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Nuclear Energy and the Power Grid

From the series The world energy battle

Electricity is at the heart of modern economies and the demand for electricity is growing much faster than the overall consumption of energy in every scenario [Electricity 2025, International Energy Agency report].

Overproduction and power grid bottlenecks

Electricity represents just 21% of energy consumption at a global level, but it is the main source for the sectors which represent more than 40% of the economy. A fundamental issue for the security of the electricity system is the modernisation of the power grid, which is currently lagging behind the expansion of production capacity.

Although global investment in the production of electricity has increased by almost 70% since 2015, reaching $1,000 billion a year, annual spending on the grid has increased at less than half this rate, reaching $400 billion. This is also a European problem.

According to the European Commission, by 2050 between €1,994 billion and €2,294 billion will be needed to modernise the European power grid [European Court of Auditors, April 1st, 2025]. Yet a significant share of renewable energy generation capacity in the Union remains unused due to the inadequacy of the existing power grid infrastructure.

In 2024, this shortfall prevented 10.5% of renewable electricity production from being fed into the grid, equivalent to over 10 terawatt-hours (1 TWh = 1 billion kWh). It is predicted that this excess in the production of renewable energy will be 22 TWh by 2030. According to Reuters [December 8th, 2025], if the modernisation plans do not take off, the EU will be forced to cut 310 TWh from renewable energy by 2040.

This is a classic imbalance of the capitalist system, as described by Marx: it is not scarcity, but overproduction, that creates the crisis. The blackout in Spain in April 2025 illustrated this dynamic.

Germany's electricity challenges

Despite its shortcomings in integrating renewable energy, the European power grid has helped Germany to cushion the impact of the war in Ukraine.

After the Fukushima catastrophe in 2011, the then chancellor Angela Merkel launched her energy policy (Energiewende), with the aim of reaching 35% of electricity from renewables by 2020 and 80% by 2050. In 2024, Germany reached 53%: progress has been substantial. Renewable energy is a strategic necessity for reducing dependence on unstable regions that hold oil and gas reserves. The challenge lies in the transition.

During the Merkel government, the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline came into operation, transporting gas directly from Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea. Her government had also backed the parallel Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, despite strong opposition from the United States. The war between Russia and Ukraine has since interrupted the supplies of Russian gas. These are the inevitable consequences of the crisis in the world order. The new situation — the combination of its energy transformation and the war in Ukraine — has led Germany to reduce its consumption of natural gas from 3.3 to 2.8 exajoules, a reduction equal to 139 TWh. Representing 55% of Germany's gas imports, Russia was Germany's main supplier.

In 2024, other countries only partially replaced Germany's gas imports from Russia: Norway accounted for 48% of total imports, the Netherlands 25%, and Belgium 18%. Electricity supplies from France, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway helped cover Germany's power difficulties caused by reduced gas imports. From 2014 to 2024, its generation of electrical energy fell from 627 TWh to 497 TWh, registering a 21% drop. Without the European grid, Germany would have been hit by a severe industrial crisis due to energy shortages.

In 2024, Italy had an electricity shortage of 51 TWh. Germany is the second net European importer of electricity with a 26 TWh shortage, equivalent to 5% of its needs. France has an impressive surplus of 90 TWh, 16% of its production. Germany is a major importer of nuclear energy from France, hydroelectric and nuclear power from Sweden, hydroelectric power from Norway, and wind power from Denmark.

Germany's nuclear energy

Angela Merkel had also committed to phasing out nuclear power. This deserves a separate discussion: has Germany really left nuclear energy behind after closing down its old and inefficient reactors? The answer is no, because it continues to enrich uranium via its participation in Urenco, a British-Dutch-German consortium which manages enrichment plants in various countries. This participation allows Germany to keep its position in the global uranium supply chain.

As Robert Oppenheimer, head of the Manhattan Project, had already pointed out after the Second World War, control over the nuclear fuel cycle is the crucial element in enabling a rapid transition to the production of a nuclear bomb. Germany continues to leverage its technical expertise in nuclear fuel enrichment, even while its reactors remain out of service. If it were to decide to do so, it could quickly become a member of the club of nuclear powers, and this is a powerful bargaining chip in international relations.

