Europe’s nuclear phase-out policies, spearheaded by Germany’s Energiewende and echoed in Belgium and others, remain a documented blunder even into 2026.

Recent admissions from top EU leaders, updated emissions analyses, and persistent economic fallout confirm it: ditching reliable, low-carbon baseload power for intermittents and fossils raised costs, increased short-term emissions, eroded energy security, and slowed decarbonization relative to what a pragmatic mix could have achieved.

Latest 2025-2026 data on Germany’s phase-out (post-2023 shutdown)Germany’s last reactors went offline in April 2023.

By 2025–early 2026:

• Emissions impact: The phase-out caused 730–800 TWh of lost nuclear output since ~2011–2025. This was mostly replaced by coal, lignite, gas, and imports—adding ~730 million tonnes of extra CO₂ cumulatively (through 2025 estimates). At 2025 EU ETS prices (€78/t), that’s €57 billion in social/environmental costs alone (€1,390 per German household). A 2026 study pegs potential CO₂ savings from retained nuclear (2015–2024) at 609 Mt if it had displaced fossils directly. 2025 power-sector CO₂ emissions stayed flat (~160 Mt) despite renewables growth—nuclear’s absence kept fossils in the mix longer. anthropoceneinstitute.com
• Prices and competitiveness: Wholesale electricity averaged €86–89/MWh in 2025 (up ~11% from 2024). Analyses (PwC, others) show prices would have been ~23% lower (€18/MWh savings) with the pre-phase-out nuclear fleet. Germany still faces Europe’s highest industrial/household rates; the French-German wholesale spread hit €22–30/MWh in 2025–2026 contracts. High prices contributed to industrial slowdowns and recession risks—Merz called the energy transition “the most expensive in the world.” foronuclear.org
• Renewables vs. reality: Renewables hit 58–60% of generation in 2025 (strong solar/wind growth), but intermittency + grid bottlenecks forced curtailments (13 TWh) and fossil backups. Net generation fell; coal/lignite/gas still covered gaps. No seamless “renewables-only” transition materialized without economic pain. energy-charts.info

Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU, post-2025 election) and his energy minister labeled the phase-out a “huge mistake”—explicitly citing lost 20 GW of affordable, CO₂-free power and added reliance on gas/imports. They rule out restarting closed plants but push SMRs for the future. Decommissioning continues, but the political narrative has flipped.

Broader European shift: explicit regret in 2026

• Ursula von der Leyen (March 10, 2026): At the Nuclear Energy Summit in Paris, the Commission President declared reducing Europe’s nuclear share (from ~33% in 1990 to ~15% today) a “strategic mistake.” She called nuclear a “reliable, affordable source of low-emissions power” Europe turned its back on—directly referencing the policy choice. New actions: €200 million guarantee for SMR investments (from ETS revenues), EU SMR strategy targeting first units by early 2030s, and updated Nuclear Illustrative Programme (PINC) calling for €241 billion in nuclear investments by 2050. reuters.com
• Belgium reversal: Fully repealed its 2003 phase-out law in 2025 (Bihet Law). Extended Doel 4/Tihange 3 to 2035 (with further talks to 2045); aims for +4 GW new nuclear capacity. Older units decommissioned, but the pivot is clear—industry is now lobbying to reopen recently closed plants. reuters.com
• EU-wide: Nuclear Alliance (France, Poland, etc.) is expanding. Von der Leyen highlighted vulnerability exposed by global events (energy crunch, Iran tensions). France’s nuclear-heavy mix keeps its prices ~€20–30/MWh lower than Germany’s.

Pro-phase-out arguments emphasize renewables scalability, safety fears, and waste. Renewables did expand, and nuclear has its challenges (high upfront capital, regulatory delays, waste management). But data shows the rushed exit amplified short-term fossil lock-in without proportionally faster decarbonization. Models claiming seamless replacement often assume perfect conditions (massive storage, demand response, grid expansion) that underperformed in reality amid energy crises.

Hindsight is clear: ideologically driven phase-outs ignored nuclear’s role as a proven, scalable, low-emission firm power source. Europe is now pivoting—lifetime extensions, SMR funding, and treating nuclear on par with renewables in policy. Retaining existing plants would have delivered cheaper, cleaner, more secure energy during the transition. The blunder cost billions, extra emissions, and competitiveness; learning from it means pragmatic technology-neutral policy, not picking losers.

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EU nuclear phase-out was a blunder

From The indepen.eu

By Marcel Crok

After Friedrich Merz in January, Ursula von der Leyen has now also admitted that the abolition of nuclear power was a major “strategic mistake” not only by Germany, but by the EU. The American researcher Roger Pielke Jr. shows with some simple calculations how big the EU’s strategic blunder has been.

