Why does the Green Party oppose nuclear energy and HS2?

[Sorcerer]

Now as we all know there have recently been severe heatwaves across Southern Europe, Southwestern United States, and China, and along with many other severe weather events this has been linked to climate change, and as such there will rightly be many discussions on how to tackle the crisis. However, despite this climate crisis, those who are likely to be the most vocal about the about it such as Greenpeace or the Green Party still maintain anti-nuclear energy and anti-HS2 stances despite the fact that both are demonstrably some of the best solutions to reducing carbon emissions. Often the arguments I've heard against them are either exaggerated or inconsequential compared to the wider problem. An example for nuclear would be the argument of "waste" despite the fact no other energy source is without it (and in fact nuclear is arguably the only one that has active plans to deal with it), and an example for HS2 is the effect on things such as ancient woodlands even though it is still preferable to lose a few trees to make way for an otherwise environmentally friendly transport project than it is to lose forests to wildfires every year because of rising temperatures.

To me as a left-leaning voter and someone who cares about climate change policies, it is baffling to me that the Green Party would oppose policies that would greatly aid us in reaching our net zero goals (or at least come as close as reasonable possible to them) on the grounds of protecting the environment. I understand it's not ideal, but there will come a point where demand for energy cannot be met by intermittent sources such as wind and solar, the holy grail of energy for green parties, and we also quite simply cannot reduce road journeys or air journeys and thus reduce transport emissions without effective and reliable high-speed rail. Electric cars and buses can only go so far. I'm sure that I am not the only one on these forums who holds these opinions since I find many on here to be quite sensible and reasonably informed, but that said I myself cannot personally understand why the Green Party and other green movements oppose nuclear energy and HS2 even despite their long-term benefits. As a left-leaning voter it makes it hard for me to take them seriously when their policies give off the idea that they're living in a fairy-tale land where wind and solar can meet energy demands of 66 million UK citizens and road/air journeys can be reduced with the mere wave of a magic wand.

 

[Broucek]

This shows that they are not a serious party.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

This shows that they are not a serious party.

I think this is basically the answer. The Greens have their hearts in the right place when it comes to prioritising the environment, but the actual policies they come up with are very often nonsensical, and seem to be motivated by vague emotions rather than any actual hard-headed analysis of what it is actually possible and reasonable to do to protect the environment.

The kindest interpretation I can put on it is that maybe the issue is that because (thanks to our electoral system) the Greens have almost never come anywhere close to holding any actual power (Brighton excepted), they've never been forced to start seriously thinking about what they would actually do if they were in Government and therefore to make sure that their policies are at least somewhat sensible. If there's no danger of you ever holding power and therefore being accountable for what you've done, then it becomes much more tempting to indulge in idealistic fantasies instead of real-world solutions. Certainly, if you look at other countries in Europe where the Greens do have more chance of power - particularly Germany - you see much more sensible approaches. I could never, for example, imagine the German Greens opposing HS2.

 

[BananaRepublic]

There is a branch of the Greens who are in favour of HS2.
They’ve formed “ Greens4HS2”.

Home - Greens4HS2

We are @thegreenparty members and supporters – some elected, some not – who think we should support HS2 because it has a big role in a low-CO2 sustainable transport network for the UK in the 2030s and beyond. HS2 supports our sustainable transport goals, nationally and locally. Who’s involved We...

hs2.green

At the other end of the spectrum, there are greens who are also opposed to building wind and solar farms, on the basis of the environmental damage they are suppose to cause ( in their minds).


.

 

[Purple Train]

Because they come out the other side of extremism. There is no nuance at all. Ffos mine is a case in point.
The trouble with polarised groups like this is that they try and stoke a "them and us" mentality, so you cannot be a true climate warrior unless you subscribe to every short-sighted policy, and are a dinosaur if you disagree - as indeed occurs with most of the liberal flank, who cannot bear the idea that anyone might disagree with them/hold different values and resort to name-calling.

Much needs to be done, but not in three seconds flat with a mallet and a grenade. Reactive short-term policies such as the ones you describe never end well. Unfortunately many single-issue groups often have a single-issue mind.

It is a shame, as I would back them to the hilt if they were a bit more grown-up.

