Good morning. Welcome to Axios today. We made it to Wednesday and it's the last day of

August. I'm Nyla Boudou. Here's what you need to know today. Climate change is affecting

monsoons and hurricanes. Plus, why Americans are holiday shopping way early this year. But

first, nuclear power is having a moment. That's today's one big thing.

Climate concerns in the global energy crisis are pressuring countries to develop better power

sources, leading many to seriously consider nuclear power for the first time since the 1970s.

California, Germany and Japan are all considering walking back closures and even reopening some nuclear

plants. Is nuclear power making an unexpected comeback? Here with some answers is Axios Market's

correspondent Matt Phillips. Hi, Matt. Hi. Matt, nuclear power has sort of a bad rap. Why is that?

Well, going back to the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979 or the Chernobyl

situation in 1986, I mean, there have been this history of really scary accidents. But we're in

this weird moment now where we're being forced to reconsider nuclear power largely because of a war,

some of which it's taking place actually in and around really important sense of nuclear power

plants, like the Zavarija plant in Ukraine, which is Europe's largest nuclear production site.

And so how is the global energy crisis because of the war in Ukraine affecting all of these

discussions about nuclear power? Russia is a massive supplier of energy commodities.

Formos among them is natural gas, where it's the world's biggest exporter. And Europe is exceedingly

reliant on Russian natural gas, especially Germany. And natural gas has exploded higher in Europe.

It's more than 10 times higher than where it was last year. They know that's a thousand percent

increase. And the energy markets there have essentially stopped working. And so it's a crisis.

And everything's on the table. And that includes nuclear. What has been the political pressure

from different governments as they consider exploring nuclear power or keeping things open

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