Nuclear power leaves a long and toxic legacy.
Mr Ruskell said: “There is nothing safe, secure or green about nuclear energy, and many people across Scotland will be dismayed and angry to hear that the Secretary of State is seeking to open a new reactor in Scotland.
“Aside from the brazen entitlement and the message this sends, it ignores that people in Scotland have long rejected nuclear energy. I hope that all progressive parties will unite in condemning this environment wrecking overreach.
“A new reactor would not only be unsafe, it would be extremely costly and would leave a toxic legacy for centuries. It would also distract from the vital work we need to do to boost clean, green and renewable energy.
“That is why I hope all progressive parties can rule out any return to nuclear power once Torness has been decommissioned.
“The Hinkley point shambles has exposed the UK government’s total inability to deliver nuclear programmes on budget or on time. We would be far better investing in the huge abundance of renewable resources that we already have here in Scotland.”
New nuclear reactors do not make sense as they routinely arrive late and massively over budget. They also steal away resources from cost-effective, realistic production with wind and solar. Also, CO2 is not the only environmental hazard there is: Humanity does not know how to safely store nuclear waste for hundred thousands of years.
I agree and I don’t understand why people like op keep bashing green parties. There’s a reason why nuclear is not a viable option. Ignoring the financial burden - Nuclear waste is not a technological issue, but a political one. People don’t trust politicians and corporations to keep it safe for multiple millennia. Look at the state of the UK rivers, chronical waste dumping to save money. People who don’t think it will happen with nuclear waste are delusional or don’t know their history, as we already had nuclear dumping incidents near Australia, Baltic Sea, Mediterranean Sea etc…
The issue is that you still need something to replace fossil fuels. Solar and wind are not going to replace fossil fuels, they’re simply not efficient enough. If you look up the global energy production solar and wind barely even register. Hydro or thermal are much better, , but they’re too dependent on geography and are also expensive. Assuming our energy demands will keep growing, whether we like it or not, nuclear is the way to go.
And we don’t really need to keep nuclear safe for a millennia, just long enough to make it safe and cheap to shoot it into the sun. Since we need to go to space anyway we need to keep it safe for a century, maybe max two centuries.
The issues you’ve brought up are all valid and the adoption time of nuclear is also a factor (I think it was something like 10 years just to build a plant), so realistically we’re fucked anyway.
Why does everyone keep ignoring the fact that we can reuse the spent fuel rods. If we go the nuclear reactor way, this will inevitably need to happen anyways.
Wind and solar cannot provide all our energy. Nuclear does not replace wind and solar, it complements it. The sun doesn’t always shine, and the wind doesn’t always blow.
Yes it costs more than burning gas or coal, but that doesn’t take into account the environmental cost or the cost on the health of living things.
And yeah we do know how to store nuclear waste for *hundreds of years. We do so already. I don’t know where you’re getting the “hundreds of thousands of years” from. Even old reactors althat don’t recycle waste didn’t have half-lives anywhere near that long.
Which is why you connect countries together. Combined with having more than enough capacity. And battery storage.
All of that is still significantly cheaper than nuclear. Plus it can be built way faster.
Nuclear is expensive and takes ages. And that’s just the budget, it’ll easily go crazy over budget and be a decade late.
Battery storage and connecting grids together (which we do already) doesn’t even come close to solving our energy needs. And no it can’t be built way faster. We cannot have worldwide, practically unlimited, cheap battery storage right now.
Don’t get me wrong, I really, really want to live in your fantasy world, but for now, that’s all it is.