{"id":383487,"date":"2025-06-17T09:43:50","date_gmt":"2025-06-17T07:43:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=383487"},"modified":"2025-06-17T09:43:52","modified_gmt":"2025-06-17T07:43:52","slug":"how-nuclear-power-might-save-the-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=383487","title":{"rendered":"How Nuclear Power Might Save The Day"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From The Daily Sceptic<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\u00a0Sallust<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Telegraph <\/em>has published an interview with a 32 year-old scientist called Tim Gregory who argues that decarbonisation needs a total rethink<\/a> in his book Going Nuclear: How the Atom Will Save the World<\/em>. His argument, unsurprisingly, is that nuclear power is the solution to clean and better energy and it\u2019s been staring everyone in the face for decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the gems are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cCertainly, for the foreseeable future, nuclear power represents our best shot of sensibly achieving Net Zero and producing all of the electricity that we\u2019re going to need by 2050 when we\u2019re all in electric cars and using heat pumps.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

France showed what was possible \u2013 by accident, after the oil crisis of the 1970s:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cThey almost decarbonised their entire grid by accident before anyone cared about climate change,\u201d says Gregory, holding up a chip for emphasis. \u201cThere\u2019s a real lesson in that. It\u2019s actually possible. The science and technology is there already. We just need to get our act together and deploy it. We\u2019re already at about 30% renewables in a lot of countries. What about 30% renewables, 70% nuclear? Then you\u2019ve done it, and you can all talk about something else and just crack on.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Germany demonstrates the folly of relying on renewables:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Germany\u2019s Energiewende <\/em>\u2013 its transition away from nuclear and fossil fuels to renewables, which began at the turn of the millennium but accelerated after Fukushima \u2013 provides the perfect counterpoint. Nuclear, argues Gregory, provides much better value for money than any of its rivals. For the \u20ac500 billion Germany spent on its \u201cfailed energy transformation\u201d, Gregory writes, it could have had 40 reactors like the one built in Finland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWith that much electricity, plus the nuclear it switched off since 2000, Germany could have entirely decarbonised its electricity supply, eliminated the need for unreliable wind turbines and solar panels, electrified all 49 million of its cars, and still have spare electricity to generate 1.7 million tonnes of green hydrogen every year.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The obstacles are the lack of a will to embark on major long-term infrastructure projects and the disease of despair that has settled in over the West which, as every Daily Sceptic<\/em> reader knows, has much to do with climate alarmism and its perpetual message of despair:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cIn the UK, we used to be world leaders at building nuclear power stations, not just quickly but en masse<\/em>. The median build time in Europe back in the 1970s and 1980s was about six years, which is about what it is today in China and South Korea,\u201d he says, pointing to the stacks where British scientists took the first steps into the Atomic Age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is a doom and gloom in society, and people are demoralised,\u201d says Gregory. \u201cI don\u2019t want to diminish the very real problems that a lot of people face and the big challenges that the UK faces and the world faces, but we are actually capable of doing some really cool stuff when we put our minds to it.\u201d That\u2019s where his Apollo programme analogy comes in. \u201cA massive, concerted effort on the nuclear power front would solve a lot of our problems. And it\u2019s totally achievable.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Gregory despairs at the whole mentality of eco activism:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cI\u2019ve read a lot of Greenpeace literature, a lot of Friends of the Earth literature \u2013 I haven\u2019t just put myself into an echo chamber. But I came away from the conversation with this guy really disappointed by how weak the arguments were. They\u2019re either based on things that aren\u2019t true, or gut feelings, and energy policy is not something that should be dictated by gut feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Gregory\u2019s argument is that green technology should be a) cleaner and b) better \u2013 the latter concept being something that often seems to escape eco activism, such as the LED bulb:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cThat\u2019s exactly the kind of technology that we should be implementing more of. It\u2019s better than what it replaces in its function, and it\u2019s cheaper and it\u2019s better for the environment. It\u2019s perfect. Who can argue with that?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is similarly irked by \u2018greenwashing\u2019 and uses a brief section of Going Nuclear<\/em> to interrogate Greta Thunberg\u2019s fabled transatlantic yacht voyage to the UN Climate Action Summit in 2019. While she may not have racked up any air miles getting there, the same cannot be said for a crew of five who had to fly to New York to retrieve the vessel and sail it back to Sweden. \u201cOf all the things in my book that might get me cancelled, the opening to that chapter might be one,\u201d Gregory says.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

None of this gets round the facts that EVs are expensive, don\u2019t last, wear out roads more quickly and don\u2019t go far enough on a charge, or that heat pumps use vast amounts of electricity and don\u2019t work very well \u2013 or, of course, that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant but boosts plant growth and is of net benefit to the planet. But perhaps for those who still believe in the imperative of reducing carbon emissions, scientists like Gregory will lead them down a more sensible and less damaging road \u2013 at least until they can be persuaded to abandon the false climate alarmist narrative altogether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Worth reading in full<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The\u00a0Telegraph\u00a0has published an interview with a 32 year-old scientist called Tim Gregory who argues that\u00a0decarbonisation needs a total rethink\u00a0in his book\u00a0Going Nuclear: How the Atom Will Save the World. His argument, unsurprisingly, is that nuclear power is the solution to clean and better energy and it\u2019s been staring everyone in the face for decades.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":383488,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691829997,691819134,691818056,691835863,691818228,691819262,691818154,691818206,691818181],"class_list":{"0":"post-383487","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-carbon-dioxide-co","9":"tag-climate-alarmism","10":"tag-climate-change","11":"tag-dr-tim-gregory","12":"tag-fossil-fuels","13":"tag-green-agenda","14":"tag-net-zero","15":"tag-nuclear-power","16":"tag-renewable-energy","18":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/0Screenshot-2025-06-16-110933.jpeg?fit=1491%2C771&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1BLh","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":234005,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=234005","url_meta":{"origin":383487,"position":0},"title":"Will nuclear fusion power save us?","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"14\/12\/2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Nuclear fusion liberates energy by combining light atoms \u2013 isotopes of hydrogen \u2013 rather than by using the radioactive decay of large atoms such as uranium and plutonium \u2013 nuclear fission.","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/0Screenshot-2022-12-13-at-21.43.59-scaled-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C883&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/0Screenshot-2022-12-13-at-21.43.59-scaled-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C883&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/0Screenshot-2022-12-13-at-21.43.59-scaled-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C883&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/0Screenshot-2022-12-13-at-21.43.59-scaled-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C883&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/0Screenshot-2022-12-13-at-21.43.59-scaled-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C883&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":299266,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=299266","url_meta":{"origin":383487,"position":1},"title":"Six SMR power plants\u00a0approved in Poland","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"01\/02\/2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Poland's Ministry of Climate and Environment has issued decisions-in-principle for the construction of power plants based on GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy's BWRX-300 small modular reactor (SMR) at six locations. 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