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Even former heads of nuclear regulation don't believe it is the answer to climate change.
Paul Wilson (Scotsman, 7/12/23) ignores the main reason nuclear power hasn’t ‘taken off’. Firstly, it does not make economic sense. Nuclear costs 2.6 times more per unit than gas and 3.7 times more than wind.[1] Government subsidies and guarantees are needed because the nuclear industry is an open-ended liability. A nuclear plant has never been fully decommissioned and many believe it would cost more than the original construction.
Second, nuclear power has facilitated, not stopped, the proliferation of nuclear weapons. India produced its first plutonium in a Canadian supplied reactor, exploding its first nuclear bomb in 1974. Nations like Iran are following suit.[2]
Third, accidents have dogged the industry from the beginning. In 1957 the Windscale reactor that produced plutonium and tritium for UK atomic and hydrogen bombs caught fire. The site, now known as Sellafield, is leaking radioactive waste from a huge silo, alarming Ireland, Norway and the US, and should alarm Scotland the most.[3]
Fourth, there’s no safe solution for nuclear waste. The UK has used Scotland as its dumping ground. The Solway Firth and Irish Sea are polluted with 60 years of Windscale discharges. The UK plans to bury waste from 27 nuclear submarines at Rosyth in nearby dumps at a cost of £3b,[4] and is blasting the Irish seabed and Solway Firth in a damaging search for a place to store waste.[5]
Fifth, former heads of nuclear regulation in the US, Germany and France issued a 2022 joint statement that nuclear wasn’t the answer to climate change due to its high cost, accident risks and waste.[6]
It doesn’t matter what Oliver Stone, Bono and Greta Thunberg think. What should matter is that the sovereign Scottish People remain implacably opposed to nuclear power and weapons.
Leah Gunn Barrett
7/12/23
[1] Serhii Plokhy, Atoms and Ashes: from Bikini Atoll to Fukushima, 2022
[2] http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2014/ph241/donohue1/
[5] https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/legal-challenge-stop-seismic-blasting-irish-sea/
[6] https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/27/22904943/nuclear-power-climate-change-solution-gregory-jaczko
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