 

[W-on-Sea]

The German Greens may be a little more sensible than those in the various Green parties in the UK, but the principal substantive legacy of their period of being in government in coalition (in 1988-2002) is that of Germany deciding to close down its nuclear power plants, and Germany thus becoming more dependent on fossil fuels, notably those imported from state-owned companies in Russia, such as that which the Chancellor of that SPD-Green coalition government, Gerhard Schroeder, subsequently went on to work for, and still does work for today....

I'm not sure they are a substantially more serious or sensible party than the UK Green parties are; it is more that the German electoral system has given them a way to attain much more or a powerbase than would be possible in (in particular) England.

You're probably right about HS2 though: I don't think NIMBYIsm is anything as endemic in Germany as in the UK, for numerous reasons, a rather lower population density, and lack of a single dominant city perhaps foremost among them

 

[Sorcerer]

I think the points about the electoral system are fair ones to raise, and I do agree that not being close to power means the Green Party policies aren't properly scrutinised and forces them to rethink more sensible ideas, but at the same time scrutinising these policies would fall on opposing political parties who may have their own agenda. For example, the Scottish Greens aren't going to rethink their anti-nuclear policy because the SNP are also against it and thus will not serve as a barrier to power. As stated earlier, the German Greens were able to convince the main party of Germany to close down their nuclear power plants which has unfortunately lead to more fossil fuel dependence, including the good old brown coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel of them all.

So with that in mind I would still worry about the Green Party getting anywhere near power because I also think there's a matter of public opinion, and much of the general public won't know enough about nuclear energy to be able to debunk the fearmongering and alarmism. Being exposed to nearly 3,000 microsieverts per hour in Chernobyl sounds scary because the average person never uses those measurements and only sees the big number, so they won't know that the actual dose is actually only comparable to a long-haul flight. Meanwhile HS2 has wrongfully been sold to many people as a £100 billion way of getting to London faster and not the capacity reliever it is actually intended to be, so when there is talk of scrapping it, nobody who has had it presented to them as a mere superfast London commuter line will argue if they don't feel they directly benefit from it.

This is why I think it is wrong for the Green Party to oppose nuclear energy and HS2 because voters will expect the parties to know better and will give them the right information, and yet the Green Party along with many others are ran by people who evidently don't have a clue, and all the while the world continues to burn and the fossil fuel companies go about their business.

 

[Lucan]

Because they are basically an anti-establishment party and they see nuclear power and HS2 as establishment projects. They have long lost real interest in the environment.

 

[BananaRepublic]

Because they are basically an anti-establishment party and they see nuclear power and HS2 as establishment projects. They have long lost real interest in the environment.

In general that appears to be true.
The Green Party have become another focal point for the fringe and what is often derided as the “loony left”, to coalesce around.
In essence, they’ve been allowed to become a joke party, rather than any sort of credible political movement.

 

[Magdalia]

There are at least four respectable arguments for opposing nuclear power.

The first is catastrophic risk. I'm old enough to remember both Three Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl (1986). More recently there was Fukushima in 2011, though it is fair to say the earthquake and tsunami risk are a more important consideration in Japan than here. Right now we have high risk at Zaporizhzhia which is in the middle of a war zone.

The second is technology risk. Here we gave up building nuclear power stations after Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, because of the catastrophic risk, so we don't have our own technology. Hinkley Point C uses Chinese technology, you can make your own judgements about whether that is a good thing for National security.

The third is that we still don't really know how to safely dispose of nuclear waste, leaving a permanent risk of an accident following a leak.

The fourth is more prosaic. Nuclear power stations are huge construction projects involving lots of concrete, steel, energy and environmental damage. Notwithstanding the other risks, "clean" nuclear power takes a long time to claw back the "dirty" costs of construction. This argument can also be applied to HS2.

 

[J-2739]

You're probably right about HS2 though: I don't think NIMBYIsm is anything as endemic in Germany as in the UK, for numerous reasons, a rather lower population density, and lack of a single dominant city perhaps foremost among them

You'll have to take a look at Stuttgart 21, then you may reconsider that statement!

 

[Ediswan]

There is a branch of the Greens who are in favour of HS2.

