Nuclear Power & Nuclear Weapons
Posted: 19th May 2025
Simon Barrow: The cost of the Trident programme alone over the next three decades alone is going to be well north of an eye-watering £250 billion. Imagine what could be done for human good with that scale of investment? But as the well-attended Scottish CND “Work, Wellbeing and Security” meeting at the recent STUC conference emphasised, the real challenge goes far deeper than that. It concerns the multiple connections between downscaling and eventually scrapping Trident and the huge industrial revolution required both to utilise the expansion of AI for positive purposes and to transition rapidly away from harmful fossil-fuel and nuclear dependence. As Craig Dalzell of Common Weal pointed out at the STUC meeting, without a civil nuclear power programme there can be no nuclear weapons. So, when politicians, including those in Scotland, are talking about expanding nuclear power – despite the fact that renewables are cheaper, greener, safer, more effective and create far more jobs – what they are actually trying to do is shore up support for a military infrastructure that generates huge profits for their friends in big corporations. But politicians know they cannot say that directly, in the same way that carbon industry companies cannot admit that their preference for nuclear power over renewable energy is all about massive subsidies and profits, rather than what makes sense economically and delivers a sustainable, liveable future. These are issues which trade unionists must speak out about more loudly. As EIS general secretary Andrea Bradley pointed out at the STUC meeting, part of that involves promoting school and public education on alternatives to a dangerous war economy. But raising awareness has to be accompanied by practical work on the industrial revolution required and the change of political will needed to achieve that. At the Glasgow rally last Saturday, tireless RMT Scotland regional organiser Gordon Martin, who also spoke at the STUC meeting, acknowledged frankly that trade unions are still divided on a number of these key issues.