TOKYO — In 2011, a meltdown at a nuclear plant in Japan prompted governments around the world, from Taiwan to Italy, to decisively and quickly move away from atomic energy. Fifteen years later, a different kind of energy crisis is accelerating a comeback movement.
The war in the Middle East is expected to cut millions of tons of liquefied natural gas from the world market, a fuel widely used for power generation across Asia. Even in Europe and other regions with continued access to gas, dwindling energy supplies are causing prices to soar.
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In response, nuclear energy, seen by countries as an alternative source less vulnerable to external shocks, is gaining new support even in some of the most historically anti-nuclear places.
In Taiwan, where the ruling party has opposed nuclear power for decades, President Lai Ching-te said last month that the island should remain open to nuclear power as a way to meet growing energy demand.
The change represented a sharp break with the previous energy strategy. After the 2011 disaster — when an earthquake and tsunami caused a triple collapse in the Japanese prefecture of Fukushima — Taiwan adopted the policy of a “nuclear-free territory”. The island shut down its last reactor in May 2025.
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Over the past month, Taiwan’s energy supplies have been strained by war in the Middle East. The phase-out of nuclear power has left the island dangerously dependent on imports for nearly all of its energy needs, just as its crucial semiconductor industry demands the most electricity. Taiwan gets about a third of its LNG from Qatar, prompting authorities to scramble for additional shipments from the United States.
Days after Lai’s statements, Taiwan’s state-owned energy company, Taipower, presented a plan to reactivate one of the island’s nuclear plants.
The president’s decision “surprised many people, including members of his own party,” said Titus Chen, deputy director of a research institute at National Chengchi University in Taipei.
Faced with decades of concern over the construction of power plants and the storage of fuel and waste on an earthquake-prone island, he said the ruling party’s opposition to nuclear energy “had become almost untouchable.”
Similar changes are visible across Asia, which buys about 90% of the liquefied natural gas produced in the Middle East.
In Japan, which deactivated its entire nuclear fleet after the 2011 disaster, regulators decided last week to change anti-terrorism requirements to, in practice, avoid the shutdown of some reactors in operation and facilitate new reactivations.
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In South Korea, the government said last month it would speed up work at five of the ten nuclear plants under maintenance so they could return to operation sooner.
Even if the turmoil in the Middle East eases, the supply shock — and the fact that LNG deliveries will likely remain disrupted for years — is giving countries “one more reason to boost nuclear power,” said Tatsuya Terazawa, CEO of the Japan Institute for Energy Economics, a think tank.
The responses of Japan and Taiwan, whose energy policies were revamped after the Fukushima disaster, are relevant, Terazawa said, because they tend to influence the nuclear stance of other countries. “This has a global context,” he added.
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In some parts of the world, the energy crisis is accelerating a nuclear shift that was already underway, driven by the energy demands of artificial intelligence and data centers.
In the United States, the government has supported the recovery of the nuclear industry with billions of dollars in federal loan guarantees and tax credits. Before the war, experts estimated that nuclear energy in the country would need to triple by 2050 to meet growing demand. China has been expanding its nuclear capacity even faster.
“The conflict in the Middle East will have long-term implications for nuclear energy,” said David Brown, director of energy transition research at consultancy Wood Mackenzie.
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Prolonged supply disruptions and high energy prices “could unlock a new level of political support.” Still, he said nuclear energy will be costly: “The ability to finance new nuclear capacity and expand supply chain policies are the public policy responses to watch in the coming months.”
For some, the acceleration of nuclear energy is not good news. On March 11, the 15th anniversary of the Fukushima disaster, the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center, a watchdog in Japan, released a statement lamenting what it described as a national energy policy that prioritizes nuclear expansion over public safety.
The day before, about 10,000 kilometers west of Tokyo, dozens of countries gathered in Paris to work toward the goal of tripling global nuclear power capacity by 2050, a goal set in 2023. In total, 38 countries joined, including four that backed the goal for the first time last month: Belgium, Brazil, China and Italy.
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Italy, in particular, attracted attention.
In 2011, just months after the Fukushima disaster, Italy held a national referendum in which more than 90% of voters rejected a government plan to revive the country’s nuclear program. The vote effectively paralyzed Italy’s nuclear ambitions for more than a decade, cementing its dependence on imported electricity and natural gas.
Now, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government has proposed a law to develop new nuclear technologies, with the aim of making nuclear energy account for 11% to 22% of electricity demand by 2050. The plan is being processed in parliament.
In Switzerland, which also adopted a policy of phasing out nuclear energy after the Fukushima meltdown, parliament is discussing a proposal to lift the ban on building new nuclear plants. The measure may ultimately be put to a national vote.
The main obstacle for many countries is that reactivating decommissioned nuclear plants — let alone building new ones — is a slow process, unlikely to alleviate current energy shortages, at least in the short term.
In Taiwan, even if the nuclear restart were approved in all instances and went through the required inspection and licensing process, experts say it would take years to restart the reactors. One of the island’s plants has been inactive for too long to be restored.
The extended deadlines have fueled criticism that leaders should instead prioritize renewable sources, which advocates say are safer, aligned with long-term climate goals and can be implemented more quickly.
“Whenever an energy crisis occurs, the issue of nuclear energy comes back to the fore from the perspective of energy security,” said Hajime Matsukubo, secretary-general of the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center. Taking into account the high costs and long construction time of nuclear plants, “there is no immediate solution here,” he said. “It is much more rational to invest this money in renewable energy.”
Other observers have expressed frustration that governments that backed away from nuclear power after Fukushima merely traded one set of risks for another, leaving countries dependent on imported fuels.
“We wasted a lot of time,” said Yang Chia-fa, founder of the clean energy advocacy group Climate Vanguards, who also works for Taiwan’s state-owned energy company. In recent years, he has attended meetings across the island to protest the end of nuclear power. “If you knew you needed nuclear power,” Yang said, “why did you insist on a nuclear-free territory in the first place?”
At an energy conference in Houston last month, Katherina Reiche, Germany’s minister for economic affairs and energy, surprised industry participants by lamenting the country’s previous decision to abandon nuclear power.
After the Fukushima disaster, Germany was among the countries that reacted most forcefully, eliminating a nuclear fleet that once supplied a quarter of the national electricity.
Now, the war in the Middle East is sending gasoline, diesel and jet fuel prices soaring and putting pressure on the “fragile recovery of the German economy,” Reiche said. “The abandonment of nuclear energy was a big mistake, a big mistake, and we miss that energy,” he added.
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