World
Europe is losing nuclear power just when it really needs energy
As the Fukushima disaster unfolded in Japan in 2011, then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel made a dramatic decision that delighted her country’s anti-nuclear movement: all reactors would be ditched.
What couldn’t have been predicted was that Europe would find itself mired in one of the worst energy crises in its history. A decade later, the continent’s biggest economy has shut down almost all its capacity already. The rest will be switched off at the end of 2022 — at the worst possible time.
Wholesale power prices are more than four times what they were at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Governments are having to take emergency action to support domestic and industrial consumers faced with crippling bills, which could rise higher if the tension over Ukraine escalates. The crunch has not only exposed Europe’s supply vulnerabilities, but also the entrenched cultural and political divisions over the nuclear industry and a failure to forge a collective vision.
Other regions meanwhile are cracking on. China is moving fast on nuclear to try to clean up its air quality. Its suite of reactors is on track to surpass that of the US, the world’s largest, by as soon as the middle of this decade. Russia is moving forward with new stations at home and has more than 20 reactors confirmed or planned for export construction, according to the World Nuclear Association.
“I don’t think we’re ever going to see consensus across Europe with regards to the continued running of existing assets, let alone the construction of new ones,” said Peter Osbaldstone, research director for power and renewables at Wood Mackenzie Group Ltd. in the UK “It’s such a massive polarizer of opinions that national energy policy is required in strength over a sustained period to support new nuclear investment.”
France, Europe’s most prolific nuclear energy producer, is promising an atomic renaissance as its output becomes less reliable. Britain plans to replace aging plants in the quest for cleaner, more reliable energy sources. The Netherlands wants to add more capacity, Poland also is seeking to join the nuclear club, and Finland is starting to produce electricity later this month from its first new plant in four decades.
Belgium and Spain, meanwhile, are following Germany’s lead in abandoning nuclear, albeit on different timeframes. Austria rejected it in a referendum in 1978.
Nuclear power is seen by its proponents as vital to reaching net-zero targets. Once built, reactors supply low-carbon electricity all the time, unlike intermittent wind or solar.
Plants, though, take a decade or more to construct at best and the risk is high of running over time and over budget. Finland’s new Olkiluoto-3 unit is coming on line after a 12-year delay and billions of euros in financial overruns. Then there’s the waste, which stays hazardous for 100,000 years.
“Despite growing international calls to address climate change and a growing number of national net-zero pledges, the global nuclear industry remains largely on its heels,” said Chris Gadomski, head of nuclear research at Bloomberg New Energy Finance.
Indeed, European Union members are still quarreling over whether nuclear even counts as sustainable. Electorates are also split. Polling by YouGov Plc published in December found that Danes, Germans and Italians were far more nuclear-skeptic than the French, British or Spanish.
“It comes down to politics,” said Vince Zabielski, partner at New York-based law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, who was a nuclear engineer for 15 years. “Everything political ebbs and flows, but when the lights start going off people have a completely different perspective.”
What’s Behind Europe’s Skyrocketing Energy Prices
There’s a risk of rolling blackouts this winter. Supply concerns plaguing Europe have sent gas and electricity prices to record levels and inflation has ballooned. There’s also mounting tension with Russia over a possible invasion of Ukraine, which could lead to disrupted supplies of gas. All this is strengthening the argument that Europe needs to reduce its dependence on international sources of gas.
Europe will need to invest 500 billion euros ($568 billion) in nuclear over the next 30 years to meet growing demand for electricity and achieve its carbon reduction targets, according to Thierry Breton, the EU’s internal market commissioner. His comments come after the bloc unveiled plans last month to allow certain natural gas and nuclear energy projects to be classified as sustainable investments.
“Nuclear power is a very long-term investment and investors need some kind of guarantee that it will generate a payoff,” said Elina Brutschin at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. In order to survive in liberalized economies like the EU, the technology needs policy support to help protect investors, she said.
