Greenpeace: Nuclear power – wrong answer

No one disagrees that a big question mark hangs over future energy supply or that we have to act now to tackle climate change.

But what is the best solution?

Tony Blair’s Energy Review recently concluded that building a new generation of nuclear reactors is critical to both tackling climate change and ensuring energy security. But what are the facts about this and are the right questions being asked?

Nuclear power currently provides 20 per cent of our electricity, representing only 3.6 per cent of the UK’s total energy use, thus only marginally dealing with our need for services that are mainly derived from gas, such as hot water and central heating. So its effect on our total CO2 emissions is very small. Indeed, even at the most optimistic build rate, 10 new reactors will only cut carbon emissions by four per cent by 2024: far too little, far too late to stop global warming.

And let’s not forget that nuclear power has its own very real dangers and problems. It provides a high-risk target for terrorists, and produces highly radioactive waste, which remains deadly for up to a million years to which there is still no safe solution to dealing with it. British Energy's recent poor track record, let alone Finland's current experience of trying to build a new reactor – now delayed by one month for every month of its construction – demonstrate the inherent unreliability of this industry and its technology.

The reality is that nuclear power is an inefficient, dangerous and expensive hangover of an antiquated, centralised electricity system, established over 50 years ago. Wasting yet more time and money pursuing the nuclear pipe dream would be too late, too expensive, too risky, and could lead to nuclear proliferation.

So what is the answer?

Well it’s simple. The only sustainable solution to climate change and energy security is to reform our centralised UK energy system. Currently two thirds of our energy from power stations in the UK is lost through wasted heat up the chimneys and down the power lines because it is produced a long way from where it is needed. We need to generate power closer to where it is required, allowing us to use both the heat for central heating and hot water, and the electricity for our other needs. This is known as a decentralised energy system. If we combined decentralised energy generation with renewable energy and energy efficiency it could deliver 30 per cent larger carbon dioxide savings than building new nuclear power stations.

So if we truly want to tackle climate change now is the time to look forward, not back, and embrace a cleaner, cheaper and more efficient energy solution to our problems and leave an outdated, unreliable and dangerous nuclear technology back in the last century where it belongs.

To find out more of the facts on nuclear power visit www.greenpeace.org.uk