Nuclear power

The government supports a new generation of nuclear power stations, arguing that we need nuclear power to tackle climate change and provide a secure future energy supply.

They're wrong; the reality is that a new generation of nuclear reactors simply won't deliver the urgent emissions cuts needed to tackle climate change. Even the most optimistic estimates suggest that a new generation of nuclear power stations will only reduce our emissions by four per cent by 2024: far too little, far too late, to stop global warming or address the predicted energy gap.

Instead, a new generation of reactors will create tens of thousands of tonnes of the most hazardous radioactive waste, which remains dangerous for up to a million years. It will establish new targets for terrorists, including nuclear waste trains carrying deadly cargoes along our public rail network for decades to come. It will keep the threat of a nuclear reactor accident hanging over us and risk the proliferation of weapons-grade plutonium. And it will render the public liable for the enormous cleaning up costs.

But the most imminent threat that a new nuclear age poses is to the real energy solutions to climate change. Investment in nuclear energy and its infrastructure is a dangerous and expensive distraction from the real solutions – energy efficiency, renewable technology and decentralised energy. By decentralising our energy system and producing energy locally, the UK can meet its energy needs in a much cheaper, cleaner and safer way, slashing our climate change contributions.