That already looks like a tall order. The European Commission has been told by a key expert group that the labeling risks raising greenhouse gas emissions and undermining the bloc’s reputation as a bastion for environmentally friendly finance.
Austria has threatened to sue the European Commission over attempts to label atomic energy as green. The nation previously attempted a legal challenge, when the UK was still an EU member, to stop the construction of Electricite de France SA’s Hinkley Point C plant, in the west of England. It has also commenced litigation against new Russia-backed projects in neighboring Hungary.
Germany, which has missed its carbon emissions targets for the past two years, has been criticized by some environmentalists and climate scientists for shutting down a supply of clean power at the worst time. Its final three reactors will be halted this year. Yet that was never going to be reversed with the Greens part of the new coalition government.
The contribution of renewables in Germany has almost tripled since the year before Fukushima, and was 42% of supply last year. That’s a drop from 46% from the year before and means the country’s new government will have to install some 3 gigawatts of renewables — equivalent to the generating capacity of three nuclear reactors — every year this decade to hit the country’s 80% goal.
“Other countries don’t have this strong political background that goes back to three decades of anti-nuclear protests,” said Manuel Koehler, managing director of Aurora Energy Research Ltd., a company analyzing power markets and founded by Oxford University academics.
At the heart of the issue is that countries with a history of nuclear weapons will be more likely to use the fuel for power generation. They will also have built an industry and jobs in civil engineering around that.
Germany’s Greens grew out of anti-nuclear protest movements against the stationing of US nuclear missiles in West Germany. The 1986 Chernobyl meltdown, which sent plumes of radioactive fallout wafting over parts of western Europe, helped galvanize the broader population. Nuclear phase-out plans were originally laid out in 2002, but were put on hold by the country’s conservative governments. The 2011 Fukushima meltdowns reinvigorated public debate, ultimately prompting Merkel to implement them.
It’s not easy to undo that commitment, said Mark Hibbs, a Bonn, Germany-based nuclear analyst at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: “These are strategic decisions, that have been taken long in advance.”
In France, President Emmanuel Macron is about to embark on a renewed embrace of nuclear power. The nation produces about two-thirds of its power from reactors and is the biggest exporter of electricity in Europe. Notably, that includes anti-nuclear Germany and Austria.
EDF, the world’s biggest nuclear plant operator, is urging the French government to support construction of six new large-scale reactors at an estimated cost of about 50 billion euros. The first of them would start generating in 2035.
But even France has faced setbacks. Development of new projects has been put on hold after years of technical issues at the Flamanville-3 project in Normandy. The plant is now scheduled to be completed next year.
In the UK, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said that the global gas price crisis underscores the need for more home-generated clean power. By 2024, five of Britain’s eight plants will be shuttered because they are too old. Hinkley Point C is due to be finished in 2026 and the government will make a final decision on another station before an election due in 2024.
One solution is to build small modular reactors, or SMRs, which are quicker to construct and cheaper. The US is at the forefront of efforts to design smaller nuclear systems with plans also underway in the UK and France. Yet they too have faced delays. SMR designs have existed for decades though face the same challenging economic metrics and safety and security regulations of big plants.
The trouble, as ever, is time. “Any investment decisions you make now aren’t going to come to fruition until the 2030s,” said Osbaldstone, the research director at Wood Mackenzie. “Nuclear isn’t an answer to the current energy crisis.”
Disclaimer: This article first appeared on Bloomberg, and is published by special syndication arrangement.
World
Funeral processions held in holy Iraqi cities for Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
Thousands of mourners attended funeral processions for Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Wednesday in the holy Iraqi cities of Najaf and Karbala as part of dayslong funeral ceremonies for the Islamic Republic’s late supreme leader.
The ceremonies began on Saturday, with authorities shutting down streets, airspace and daily life in Tehran, Iran’s capital, as throngs commemorated the life of the man who led Iran for decades with an iron fist while confronting the West. His body was later taken from Najaf to Karbala before it is to be returned to Iran.