There are also Greens in favour of nuclear energy.

https://greensfornuclear.energy/

Greens For Nuclear Energy seek to influence the Green movement’s key organisations and institutions to favour nuclear energy. We need every available low carbon power source to combat catastrophic climate change.

 

[brad465]

There are two explanations I can think of, one is trying to influence larger parties to adopt some of their policies, or at least watered down versions of them, which the Greens will then claim credit for. I'm sure I've seen previous party leaders for them claim this, and on the right wing this has definitely happened with UKIP influencing Tory policy through the EU ref and later policies on other issues.

I wonder if there is also an element of being able to say stuff they know they will never have to follow through on, given their small size and a voting system working against them, so when things go wrong they can claim this wouldn't have happened had their plans been adopted. Again this is something that right wing grifters and parties like UKIP/Reform UK have done, but on the other end of the spectrum. The spiralling costs and delays of both HS2 and Hinkley Point C must be providing them with ammunition.

Personally I think now Rolls Royce appear to be getting somewhere with Small Modular reactors, all future nuclear power that's not already under construction should be of this form, the smaller scale avoids some of the problems that come with big projects spiralling out of control cost and time-wise, and as it's UK technology there is no national security concern, unlike with the foreign consortium at HPC.

 

[bahnause]

Short answers:

HS2
I don't know, I'm not from the UK and do not know enough about it.

Nuclear energy:
For the same reason as everywhere else in the world. Nuclear power is neither carbon neutral, nor available in a reasonable time, nor reliable, nor even remotely economically viable. It is a useless waste of money, not a solution to any problem we have right now.

 

[BananaRepublic]

There are at least four respectable arguments for opposing nuclear power.

The first is catastrophic risk. I'm old enough to remember both Three Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl (1986). More recently there was Fukushima in 2011, though it is fair to say the earthquake and tsunami risk are a more important consideration in Japan than here. Right now we have high risk at Zaporizhzhia which is in the middle of a war zone……..

To put those 3 major disasters into some sort of context.
We’ve had over 60 years experience with nuclear power plants and nearly 40 years experience, since Chernobyl.

There are approximately 440 commercially active reactors, currently supplying electricity around the world, in addition to about 220 research reactors.
That’s in addition to another (circa) 200 commercial and well over 500 research reactors, that have been retired from operational use and have been decommissioned.

Those stats don’t include military reactors, such as those used for decades in submarines or very large warships, like the nuclear powered aircraft carriers.


z

 

[Sorcerer]

There are at least four respectable arguments for opposing nuclear power.

The first is catastrophic risk. I'm old enough to remember both Three Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl (1986). More recently there was Fukushima in 2011, though it is fair to say the earthquake and tsunami risk are a more important consideration in Japan than here. Right now we have high risk at Zaporizhzhia which is in the middle of a war zone.

The risk is hardly catastrophic for the following reasons. Three Mile Island was very much contained and isn't worth discussing. Chernobyl was a very unique case of a specific type of reactor (RBMK) with a positive void coefficient and inherent design flaws that were covered up so as not to embarrass the ever secretive Soviet Union. However, those design flaws have since been retro-fitted, and of course despite the inherent design flaws it took the operators pushing the reactor to it's limits and breaking operational procedures to even cause the accident to begin with. As for Fukushima, the flaws in the power plant were very much known by TEPCO (the plant owners) and were advised on it by quite a few bodies but completely ignored the warnings. None of the two biggest nuclear disasters were actually systematic to nuclear power itself, and using them as arguments assumes we cannot learn or improve on the mistakes made.

The second is technology risk. Here we gave up building nuclear power stations after Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, because of the catastrophic risk, so we don't have our own technology. Hinkley Point C uses Chinese technology, you can make your own judgements about whether that is a good thing for National security.

The national security concerns from the use of foreign technology is again not a systemic issue of nuclear energy itself but government policy decisions.

The third is that we still don't really know how to safely dispose of nuclear waste, leaving a permanent risk of an accident following a leak.

The fact you use the term "leak" demonstrates the lack of understanding because the term "leak" implies a liquid substance, whereas spent nuclear fuel is actually a solid rod that can be stored on site or in specialised facilities. Plus, as I had mentioned earlier, nuclear energy is the only source of energy whose waste management is even a consideration. Nobody seems to care about what to do with used solar panels despite the use of materials such as arsenic which is very much toxic forever unlike uranium. Plus, spent nuclear fuel can also be recycled.

