Japan has restarted 15 reactors after reviewing the lessons of the earthquake and tsunami that damaged the Fukushima plant, and 10 more are in the process of getting approval to restart.

South Africa has the only nuclear power plant on the African continent, although Russia is building one in Egypt, and several other African nations are exploring the technology.

“The momentum we are seeing today is the result of a growing recognition that reliable, low-carbon electricity will be essential to meet the world’s rising energy demand,” said Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

EU eyes nuclear expansion

Europe sought to wean itself off Russian energy after the Ukraine conflict, but its dependence on hydrocarbons was underlined by the war in the Middle East.

The European Commission has shifted its perception of nuclear energy and views it as part of clean energy, along with wind and solar power, to achieve climate goals.

In 1990, nuclear energy accounted for about a third of Europe’s electricity; now it’s only about 15%, and von der Leyen has acknowledged that its reliance on imported fossil fuels puts it at a disadvantage.

“I believe that it was a strategic mistake for Europe to turn its back on a reliable, affordable source of low-emissions power,” she said recently. “In the last years, we see a global revival of nuclear energy. And Europe wants to be part of it.”

The EU is considering the development of Small Modular Reactors. Expected to become operational in the early 2030s, they are seen as cheaper and faster to build and more flexible than traditional reactors.

France and a few other EU members, including Sweden and Finland, have spearheaded nuclear power. On the other hand, Germany, Austria and Italy are among the EU members that outlawed its use.

In a major policy reversal last year, Belgium repealed a law that demanded the closure of its reactors and extended their lifespan. Spain, meanwhile, still plans to phase out its nuclear capacity and shut down its seven operational reactors between 2027 and 2035.

France remains a nuclear powerhouse

With 57 reactors at 19 plants, France relies on nuclear power for nearly 70% of its electricity.

Successive governments have backed nuclear power as central to France’s energy independence, undeterred by the Chernobyl disaster. In 2022, President Emmanuel Macron announced plans to build six new pressurized water reactors, aiming to cut greenhouse gas emissions and support the transition to low-carbon energy.

The COVID-19 pandemic, combined with the gas supply crunch triggered by the conflict in Ukraine, “revealed the limits of deploying renewable electricity and Europe’s dependence on gas,” said Nicolas Goldberg, a partner at Paris-based Colombus Consulting.

“France has therefore been reinforced in its strategy of maintaining its existing nuclear plants, which means extending their lifespan as much as possible,” he said.

Germany stands firm in phasing it out

Decades of anti-nuclear protests in Germany, stoked by past accidents, had pressured successive governments to end using a technology that critics saw as unsafe and unsustainable. Germany switched off its last three nuclear reactors in 2023, the final step in plans that had been drawn up by governments of various political stripes over two decades.

A significant nuclear revival in Europe’s biggest economy still looks far-fetched, despite recent talk among some in Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s center-right bloc about being open to a possible future generation of small modular reactors.

“The decision is irreversible — I regret it, but that’s how it is,” Merz said, noting the plant operators’s “consistent answer was: ’We are too far along with demolition.’”

Russian domestic nuclear expansion and exporting reactors

Russia has aggressively expanded its nuclear power capacity both domestically and internationally.

It has 34 operational reactors, including eight Chernobyl-type RBMK reactors, known as the light water graphite reactors, which account for about a quarter of all nuclear power generation. They have seen extensive modernizations, adding safety features to fix the inherent design flaw that, coupled with human error, triggered the Chernobyl disaster.

Key projects under construction include new units at the Kursk, Leningrad and Smolensk sites, a prospective plant in the Far East, and prospective floating nuclear units.

Russia also is building 20 reactors in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and has signed contracts to launch construction in several other countries.

Russia has built the first nuclear reactor for neighboring ally Belarus, which has seen a third of its territory contaminated from the Chernobyl accident.

“Belarusian authorities are using the changed context and the so-called ‘nuclear renaissance’ to claim that we are acting like everyone else in the world, rather than solving the problems of Belarusians in the contaminated territories,” said Irina Sukhiy, founder of the Belarus ecological group Green Network.

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John Leicester and Sylvie Corbet in Paris, Geir Moulson in Berlin, Gerald Imray in Cape Town, South Africa and Yuras Karmanau in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed.