nuclear-news

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/

October 2, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change | Leave a comment

The uphill battle ahead: Four different leaders, four different takes on global warming

By  SETH BORENSTEIN and MELINA WALLING, September 26, 2025

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Four men. Four corners of the globe. Four vastly different visions and experiences on climate change.

At the United Nations this week, a quartet of leaders with distinct personal styles and decidedly different national agendas demonstrated why saving the planet isn’t simple, fast or something they can even agree on.

U.S. President Donald Trump, a real estate tycoon and television personality, kicked off the issue a day early when he played skunk at a garden party. He told fellow leaders at the United Nations not to worry about climate change because it’s a scam and insisted that renewable energy, such as wind and solar, would wreck their economy. He was basically alone on that.

Then, on Wednesday, when more than 100 leaders gathered specifically to work on climate, it was the engineer-turned-president, Xi Jinping of China, who seized the moment, attention and headlines in a controlled video. He announced that for the first time, the world’s top carbon polluter would cut emissions. Though experts called it timid, he positioned his country to amass ever more economic might by cornering the market of the very renewables that Trump denigrated.

Feleti Penitala Teo, the soft-spoken prime minister of the small island nation of Tuvalu, talked of watching the beaches of his childhood get swallowed up by climate change’s rising seas. His role, he said in a Thursday interview, is to be the conscience of his colleagues.

And finally, playing host even though he lives a continent away was Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a former trade negotiator who represents a country that acts as a common middle ground for issues between North and South, rich and poor. He will host climate negotiations in Belem, Brazil, in November.

Their differences on the issue tell an important and intricate story…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://apnews.com/article/climate-change-united-nations-trump-lula-xi-8ab619c37a5471fc0de0a063feaf7b9e

September 30, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change | Leave a comment

Human-made global warming ‘caused two in three heat deaths in Europe this summer’

Human-made global heating caused two in every three heat deaths in Europe
during this year’s scorching summer, an early analysis of mortality in 854
big cities has found. Epidemiologists and climate scientists attributed
16,500 out of 24,400 heat deaths from June to August to the extra hot
weather brought on by greenhouse gases. The rapid analysis, which relies on
established methods but has not yet been submitted for peer review, found
climate breakdown made the cities 2.2C hotter on average, greatly
increasing the death toll from dangerously warm weather.

Guardian 17th Sept 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/sep/17/human-made-global-warming-caused-two-in-three-heat-deaths-in-europe-this-summer-analysis-finds

September 20, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change | Leave a comment

Protect Arctic from ‘dangerous’ climate engineering, scientists warn.

Plans to fight climate change by manipulating the Arctic and Antarctic
environment are dangerous, unlikely to work and could distract from the
need to ditch fossil fuels, dozens of polar scientists have warned. These
polar “geoengineering” techniques aim to cool the planet in unconventional
ways, such as artificially thickening sea-ice or releasing tiny, reflective
particles into the atmosphere. They have gained attention as potential
future tools to combat global warming, alongside cutting carbon emissions.
But more than 40 researchers say they could bring “severe environmental
damage” and urged countries to simply focus on reaching net zero, the only
established way to limit global warming.

 BBC 9th Sept 2025,
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yqw996q1ko

September 11, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change | Leave a comment

Kenya’s Ruto says western leaders have broken ‘climate blood pact’.

Africa Climate Summit told that developed countries are failing poorer
nations enduring worst effects of global warming.

Ruto told a gathering of fellow leaders at the Africa Climate Summit in Addis Ababa on Monday he was
“extremely concerned” developed countries were not following through on
their commitments. Overseas assistance budgets have been slashed by the UK,
France, Netherlands as defence spending stretches weak economies,
exacerbated by swingeing cutbacks by the US under President Donald Trump.

