Many people believe that nuclear power is the solution to the world's energy needs. This is often due to misinformation and half-knowledge. Because there is a lot to be said against it: For example, reactor disasters, the globally unresolved question of where to store highly radioactive nuclear waste, and the problematic extraction of uranium as the basis for nuclear power. The fact is that uranium has been radioactive for thousands of years and is therefore harmful to humans and the environment. So what is there to the idea that nuclear power is helpful and good for the future?
Nuclear Power as a Lifeline in Times of Crisis?
In politics, nuclear power is seen as a climate-friendly solution to the energy crisis: The European Union (EU) even classified nuclear power as “sustainable” in 2022. France, the third-largest operator of nuclear power plants (NPPs) after the USA and China, was particularly keen to achieve this. At the 2023 World Climate Conference in Dubai, the nuclear lobby announced the goal of tripling nuclear power capacity by 2050. And at the Nuclear Energy Summit in Brussels in March 2024, the representatives of the more than 30 participating nuclear states confirmed this target.
Nevertheless, half-truths and untruths about nuclear power persist right up to the highest political circles and dominate the debates about the future of this energy source. We use facts and figures to show what is true about the myths surrounding the topic.
1 – Nuclear Power helps to solve the climate crisis (external link, opens in a new window)2 - Nuclear power is climate-neutral and therefore clean (external link, opens in a new window)3 - Electricity from Nuclear power is cheap! (external link, opens in a new window)4 - Nuclear power contributes to energy security (external link, opens in a new window)5 - Nuclear power makes us independant of energy imports (external link, opens in a new window)6 – Nuclear power serves solely peaceful purposes (external link, opens in a new window)7 – Nuclear power also helps the countries that produce Uranium (external link, opens in a new window)8 - Nuclear power also contributes to energy security and development in African countries (external link, opens in a new window)9 – Small nuclear reactors and fusion reactors are the future (external link, opens in a new window)10 - Germany is the only country phasing out nuclear power, the rest of the world continues to rely on it (external link, opens in a new window)
The opposite is the case: At the end of 2024, coal-fired power plants worldwide generated 2,175 gigawatts of electricity. To replace them with nuclear power plants, around 1,500 new nuclear reactors would have to be built. This is completely unrealistic: the new reactors in Finland, France, and England were and are far behind schedule and cost well over 10 billion euros per reactor. France now has €3 trillion in public debt, partly due to the high cost of nuclear power. Instead, the money should be used to develop renewable energies (solar, wind, geothermal, etc.).
Germany could cover the entirety of its energy needs for electricity, heat, and transport with these. Nuclear power is a barrier to solving the climate crisis!
„Unlike coal and gas, nuclear power does not release any CO2, so it is climate neutral.“
It is true that no harmful greenhouse gases are released in the nuclear power plant itself during electricity production. And nuclear power is comparatively low in CO2 compared to coal and natural gas. However, nuclear power is by no means climate-neutral because the mining, processing, and transportation of the uranium fuel and all downstream processes do cause CO2.
The disasters in Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011 show that no reactor is safe. Severe weather, wars, and other extreme events can destroy nuclear power plants and make entire regions uninhabitable. Nuclear power is neither CO2-neutral nor clean, but rather extremely dangerous!
“Nuclear power in Germany only costs 2 to 3 cents per kilowatt hour. We should therefore invest in nuclear power!”
Only the ongoing operating costs were taken into account in this calculation. The many billions for the construction of a reactor (external link, opens in a new window) and the state subsidies (external link, opens in a new window) for research and final storage are missing. If a new nuclear power plant were to be built in Germany today, it would cost between 13.6 and 49 cents per kilowatt hour of nuclear power, depending on the operating time of the power plant. This does not even include the costs for the final storage of the resulting nuclear waste. In Germany, as with everywhere else, these are mainly financed through taxes. So nuclear power is very expensive — the costs are just hidden. Green electricity from new wind and photovoltaic plants, on the other hand, costs far less than nuclear power — and this is true for everywhere in the world!
