Letter from Professor Andy Stirling:

Posted: 25th July 2022

The UK is sadly becoming habituated to an officially sponsored
attrition of truth about nuclear power. Despite intensifying propaganda, even
government data shows this military-backed technology to be, in reality, an
expensive, slow, unreliable, risky and unpopular way to deliver affordable,
secure, zero-carbon energy. The gap in efficacy and competitiveness between
nuclear and other options is continually growing. Supporting nuclear, rather
than energy efficiency, wind and solar, slows down climate action, bleeds
taxpayers, forgoes jobs and forces unnecessarily large and regressive burdens
on consumers. … BEIS says: “Nuclear is the only form of reliable, low-carbon
generation which has been deployed at scale to date.” [The] manifest falsity of
this starkly unqualified statement is extraordinary. As the government’s own
data also shows, the costs of managing variable supply are rapidly diminishing
and are already far smaller than the competitiveness gap between nuclear and
renewables. Current renewable contributions to UK electricity far surpass the
peak achieved by nuclear. When did it become acceptable in British public life
that a supposedly democratic government should so seriously misrepresent
reality in a formal policy document? In a period when stakes are
unprecedentedly high for climate, economy, energy security and hard-pressed
households, it is time to renew reasoned scientific and democratic debate in
this field and prevent this national self-harm by unaccountable special
interests.



 



Guardian 21st
July 2022



https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/21/time-for-the-government-to-tell-the-truth-about-nuclear-power