Khamenei was killed in late February in wide-scale U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran that started the war. The 86-year-old supreme leader was among several senior Iranian leaders killed in strikes during the war.
Talks on ending the war between the United States and Iran appear to be on hold until after the burial.
However, strikes from both sides in the Persian Gulf on Tuesday and into Wednesday raised risks that the interim agreement to end the monthslong conflict that engulfed the Middle East could completely break down.
The U.S. military attacked Iran early Wednesday after it said Tehran struck three ships in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran then launched retaliatory strikes on Kuwait and Bahrain.
Khamenei’s body arrived on Tuesday in Najaf, considered one of the holiest of cities for millions of Shiite Muslims worldwide. Mourners holding portraits of Khamenei welcomed the body and senior officials escorting it, including Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.
The body was placed in a casket draped in the Islamic Republic’s flag and encased in glass.
Some supporters performed self-flagellation on the streets, while others waved Iranian as well as red and black flags symbolizing mourning and revenge.
Muhammad Taqi al-Hakim, a senior scholar at the Najaf seminary, led the funeral prayers at the Shrine of Imam Ali, the Prophet Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law.
As the coffin was carried into the shrine, large crowds pushed and shoved their way to get close to it. Some threw themselves onto the casket, as attendants struggled to control the crowd, urging the pallbearers to carry it closer to the ground for fear it might fall.
“We, the people of Iraq, will remain a thorn in the eyes of the enemies,” said Jaafar Jawad, a funeral attendee. “(His body arriving here) is the greatest possible honor, and God willing, we will be loyal and repay a little of his debt in the holy city of Najaf.”
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The body later arrived in Karbala, also a holy city for Shiites, where Imam Hussein, the grandson of the prophet, was killed in 680 AD. Thousands of supporters gathered in the desert heat in and around the shrine while Abdul Mahdi al-Karbalaei, a representative of Iraq’s top Shiite religious authority, led the prayers there.
Iran’s new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, has yet to make an appearance at the funeral ceremonies, which are unfolding over several days. He is believed to be in hiding after reportedly being wounded in the airstrike that killed his father.
They called themselves the “German driving school for experts,” but prosecutors say the true purpose of their Telegram chats was to brag about the women they raped and share tips about how to drug them.
In posts that sometimes included photos and videos of their attacks on unconscious victims, they referred to women as “cars,” sedatives as “fuel” and rape as “driving,” according to court documents. They called their victims “dead pigs.”
Investigators have been poring through several years’ worth of posts in roughly two dozen group chats on the popular messaging app that authorities believe served an online predator network of mainly Chinese men targeting mostly Chinese women in Germany. Their investigation has already led to the convictions of three alleged inner circle members on rape and other charges. A fourth was convicted Wednesday in Berlin.
Predator network’s coded language
A group calling itself a “German driving school for experts” in chat groups on Telegram used code words when discussing drugging and sexually abusing women, according to prosecutors. Some of the terms used:
| “Gas station” | A place where drugs could be obtained |
|---|---|
| “Fuel” or “oil” | Sedatives |
| “Filling up” | Drugging victims |
| “Driving” | Sexually assaulting a sedated victim |
| “Luxury car” | An attractive woman |
| “Wild cars” | Strangers |
| “Private cars” | Girlfriends |
| “Dead pig” | An unconscious woman |
| “Half-dead pig” | A partially-conscious woman |
Major details of the investigation remain unknown, at least to the public, including how many attacks and perpetrators have been linked to the German Telegram chats and how the chats, some of which reportedly had tens of thousands of members, could have operated for so long. It’s also unclear if the chats are linked to a ballooning investigation in Europe and the Americas into drug-facilitated sexual assaults by misogynist online communities.
Chinese community rallies to support the victims
Under German privacy laws, prosecutors are limited in what they can say outside the courtroom, documents are restricted and, in the ongoing case in Berlin, members of the public have been forced to leave the courtroom during parts of the trial.