“Renewables alone are not enough: especially in winter, when the sun only shines for a few hours a day and there is no wind, nuclear power is needed to secure the energy supply. Otherwise there is a risk of a dark doldrums.”
The share of renewables in the German electricity mix is now so high — it stood at 60 percent in 2024 — that it is incompatible with nuclear power plants. Even though Dunkelflauten (a German term meaning “dark doldrums”, referring to periods of extremely low wind or sun) aredo pose a problem, nuclear power plants cannot be ramped up and down easily enough to bridge these gaps. In a fully renewable energy system, gas turbines that burn green hydrogen and large-scale battery storage will be the main means of bridging potential supply gaps.
Even in the event of natural disasters such as hurricanes, floods, or earthquakes, nuclear power plants have to be shut down for safety reasons, which is costly and the residual risk of a major disaster always remains. And finally, nuclear power plants pose a high risk in wars, as the case of Zaporizhzhya in Ukraine shows. Nuclear power is therefore completely unsuitable for energy security!
“In contrast to gas, which many countries imported from Russia for a long time, nuclear power is a reliable and often even domestic source of energy. That's why it should be promoted!”
This is nonsense: most countries around the world import uranium from other countries for their nuclear power. Even though the EU, with around 100 nuclear reactors, is the world’s largest consumer of uranium, it is dependent on fuel from all over the world. Nevertheless, this myth was very prominent in the campaigns for the 2022 elections in France, for example. Much of the uranium for French nuclear power plants came from Niger until its military government terminated this neocolonial relationship in 2024!
In 2024, 88 percent of the world's uranium was mined in just 5 countries: Kazakhstan, Canada, Namibia, Australia and Uzbekistan. The raw material of the nuclear age is further processed in 13 enrichment plants and 38 fuel element factories worldwide. This means that anyone who uses nuclear power is dependent on other countries.
This has not changed even since the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine: in 2024, the EU sourced 15.6 percent of the uranium it needed from Russia, with a further 24.3 percent coming from Russia’s ally Kazakhstan. Eighteen reactors in Eastern Europe can only be operated with Russian-designed fuel elements. Until recently, the Russian state-owned company Rosatom had a monopoly on this. Nuclear power creates a high degree of dependency!
„Nuclear power and nuclear weapons have nothing to do with each other.“
Initially, nuclear power was only developed in the 1940s to build the atomic bomb during the Second World War. Uranium, on the other hand, was initially mined exclusively for military purposes during the Cold War. East and West wanted to “deter” each other with nuclear weapons.
It was not until the 1960s that nuclear power began to be used as a source of electricity, but even this could not be separated from the military side of things: the knowledge, material, and technology of nuclear power always contribute to military use.
What’s more, anyone who can enrich uranium — and you always have to do this for it to be used — can also use the technology to build nuclear bombs. In a nuclear power plant, around one percent of the uranium is converted into plutonium. This can be used to build a plutonium bomb. After 1945, the first nuclear power plants therefore only had the task of supplying plutonium for bombs. The peaceful use of nuclear power is therefore the prerequisite for military use!
In view of the tense global situation, the peace research institute SIPRI predicts that more countries will want to acquire nuclear weapons. The call for more nuclear power can therefore also be understood as a hidden call for nuclear armament.
If we want a peaceful world without nuclear weapons, that also means phasing out nuclear energy!
This is not true: African countries or the Indigenous communities of North America and Australia, on whose land uranium is mined, gain practically nothing from uranium wealth.
Niger is a particularly pertinent example of this. Historically, the country is one of the world’s largest uranium producers. Most of the uranium went to France, which ruled Niger as a colonial power until 1960. The country is one of the poorest in the world, but now has a radioactive legacy — for which the French mining company Orano is failing to implement sufficient safety and remediation measures.
In the southwest of the USA, four million tonnes of uranium ore have been mined on the territory of the Indigenous Diné people since the 1950s. However, the more than 500 abandoned mines within the reserve have still not been rehabilitated. There is hardly a family that has not lost a member to lung cancer. The overwhelming impacts of uranium mining therefore disproportionately affect poorer countries and Indigenous peoples. All the more reason to prevent nuclear power!
