In order to serve their commercial interests the nuclear industry has achieved not one but two triumphs in “public relations” — in other words, lying.  (We should never forget that precisely the same methods were used to get Hitler elected.)

First, it has convinced politicians — and even some fools in the green movement — that nuclear power is essential if we are to reduce greenhouse gas emission, bring global warming under control, and limit climate change.  This is untrue.  Nuclear power is not sustainable since it depends upon a limited natural resource.  Just like oil, nuclear fuel is also widely scattered beneath foreign soil.  The construction of nuclear power stations, and nuclear waste repositories (should anyone ever get around to building them) give rise to immense carbon emission.  Nuclear power also enhances potential terrorism by providing high-value vulnerable targets, and by increasing the risk of the use of nuclear material.  The need to safely store and guard lethal waste for hundreds of thousands of years ought, alone, to rule out any significant exploitation.

Second, it has convinced politicians, and, sadly, the public at large, that nuclear power is safe, and that the Chernobyl disaster was just a one-off accident that really was “no big deal”.  The World Health Organisation believes at least 9,000 died as a direct result.  Greenpeace believes the true figure could eventually reach a quarter of a million.  The fact is, like smoking, it is not possible to attribute any individual cancer to radiation exposure, never mind the source of that radiation.  Nearly 3,000 square kilometres of agricultural land in the vicinity has been lost, and the safe use of vastly more, as far away as Wales, has to be carefully monitored.

Chernobyl was and remains a “big deal”.  Nuclear power is no more safe than it is sustainable, or a solution to climate change.  There is a long history of nuclear accidents, dating back to Windscale in Cumbria in 1957.  The more nuclear power stations we build, the more certain we should be of another Chernobyl.

We can generate enough electricity for our domestic needs, and most of our industrial needs, sustainably. But not enough to power a billion electric cars, making more and longer journeys because our habitat consists almost entirely of car-predicated sprawl.