Green Party policy changes on Nuclear power

Posted: 20th October 2026

Green Party

The Green Party of England and Wales has abandoned it long standing opposition to nuclear power. A bit of a shock. However, its briefing paper on ‘Ending the Green Party’s Blanket Opposition to Nuclear Fission’, produced evidently by the ‘greens for nuclear’ group, says the proposed new policy, now accepted by the Party, ‘does not commit the green party to being a pro-nuclear party in any way beyond committing the party to following contemporary scientific research. We contend this is what the motion is really about: evidence’. OK so let’s look at its marshalling of the evidence. First it points to an ‘Our World in Data’ chart which it says shows that ‘nuclear power has the lowest carbon footprint and the second lowest death rate of any energy source.’ It’s hard to know where to start with these much debated and controversial topics. It is true that nuclear plants do not generate carbon dioxide when running, but producing the fuel for them does. That’s not the case for renewables like wind and solar, so they also avoid the eco and social impacts of uranium mining and waste management, although their output per GW installed is less and is variable and dependent on location, making comparisons hard. But, though there are debates on the exact difference between nuclear and renewables in
CO2 terms, it is small – fossil fuels are much worse. In terms of the deaths, there are some big uncertainties and controversies. For example, in the video produced by Greens for Nuclear Energy, Prof Gerry Thomas puts the death toll for the Chernobyl disaster at 28 initially, followed by around
19 later. But others put it very much higher, in the thousands including from clean-up workers, and possibly even more globally. Whereas the highest figure I’ve seen for wind, from an anti-wind farm group, is 272 fatalities so far worldwide, while, as the World in Data chart shows, deaths for solar are very low.

Renew Extra 17th Oct 2026

https://renewextraweekly.blogspot.com/2026/10/green-party-goes-nuclear.html