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This article focuses on the growing prospects for a nuclear power renaissance in Europe. While accepting the conventional wisdom that the incipient renaissance is being driven by climate change and energy security concerns, we argue that it would not be possible without the pioneering work of Sweden and Finland in providing a technological and sociopolitical solution to the industry's longstanding “Achilles' heel”: the safe, permanent, and locally acceptable disposal of high‐level radioactive waste. In this article, we track the long decline and sudden resurgence of nuclear power in Europe, examining the correlation between the fortunes of the industry and the emergence of the Swedish model for addressing the nuclear waste problem. Through an in‐depth exploration of the evolution of the siting model initiated in Sweden and adopted and successfully implemented in Finland, we emphasize the importance of transparency, trust, volunteerism, and “nuclear oases”: locations already host to substantial nuclear facilities. Climate change and concerns about energy independence and security have all opened the door for a revival of nuclear power in Europe and elsewhere, but we argue that without the solution to the nuclear waste quandary pioneered by Sweden and Finland, the industry would still be waiting for the nuclear renaissance.

This article examines the emergence of an unusual coalition of opponents and proponents of nuclear power, united in their insistence that the EU's high-level radioactive waste (HLW) be disposed of within the EU, and in their opposition to the export of HLW beyond the EU. We argue that this odd coalition is best understood by considering the waste disposal issue within the context of the industry's entire production chain. The activist-industry consensus represents a coalition of “baptists and bootleggers, once removed” brought together not by opposition to HLW exports per se, but rather by the intersection of the issue of radioactive waste disposal with that of nuclear power generation. For quite different reasons, both partners believe that internalizing the EU's radioactive waste is more likely than export to advance their respective goals, be it the expansion or elimination of nuclear power.

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