Is Putin's War Pushing World Toward Nuclear Energy?

When former German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced plans to decommission the nation's nuclear power plants more than a decade ago, many believed the decision to be the inevitable end of a protracted atomic experiment that now found itself relegated to relic status under a rising tide of renewable energy sources that were growing cheaper by the year.

Germany—which once relied on nuclear power for roughly one-quarter of its energy—had elected a government supportive of renewable energy policies with generous subsidies. The Fukushima disaster in 2011 only served as a catalyst to that shift, compelling Germany to adopt plans to decommission its nuclear power plants on an expedited timeline.

Then Russia invaded Ukraine, and Germany—increasingly reliant on Russian fossil fuels to offset the losses from nuclear power—pulled the plug on plans to build a new pipeline between the two nations, announcing it would keep some of its nuclear plants running.

It was a massive reversal for a country with a deep-seated cultural aversion to nuclear power. Where public polling once showed a vast majority of Germans against expanding nuclear capacity in the country, a vast majority today support extending the lives of the plants the country already has online.

But it's not alone: As the war in Ukraine has challenged foreign energy supply chains, even U.S. states like California have delayed plans to decommission their nuclear power facilities as their energy grids face increasing strain to meet demand. Spurred by foreign conflict and unprecedented global investment, proponents of nuclear power say its stock is rising, with the industry poised to enter a renaissance period not seen since the middle of the 20th century.

"What we're seeing now is a commitment to decarbonizing the energy sector to a degree that we just haven't seen before," said John Kotek, senior vice president of policy development and public affairs for the Nuclear Energy Institute and former acting assistant secretary for the Office of Nuclear Energy under Barack Obama. "In the United States, more than 80 percent of U.S. customers are served by a utility that is committed to go largely or completely carbon free by mid-century or sooner. You couple that with the interest in job creation that comes from nuclear energy and the real concerns about energy security in relying on unreliable countries like Russia for energy supply, and it's causing policymakers both in the U.S. and around the world to really take a new look at nuclear energy."

In February, President Joe Biden's Department of Energy announced the start of an application process for more than $6 billion in nuclear power tax credits as private utilities companies began the pursuit of experimental, small-scale nuclear projects in states like Washington and Wyoming. Countries in central and Eastern Europe like Romania and Poland also reliant on Russian fossil fuels have begun looking at their own nuclear alternatives, Kotek said, while leaders in France and South Korea have shown indications they are beginning to warm on nuclear power.

But critics say that an overreliance on nuclear energy as a catch-all solution has plenty of shortcomings and should not be seen by governments as the only solution to meeting growing international demand for energy.

There is still no consensus on where to store the waste produced by nuclear power plants, with the federal government's proposed solution under Nevada's Yucca Mountain a political quagmire and proposed alternative solutions, like one short-lived proposal in Wyoming's Fremont County, going nowhere.

The raw materials needed to build new nuclear energy facilities—many of which are still unproven—are still subject to the whims of persistent supply chain challenges, while Russia itself remains a top producer of the world's uranium. And while nuclear power is more reliable than renewable energy sources, it is also much more expensive to deliver, with the projected cost of some small-scale nuclear reactors estimated to be three times that of similarly scaled renewable energy sources.

"If we wanted to be truly secure and independent from other countries, we already have the tools at hand today," David Schlissel, director of resource planning analysis at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, told Newsweek.

"It's just of concern to see the federal government—and good people in the federal government—deciding that instead of pursuing the lowest cost alternative, we're going to be running around to get billions of dollars to projects that either don't work or may not work in the future," he added.

The U.S. Congress, however, sees a shift to nuclear energy as a national security issue as much as a domestic issue. Wyoming Republican Senator John Barrasso, a top proponent of nuclear energy in the U.S. Senate and an early critic of Germany's work on the Russian pipeline, has pushed legislation in recent months angling to increase domestic uranium production while calling for divestment from Russian sources, citing the country's propensity to use its energy exports as a geopolitical weapon against its adversaries.

Those proposals, as well as a Barrasso pitch to create a strategic uranium reserve, have so far faced headwinds from Senate Democrats, who have remained divided between environmental and economic concerns.

"Russia's unprovoked war in Ukraine has made it abundantly clear that the West cannot rely on Russia for this critical resource," Barrasso said in a statement to Newsweek. "The nuclear fuel supply chain should begin with American uranium and end with American fuel. We cannot leave America's energy security and national security reliant on fuel supplies from Vladimir Putin or our other enemies."

The bigger driver, however, might be the international imperative to thwart a changing climate, with U.S. research and development at the heart of efforts to upgrade dirtier energy sources in coal-reliant countries like India and China.

Assistant professor of economics and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University Akshaya Jha, who co-authored a paper on Germany's shift away from nuclear energy, told Newsweek that the question might not be one of economic viability, but of political will. And that paradigm shift, he added, is likely still a long time coming, going hand-in-hand with the broader adoption of other renewable energy sources.

"To say we're on the cusp of some sort of nuclear revolution...yeah, I don't think the evidence is there for that," he said.