Beautiful Nuclear: Driving Deep Decarbonisation
LucidCatalyst
June 2022
"The climate problem is mostly an energy problem."
-Sir David MacKay
"This report shows how nuclear energy helps meet all 17 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. No other electricity generation technology can match this diversity of beneficial impacts. It emphasises that the priority for preventing irreversible climate change is decarbonisation, not the creation of energy systems which are 100% dependent on renewables. In the context of the increasing urgency of the need to replace fossil fuels, the case for expanding the range of low carbon options, including nuclear is crucial. This report calls for a whole system approach to the energy transition and for evidence-based decision making. It advocates extending the resource and effort that has successfully driven down the cost of solar and wind energy, and accelerated their deployment, to all low carbon technologies."
-Tim Yeo, Chair, The New Nuclear Watch Institute and former Chair of the UK Environment Select Committee
The Civil Society Declaration’s 35 signatories from nine countries, including world-renowned climate scientist, James Hansen; President of African Women in Energy and Power, Ms. Bertha Dlamini; National Secretary of Prospect Union, Alan Leighton; former chairman of the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee, Tim Yeo; and climate author, Mark Lynas, have all called for more inclusive climate and energy policy:
"The scale of our ambition must be commensurate to the scale and urgency required by our current predicament. The last decade has seen the development of wind and solar into affordable technologies that can make major contributions to the decarbonisation of electricity.
In this critical decade we must expand the suite of clean energy options to include nuclear products that are cost competitive, easier to buy, easier to deliver, present lower risk to investors and can meet a broad range of market applications.
In addition to the supply of electricity, which is only one fifth of energy consumption, advanced reactors have the potential to supply heat to homes, businesses and industrial processes; to produce hydrogen and synthetic fuels that will support a transition in transport and the difficult sectors of aviation and shipping; to desalinate seawater in regions suffering water scarcity; to support access to modern energy services in remote and developing communities; as well as to repower the existing global fleet of coal plants as part of a just transition ...
We call on all capable countries to collaborate to accelerate the development and commercialisation of advanced reactor technology during the 2020s for rapid global deployment at scale."
-The Civil Society Declaration presented to Heads of Delegations at the Canada-UK Nuclear Energy Summit on 5 March 2020. The Civil Society Declaration Calls for a Critical Decade of Clean Energy Collaboration.
"As committed environmentalists, our conversion to the cause of nuclear power was painful and disorienting. All of us carried a cost in changing our position, antagonising friends and alienating colleagues. But we believe that shutting down — or failing to replace — our primary source of low carbon energy during a climate emergency is a refined form of madness."
-George Monbiot, Mark Lynas & Chris Goodall
LucidCatalyst was commissioned to write this report with the collaboration of experts from various organisations.
Note this report is being released in Europe, hence we are using European spellings for "decarbonisation" etc.