We must count the real costs of nuclear power

With efficient renewables, the whole world could have a western European lifestyle and still use less energy, writes Nick Eyre, while Kathleen Askew asks what happens to hugely toxic radioactive waste

Tim Gregory (Can we afford to be afraid of nuclear power? 6 July) makes a series of assertions that are incompatible with recent evidence about the transition to zero-carbon energy. Two stand out.

The first is that the world needs more energy. Poor countries certainly do. But the clean-energy transition involves shifting to much more efficient technologies, such as electric vehicles and heat pumps. Many studies, including by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, show that these can enable rich countries to halve their energy use while improving living standards. The whole world could have western European lifestyles and still use less energy.

The second error is to argue that wind and solar energy cannot power a reliable electricity grid. A major study by the Royal Society showed that a system based on these resources with some long-duration storage is not only feasible, but will be cheaper than a system with any level of nuclear power. Nuclear power is a costly distraction from building an efficient and renewable system.
Nick Eyre
Emeritus professor of energy and climate policy, University of Oxford

 Your author, in his enthusiasm to highlight the cheaper costs to build new nuclear plants, failed to include the ever-increasing costs of decommissioning nuclear plants at the end of their working life. This must be included in any comparison of costs.

He also failed to mention the problems of vast amounts of highly dangerous radioactive nuclear waste and accidents, freak weather – such as the tsunamis causing radioactive leaks in Japan – and potential terrorist attacks.

Nuclear may not cause atmospheric carbon waste but it does create hugely toxic radioactive waste that remains dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years. A problem that threatens the health of all life.

He mentions that Finland has made a deep burial site for nuclear waste, and the probability of geological activity and disturbance has obviously been factored in. However this does not mean it is guaranteed to stand the tests of time – and stable rock formations found at the site in Finland may not be so readily found elsewhere.
Kathleen Askew
Hayling Island, Hampshire

Cover photo:  Wind turbines and a support vessel off the coast of Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, in June 2024. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images