The first nuclear power plant is already being built in Egypt. In addition, Burkina Faso, Ghana, South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya are some African countries that also want to build new NPPs. But how sensible is this?
In fact, almost 600 million people south of the Sahara have no access to electricity. When the sun goes down, every second person lives in the dark. But nuclear power will not help to electrify individual countries or large parts of the continent. This is mainly due to the gigantic costs of nuclear power (external link, opens in a new window). In contrast to the comparatively rich industrialized countries, African states cannot co-finance nuclear power; in other words, they make themselves dependent on foreign investors. The Russian state-owned company Rosatom, in particular, has concluded nuclear agreements with African countries in order to establish closer geopolitical relations with them.
„Small Modular Reactors are less dangerous and can be deployed much more flexibly than conventional nuclear power plants, and the fusion reactor will solve all our energy problems“
There is nothing to suggest that small modular reactors (SMRs) will ever be built in significant numbers. Precisely because SMRs are small, they are even less economical than large nuclear power plants. Previous projects have recently been shelved due to horrendous cost overruns, including NuScale’'s flagship project in the US state of Idaho. This means that no SMR is currently being implemented in any country. At least 3,000 SMRs would have to be built before the technology pays off. But why? The future is solar and wind power all over the world.
Only during the so-called “dark doldrums”, when neither the sun is shining nor the wind is blowing, is a replacement needed. But nuclear power is not suitable for this. It is already wickedly expensive in continuous operation; using it only on a daily or hourly basis makes it unaffordable. Quite apart from that, it still produces highly radioactive waste. And yes: each individual small reactor contains less radioactive material than a large one and is therefore not quite as dangerous. But because a large number of small reactors would have to be built, the risk is proportionally greater. So relying on “small” nuclear power plants makes no sense at all.
So far, around 100 billion euros, dollars, and pounds have been invested in fusion research without generating a single kilowatt hour of electricity.
Mini nuclear power plants and fusion research are a waste of money. Renewable energies should be promoted right away!
„The whole world is promoting nuclear power and building new reactors – only Germany is not. This is a strategic mistake!“
Germany is not so alone: although there are 407 nuclear power plants in operation worldwide as of November 2025, they are concentrated in 31 countries. There are also Turkey, Egypt, and Bangladesh, where nuclear power plants are being built for the first time. Out of 193 UN states, 159 do not use nuclear power. And some want to follow Germany’s example and phase out nuclear power, or have already done so: Taiwan shut down its last nuclear power plant in May 2025. Switzerland wants to build no more new NPPs and leave the existing NPPs running for as long as they are safe. Austria decided to phase out nuclear power back in 1978. Italy phased out nuclear power after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The last reactor was shut down in 1990.
The global trend is toward renewables: in 2024, investment in renewable power plants reached a record high of US$727.7 billion, 20 times as much as in new nuclear power plants. Only 11 countries are building a total of 64 new reactors, more than half of them in China. With its nuclear phase-out, Germany is on the right path and in good company with its nuclear phase-out.
A contribution by Horst Hamm and Franza Drechsel. Text by Horst Hamm. Online editing by Florian Leiner and Alina Kopp. Illustrations by Katherine Rodríguez García. Content based on the Uranium Atlas. Graphs from the Uranium Atlas by Tanja Hoffmann. Graphs of myth 1 by Nikolai Smith.
This article is published under the Creative Commons License: Attribution – 4.0 International CC BY 4.0! Feel free to share, use, or adapt this article for your educational work. Don't forget to publish it under the same conditions and mention L!NX and the authors!
Uranium mining mostly takes place on the land of indigenous peoples in the Global South and poses extreme risks to the environment and to people’s health. Nuclear power is extremely costly, and scientists are still unsure about how to store radioactive waste. The Uranium Atlas provides an overview of data and facts that are important to answer questions about Uranium.
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