The fourth is more prosaic. Nuclear power stations are huge construction projects involving lots of concrete, steel, energy and environmental damage. Notwithstanding the other risks, "clean" nuclear power takes a long time to claw back the "dirty" costs of construction. This argument can also be applied to HS2.

But the long-term benefits outweigh the short-term costs, because the alternative is what we're dealing with now which is extreme weather events only tenfold.

Nuclear energy:
For the same reason as everywhere else in the world. Nuclear power is neither carbon neutral, nor available in a reasonable time, nor reliable, nor even remotely economically viable. It is a useless waste of money, not a solution to any problem we have right now.

No energy source is truly carbon neutral, but nuclear is the cleanest and most reliable source of energy alongside wind, and it also produces considerably more energy than fossil fuels does. Yes it's expensive, but the argument is about saving the environment, not money, and your arguments are basically the same incorrect statements the Green Party is guilty of parroting.

There is a branch of the Greens who are in favour of HS2.
They’ve formed “ Greens4HS2”.

At the other end of the spectrum, there are greens who are also opposed to building wind and solar farms, on the basis of the environmental damage they are suppose to cause ( in their minds).

There are also Greens in favour of nuclear energy.

I just quickly thought it would be worth addressing here that while there are some sensible people in the Green Party who rightly support HS2 and nuclear energy, the official party stance are still very much opposed to both things, though I can only hope that these more pragmatic views will become the norm and the party will actually become reasonably electable.

 

[Lucan]

There are at least four respectable arguments for opposing nuclear power.

The first is catastrophic risk. I'm old enough to remember both Three Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl (1986). More recently there was Fukushima in 2011

The risks to the public of Three Mile Island and Fukushima were, and remain, trivial. The fact that the death of one power station worker has received more media attention than the deaths of 18,000 people directly from the earthquake and the tsunami shows how distorted public perception danger is - something also seen with the risks of rail versus road. Chernobyl was more serious but it was an already discredited design unique to Russia and which would never have been approved in the West.

The second is technology risk. Here we gave up building nuclear power stations after Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, because of the catastrophic risk ...

No we did not. Sizewell B was begun after both of those events. The hiatus between Sizewell B and Hinkley Point C was for political and financial reasons. The professional assessors, including the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (since renamed the Office for Nuclear Regulation), were basically satisfied with the safety cases for further replicas of Sizewell B - I know, I worked in the industry and I dealt with them. Anyway, isn't this a repeat of your first point?

The third is that we still don't really know how to safely dispose of nuclear waste, leaving a permanent risk of an accident following a leak.

My work in the industry included procedures for nuclear waste handling. There is no serious technical problem with nuclear waste, it is a political problem. Paradoxically, the nuclear objectors don't want the waste to be dealt with properly and finally because they want it kept around as a standing argument (you could say scare factor) against nuclear power, and oddly enough there are some within the nuclear industry (I have had dealings with them) who also do not want it solved because as long as it remains in surface cooling ponds their jobs are secure.

The fourth is more prosaic. Nuclear power stations are huge construction projects involving lots of concrete, steel, energy and environmental damage. Notwithstanding the other risks, "clean" nuclear power takes a long time to claw back the "dirty" costs of construction. This argument can also be applied to HS2.

Depends on how you measure environmental damage. One power station takes out less land and associated natural environment than one new housing estate, but no-one seems to object to those very much.

 

[yorkie]

The Green Party are completely unelectable.

There are sensible Greens called 'Greens for HS2' but the party has too many members who are completely out of touch with reality to listen to them

...This argument can also be applied to HS2.

Not really.

In any case, we need modal shift towards rail and high speed lines are proven throughout Europe and beyond to achieve that.

 

[bahnause]

The risk is hardly catastrophic for the following reasons. Three Mile Island was very much contained and isn't worth discussing. Chernobyl was a very unique case of a specific type of reactor (RBMK) with a positive void coefficient and inherent design flaws that were covered up so as not to embarrass the ever secretive Soviet Union.

A bit odd to exclude Three Mile Island from the discussion, but not chernobyl. The investigation of the incident in the USA revealed safety risks in execution and organisation alike.

