In 2011, a meltdown at a nuclear plant in Japan caused governments around the world, from Taiwan to Italy, to move decisively and swiftly away from atomic energy. Fifteen years later, a different kind of energy crisis is hastening a move back.
The war in the Middle East is expected to cut the world off from millions of tons of liquefied natural gas, a fuel used extensively for power generation across Asia. Even in Europe and other regions with sustained access to gas, the diminishing supply of energy is causing prices to surge.
In response, nuclear power, seen by countries as an alternative energy source that is less vulnerable to outside shocks, is finding new backing even in some of the most historically antinuclear places.
In Taiwan, where the ruling party has opposed nuclear energy for decades, President Lai Ching-te said last month that the island should be open to nuclear power as a way to meet its growing energy demands. The move was an abrupt departure from Taiwan’s previous energy strategy. After the 2011 disaster — when an earthquake and tsunami triggered a triple meltdown in Japan’s Fukushima prefecture — Taipei committed to a “nuclear-free homeland” policy. The island shut down its final reactor last May.
In the past month, Taiwan’s energy supply has been strained by the war in the Middle East. The phaseout of nuclear power has left the island precariously dependent on imports for nearly all its energy needs, just as its vital semiconductor industry requires more power. Taiwan procures about a third of its L.N.G. from Qatar, prompting officials to scramble for additional shipments from the United States.
Days after Mr. Lai’s remarks, Taiwan’s state utility company, Taipower, submitted a plan to restart one of the island’s nuclear plants.
The president’s decision “surprised many people, including members of his own party,” said Titus Chen, the deputy director of a research institute at National Chengchi University in Taipei. Given decades of concern over building nuclear plants and storing fuel and waste on an island prone to earthquakes, he said, the ruling party’s opposition to nuclear power “had become almost untouchable.”
Similar shifts are visible across Asia, which buys about 90 percent of the liquefied natural gas that the Middle East produces.
In Japan, which mothballed its entire nuclear fleet after the 2011 disaster, regulators decided last week to alter antiterrorism requirements to effectively prevent the shutdown of some operational reactors and facilitate further restarts. In South Korea, the government said last month it would accelerate work on five of the 10 nuclear power plants under maintenance so they could be restarted earlier.
Even if the turbulence in the Middle East settles, the supply shock, and the fact that L.N.G. deliveries are likely to remain disrupted for years, is giving countries “another reason to push for nuclear,” said Tatsuya Terazawa, chief executive of the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan, a think tank.
The responses of Japan and Taiwan, whose energy policies were reshaped by the Fukushima disaster, are significant, Mr. Terazawa said, because they are likely to influence other nations’ nuclear stances. “It has global context,” he added.
In some parts of the world, the energy crisis is accelerating a nuclear pivot already underway, fueled by the power demands of artificial intelligence and data centers.
In the United States, the government has backed the nuclear industry’s resurgence through billions of dollars in federal loan guarantees and tax credits. Before the war, experts estimated nuclear energy in the United States would need to triple by 2050 to meet rising energy demands. China has been building nuclear capacity even faster.
“The Middle East conflict will have long-term implications for nuclear power,” said David Brown, the director of energy transition research at Wood Mackenzie, a consultancy. Prolonged supply disruptions and elevated power prices, “could unlock a new level of political support.” Yet, he said, nuclear power will come at a premium: “The ability to fund new nuclear capacity and scale new supply chain policies are the policy responses to watch in the months ahead.”
For some, the acceleration of nuclear is not welcome news. On March 11, the 15th anniversary of the Fukushima disaster, the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center, a watchdog in Japan, issued a statement lamenting what it said was a national energy policy prioritizing nuclear expansion over public safety.
The previous day, 6,000 miles west of Tokyo, dozens of countries convened in Paris to work toward tripling global nuclear energy capacity by 2050, a goal that had been set in 2023. A total of 38 countries have signed, including four that endorsed the goal for the first time last month: Belgium, Brazil, China and Italy.
Italy, in particular, stood out.
In 2011, just months after the Fukushima disaster, Italy held a national referendum in which more than 90 percent of voters rejected a government plan to restart 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 having nuclear cover 11 to 22 percent of electricity demand by 2050. That plan is working its way through Parliament.
In Switzerland, which also put in place a policy to phase out nuclear energy after the Fukushima meltdown, Parliament is discussing a proposal to lift a ban on constructing new nuclear power plants. It could ultimately be put to a nationwide vote.
The fundamental hurdle for many nations is that restarting idled nuclear plants — to say nothing of new construction — is a slow-moving process, unlikely to alleviate current energy supply crunches, at least in the near term.
In Taiwan, even if a nuclear restart were approved in all quarters and sailed through the required inspection and permitting process, experts say it would take years to switch the reactors back on. One of Taiwan’s plants has already been dormant for too long to be revived.
The protracted timelines have fueled criticism that leaders should instead prioritize renewable energy sources that proponents argue are safer, align with existing long-term climate goals, and can be deployed more rapidly.
“Whenever an energy crisis occurs, the topic of nuclear power comes up from the perspective of energy security,” said Hajime Matsukubo, the secretary general of the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Center. Taking into account nuclear facilities’ high costs and long construction times, “there is no immediate solution here,” Mr. Matsukubo said. “It’s far more rational to invest that money into renewable energy.”
Other observers expressed frustration that governments recoiling from nuclear power after Fukushima merely exchanged one set of risks for another, leaving nations reliant on imported fuels.
“We’ve wasted so much time,” said Yang Chia-fa, a founder of the clean energy advocacy group Climate Vanguards, who also works for Taiwan’s state-owned power company. Over the past few years, he has taken part in gatherings across the island to protest the end of nuclear energy. “If you knew you needed nuclear energy,” Mr. Yang said, “why did you insist on a nuclear-free homeland in the first place?”
At an energy conference in Houston last month, Katherina Reiche, Germany’s minister for economic affairs and energy, surprised industry attendees when she bemoaned Germany’s earlier decision to phase out nuclear power.
After the Fukushima disaster, Germany was among the countries that reacted most aggressively, phasing out a nuclear fleet that once supplied a quarter of the nation’s electricity.
Now, the war in the Middle East is causing gasoline, diesel and jet fuel prices to spike and putting stress on the “fragile recovery of Germany’s economy,” Ms. Reiche said. “The phaseout of nuclear was a huge mistake, a huge mistake, and we miss this energy,” she added.
Motoko Rich contributed reporting from Rome, Xinyun Wu from Taipei and Hisako Ueno from Tokyo.
River Akira Davis covers Japan for The Times, including its economy and businesses, and is based in Tokyo.
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