Why Nuclear Power Isn't The Way To Go

Prof John Whitelegg is the Green Party's spokesperson on sustainable development. He's one of 12 Green councillors on Lancaster city council:

"It is true that a small number of Greens, feeling the urgency of the climate crisis, have suggested a nuclear re-think as a lesser of two evils. But it's also true that the Green Party overwhelmingly thinks they're wrong."

"A recent study showed that the UK nuclear industry has wasted £32 billion. It's the most expensive form of energy when we take into account its long-term waste costs, even if we ignore the potential costs of a nuclear disaster."

"[Greens] want to create a truly sustainable economy. That means viable jobs for huge numbers of people in sustainable industries. Studies have consistently shown that nuclear energy sustains far fewer jobs per megawatt than non-nuclear renewables."

"Renewable energy ... would also create huge numbers of jobs spread around the entire country, benefitting every local economy, for instance the jobs installing and maintaining microgenerators and servicing very large numbers of small-scale windfarms and biogas plants ... in the immediate term we have a recession to deal with. We need to create very large numbers of jobs right now. We can't achieve this by building nuclear power stations in fifteen years' time."

"If we achieved Denmark's rate of growth on wind energy, we could create something like 200,000 jobs in that sector alone by 2020 - faster than you could build nuclear power stations."

"And also, as a matter of priority, we could start straightaway with domestic and business energy conservation. Not only would this rapidly create many tens of thousands of jobs within a short space of time - it would also save as much energy as all the UK's nuclear power stations currently generate."

"So we simply don't need nuclear power to stop climate change. But we do need comprehensive Green policies, and we need them to be implemented now"