Not so carbon neutral nuclear

c. Russ

One of the arguments used to support the nuclear industry is that it is clean. Leaving aside what happens when nuclear goes wrong (and everyone always promises that it is perfectly safe, except for those few times, that could never possibly happen here, which we are to believe...) and leaving aside the issue of having radioactive waste that will have to be stored securely for thousands of years, is there any merit to the ‘carbon neutral’ claim?

Those of us who lived near Berkley and Oldbury stations when they were running, know that they did not belch smoke into the air in the manner of a traditionally ‘dirty’ fossil fuels station. However, there is more to the life, and carbon impact of a nuclear power station than what it does in the moment of producing energy.

If this is something you’d like to know more about, do please have a read of Dr Iain Fairle’s recent piece in The Ecologist – nuclear power is no answer to global warming

 Dr Iain Fairlie is an independent consultant on radioactivity in the environment who has spoken in Stroud on several occasions. You can find out more about his visits to Stroud here  and more about Dr Fairlie here.