Does Britain really need nuclear power?

Well, the answer was supplied in 2023 by the Rishi Sunak administration which admitted that the main reason for its continued eye-watering financial support for civil reactors was that they provided needed technical support and expertise for the government’s nuclear weapons programme.

December 14, 2025 by beyondnuclearinternational

It doesn’t, but the link to nuclear weapons is the key driver, writes Ian Fairlie

In recent months, the government has continued to promote nuclear reactors. For example, the Energy Secretary is now asking GB Energy to assess sites to be used to host new nuclear reactors. And the Prime Minister continues to push for so-called Small Modular Reactors and has backed the US President’s wishful thinking of ‘a golden age of nuclear’.

But these announcements and proposals are mostly pie-in-the-sky statements and should be treated with a pinch (or more) of salt, as the reality is otherwise.

Let’s look at what is happening in the rest of the world. Last year, a record 582 GW of renewable energy generation capacity was added to the world’s supplies: almost no new nuclear was added.

Indeed, each year, new renewables add about 200 times more global electricity than new nuclear does.

Of course, there are powerful economic arguments for this. The main one is that the marginal (i.e. fuel) costs of renewable energy are close to zero, whereas nuclear fuel is extremely expensive. Nuclear costs – for both construction and generation – are very high and rising, and long delays are the norm. For example, the proposed Sizewell C nuclear station is now predicted to cost £47 billion, with the government and independent experts acknowledging even this estimate may rise significantly. The upshot is that new nuclear power means massive costs, a poisoned legacy to future generations, and whopping radioactive pollution.

Given these manifest disadvantages, independent commentators have questioned the government’s seeming obsession with nuclear power. It is not that nuclear provides a good solution to global warming: it doesn’t. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that renewables are now 10 times more efficient than new nuclear at CO2 mitigation.

It’s not that AI centres will need nuclear: the International Energy Agency expects data centres will cause a mere 10% of global electricity demand growth to 2030. And it forecasts that the renewables will supply 10 to 20 times the electricity required for data-centre growth, with Bloomberg NEF predicting a 100-fold renewables expansion.

As for so-called Small Modular Reactors, the inconvenient truth is that these designs are all just paper designs and are a long way off. They would also be more expensive to run than large reactors per kWh – the key parameter. And as the former Chair of the US government’s Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) says, SMRs will produce more chemical and radioactive waste per KW produced than large reactors.

Given a UK Treasury strapped for cash, the unsolved problem of radioactive nuclear waste, the spectre of nuclear proliferation, and it’s being a target in future wars, many wonder why the government is so fixated with nuclear power.

Here is CND’s look at those links between nuclear power and nuclear weapons:

Nuclear weapons and nuclear power share several common features and there is a danger that having more nuclear power stations in the world could mean more nuclear weapons.

The long list of links includes their histories, similar technologies, skills, health and safety aspects, regulatory issues and radiological research and development. For example, the process of enriching uranium to make it into fuel for nuclear power stations is also used to make nuclear weapons. Plutonium is a by-product of the nuclear fuel cycle and is still used by some countries to make nuclear weapons.

There is a danger that more nuclear power stations in the world could mean more nuclear weapons. Because countries like the UK are promoting the expansion of nuclear power, other countries are beginning to plan for their own nuclear power programmes too. But there is always the danger that countries acquiring nuclear power technology may subvert its use to develop a nuclear weapons programme. After all, the UK’s first nuclear power stations were built primarily to provide fissile material for nuclear weapons during the Cold War. Nuclear materials may also get into the wrong hands and be used to make a crude nuclear device or a so-called ‘dirty bomb’.

The facts

Some radioactive materials (such as plutonium-239 and uranium-235) spontaneously fission in the right configuration. That is, their nuclei split apart giving off very large amounts of energy. Inside a warhead, trillions of such fissions occur inside a small space within a fraction of a second, resulting in a massive explosion. Inside a nuclear reactor, the fissions are slower and more spread out, and the resulting heat is used to boil water, to make steam, to turn turbines which generate electricity.