This may be why the investigation into the Telegram group has garnered less attention in Germany than might be expected. But members of the country’s Chinese community, mostly women, have been attending court proceedings to show support for the victims even if they don’t know them.
“What makes one really angry is to see that such groups hate women, they have no respect,” said Fu Xiao, who traveled roughly 500 kilometers (310 miles) to Berlin last week to attend the trial. “Women aren’t seen as people.”
In China, state media has covered the cases comprehensively, but wider discussion about the prosecutions on Chinese-language social media like Rednote has been partially censored. Certain tags have been more likely to get a post deleted or banned on Rednote, screenshots and searches show. But posts using less direct language have survived the censors, including ones that refer to “date rape” or the euphemistic “students studying abroad in Germany.”
China’s Ministry of Public Security and Rednote didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Cases echo a landmark French trial
The German cases have drawn comparisons to the attacks on Gisèle Pelicot, a French woman who, over the course of nearly a decade, was repeatedly drugged and raped by her then-husband and strangers he invited to their home. The trial — and Pelicot’s decision to waive her anonymity — prompted a reckoning over rape culture in France and beyond.
“Pelicot is not an isolated case,” Judge Markus Koppenleitner said during a hearing in Munich for one of the Chinese men convicted in the German investigation. “This is not a Chinese or French phenomenon, but one that also exists in Germany and, ultimately, worldwide.”
Similar cases to the “German driving school” investigation have been popping up around the globe. Although authorities haven’t publicly linked them to the German prosecutions, some investigators have cited tips from German authorities and journalists as crucial to their progress.
In Los Angeles, German investigators last year reached out to police about a potential suspect in drug-facilitated sexual assaults. The defendant, a graduate student from China, is accused of drugging and sexually assaulting three women in LA after he allegedly procured the drugs from a Chinese national in Germany.
In the Netherlands last month, police arrested four men suspected of drugging and sexually abusing women after hearing from authorities in Germany and the U.K. Dutch police said the alleged perpetrators used social media chat groups to disseminate videos showing the abuse and discuss how to drug victims.
And Europol, the European Union’s police agency, last week announced “Project Medusa,” an international operation designed to dismantle online networks that promote drug-facilitated sexual assaults. Law enforcement from Germany and the U.K. are leading the operation, which has already netted 57 arrests.
Russian drones and missiles killed four people across Ukraine on Wednesday in attacks before dawn and at midday, as Moscow kept up its pressure on the capital of Kyiv in the latest phase of the over 4-year-old war.
Ukraine struck oil refineries in Russia’s Saratov and Tatarstan regions, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who met with U.S. President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Turkey. Trump said the U.S. would give a license to Ukraine so it could manufacture Patriot air defense systems to counter Russia.
Russia attacks Kyiv, hours apart
In Kyiv, several explosions were heard shortly after midnight, even before authorities could issue an alert to give civilians time to find shelter.
The early morning Russian attacks killed one woman and injured two others in Kyiv, according to city administration head Tymur Tkachenko. The State Emergency Service said the attack damaged several administrative buildings and warehouses, as well as a garage complex and several trams.
Hours later, another Russian drone struck Kyiv’s Desnianskyi district, killing a second person and injuring six others, Tkachenko said. A total of eight people were injured in the attacks on the capital.
In Kharkiv, two people were killed and 20 others were injured in a series of overnight strikes, according to Mayor Ihor Terekhov. In Zaporizhzhia, a Russian guided bomb injured two people Tuesday night, regional head Ivan Fedorov said.
Ukraine’s air force says Russia fired 169 long-range strike drones and seven missiles, including five ballistic missiles. Air defenses shot down or jammed 139 drones, and two anti-radar missiles didn’t reach their targets, it said.
All five ballistic missiles and 20 drones struck targets at 15 locations, the air force said, underscoring the continued strain on Ukraine’s air defenses.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said it struck an arms industry facilities in Kyiv, hitting a plant that manufactured components for Flamingo cruise missiles and a facility assembling mid- and long-range drones.
