Reducing nuclear energy a 'strategic mistake', EU chief says

She says Europe’s fossil fuel dependence weakens energy security

Photo: Reuters

Reducing Europe's nuclear energy sector was a "strategic mistake", EU chief Ursula Von der Leyen said on Tuesday, as governments grappled with an energy crunch from the Iran war.

Europe produced around a third of electricity from nuclear power in 1990, but that has fallen to 15 percent, the EU Commission president told an event in Paris, leaving it reliant on oil and gas imports whose prices have surged in recent days.

Being "completely dependent on expensive and volatile imports" of fossil fuels put Europe at a disadvantage to other regions, von der Leyen said in a speech at a nuclear energy event.

"This reduction in the share of nuclear was a choice, I believe that it was a strategic mistake for Europe to turn its back on a reliable, affordable source of low-emissions power."

Germany, where von der Leyen is from, took a political decision under former Chancellor Angela Merkel to phase out nuclear power plants owing to public opposition and safety concerns after the 2011 Fukushima disaster.

Europe's exposure was first illustrated in 2022 with the end of cheap supplies of Russian gas after the invasion of Ukraine.

NUCLEAR RENAISSANCE?

France, Europe's biggest nuclear energy producer, argues stable, low-carbon power from nuclear plants is key to improving the competitiveness of heavy industries.

French President Emmanuel Macron said the bloc - where nuclear power producers still use a large amount of Russian enriched uranium - needed to move away to other reliable suppliers.

"We need to cooperate internationally to make progress on this issue, to diversify our supply sources," he told the Paris event. "We must also continue investing and innovating in order to expand enrichment capacity further," he said, adding that France planned to increase its own capacity.

Moscow supplies about 15 percent of uranium used in the EU, according to data from the Euratom supply agency for 2024, the most recent year available.

Canada provided about 34 percent followed by Kazakhstan with 24 percent.

France imported 39 percent of its enriched uranium from Russia in 2025, customs data showed.

Macron also proposed standardising reactor designs across Europe. That could benefit France's state-owned nuclear giant EDF, which has struggled to win recent tenders for new projects.

In 2024 South Korea's KHNP won a tender worth at least $18 billion to build a new nuclear power plant in the Czech Republic, a decision which losing bidder EDF sought to block in the courts.