France, of course, is already there. Second only to the U.S. in terms of nuclear generation, France gets 80 percent of its energy from nuclear sources. Nor is France keeping its atomic knowledge to itself. Nicolas Sarkozy’s government recently announced that it will “share nuclear technology” with Algeria. An altruistic move, entirely uninfluenced by the fact that Algeria holds the second-largest gas and third-largest oil reserves in Africa?

While E.U. nations like Austria remain determined to retain their staunch anti-nuclear credentials, at least for the moment, others are embracing nuclear. Finland is building the first nuclear generating plant in western Europe since 1991. Sweden and the Netherlands are re-thinking their plans to abandon or phase out old nuclear plants. Lithuania, already more dependent on nuclear energy than France (via its single reactor), has agreed on a deal with Poland to construct a new plant. The reactor will provide electricity for Latvia and Estonia as well as Poland and Lithuania.

Belarus, which back in January 2007 felt the paw of the Russian bear on its oil pipeline, will start construction in 2008 on a plant that will begin generating in 2014. A list of 20 countries published in July 2007 by the World Nuclear Association identifies Italy (the only G8 country without its own nuclear power plant), Portugal, Norway, Ireland, and a group of eastern European countries, as “actively considering nuclear power programs.”

And just in case anyone should doubt that going nuclear had become the unofficial policy of the E.U., the European Commission has called for a “new industrial revolution” – through increased investment in renewable energy and nuclear power. It is easy to see why. E.U. forecasts reveal that the region’s energy imports will jump to 65 percent of consumption by 2030, with a massive 84 percent of its gas and 93 percent of its oil coming from overseas. Renewable energy was never going to plug the yawning energy gap. And confidence in current key supplier Russia further nose-dived in the wake of the Druzhba oil pipeline spat with Belarus at the turn of the year. Russia’s failure to warn Belarus of the intended shutdown was one thing, but playing Russian roulette with a pipeline that also serves other European countries was too much to take.

The E.U. now sees nuclear power as providing as much as 30 percent of Europe’s energy needs by 2050. In June 2007 the E.U. Nuclear Energy Forum (ENEF), founded by the Czech Republic and Slovakia – both highly reliant on nuclear sources – was re-launched as the E.U.’s official forum for renewed debate on the future of nuclear energy in Europe. The ENEF’s first meeting is scheduled for this fall in Bratislava. E.U. energy commissioner Andris Piebaigs has said that ENEF “will be fundamental to structure an open debate without any taboo on this source of energy.”

It would seem that what was taboo in post-Chernobyl Europe has been thoroughly rehabilitated – and the fallout is being felt around the globe. India and Russia have announced plans to double their nuclear capacities. Israel is looking to expand its nuclear program, and Australia is considering its nuclear future. With the “greening” of nuclear power, Europe is now aligning with the rest of the world when it comes to nuclear fission. This can be seen by looking at the U.K.

In 1956, Britain became the first country to use nuclear energy to produce electricity for large-scale consumer use. Today, the U.K. relies on nuclear power for about 20 percent of its electricity. The last new reactor opened in 1995, and since then the country’s nuclear development has been stalled. But a looming electricity shortage is nudging the U.K. back toward nuclear power.

The U.K. now has 14 nuclear power stations and all of them are coming to the end of their working lives. By 2020 only one, Sizewell B, is likely to be working. Lacking new investment, nuclear power will provide only 4 percent of the U.K.’s electric needs by 2020.

The need for new nuclear power comes against a backdrop of declining natural gas production. In 2005, declining reserves of North Sea oil and natural gas forced the U.K. to become a net importer of gas. By 2010, around 40 percent of the country’s gas will be imported, and that could rise to about 90 percent by 2020. Thus, the U.K. faces the choice of either relying on more Russian oil and gas, or covering the country with wind turbines while praying that the wind keeps up.

The Labour Government decided to push ahead with more nuclear power because it knew that it had broad public support. A February Daily Telegraph poll showed that warnings about a coming energy crisis had already moved the debate from the philosophic to the pragmatic. Some 90 percent of those polled said they welcomed more nuclear power stations in Britain. Further, additional nuclear power is an integral aspect of the government’s ambitious 2050 target of a 60 percent CO2 emissions reduction. Nevertheless, Greenpeace issued a court challenge to stop the Labour Party from pursuing nuclear. By May 2007, even the U.K.’s minister for trade and industry, Alistair Darling, was sufficiently emboldened to criticize the anti-nuclear lobby as being “daft” for its insistence on a renewables-only energy policy.

The proof of Labour’s support for more nuclear power came in July, when it announced that it had accepted applications from four entities – GE-Hitachi, Toshiba-Westinghouse, France’s Areva, and Atomic Energy of Canada Limited – in the pre-licensing process for new nuclear reactor designs. Of course, there’s no telling when those designs will actually be turned into plants that actually produce electric power, but it appears that Britain will be building more nuclear plants, and soon.