Trump cites a better relationship with Zelenskyy
In Ankara, Trump said the U.S. will give a license to Ukraine to manufacture Patriot air defense systems to defend against Russian missile attacks like those that have been striking Kyiv in recent weeks.
It would be a huge coup for Ukraine, which badly needs the systems that are expensive, in high demand and take a long time to produce. Zelenskyy long has been asking for more Patriot systems, as well as the license to produce them.
“We’ll give them the right to make Patriots. We’ll show them how to do it,” Trump said, sitting next to Zelenskyy. “I think they can produce them pretty quickly.”
The tone of their meeting was a markedly different from an earlier, acrimonious encounter at the White House in February 2025 when Trump berated Zelenskyy. On Wednesday, he praised the Ukrainian leader’s willingness to reach a deal to ending the war, saying he has “done an amazing job” and “been very effective.”
“We’ve actually developed a good relationship. It’s hard to believe,” Trump said, adding he believed a deal on ending the war was on the horizon and that the U.S. would “work on some kind of security package” for Ukraine.
Zelenskyy thanked Trump for his support and said he wanted to discuss weapons supplies, possible peace negotiations and a developing drone deal.
“Air defense is the priority,” Zelenskyy said, adding that Kyiv wanted to share details of its needs under the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List, or PURL, in which European allies and Canada are buying American weapons to help his country.
Zelenskyy also said Ukrainian and U.S. officials had begun work on a drone deal, calling it “a very good beginning.”
Trump was expected to have another call with Putin following his meeting with Zelenskyy.
Ukraine hits Russian oil and gas facilities
The ministry also said air defenses downed 415 Ukrainian drones from late Tuesday to early Wednesday. Gov. Roman Busargin of Russia’s Saratov region said a Ukrainian drone attack killed one person, injured several others and damaged industrial facilities.
Zelenskyy said Ukraine’s long-range attacks reached the Saratov, Tatarstan and Bashkortostan regions deep inside Russia, as well as the Voronezh region, closer to the border. The strikes hit refineries in Saratov and Tatarstan, the latest energy facilities struck by Ukraine that have worsened fuel shortages across Russia.
In the Tatarstan region, Nizhhnekamsk Mayor Radmir Belyayev said Ukrainian drones damaged industrial facilities in the city and injured several people. Belyayev didn’t identify the damaged facilities.
Sergei Aksyonov, the Moscow-installed head of the Crimean Peninsula that was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014, said restrictions on civilian fuel sales would continue and that gasoline would not be available “on certain days.”
Aksyonov said many of the decisions being made to resolve the crisis could not be disclosed publicly, adding that he was giving regular updates to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“The fuel supply situation remains strained and will continue to be so for some time,” he said. “We are monitoring this issue closely in coordination with the federal government and are working on a solution.”
Following a meeting with Putin, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak announced all diesel exports will be halted until the end of July as Russia grapples with fuel shortages. Similar export bans are already in place for gasoline and jet fuel.
Putin told the meeting that Ukraine’s attacks on energy infrastructure was an attempt to provoke anxiety and damage the economy -– goals he described as “unachievable.”
Russia’s Gazprom state-controlled gas company said Ukrainian drones attacked the Krasnodarskaya compressor station serving the Blue Stream natural gas pipeline to Turkey late Tuesday. It said the attack was intended to derail Russian gas shipments to Turkey, but there was no disruption of supplies.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called it another “dangerous” attack against “the critical international energy system” and voiced hope that Turkey and other nations would warn Kyiv against such action.
Rostov regional Gov. Yuri Slyusar said Ukrainian drones damaged two oil tankers in Taganrog Bay, injuring two crew members. The crew of one of the ships had to be evacuated.
He said there was no oil spill because the tankers heading to the port of Rostov-on-Don were empty.
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