Green Party policy change on nuclear power

Posted: 22nd October 2026

Green Party

The Green Party has taken a wrong turn on nuclear Nuclear pollution from accidents, incidents and normal reactor operation impacts people and our shared environment. New nuclear power increases the existential risk of weapons proliferation in an increasingly unstable world, and creates highly dangerous radioactive waste that is toxic for millenia. Uranium for new UK nuclear would be mined overseas and imported, also placing health and environmental burdens on indigenous and low-income communities while violating their human rights. As we’ve seen in Ukraine and the Gulf, civil nuclear infrastructure is increasingly vulnerable to military attack and AI cyber threat. Crucially, both coastal and inland nuclear will be at significant risk from ramping climate impact. In the UK, households already pay what amounts to a nuclear tax to fund Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C, among the world’s most expensive nuclear projects. Meanwhile, renewables generate 52% of UK electricity – more than four times nuclear’s contribution. Globally, the contrast is starker. In 2025, renewables supplied 85.6% of new global generating capacity. Solar capacity grew by 510GW and wind by 159GW, against just 1.5GW for nuclear: a 462:1 ratio.
Nuclear now adds in a year roughly what renewables add every two days. In terms of actual annual electricity generation output, this means that last year new wind and solar supplied 104 times more usable power than new nuclear. With 20-plus-year build times, repeated delays and huge cost overruns, new nuclear diverts scarce resources from faster options. Small modular reactor (SMR) designs remain in development, and won’t deliver electricity at scale for decades. Taking full account of systems costs of uninterrupted supply – renewables, storage, efficiency and stronger grids deliver far more firm power for every pound spent. The uncomfortable truth is nuclear reduces and delays climate action. The very long nuclear development and build times means much longer fossil fuel burn. Nuclear is just too slow, too hazardous, and too costly for the climate and energy crises.

Nuclear Consulting Group 20th Oct 2026

https://www.nuclearconsulting.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/The-Green-Party-has-taken-a-wrong-turn-on-nuclear.pdf

The GPEW has ceased to be a serious environmental/energy campaigner. By dropping its opposition to nuclear power, the Green Party of England and Wales (GPEW) seems to have cut off its roots, which lie in opposing nuclear proliferation. This is at a time when the dangers of nuclear proliferation are at their peak in the Middle East. The role of nuclear power in providing, or encouraging, nuclear weapons possession in Israel, Iran and now, it seems, also Saudi Arabia, are central to the current Middle Eastern conflict. How can the UK encourage more nuclear power and set such a bad example when this is going on? None of the main parties talk about this, and neither can we now expect the GPEW to do so. It is not as if new nuclear power stations are unavoidable requirements, or economic and quick to deploy. They are not, so why not say so? No doubt my senses will be assaulted to see, at some time in the future, Green Party spokespersons even falling into the nuclear fantasy world to affect that small modular reactors are a serious future or that Sizewell C will be installed before the year 2040. The Guardian quotes Carla Denyer MP as saying, ‘ if I were energy secretary, my evidence-based approach would be to keep existing nuclear plants in operation, but to consider proposals for new nuclear power very carefully, bearing in mind the cost, speed and environmental impacts.” Her comments strike a different tone from her assessment in 2023, when she described nuclear energy as “incredibly slow and incredibly expensive”.

Dave Toke’s Blog 20th Oct 2026

https://davidtoke.com/disastrous-motion-at-green-party-conference/