(Bloomberg) — The European Union made a “strategic mistake” in turning its back on nuclear energy, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in thinly-veiled criticism of Germany’s decision to close its reactors.
“While in 1990 one-third of Europe’s electricity came from nuclear, today it is only close to 15%,” she said at the Nuclear Energy Summit in Paris on Tuesday. “I believe that it was a strategic mistake for Europe to turn its back on a reliable, affordable source of low-emissions power.”
Von der Leyen’s comments are the latest to describe the decision by a number of European countries — most notably her home nation Germany — to phase out nuclear power as an error as the region transitions to a net-zero economy and weans itself off Russian fossil fuels. The current conflict in Iran is another reminder of how exposed the European economy is to global energy markets, with prices of oil and gas lurching higher since war began.
The European Commission put forward Tuesday a strategy to spur the bloc’s rollout of so-called small modular reactors, a technology that many see as key for replacing fossil-fuel generation and meeting the power demand needs of AI and data centers. Nuclear power provides clean baseload power, which can support the grid when there’s not enough wind or solar output.
Von der Leyen said that SMRs should be operational in Europe by the early 2030s. As part of the strategy, the commission will create a €200 million ($233 million) guarantee to support private investment in the technology, with the financial resources coming from the bloc’s emissions trading system.
Germany retired its last nuclear plants in 2023, following a decision finalized after the 2011 Fukushima disaster by then-Chancellor Angela Merkel. Von der Leyen was German minister for labor and social affairs at the time. Other nations — like Belgium — have decided to extend the lifetimes of their nuclear fleets.
Asked about von der Leyen’s remarks, current Chancellor Friedrich Merz said it should come as no surprise that he personally agrees with his fellow Christian Democrat and that he regrets the previous government’s decision to end nuclear power.
“The decision is irreversible,” Merz said at a news conference in Berlin. “We’re focusing now on the energy policy that we have. We have to expand the networks, and we need cross-border cooperation. We’re really working every day to increase the available energy supply so that prices can come down in Germany.”
German Environment Minister Carsten Schneider, from Merz’s Social Democrat coalition partners, however disagreed that the nuclear exit was a mistake. He insisted Tuesday that the government in Berlin was right to phase out nuclear power and called the idea of building new plants “a dead end.”
“Instead of clinging to a nuclear mirage, we are focusing on better, safer, and more affordable alternatives,” Schneider said. “Thanks to the nuclear phase-out, our country has become considerably safer. The nuclear consensus reached 15 years ago has benefited our country, and we shouldn’t jeopardize it lightly.”
(Updates with SMR strategy from fourth paragraph, details in table.)
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