In 2023, Germany produced 178 tons of uranium U-235 enriched to 3-5%, used in reactors. Since nuclear bomb-grade enrichment requires 90% U-235 and a single nuclear bomb needs 25-60 kg of U-235, Germany — with its technology, facilities, scientists, and technicians — could, if it so chose, produce hundreds of bombs within months. As shown in the table alongside, according to Eurostat, five EU countries produced enriched uranium in 2023: Germany, Spain, France, Romania, and Sweden.

This did not escape the notice of Bloomberg [March 14th, 2025]. The American financial magazine points out that, in the enrichment of uranium, Urenco is second in the world only to the Russian Rosatom and saw its portfolio of orders grow by more than a quarter last year, to €18.7 billion. Urenco's Chief Financial Officer Ralf ter Haar stated in an interview that public opinion in Germany is changing and is becoming more positive as regards nuclear energy.

According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, global nuclear energy production could nearly triple by the middle of the century.

Urenco has enrichment plants in Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States, where the centrifuges, spinning at a supersonic speed, separate the U-235 isotopes needed to produce nuclear fission. Urenco Deutschland GmbH, Urenco's German branch, runs a plant in Gronau, in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Between now and 2050, it will become clear how far the European supergrid has developed and what the electricity-generation mix will look like. In a society founded on the balance between imperialist powers, war is a powerful accelerator of political processes. On the energy front, the war in Ukraine has accelerated integration among the European countries and their different forms of energy — nuclear, natural gas, wind power, hydropower, and solar power. In the crisis in the world order, the energy grid is an essential factor in the competition between powers.

ELECTRICITY GENERATION 2014 and 2024 in TWh and in %

France Germany EU US China World
2014 565.2 626.6 2,850.7 4,363.3 5,794.5 24,073.3
% 2.4 2.6 11.8 18.1 24.1 100.0
2024 561.3 497.3 2,794.6 4,634.8 10,086.9 31,255.9
% 1.8 1.6 8.9 14.8 32.3 100.0
Change 2014-24 (%) -0.7 -20.6 -2.0 +6.2 +74.1 +29.8

ELECTRICITY GENERATION 2014 and 2024 in TWh and in %

France Germany EU US China World
oil 1.9 5.0 46.7 16.4 9.4 694.7
%* 0.3 1.0 1.7 0.4 0.1 2.2
gas 18.5 78.4 419.2 2,005.2 320.7 7,001.2
% 3.3 15.8 15.0 43.3 3.2 22.4
coal 0.7 106.4 296.6 712.4 5,827.6 10,613.7
% 0.1 21.4 10.6 15.4 57.8 34.0
nuclear 380.5 0 649.5 823.1 450.9 2,817.5
% 67.8 0 23.2 17.8 4.5 9.0
hydroelectric 70.9 22.2 368.5 238.7 1,354.3 4,452.9
% 12.6 4.5 13.2 5.2 13.4 14.2
renewables 79.9 281.8 946.6 830.0 2,044.6 5,415.2
% 14.2 52.6 33.9 17.9 20.3 17.3
total 561.3 497.3 2,794.6 4,634.8 10,086.9 31,255.9

1 TWh = 1 billion kwh.
*) percentage share of national production.
Source: our analysis of data from the Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy 2025.

POWER EXPORTS AND IMPORTS (2024)

TWh
Italy -51.0
Germany -26.3
Netherlands +4.2
Spain +10.2
Norway +18.4
Sweden +33.4
France +89.9
EU +12.2

Note: the minus sign indicates net imports.
Source: Eurostat.

FRESH NUCLEAR FUEL PRODUCTION

Tons
France 568
Sweden 364
Spain 277
Romania 212
Germany 178
EU 1,600

Note: tons of heavy metal (3-5% enriched U-235) in 2023.
Source: Eurostat.

Lotta Comunista, January 2026

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