However, the prime use of plutonium-239 and uranium-235, and the reason they were produced in the first place, is to make nuclear weapons.

Nuclear reactors are initially fuelled by uranium (usually in the form of metal-clad rods). Uranium is a naturally-occurring element like silver or iron and is mined from the earth. Plutonium is an artificial element created by the process of neutron activation in a reactor.

Nuclear secrecy

The connections between nuclear power and nuclear weapons have always been very close and are largely kept secret. Most governments take great pains to keep their connections well hidden.

The civil nuclear power industry grew out of the atomic bomb programme in the 1940s and the 1950s. In Britain, the civil nuclear power programme was deliberately used as a cover for military activities.

Military nuclear activities have always been kept secret, so the nuclear power industry’s habit of hiding things from the public was established right at its beginning, due to its close connections with military weapons. For example, the atomic weapons facilities at Aldermaston and Burghfield in Berkshire, where British nuclear weapons are built and serviced, are still deleted from Ordnance Survey maps, leaving blank spaces.

It was under the misleading slogan of ‘Atoms for Peace’, that the Queen ceremonially opened what was officially described as Britain’s first nuclear power station, at Calder Hall in Cumbria, in 1956. The newsreel commentary described how it would produce cheap and clean nuclear energy for everyone.

This was untrue. Calder Hall was not a civil power station. It was built primarily to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons. The electricity it produced was a by-product to power the rest of the site.

Fire at Windscale piles………………………………………………………………..

Subsidising the arms industry

The development of both the nuclear weapons and nuclear power industries is mutually beneficial. Scientists from Sussex University confirmed this once again in 2017, stating that the government is using the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station to subsidise Trident, Britain’s nuclear weapons system.

As part of a Parliamentary investigation into the Hinkley project, it emerged that without the billions of pounds ear-marked for building this new power station in Somerset, Trident would be ‘unsupportable’. Professor Andy Stirling and Dr Phil Johnstone argued that the nuclear power station will ‘maintain a large-scale national base of nuclear-specific skills’ essential for maintaining Britain’s military nuclear capability.

This could explain why Prime Minister Theresa May continues to support subsidising a project which looks set to cost the taxpayer billions. Subsidies which go to an industry which still can’t support itself sixty years after it was first launched.

What to do with the radioactive waste?

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….The safe, long-term storage of nuclear waste is a problem that is reaching crisis point for both the civil nuclear industry and for the military.

During the Cold War years of the 1950s and 1960s, the development of the British atomic bomb was seen as a matter of urgency. Dealing with the mess caused by the production, operating and even testing of nuclear weapons was something to be worried about later, if at all.

For example, the Ministry of Defence does not really have a proper solution for dealing with the highly radioactive hulls of decommissioned nuclear submarines, apart from storing them for many decades. As a result, 19 nuclear-powered retired submarines are still waiting to be dismantled, with more expected each year. Yet Britain goes on building these submarines………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Reprocessing…………………………………………………………………………

Terrorism

A major objection to reprocessing is that the plutonium produced has to be carefully guarded in case it is stolen. Four kilos is enough to make a nuclear bomb. Perhaps even more worrying, it does not have to undergo fission to cause havoc: a conventional explosion of a small amount would also cause chaos. A speck of plutonium breathed into the lungs can cause cancer. If plutonium dust were scattered by dynamite, for example, thousands of people could be affected and huge areas might have to be evacuated for decades.

Conclusion

The many connections between nuclear power and nuclear weapons are clear. Nuclear power has obvious dangers and its production must be stopped. We need a safe, genuinely sustainable, global and green solution to our energy needs, not a dangerous diversion like nuclear power. CND will continue to campaign to stop new nuclear power stations from being built, as well as for an end to nuclear weapons.

Ian Fairlie is an independent consultant on radioactivity in the environment. https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2025/12/14/does-britain-really-need-nuclear-power/