Green party drops longstanding opposition to nuclear power

Hinkley C nuclear power plant (model)

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They just worked out that renewables don’t supply baseload (on-demand) electricity to power grids. Once coal and gas are ruled out on grounds of misplaced climate dogma, the main realistic grid-scale alternatives in the UK are CO2-producing biomass and nuclear. Biomass has obvious issues, leaving nuclear as the last man standing for new baseload in ‘Green world’ where everyone wants to be a climate saver, or something.
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Green party members have voted to end the party’s opposition to nuclear power, dropping a commitment to phase out the technology in a major shift in its energy policy, says the Guardian (via Yahoo News).

The motion, adopted at conference, removes a “blanket opposition to nuclear fission” and instead commits the Green party of England and Wales to assessing nuclear projects alongside other low-carbon technologies.

Its electricity generation policy still prioritises offshore wind, onshore wind and rooftop solar as the primary sources of electricity [Talkshop comment – daytime-only power isn’t very ‘primary’], but allows elected representatives to support new nuclear reactors on a case-by-case basis.

The Green MP Carla Denyer said the decision recognised there was a role for nuclear while the country moved towards an electricity system based primarily on renewables.
. . .
Denyer said keeping existing nuclear stations running could be a low-carbon option because a significant proportion of their carbon footprint came from construction. “So 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”. She said at the time: “Renewables is simply the way forward. Nuclear is not going to help us out in this climate emergency.”
. . .
The Green’s previous opposition to nuclear fission was rooted in its staunch opposition of nuclear weapons, one of the party’s founding principles.

Eugene McCarthy, a co-founder of Greens for Nuclear and a supporter of the motion, said the urgency of the climate crisis demanded a willingness to consider all available options. “We are at the throw-the-kitchen-sink-at-it phase of the climate crisis where you cannot be ruling anything out for things like Chernobyl happening in the 1980s,” he said.

Full article here.
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Image: Hinkley C nuclear power plant (model).