--- title: UK Green party drops longstanding opposition to nuclear... description: Green party members in England and Wales voted to drop the party's longstanding opposition to nuclear power. The motion removes a 'blanket opposition to... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/uk-green-party-drops-longstanding-opposition-to-nuclear-power-vm4qsjv8k twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: UK Green party drops longstanding opposition to nuclear power | daily.dev og:description: Green party members in England and Wales voted to drop the party's longstanding opposition to nuclear power. The motion removes a 'blanket opposition to... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/uk-green-party-drops-longstanding-opposition-to-nuclear-power-vm4qsjv8k og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/Vm4QSJV8K.png og:image:alt: UK Green party drops longstanding opposition to nuclear power og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # UK Green party drops longstanding opposition to nuclear power **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 4 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Green party members in England and Wales voted to drop the party's longstanding opposition to nuclear power. The motion removes a 'blanket opposition to nuclear fission' and lets elected representatives assess nuclear projects case by case. Offshore wind, onshore wind and rooftop solar remain the policy's priority sources. MP Carla Denyer said existing nuclear plants could be low-carbon since a significant proportion of their carbon footprint comes from construction, though she stopped short of backing new nuclear. Critics, including Prof Andrew Stirling, called the shift 'completely irrational'. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 218 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-10-31). **TL;DR:** Discussion is dominated by a long, often combative debate about nuclear economics, waste, and energy security (with a heavy detour into Germany/Russia and Israel-Palestine politics) rather than direct reaction to the Green party's policy shift itself; many see the change as overdue and politically marginal. **Sentiment:** 25% positive · 30% mixed · 45% skeptical **The case for** - Some argue nuclear provides reliable baseload power that renewables plus storage can't fully replace yet. - Several note that nuclear fuel supply is less vulnerable to short-term disruption than fossil fuel imports. - A few see the policy change as a positive, if belated, example of a party updating its position based on evidence. - Some point out that nuclear waste is a small, manageable volume compared to fossil fuel waste and emissions. **The pushback** - Many argue nuclear is now far too slow and expensive to build compared to rapidly cheapening solar, wind, and batteries. - Some dismiss the move as 'too little, too late' given decades of opposition already did damage. - Several note the party remains marginal in UK politics (first-past-the-post), making the policy shift largely symbolic. - Critics point out unresolved issues like long-term nuclear waste storage and reliance on Russian-linked nuclear fuel supply chains. - Some commenters felt the party's other positions (e.g. on Israel/Palestine) undermine its credibility, distracting from the nuclear debate. **By community** - hackernews (heated): A sprawling, contentious thread where arguments over nuclear economics and safety are matched by equally heated tangents on German energy policy, Russia, and the party's Israel-Palestine stance. **Hottest debate:** Whether nuclear power is still economically competitive and fast enough to matter versus renewables plus storage, which splits commenters sharply. **Open questions** - Is nuclear power actually cost-competitive with renewables plus storage at scale? - How should long-term nuclear waste disposal be handled responsibly? - Can new nuclear plants be built quickly enough to matter for climate goals given multi-decade timelines? **Highlights** > Which means new nuclear is about the worst thing we can spend our limited resources on since it won't be coming online until the 2040s, and then at a ruinosuly expensive price. Meanwhile renewables and storage are reshaping our global energy system due to being the cheapest globally scalable energy source in human history. We also need to keep in mind nuclear supply chains. After 21 sanction packages the EU still haven't sanctioned Russia's nuclear industry. We're simply too deeply entangled across the entire supply chain: nuclear fuel, enrichment, reprocessing, technological partnerships, reactor maintenance, new construction and more. > — [ViewTrick1002 on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50318918) > Nuclear costs $16B/GW. Solar $1B/GW nominal. Batteries $1B for 1GW/4GWh. Figure out how much solar overcapacity and batteries you can get, within a year or two, for the price of a nuclear reactor deployable 10-20 years from now. > — [iknowstuff on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50319469) > >there is no way to deal with the long term waste. Yes there is, bury it. Its what we do with lots of other waste. Of course, you have to be a bit more careful than you would be with a standard landfill. But the engineering is well understood. It is usually just the fact that nobody wants it buried near them that causes political issues. >The waste will burden hundreds of generations for millenia Pumping more carbon into the atmosphere is also a huge burden for future generations. >Climate change is a minor problem in comparison What do you base that on? > — [hermitcrab on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50319392) > There is a very very strong pro-nuclear contingent on HN and in tech in general, and most of the tech pro-nuclear support comes from viewing nuclear as environmentally positive compared to alternatives, so I'm not surprised at all to see this. It hits all the right "this is good" receptors, even if UK Greens are a tiny party. (I personally view nuclear as completely infeasible, economically, while also being environmentally friendly, so I've had few allies on any grounds when it comes to public debate on nuclear.) > — [epistasis on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50318826) > It's a sad case of "too little too late". The best time to build up nuclear power was 4 decades ago - when the supply of fossil fuel was obviously fraught, and things like solar and wind power were nonviable. Whether it makes any sense to push for nuclear power now is unclear. Nuclear was quite expensive even back then - but decades of NIMBYism, "environmental" activism and overregulation have damaged the industrial capability and eroded supply chains to the point that getting a buildout going at scale and on a sane budget and a sensible timetable would be an uphill battle. At the same time, renewables aren't anywhere near as opposed, the economic outlook for solar, wind and grid storage is better than it ever was, and the situation is likely to improve even further. > — [ACCount39 on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50319072) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50318189) · 142 points · 218 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [UK plans regulatory reset to boost nuclear power](https://daily.dev/posts/uk-plans-regulatory-reset-to-boost-nuclear-power-h7hhs3hkc) · The Register · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Foldable Reflectarray Turbocharges Cubesats' Data Rates](https://daily.dev/posts/foldable-reflectarray-turbocharges-cubesats-data-rates-6ooqpg36k) · IEEE Spectrum · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [In Europe, Wind and Solar Overtake Fossil Fuels](https://daily.dev/posts/in-europe-wind-and-solar-overtake-fossil-fuels-if9qtbuh6) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Startup plans to rejuvenate the nuclear power industry with a new manufacturing approach](https://daily.dev/posts/startup-plans-to-rejuvenate-the-nuclear-power-industry-with-a-new-manufacturing-approach-flem6dljn) · MIT News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [A £35bn plan to build 14 mini nuclear reactors in the UK](https://daily.dev/posts/a-35bn-plan-to-build-14-mini-nuclear-reactors-in-the-uk-rt5ihu9sv) · The Next Web · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/uk-green-party-drops-longstanding-opposition-to-nuclear-power-vm4qsjv8k) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"UK Green party drops longstanding opposition to nuclear power","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/uk-green-party-drops-longstanding-opposition-to-nuclear-power-vm4qsjv8k","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/uk-green-party-drops-longstanding-opposition-to-nuclear-power-vm4qsjv8k"},"datePublished":"2026-10-31T18:49:32.353Z","dateModified":"2026-10-31T20:20:34.591Z","description":"Green party members in England and Wales voted to drop the party's longstanding opposition to nuclear power. 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