Mark Lynas is the author, most recently, of "Nuclear 2.0: Why a Green Future Needs Nuclear Power."

I fully agree with the climate scientists who are now so worried about climate change that they are reduced to pleading with the leaders of the green movement to drop their decades-long ideological opposition to nuclear power. As an author and campaigner on global warming for many years, I have tried to make the same case. In short, it makes no sense to try to tackle carbon dioxide emissions by eliminating one of the world's largest sources of zero-carbon power, as anti-nuclear environmentalists demand. This idea is not just implausible; it is mathematically absurd.

The ideal approach would be huge amounts of both wind and solar power, but they cannot do the job without nuclear also in the mix.

For my recent book, “Nuclear 2.0,” I did some climate modelling with the British Meteorological Office to try to investigate the climate change outcomes of different energy approaches. The conclusion was clear: The only pathway that has a good chance of delivering a manageable climate outcome (below 2 degrees centigrade of global warming) is one including a substantial deployment of new, safer nuclear power. This is not a nuclear-only pathway, by the way. I don't know anyone, not even in the nuclear industry, who claims that nuclear can do the job alone.

The safest pathway from my models had huge amounts of both wind and solar power, with the world’s wind farms covering an area equal to Texas and New Mexico combined and 2,500 concentrating solar plants in hot deserts. But all this renewable power cannot do the job without nuclear also in the mix, because poorer countries are seeking to vastly increase their energy consumption as their populations get connected to the electric grid for the first time. Energy scarcity is the enemy of development.

Nuclear is also vital to supply a zero-carbon baseload – a consistent source that does not vary with the weather. With smart grids, energy efficiency and electricity storage options, renewables and nuclear can work together to create a grid with little or no carbon output. It makes no sense to think of renewables and nuclear as rivals.



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