Why I changed my mind on nuclear power

Fission for answers

This was taken in Chernobyl in 2018. I have significantly less hair now but that’s because of the unrelenting horror of being a man in his late 30s, rather than due to the radiation.

New event! Tickets are now available for the first ever homemade Odds and Ends of History live event. On October 15th, come and see me “in conversation” with the amazing climate activist and science communicator Zion Lights talking about how we can actually build a nuclear future. Did I mention it’s going to be in a pub?

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New podcast! My podcast, What’s Happening Now, which I make with my comedian friend Sam Hampson, is back for a third season. Our first episode is a fun one – we’re talking about SpaceX’s new Starship rocket and how it could transform the economics of space, and our guest is the excellent space journalist Kate Arkless-Gray.

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A maxim that I try to live by is that it is good to change your mind.

This is because if you want to be someone who is thoughtful and rational, an open mind is part of the bargain. If you believe that others should be willing to change their views, then you should be willing to change yours too.

And besides, who wants to be a bunkered ‘soldier’ who denies facts, reason or logic in the face of new evidence? That’s the sign of a sloppy thinker, who is undeserving of our respect – or at best it shows that someone is epistemologically compromised, and is not interested in finding the truth.

That’s why I’ve always tried to maintain an open mind, even on issues where one side seems so obviously correct – like whether we should liberate the Postcode Address File.

But this is where reality becomes a little embarrassing for me, as someone who wants his personal brand to be “guy who is thoughtful and willing to change his mind”.

Because though I’d love to be able to tell stories about how I used to believe completely different things, and that high-minded consideration of the evidence persuaded me otherwise, there are only a few issues where I think my opinions have significantly shifted in the twenty years since my life circumstances and teenage brain planted me on the centre-left.

And even then, I still don’t really have any great “Damascene conversion” stories. Instead, my views that have changed have tended to shift from “ambivalent” to “not so ambivalent”, or vice-versa – so not even a full 180 degree turn.

And one example of this is my opinion on the importance of nuclear power – which is what I actually want to talk about today.

Nuclear pivot

It’s not that I was ever a staunch opponent of nuclear energy, but I definitely felt uneasy about it.

This was for unsurprising reasons. In theory nuclear materials are very dangerous. So I defaulted into the reasonable-sounding position that surely we can just build a zero-carbon energy system using the cuddlier renewables, like solar and wind power. Why add scary nuclear into the equation?

I suspect I’m not the only one. I bet a lot of people in the hazy centre-left part of the political spectrum currently hold this view too, as it seems eminently sensible.

And perhaps this group even includes new energy secretary Ed Miliband? As despite his new gig, so far he has seemed cool on the idea of nuclear, relative to his enthusiasm for the renewables.

For example, though his department has committed to building the two nuclear plants that are already under construction (Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C), and the government has said that it wants to get two Small Modular Reactors off the ground by the end of the Parliament, Ed has yet to commit to the same nuclear timetable as the previous government.

In that case, the previous intentions were to build 3-7 gigawatts of nuclear capacity every five years from 2030 to 2044 – essentially adding another nuclear plant each time. But now Labour are in power, it looks as though the commitment may not last. Last week it was reported that Ed was considering scrapping the planned Wylfa nuclear power station in North Wales.

Obviously I’ve no real idea how accurate this characterisation of the Energy Secretary is – I’m just a guy on the internet. But it certainly wouldn’t surprise me if these were his views – not least because his goal is to achieve the 2030 zero-carbon grid “mission” that Labour committed to in its manifesto. On such an aggressive (and some experts would say unachievable) timeline, it’s hard to see how more new nuclear fits into that equation.

And in any case, why do we even need more nuclear if wind, solar and battery storage alone can (somehow) decarbonise the grid by 2030?

This brings me back to what’s going on inside my head – because like I say, I’ve changed my mind on nuclear.

Today I am no longer ambivalent about the technology. In fact, I’m incredibly enthusiastic about nuclear. I think it’s more important than we realise, because of how it can potentially transform our world.

And I’m not just talking about climate change – I think nuclear is also critical to our future economy. And in my view it is mad that we’re not doubling down and building more nuclear power plants, more quickly.

So what changed my mind? And why do I think that I might know better than the straw-man energy secretary I’ve created? Read on to find out.