Climate Change UK Nuclear

In the last year, climate models have run hot. As knowledge of enhanced climate sensitivity and polar ice melt-rate evolves, it has become clear that sea-level rise is significantly faster than previously thought, resulting in more frequent and destructive storm, storm surge, severe precipitation, and flooding.

With rare extreme events today becoming the norm in the future, existing risk mitigation measures become increasingly obsolete. The corollary to this analysis is that present and planned UK coastal nuclear installations will be at significant risk. In other words, nuclear’s lower-carbon electricity USP sits in the context of the much larger picture – that UK coastal nuclear will be one of the first, and most significant, casualties to ramping climate impact. Put simply, UK nuclear is quite literally on the front-line of climate change – and not in a good way.