Suddenly there was the next remarkable twist. Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, admitted during the Nuclear Energy Summit near Paris that the phasing out of nuclear power was a “strategic mistake”. What does that remind us of? Indeed, Chancellor Friedrich Merz used exactly the same words at the beginning of January during a lecture in Germany (Indepen also reported on this at the time). This said Von der Leyen: “Phasing out the share of nuclear energy was a choice. I believe it was a strategic mistake for Europe to turn its back on a reliable, affordable, low-emission source of energy.”

This is a huge turn. Think back to all the times that European Commissioner Frans Timmermans, responsible for the Green Deal, the ambitious program with which the EU wants to reduce CO2, spoke out about nuclear energy. In an interview with NRC in 2020, he called it “not sustainable and also very expensive”. He reluctantly defended the decision to label nuclear energy as ‘green’ in the so-called EU Taxonomy, but only under strict conditions and saw it solely as a transitional form on the way to a society that runs entirely on ‘renewable’ energy sources, especially solar and wind.

Irreversible

In Germany, Von der Leyen’s words were of course the talk of the town. Merz himself now said that he “regrets” the nuclear phase-out, but that as far as he is concerned it is “irreversible” and he added: “that’s just the way it is.” The German environment minister Carsten Schneider (SPD) spoke of it as a disgrace and called any new construction of nuclear power plants a “backward strategy” and a “dead end”. According to Schneider, that “backward strategy will consist of new subsidies for nuclear power plants.”

Professor Fritz Vahrenholt, the German ambassador of the Clintel foundation (and once politically active with the SPD), noted on Welt-TV that Von der Leyen was Minister of Labor in 2011 when Angela Merkel decided in a hurry after the Fukushima disaster that all German nuclear power plants would be closed. “That has cost us 600 billion euros since then and led to the highest electricity prices and massive deindustrialization.” According to Vahrenholt, Schneider shows, with his comment that electricity from solar and wind energy is cheaper, that he does not understand it. “We spend twenty billion euros a year on subsidies for solar and wind. With that money, we could build two nuclear power plants every year and have reliable, cheap electricity for eighty years. Dear Comrade Schneider: At least don’t disturb our neighbors when they build next-generation nuclear power plants. We will beg for that flow again.”

The reactions of German politicians are very similar to what we have heard in the Netherlands in recent weeks from politicians about the gas fields in Groningen. There, too, the word irreversible was used, while more and more energy experts, in view of the war in Iran, are arguing in favor of keeping Groningen gas available, even if only for emergencies. In the Netherlands, the gas wells are filled with concrete to make extraction permanently impossible. But that process has not yet been completed and can therefore certainly be reversed.

In Germany, the situation is similar with the nuclear power plants. Although they are all closed, a study last year by the American Radiant Energy Group, presented during the Anschalt Congress (on restarting nuclear power plants) in Berlin, shows that nine power plants could be ‘saved’ from demolition, if the political will were there. Apparently, Merz is not there yet, he wants to build gas-fired power stations.

Renaissance

Von der Leyen acknowledged in her speech that there is a global renaissance of nuclear energy and said that Europe wants to be part of it. However, she seems to be referring mainly to new types of nuclear power plants, including the small modular reactors. These are still under development.

In a fascinating article on his Substack page The Honest Broker (behind paywall), the American researcher Roger Pielke Jr. shows with some simple calculations how much the EU has missed the mark in recent decades with its energy policy, which was supposedly aimed at reducing CO2. He works with two scenarios. In the first scenario, he converts the decrease in nuclear power plants in Europe between 2000 and 2024 into an equally strong increase. In the second scenario, the number of nuclear power plants grows at the same rate as in the period between 1970 and 1990, when France built more than 50 power plants at a rapid pace.

In black, the number of nuclear power plants operating in Europe. Source: Roger Pielke Jr.

He then looks at the extent to which Europe could have become independent of Russian gas and LNG from Qatar with these scenarios and to what extent the use of coal could have been reduced. The table below shows the results.

In both scenarios, we would no longer need gas from Russia and Qatar at all. In scenario 1, with slight growth in nuclear energy, 66 percent of coal use would also have been reduced and in scenario 2 even all coal use. There would even be energy left to replace about 129 billion cubic meters of gas. The Netherlands uses about 30 to 35 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually.

Of course, the sums also have major consequences for the EU’s CO2 emissions. Had we followed scenario 1, the EU would have emitted 15 percent less CO2 in 2024 than it did now, and even 21 percent less in scenario 2.

European energy policy over the past four years has been dominated by two major crises: the Russian gas boycott following the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and the recent transport problems caused by the war in Iran. Both crises could have been avoided, or at least considerably mitigated, if Europe had continued to build nuclear power plants at a leisurely pace after 2000. Fortunately, the tide is now starting to turn, but much will still be needed before a real nuclear revival will take place.