Greece launches nuclear study committee, revisiting a 2021 no-build stance

Mitsotakis has opened a formal Greek review of nuclear energy, naming small modular reactors as the technology of interest. A small modular reactor is a factory-built unit, typically a fraction of the size of a conventional plant, pitched by vendors as a faster-to-deploy, lower-initial-cost alternative to gigawatt-scale nuclear. The committee marks a posture shift from the prime minister's 2021 refusal to build reactors in seismically active Greece, but it does not retire the earthquake caveat that drove that stance.

The committee, announced at the 2nd Nuclear Energy Summit in Paris on 10 March 2026, brings together ministers to examine nuclear options under a brief that Mitsotakis himself described as "scientific investigation" and a "defined framework" rather than a build commitment. Greece has no domestic nuclear history to retrofit, and the country's previous flirtation with nuclear, in the early 2020s, was an effort to draw long-term supply from new Bulgarian capacity rather than to build at home.

"Greece is turning the page," Mitsotakis told the summit, according to the Prime Minister's office, which framed the speech as a deliberate break with the position the PM took five years ago. In 2021, Mitsotakis had publicly ruled out nuclear plants in Greece, citing seismic risk in the eastern Mediterranean. That caveat is not retired by the new committee. The panel's mandate is to study, not to license, site, or build, and seismic hazard in Greece remains among the highest in Europe. Any future siting decision would still have to clear the regulatory question Mitsotakis himself named in 2021 as disqualifying.

Protothema's English edition reproduced the same speech in which Mitsotakis told delegates that "more and more countries" are turning to SMRs. That language is positioning, not a deployment count. No independent energy-market or vendor analyst has published a tally of SMR orders that includes Greece as a buyer. Greece remains a study-stage country in the European SMR conversation, sitting behind early-mover peers in the Czech Republic, Poland, and Romania that have signed vendor agreements Greece has not. The 41-country turnout at Paris was cited by the Greek government as evidence that nuclear is "back on the European agenda," a framing that puts Athens in step with, not ahead of, the EU's nuclear-revival cohort.

The operative driver is not a baseload power pivot. Mitsotakis has previously tied nuclear to decarbonising Greek shipping, one of the world's largest merchant fleets, rather than to replacing lignite in the domestic grid. Shipping sits outside most national nuclear regulatory regimes, and SMR vendors have begun marketing maritime-class units to that gap. A study committee that includes shipping in its brief is, in effect, asking whether Greek-flagged decarbonisation pressure is a workable entry point for the technology without forcing the seismic question in the power sector. If the committee's first framework document treats shipping as the primary use case, the seismic obstacle becomes a power-sector problem the committee never has to solve, and Greek SMR politics look very different from a terrestrial build-out.

Mitsotakis closed his Paris remarks by asking the audience to "consider Greece to be a friend of nuclear energy." That is a posture, not a procurement signal. The next test is whether the committee's framework document treats shipping as the operative entry point or returns the conversation to the 2021 grid-siting question. The answer will tell readers whether "turning the page" is a real move or a positioning one.