts by 2050. Fine. But 2050 isn’t a plan. Italy will be buying gas and begging France for power well into the 2040s, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something.

Real Energy Independence

Here's the thing about independence: It costs money.

Europe is finally willing to spend it because the other option is worse. Sanctions cut off Russian gas. The Strait of Hormuz can close in an afternoon. American LNG ships go where the highest bidder points. Renewables are wonderful, but they need backup, and backup means gas, and gas means you're on the phone with some fellow in a dishdasha.

Nuclear fixes that problem. Not tomorrow or next year, but by 2035, if Europe actually builds what it says it will, a big chunk of the continent's power will come from fuel rods that last years, not tankers that can be seized in hours.

That is what energy security looks like when grown-ups write the plan and send the English majors out of government and back to academia.

The Catch

Don't pop the champagne yet.

Europe still buys Russian uranium and Russian fuel services. Not one SMR has been licensed to build in the EU as of this year. Reactor projects run late and over budget. Politicians lose nerve. Voters change their minds when the power bill drops and the fear fades.

And nothing being built now will cool your apartment this summer. Nuclear is a long-dated option. It sets a floor under 2035 power prices. It doesn't fix 2026.

Wrap Up

For investors, the trade is clear enough.

French utilities with existing reactors look better than they did a year ago. Engineering firms tied to EPRs and SMRs have a long runway. Fuel-cycle companies and reactor-component makers just got a political tailwind. Pure-play renewables are still fine, but lose a bit of their monopoly on the green story.

Gas gets a stay of execution through the 2030s, then the squeeze begins. Long-dated European power curves should flatten as more reactor capacity clears the mountains of red tape.

The best opportunities sit where the political risk has just gotten smaller. Nuclear used to be uninvestable in polite European company. Now it's strategic infrastructure. That repricing is happening in real time, and most portfolios are still positioned for the old story.

The Iran war broke the last taboo. Europe is going nuclear because it has no choice left.