No energy source is truly carbon neutral, but nuclear is the cleanest and most reliable source of energy alongside wind, and it also produces considerably more energy than fossil fuels does. Yes it's expensive, but the argument is about saving the environment, not money, and your arguments are basically the same incorrect statements the Green Party is guilty of parroting.

Same as above. Suddenly cost doesn't matter. You really seem to only pick parts of the argument you like and dismiss everything else as irrelevant. Funny enough, it is the austerity party wanting to go nuclear, and not the "financially unresponsible" green party.

There is no serious technical problem with nuclear waste, it is a political problem.

Doesn't change the fact, thats there is no solution for this crucial problem at all...

But if nuclear energy is as good as you want to make it look, there will be plenty of private investors available take the risk.

 

[Sorcerer]

A bit odd to exclude Three Mile Island from the discussion, but not chernobyl. The investigation of the incident in the USA revealed safety risks in execution and organisation alike.

Because Three Mile Island did not have the same lasting legacy and impact as Chernobyl did because the incident was not on the same level. If anything one might go a step further to argue that it's an example of how an incident can be contained but I won't try to sell it on that basis, because the fact is, the positives speak for themselves without the need to do so.

Same as above. Suddenly cost doesn't matter. You really seem to only pick parts of the argument you like and dismiss everything else as irrelevant. Funny enough, it is the austerity party wanting to go nuclear, and not the "financially unresponsible" green party.

I don't know what you're even talking about in the first half of your post, but if the parties involved matter to you then I remind you that the Labour Party also support nuclear energy. It's not an issue of party politics, it's a matter of pragmatism, and the Green Party is severely lacking in that with both nuclear energy and HS2.

Doesn't change the fact, thats there is no solution for this crucial problem at all...

Spent nuclear fuel can be stored on site or recycled in other reactors. I find it remarkable that no other power source is given anywhere near as much scrutiny for it's waste products as nuclear. But seeing as waste arguments matter to you, what would be your solution for the current waste produced by fossil fuels? Or even better, what would you suggest doing with solar panels once they have reached the end of their lifespan? What do you think should be done about materials containing arsenic which is practically toxic forever? Where are you going to put these used panels once the big solar farms have no use for them?

But if nuclear energy is as good as you want to make it look, there will be plenty of private investors available take the risk.

Nuclear energy speaks for itself, and no amount of alarmism and misinformation will change that. The only reasonable argument I have ever heard against nuclear energy is the fact that uranium is a finite resource, but the technology can improve with research into fusion and thorium reactors. But otherwise it is objectively among the best sources of energy available to us at the moment, and curiously the ones who stand to loss the most from it's usage are the big fossil fuel companies who know full well that coal, oil and gas cannot match the energy production of uranium.

 

[MarkWi72]

I’m a Green Cllr, who is largely in favour of HS2 ( and High Speed Rail in general) . I’m on our Council’s advisory board for it. I’m also in touch with Greens4 HS2. There is an offshoot of people who a mix of NIMBYS and followers of John Whitelegg who oppose ( all for different reasons).

 

[Sorcerer]

I’m a Green Cllr, who is largely in favour of HS2 ( and High Speed Rail in general) . I’m on our Council’s advisory board for it. I’m also in touch with Greens4 HS2. There is an offshoot of people who a mix of NIMBYS and followers of John Whitelegg who oppose ( all for different reasons).

If I may ask out of interest, how do the councillors compare to the parliamentary section of the party? Are they more sensible and reasonable?

 

[MarkWi72]

If I may ask out of interest, how do the councillors compare to the parliamentary section of the party? Are they more sensible and reasonable?

It’s a big mix. Like most parties, a wider spectrum. The Parliamentary section of the party ( Caroline Lucas) is very good on certain social issues, but lags behind on HS2 etc.

Our former leader in my group was a project manager at JLR. Our group overall is ‘normal’ . We work cross party and with residents. We don’t strip off and glue ourselves in the road or sit in trees.

Climate issues are key which is why HS2 and Nuclear opposition is crazy IMO.

You will find that as the party is widening membership and Cllrs , then the church broadens in that sense.

 

[yorkie]

I’m a Green Cllr, who is largely in favour of HS2 ( and High Speed Rail in general) . I’m on our Council’s advisory board for it. I’m also in touch with Greens4 HS2....