“Climate inaction” was costing tens of thousands of lives, Ruto said.
“Lives lost to a crisis Africa did not cause, as the least polluting
continent in the world.” Senegal’s former president Macky Sall also
told the summit that the continent and the rest of the world should prepare
for more shocks, following the “dangerous retreat” of the west from
climate action. “Africa’s crisis is not Africa’s alone,” he said.
“It fuels migration, pandemics, food insecurity, economic shocks,
extremism, and instability.”

 FT 8th Sept 2025,
https://www.ft.com/content/c59f1907-4b2c-4f36-886a-60dabbdd29cc

September 11, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change | Leave a comment

These countries are sinking into the sea. What happens when they disappear forever?

Can these small island nations still be considered states if their land disappears?

 Small island nations such as Tuvalu, Kiribati, the
Maldives and Marshall Islands are particularly vulnerable to climate
change. Rising seas, stronger storms, freshwater shortages and damaged
infrastructure all threaten their ability to support life. Some islands
even face the grim possibility of being abandoned or sinking beneath the
ocean. This raises an unprecedented legal question: can these small island
nations still be considered states if their land disappears? The future
status of these nations as “states” matters immensely. Should the worst
happen, their populations will lose their homes and sources of income. They
will also lose their way of life, identity, culture, heritage and
communities.

Independent 29th Aug 2025, https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/climate-change-un-maldives-kiribati-islands-states-icj-b2816719.html

September 5, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change | Leave a comment

Why New Large and Small Nuclear Reactors are Not Green.

August 20, 2025, By: Mark Z. Jacobson, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/energy-world/why-new-large-and-small-nuclear-reactors-are-not-green

Despite their considerable allure in the eyes of many, and despite being put forth as the cure to the energy crisis, nuclear reactors are not green.

Air pollution, global warming, and energy security are three of the biggest problems facing the world. Many have suggested that new nuclear reactors can help solve these problems. However, due to the long time from planning to operation alone, new reactors are useless for solving any of these problems. This is just one of seven issues with nuclear electricity that illustrate why it can’t be classified as “green.” Developing more clean, renewable energy is a viable solution.

Long Planning-to-Operation Time

The planning-to-operation (PTO) time of a nuclear reactor includes the time to identify a site, obtain a site permit, purchase or lease the land, obtain a construction permit, finance and insure the construction, install transmission, negotiate a power purchase agreement, obtain permits, build the plant, connect it to transmission, and obtain an operating license.

New reactors now require PTO times of seventeen to twenty-three years in North America and Europe and twelve to twenty-three years worldwide. The only two reactors built from scratch in the United States since 1996 were two in Georgia. They had PTO times of seventeen and eighteen years (construction times of ten and eleven years). The Olkiluoto 3 reactor in Finland began operating in 2023 after a PTO time of twenty-three years. A French reactor began operating in 2024 after a PTO time of twenty years. Hinkley Point C in the UK is estimated to have a PTO time of up to twenty-three years. Four UAE reactors had PTO times of twelve to fifteen years (construction times of nine years). A Chinese reactor in Shidao Bay had a PTO time of seventeen years. China’s Haiyang 1 and 2 had PTO times of thirteen and fourteen years. No reactor in history has had a PTO time of less than ten years. Today, that number is twelve years,

Wind and solar take only two to five years. Rooftop PV is down to six months. Thus, new nuclear is useless, but renewables are not, for solving the three world problems, which need an eighty percent solution by 2030 and 100 percent renewable by 2035 to 2050.

Cost

The 2025 cost of electricity for the new Vogtle nuclear reactors is $199 (169 to 228) per megawatt-hour. This compares with $61.5 (thirty-seven to eighty-six) for onshore wind and $58 (thirty-eight to seventy-eight) for utility-scale solar PV. Thus, new nuclear costs three (two to 6.2) times as much as new solar and wind. But nuclear’s cost does not include the cost to clean up the three Fukushima Dai-ichi reactor meltdowns, estimated at $460 to $640 billion, or ten to 18.5 percent of the capital cost of every reactor worldwide. Also, the cost of storing nuclear waste for 200,000 years is ignored. About $500 million is spent yearly in the United States to safeguard waste.

