Nuclear energy use varies widely across European countries with similar economic and technological characteristics. The present research aims to partly explain why. Using parliamentary debates from 1960 to the present in France and Germany, I show that policymakers in both countries update their beliefs about nuclear risks in a Bayesian manner following major accidents but do so asymmetrically. The debates also reveal that France and Germany strategically interact to plan their future nuclear energy policy, in an asymmetric fashion; German policymakers anticipate relying on French nuclear production to support a domestic phase-out after the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, while French policymakers internalize this dependence. To rationalize these findings, I develop a model in which two identical countries form beliefs about nuclear power riskiness and make nuclear investment decisions under uncertainty while strategically interacting. The model extends a two-armed bandit framework and yields (Symmetric and Asymmetric) Perfect Markovian Equilibrium, matching the empirical evidence.

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