Europe Eyes Nuclear Power as Hormuz Crisis Exposes Energy Vulnerability
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has forced a reckoning over Europe’s energy dependence, and analysts told CNBC on Monday that nuclear energy could offer the continent a meaningful escape route — though the path forward is far from straightforward.
Hormuz Shock Reveals a Structural Weakness
The effective shutdown of the vital Gulf shipping lane, triggered by the ongoing U.S.-Iran war, has exposed how deeply European economies rely on imported oil and gas. As of 2025, fossil fuels still account for more than a third of Europe’s total energy mix, according to Eurostat. Nuclear, by contrast, makes up just under 12%.
Chris Seiple, vice chairman of the power and renewables division at Wood Mackenzie, told CNBC the math is fairly direct. Nations without domestic energy resources face higher import costs and greater supply risk. Nuclear can provide a durable alternative, he argued.
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France Sets the Standard, Others Lag Behind
France remains Europe’s clearest success story in this space. Nuclear plants supply more than 60% of the country’s electricity needs, keeping French power prices substantially below those in Germany, which has spent recent decades decommissioning reactors rather than building them.
Michael Browne, global investment strategist at Franklin Templeton, told CNBC the Franco-German contrast is instructive. Building nuclear capacity is expensive upfront, but France’s lower electricity costs reflect how efficient a well-developed nuclear fleet can be over time.
Adnan Shihab-Eldin, a senior visiting research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, went further. He told CNBC that Germany and other European countries made a strategic error in letting ideology override practicality when it came to nuclear policy.
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Decades of Delays Cloud the Outlook
The urgency is real, but the timeline for building new reactors is not encouraging. The U.K.’s Hinkley Point C broke ground in 2016 and is not expected to come online until late this decade. France’s Flamanville 3 reactor took 17 years to complete. Chris Aylett, a research fellow at Chatham House, told CNBC that by the time a plant commissioned today becomes operational, the broader energy landscape may look completely different.
One potential shortcut involves partnering with Chinese firms, which have built reactors faster and cheaper than Western counterparts. Seiple told CNBC the rest of the world has already found cost-competitive construction models. However, analysts view Chinese involvement in European nuclear infrastructure as a political non-starter, given security concerns.
South Korea, meanwhile, is moving decisively. Climate minister Kim Sung-hwan told CNBC the Iran war is a turning point for the country, with nuclear and renewables set to become the twin pillars of its future energy strategy.
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