Kuala Lampur, June 19 -- The US-Iran standoff did more than spike crude prices; it performed autopsy on the global economy. And what it revealed was a world addiction to fossil fuels. For a few terrifying weeks, the world remembered a simple truth: when energy security snaps, sovereignty snaps with it. The result? A whiplash pivot toward the one technology that was, until yesterday, the ghost at the banquet: nuclear power.

Germany, which swore a sacred oath to nuclear phase-out after Fukushima, is now having hushed conversations about keeping its remaining plants humming. Japan, still haunted by 2011, has restarted reactors with a new sense of grim necessity. Even Poland, a coal fortress, is breaking ground on its first nuclear plant. Ta...