Does the fight against climate change need nuclear power?

Pete Dickenson, Tower Hamlets Socialist Party, 01/10/2025

As the major capitalist powers’ refusal to seriously invest to tackle climate change becomes ever clearer, some are looking again to nuclear energy as an alternative because it does not emit carbon dioxide, the main driver of global warming.

Rising costs and public opposition after a series of disasters has meant that the total energy produced by nuclear has largely flatlined globally since the turn of the millennium. Now several states, including Britain, are turning again to nuclear fission – harnessing the energy released by splitting the atom, the basis of all presently operational reactors.

In desperation at the pressing need to phase out fossil fuel production, prominent environment writer George Monbiot, changed his position on nuclear power fifteen years ago, thinking that capitalist governments would be more willing to adopt nuclear than wind, solar or other renewables. He can now point to Britain’s pro-nuclear change in policy, and that of other governments, to support his case. China for instance, has significantly stepped up its nuclear programme.

Direct action groups such as Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil, do not take a position on the nuclear question, they have members who are both for and against. Also, support for nuclear appears to be spreading to some extent among activists on the socialist left, in particular among younger activists.

It is claimed that, because global warming is correctly seen as the major threat facing the planet, risks associated with nuclear power can be justified, since they are significantly less than those linked to climate inaction – and it is a tried and tested technology.

Risks from nuclear power and climate inaction cannot be balanced in abstract against each other without considering in absolute terms just how dangerous nuclear is. Prolonged climate inaction for a significant period could be truly catastrophic. Nuclear risks, although relatively smaller, nevertheless still pose a major threat.

Nuclear safety

Nuclear power generation has two major sources of risk: from future accidents and from storing spent radioactive material, a by-product of the nuclear reaction, for the indefinite future.

The 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine, although the worst, was just one of a series of nuclear accidents going back to the 1950s. The first was at Sellafield in Britain, then called Windscale, where there was a large leak of radioactivity, then in 1979 at Three Mile Island in the USA, where a meltdown of the reactor core, with potentially disastrous consequences, was only very narrowly avoided. This was followed by Chernobyl in 1986 where a series of explosions in the reactor building sent a massive radioactive cloud around the world and forced the long-term evacuation of land for hundreds of square miles around the site. The most recent disaster was at Fukushima in Japan in 2011 when, following an earthquake and tsunami, the cooling system failed, leading to a meltdown of the reactor core followed by explosions that contaminated surrounding land and sea…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

An even bigger long-term danger than a nuclear accident is safely storing spent radioactive nuclear material for the indefinite future, at least 100,000 years while it remains dangerously radioactive. No safe method has yet been devised to do this. If the radioactive waste is stored deep underground or at the bottom of the ocean, it could be vulnerable to earthquakes, undersea volcanic activity, major meteorite strikes or changes in geological conditions over such a long time scale, possibly caused by climate change. The materials used to store waste could deteriorate over 100,000 years. All these factors could cause leakage of radioactivity.

In Britain, existing very radioactive ‘high-level’ waste is stored in the nuclear plants themselves and less dangerous ‘low-level’ waste at Sellafield in Cumbria. The quantities involved are large. The Sizewell C nuclear station in Suffolk, recently given the go-ahead by climate secretary Ed Milliband, will generate an estimated 26,880 tonnes of radioactive waste over its 60-year lifecycle. Also, the plutonium used in making nuclear bombs creates further toxic waste.

In 2023, 88,000 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel was stored in the USA alone.

Considering the nearly 600 plants around the world operational, under construction and planned, some already accumulating waste for up to 60 years, the size of the problem is clear. A solution will have to be found, it would be irresponsible to add to it further.

Does nuclear expansion meet the urgency for climate action?

In its latest report, the IPCC, the UN body that advises on climate change correctly stresses the need for rapid action if the worst effects of global warming are to be avoided. If nothing meaningful is done in the next 20 years, current extreme weather will get far worse and tipping points, where there is an uncontrollable rise in temperature, will become more likely. However, if a massive expansion of nuclear is contemplated to address the situation, experience has shown that very little would be operational within 20 years. For example, planning began in 2007 on the Hinkley Point C reactor in Somerset, construction started in 2016 and it is expected to be operational in 2031, although some observers put it at 2033. It is true there have been particular problems with Hinkley but, even without construction delays, it would still have taken nearly 20 years from inception to completion……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Not just because of the unacceptable danger but also due to the long delay before it can be operational on the scale needed, the use of fission-based nuclear power to tackle climate change should be opposed. Viable alternatives are available. None of the capitalist powers can be trusted to put the need to tackle global warming at the top of their agendas, since, for them, profit and increasingly ‘national energy security’ in the era of trade wars and growing international tensions comes first. Through democratic planning internationally, possible only on the basis of socialist change, with the energy industry, big business and the banks brought into public ownership, investment into a ‘green transition’ can bring an end to deepening climate disaster. https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/143357/01-10-2025/does-the-fight-against-climate-change-need-nuclear-power/