Air Pollution and Global Warming From Nuclear

There is no such thing as a close-to-zero-emission nuclear power plant. Carbon-equivalent emissions per unit of electricity from new nuclear power plants are nine to thirty-seven times those of onshore wind. Higher nuclear emissions are due to emissions from the background electric grid during the long PTO time of nuclear as compared with that of wind, emissions from mining and refining uranium, emissions from constructing and decommissioning a reactor, and heat and water-vapor emissions during reactor operations.

Weapons Proliferation Risk

The growth of nuclear electricity has historically increased the ability of several nations, most recently Iran, to enrich uranium or harvest plutonium to build or attempt to build nuclear weapons. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states, with “robust evidence and high agreement,” that “barriers to and risks associated with an increasing use of nuclear energy include…nuclear weapons proliferation concerns…” Building a reactor allows a country to import and secretly enrich uranium and harvest plutonium from uranium fuel rods to help develop nuclear weapons. This does not mean every country will, but some have. Small modular reactors (SMRs) increase this risk, because SMRs can be sold more readily to and transported to countries without nuclear power.

Meltdown Risk

To date, 1.5 percent of all nuclear power plants built have melted down to some degree. Meltdowns have been either catastrophic (Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986; three reactors at Fukushima Dai-ichi, Japan, in 2011) or damaging (Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, in 1979; Saint-Laurent, France, in 1980). The nuclear industry claims that new reactor designs are safe. But new designs are generally untested, and there is no guarantee that a new reactor will survive a disaster.

Waste Risk

Consumed fuel rods from nuclear reactors are radioactive waste. Most rods are stored near the reactor that used them. This has given rise to hundreds of radioactive waste sites that must be maintained for at least 200,000 years. The more nuclear waste that accumulates, the greater the risk of a leak that damages water supply, crops, animals, and/or humans.

Miining Lung Cancer Risk

Underground uranium mining, which is about half of all uranium mining, causes lung cancer in miners because uranium mines contain radon gas, some of whose decay products are carcinogenic. Wind and solar do not have this risk because they do not require continuous fuel mining, only one-time mining to produce the infrastructure, and such mining does not involve radon.

In sum, new nuclear takes seven to twenty-one years longer, costs two to 6.2 times as much, and emits nine to thirty-seven times the pollution per unit of electricity as new wind or solar. Beyond simply not being “green,” nuclear energy also has weapons proliferation risks, meltdown risks, waste risks, and mining lung cancer risks, which clean renewables avoid. SMRs will continue most of these problems and increase the risk of proliferation. In 2024, China added 378 gigawatts of wind, solar, and hydropower, ninety-five times the nuclear power it finished. Thus, even where nuclear is growing fastest, renewables are beating it by two orders of magnitude.

Finally, many existing reactors are so costly, their owners are demanding subsidies to stay open. But subsidizing existing nuclear may increase carbon emissions and costs versus replacing the plants with wind or solar.

August 26, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change | Leave a comment

Radiocarbon Dispersion around Canadian Nuclear Facilities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2016, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/radiocarbon/article/radiocarbon-dispersion-around-canadian-nuclear-facilities/3BEF0553EC67E4951B9D5EF132D7EDCA

G. M. Milton, S. J. Kramer, R. M. Brown, C. J. W. Repta, K. J. King and R. R. Rao

Abstract

Canadian deuterium uranium (CANDU) pressurized heavy-water reactors produce 14C by neutron activation of trace quantities of nitrogen in annular gas and reactor components (14N(n,p)14C), and from 17O in the heavy water moderator by (17O(n,α)14C). The radiocarbon produced in the moderator is removed on ion exchange resins incorporated in the water purification systems; however, a much smaller gaseous portion is vented from reactor stacks at activity levels considerably below 1% of permissible derived emission limits.