...Climate issues are key which is why HS2 and Nuclear opposition is crazy IMO....

That's good to hear.

As someone who doesn't own a car, I should be part of the Green Party's target demographic, however until there are more people like you in the party, there is no way I am going to vote for them.

 

[bahnause]

I don't know what you're even talking about in the first half of your post, but if the parties involved matter to you then I remind you that the Labour Party also support nuclear energy. It's not an issue of party politics, it's a matter of pragmatism, and the Green Party is severely lacking in that with both nuclear energy and HS2.

It's quite something calling a concept, that results in an energy price 4-5 times as high as renewable energy "pragmatic" It's a rip off of the taxpayer.

Spent nuclear fuel can be stored on site or recycled in other reactors. I find it remarkable that no other power source is given anywhere near as much scrutiny for it's waste products as nuclear. But seeing as waste arguments matter to you, what would be your solution for the current waste produced by fossil fuels? Or even better, what would you suggest doing with solar panels once they have reached the end of their lifespan? What do you think should be done about materials containing arsenic which is practically toxic forever? Where are you going to put these used panels once the big solar farms have no use for them?

I don't know in which world you are living in, but we recycle them for years now. It seems to be starting in the UK as well:

Recycling Solar Panels & Inverters Collections throughout UK & Ireland

Recycle Solar Technologies Limited provides recycling services for Solar PV Panels, solar PV inverters & other energy products to benefit the UK & Ireland.

www.recyclesolar.co.uk

 

[MarkWi72]

I do own a car as do most of the Cllrs in my group. Public Transport in my region is poor overall. Modal shift is required, but only with a cheap and sustainable public transport system.

I’ll add we are the official opposition in my Council, so we are doing things right as a group. But some of us tear out hair out at certain things in the wider party.

 

[Sorcerer]

It’s a big mix. Like most parties, a wider spectrum. The Parliamentary section of the party ( Caroline Lucas) is very good on certain social issues, but lags behind on HS2 etc.

Our former leader in my group was a project manager at JLR. Our group overall is ‘normal’ . We work cross party and with residents. We don’t strip off and glue ourselves in the road or sit in trees.

Climate issues are key which is why HS2 and Nuclear opposition is crazy IMO.

You will find that as the party is widening membership and Cllrs , then the church broadens in that sense.

It is good to hear that there are those within the party who are willing to take a more sensible stance, and I hope more follow your example. Even though I might have a natural bias towards supporting HS2 (I do love railways after all) there is still much to gain from it, including less negative impact on the environment. It just makes sense for an environmentalist party to support the development of greener transport infrastructure including high-speed rail that can potentially eliminate domestic air travel such as in Italy (even despite delays).

It's quite something calling a concept, that results in an energy price 4-5 times as high as renewable energy "pragmatic" It's a rip off of the taxpayer.

It is pragmatic. It produces energy at a consistent rate and at a much higher level than fossil fuels compared to renewables which at best are intermittent and will not meet the energy demands of the UK alone. Germany's push for renewables without nuclear has resulted in an increased reliability on fossil fuels including lignite (brown coal) which is the dirtiest source of energy available. The most sensible solution to the climate crisis we face is clearly nuclear baseloads complimented by renewables such as wind power with the option for solar panels on individuals homes at the discretion of the homeowner. But instead people like the Green Party and Greenpeace continue to parrot their anti-nuclear misinformation and alarmism which won't benefit anyone except for the fossil fuel companies that we so desperately need to move away from.

I don't know in which world you are living in, but we recycle them for years now. It seems to be starting in the UK as well:

Okay, so solar panels are recycled, but that still doesn't change the face that spent nuclear fuel can be recycled as well, and any that isn't/can't be can instead be stored on site or in specialised facilities. The fact is, the so-called "waste" argument is ridiculous because not only is it a problem that is actively dealt with, but it is still the only energy source that receives so much scrutiny for it. It is an argument that in my experience is made either from either a position of ignorance at best or in bad faith at worst.

 

[GusB]

Cards on the table: I actually joined the Scottish Green Party a few years ago. It fitted in with my views at the time and the party was pro-independence. I've voted SNP-Green in the last three Holyrood elections.

