The Green Party of England and Wales has abandoned it long standing opposition to nuclear power. A bit of a shock. However, its briefing paper on ‘Ending the Green Party’s Blanket Opposition to Nuclear Fission’, produced evidently by the ‘greens for nuclear’ group, says the proposed new policy, now accepted by the Party, ‘does not commit the green party to being a pro-nuclear party in any way beyond committing the party to following contemporary scientific research. We contend this is what the motion is really about: evidence’. OK so let’s look at its marshalling of the evidence.
First it points to an ‘Our World in Data’ chart which it says shows that ‘nuclear power has the lowest carbon footprint and the second lowest death rate of any energy source.’ It’s hard to know where to start with these much debated and controversial topics. It is true that nuclear plants do not generate carbon dioxide when running, but producing the fuel for them does. That’s not the case for renewables like wind and solar, so they also avoid the eco and social impacts of uranium mining and waste management, although their output per GW installed is less and is variable and dependent on location, making comparisons hard. But, though there are debates on the exact difference between nuclear and renewables in CO2 terms, it is small - fossil fuels are much worse.
In terms of the deaths, there are some big uncertainties and controversies. For example, in the video produced by Greens for Nuclear Energy, Prof Gerry Thomas puts the death toll for the Chernobyl disaster at 28 initially, followed by around 19 later. But others put it very much higher, in the thousands including from clean-up workers, and possibly even more globally. Whereas the highest figure I’ve seen for wind, from an anti-wind farm group, is 272 fatalities so far worldwide, while, as the World in Data chart shows, deaths for solar are very low.
It may be true that, thankfully, at Fukushima, with the wind blowing the radiation cloud eastward across the sea and the prompt evacuation of local people, public exposure was reduced and deaths avoided, as Greens for Nuclear note, but there were some staff impacts and the debate on health impacts of nuclear in normal operation on workers and the public globally continues, with, for example, a US study claiming new proof that proximity to nuclear plants can lead to increased local cancer rates.
What about nuclear waste? The background paper says that the risk from nuclear waste (and by implication leaks) were less than was commonly thought, since ‘radioisotopes with long half-lives are inherently less radioactive than ones with short half-lives as they spread their radioactivity over a longer time.’ Even so it did admit that ‘raw spent nuclear fuel remains more radioactive than uranium ore for around 300,000 years’. However, it claimed that ‘the Plutonium can be removed from the spent fuel and reprocessed into new fuel. Fuel treated in this way decays to be less radioactive than uranium ore in 9,000 years’. So that’s fine then! And in case you were worried, it adds that, while some countries did get nuclear bombs from reactor material, that is no longer the case and now ‘there is not a clear connection between states with civilian nuclear power programs and the acquisition of nuclear weapons’. Tell that to those who worry about Iran’s uranium enrichment programme!
Then it moves on to ‘Nuclear Power’s Greatest Advantage’- reliability. Last summer’s heat wave led to many reactors across Europe having to be shut down due to problems with cooling. And in any case, in normal circumstances, reactors have to shut down regularly for spent fuel replacement – unlike renewables such as wind and solar, which do not need any fuel. These renewables do depend on the weather, so there have to be balancing/backup systems, but then, as noted above, that is also true of nuclear plants- they can’t be relied on all the time. The issue is how much will that backup add to the cost of either of them. Some say it will add a lot more to the cost of renewables, but Lazarsd’s LCOE data, which now includes the cost of storage, still has most renewables doing much better than (US) nuclear over almost all the range of cost estimates.
The greens for nuclear briefing does concede that ‘per unit of energy generated wind and solar are cheaper than nuclear’, but it says that is irrelevant since the market ‘is structured so that all producers are paid the price of the most expensive producer - i.e. whatever the cost for wind, solar, and nuclear they are all paid the price of whatever the most expensive electricity source currently being used is, generally natural gas’. However, it adds ‘any Green government would fix the electricity market (likely by bringing it into government control).’. Fine! But how does that make nuclear cheaper? Or faster to install- something that renewables also beat nuclear at hands down.
The Briefing paper may be more convincing when it talks of land use. Wind and solar do take up more space than nuclear plants, although the land needed for uranium mines and waste repositories also has to be taken into account, and the land around wind turbine bases can be used for farming, while solar can be on roof tops and there are agri-solar options for solar farms. The higher use of scarce minerals and materials for some wind and solar technologies is another key issue- although that has to be set alongside the fact that nuclear plants need uranium and reserves of that are not infinite. While there are options for recycling of all materials, including nuclear wastes, perhaps what needs to be said in all cases of impact (including in relation to the use of land and materials), is that we need to reduce demand for energy- that is something greens should all agree on.
The Briefing note ends by reporting that a survey conducted by IPSOS for Greens 4 Nuclear Energy in 2022 ‘found that on balance members of the public would look more favourably on the Green Party if it dropped its anti-nuclear stance’. It said ‘this was especially pronounced for members of the wider green movement’. I thought this was surprising. But when I checked with Google it confirmed that the report said that ‘people involved in environmental campaigning and green groups continue to support nuclear energy for electricity production.’
Sadly the Green4 nuclear web site link on this report is broken, so I could not explore more. But it is true that views may be changing. That may not be surprising given the wave of pro-nuclear propaganda in recent years - even Nature seems to have succumbed. However, I still find the pro-nuclear case unconvincing. Though basically I’m a Faithfull trying to accept that a group of Traitors have won! At least for the moment, in this specific setting.
There may still be some battles ahead, internally and externally – after all there are many who don’t want nuclear, especially if it undermines renewables. And the conference vote may not reflect the views of the wider party membership. So there may yet be a challenge. Though, maybe the big political issue is likely to be what the Green Party will do when and if Small Modular Reactors start spreading, and, as seems likely, local people object. Its deputy leader had earlier spoken out against SMRs. And, more generally, what will it do over the battles for funding between renewables and nuclear as the latter tries to expand? Will try to to sit on the fence on that too?
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