Early measurements of the carbon speciation indicated that >90% of the 14C emitted was in the form of CO₂. We conducted surveys of the atmospheric dispersion of 14CO₂ at the Chalk River Laboratories and at the Pickering Nuclear Generating Station. We analyzed air, vegetation, soils and tree rings to add to the historical record of 14C emissions at these sites, and to gain an understanding of the relative importance of the various carbon pools that act as sources/sinks within the total 14C budget. Better model parameters than those currently available for calculating the dose to the critical group can be obtained in this manner. Global dose estimates may require the development of techniques for estimating emissions occurring outside the growing season.

Information

TypeIV. 14C as a Tracer of the Dynamic Carbon Cycle in the Current EnvironmentInformation

Radiocarbon , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , 1995 , pp. 485 – 496

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033822200030964

References…………………………………………………………………….

August 26, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change | Leave a comment

Do heatwaves, wildfires and travel costs signal the end of the holiday abroad?

It was a prediction nobody wanted to hear. On the main stage of the world’s
biggest tourism fair, Stefan Gössling, a leading researcher in sustainable
transport, had just calmly announced the looming death of the holiday
industry. “We have already entered the beginning of the age of
non-tourism,” said Gössling, to an uneasy audience of travel agencies,
car rental companies, cruise operators and hoteliers. That prophecy may
sound fanciful to holidaymakers in Europe and North America who have been
jetting off this summer – as well as to industry executives delighted to
see international tourism return to pre-pandemic highs last year – but
Gössling argues that as carbon pollution stokes heatwaves, fuels wildfires
and ruins harvests, the cost of foreign travel will soar, and fewer people
will be able to afford it. Gössling is not short of examples of
destinations already feeling the squeeze. Warm weather is melting snow that
keeps Alpine ski resorts alive. Coastal erosion is stripping sand from
southern European beaches. Droughts are forcing Spanish hotels to ship in
fresh water as swimming pools lie empty, while wildfires are setting scenic
Greek islands ablaze.

Guardian 23rd Aug 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/aug/23/do-heatwaves-wildfires-and-travel-costs-signal-the-end-of-the-holiday-abroad

August 25, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change | Leave a comment

Wildfire smoke far more dangerous to health than thought, say scientists.

Deaths from short-term exposure to fine particulates spewed by forest fires underestimated by 93%

Ajit Niranjan, Guardian, 19 Aug 25

Choking smoke spewed by wildfires is far more dangerous than previously thought, a new study has found, with death tolls from short-term exposure to fine particulates underestimated by 93%.

Researchers found that 535 people in Europe died on average each year between 2004 and 2022 as a result of breathing in the tiny toxic particles known as PM2.5 that are released when wildfires rage.

Under standard methods, which assume PM2.5 from wildfires is as deadly as from other sources, such as traffic, they would have expected just 38 deaths a year.

The study comes as wildfires ravage southern Europe, and new data from EU fire monitors shows that 895,000 hectares (2.2m acres) have burned so far in 2025, breaking records for this time of year. They have pumped out more than twice the amount of PM2.5 that wildfires have generated on average by this point in the year over the last two decades.

“Previously, people assumed the same toxicity for wildfire particles and all particles,” said Prof Cathryn Tonne, an environmental epidemiologist at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) and co-author of the study.

“Our paper shows evidence that – although it happens less often – the health impact for the same amount of particles is stronger for wildfire particles,” she added.

Dirty air is one of the biggest threats to human health, and research suggests wildfires are a significant contributor to the vast death toll. In December, a study attributed 1.53 million deaths around the world each year to short-term and long-term exposure to air pollution from wildfires.

The ISGlobal researchers, who looked only at the smoke’s short-term effects, for which the evidence base is stronger, combined daily mortality records from 32 European countries with estimates of PM2.5 pollution from 2004 to 2022.

Using models that account for an expected lag in deaths, they found exposure to wildfire smoke increased the risk of death in the following week………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/19/wildfire-smoke-far-more-dangerous-than-thought-say-scientists

August 22, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change | Leave a comment