The main reason that I let my membership lapse was because I could no longer afford it at the time, but there were a few niggly issues that prevented me from rejoining when I could. First of all, most of the local Greens were located in and around one particular town that wasn't central to the constituency, and in order for me to get to any meetings it would have required two separate bus journeys at considerable expense. As most of them lived locally, there was no hope of car-sharing. Not one of those people had experienced the difficulties faced by people like me who lived in an outlying village and who had to ensure that transport connections lined up properly or face being stranded.

Getting back to the topic on hand, I'm not opposed to nuclear per-se. I am concerned about the length of time that the radioactive stuff needs to be kept but, like in any other branch of science, there are always new ideas and solutions. I keep my mind open in this respect.

I am absolutely for high-speed rail and it's bloody annoying that we've spent so much time dithering over HS2. It should have been planned from the outset to end up in Scotland, but we are where we are.

The thing is, though, Green politics is all about de-centralisation and I think it's rather unfair to assume that everyone who believes in it should share the same views. It's one thing to have shared goals but, at the end of the day, there are three separate parties under the Green umbrella.

 

[tomuk]

There are at least four respectable arguments for opposing nuclear power.

The first is catastrophic risk. I'm old enough to remember both Three Mile Island (1979) and Chernobyl (1986). More recently there was Fukushima in 2011, though it is fair to say the earthquake and tsunami risk are a more important consideration in Japan than here. Right now we have high risk at Zaporizhzhia which is in the middle of a war zone.

So what was the result of the catastrophic failures of Three Mile, Chernobyl and Fukushima? How many were killed? How much of the world is uninhabitable?

The second is technology risk. Here we gave up building nuclear power stations after Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, because of the catastrophic risk, so we don't have our own technology. Hinkley Point C uses Chinese technology, you can make your own judgements about whether that is a good thing for National security.

No we didn't give up building nuclear power stations due to those incidents. Our own nuclear power program had been beset with delays and overruns and we belatedly switched to American PWR design at Sizewell B. By that point due to the move towards privatisation, already built capacity and the availability of North Sea gas meant any further builds were not economic. We stopped due to money not safety.

Hinckley Point C does not use Chinese technology it is a predominantly a French design the Chinese are simply investors. The French and Germans started the design used at Hinckley as a new generation European reactor based on eaches earlier designs.

We do still have nuclear reactor design capability specfically Small Modular Reactors which Rolls Royce are leading a programme.

The third is that we still don't really know how to safely dispose of nuclear waste, leaving a permanent risk of an accident following a leak.

In the long term we basically need to bury it, plus burning the nastiest waste in a thorium reactor would help. Both of these due to the cost and surfeit of Nimbys in the UK mean no real progress has been made on long term storage. Short to Medium term storage is being done on site at decommissioned reactor sites.

The fourth is more prosaic. Nuclear power stations are huge construction projects involving lots of concrete, steel, energy and environmental damage. Notwithstanding the other risks, "clean" nuclear power takes a long time to claw back the "dirty" costs of construction. This argument can also be applied to HS2.

Carbon from construction is overblown. One example was the footprint calculated for a new relief road it was calculated 70,000t, ooh scary!, but if you compare that with other producers it is a small amount for example it is about the same as the annual emissions from about 35,000 BMW 5 Series.

So in summary you four points are not respectable arguments for opposing nuclear power

 

[DynamicSpirit]

That's good to hear.

As someone who doesn't own a car, I should be part of the Green Party's target demographic, however until there are more people like you in the party, there is no way I am going to vote for them.

I would echo that. I regard protecting the environment/stopping CO2 emissions/fixing biodiversity loss/etc. as by far the single most important issue facing humanity and would love to be able to support a party that puts that priority into all its policy making, but the Green Party's opposition to HS2 and nuclear power, alongside other similar stuff totally puts me off (The Greens' longstanding opposition to GM foods comes to mind - it seems to me that it's another issue where the Greens formulate policy based on vague emotion rather than on any real understanding of the issues. I'm also thinking of what seems to me to be a frequently crazy attitude to many economic and social issues). If @MarkWi72 can work to make the Greens more sensible and more focused on pragmatic solutions to 'Green' issues, then I'd be very supportive.

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