When the definitive history of the demise of nuclear power is written sometime in the 2020s, 26th April 1986 will be seen as the first peal of its death knell.
At that time, the industry had seen off any reputational damage from the accident at Three Mile Island in 1979, and was producing about 16% of total global electricity, with steady prospects ahead. But the Chernobyl disaster transformed the ‘tone’ of energy discussion; the industry’s brash arrogance was gone; safety was the No.1 issue. By 2015, its contribution was down to 11%; today it’s just 9% – at least as much because of the 2011 Fukushima disaster as Chernobyl.
Nuclear power is the industry that has refused to die. We find ourselves, today, all over again, engulfed in a tsunami of massively overblown nuclear propaganda. It’s almost all bollocks, for so many reasons. But given this is a short anniversary blog (I was Director of Friends the Earth in 1986, so 26th April is one of those few dates I remember unprompted!), let’s just touch on two of these reasons.
1. NUCLEAR’S REDUNDANCY
China has just announced that its solar exports in March (the first month’s figures since Trump decided to blow up both Iran and the global economy) surpassed its previous best month (August 2025) by a staggering 49%. 50 different countries set all-time records for solar imports from China, including India (up 141 %), Malaysia (391 %) and Nigeria (519 %).
This is primarily a response to the Trump-driven fossil fuel crisis. But even nuclear renaissance groupies should be able to work this out: you get new solar capacity ordered, installed and generating precious electrons in months (instead of an average of eight years for nuclear), at a cheaper price per MWh than any fossil option (let alone ludicrously expensive nuclear power!), giving your grid operators greater flexibility and contributing immediately to increased energy security.
There is nothing nuclear can do to counter that.
2. NUCLEAR’S VULNERABILITY
In February 2025, a Russian Geran-2 drone with a high-explosive warhead struck the roof of the protective shield preventing radiation leaks from the Chernobyl plant, ripping out a 15m2 hole. A fortnight ago, a dramatic report from Greenpeace highlighted the risks arising from this insanely irresponsible Russian attack — emphasising that it’s still impossible to carry out the repairs that are so urgently needed because of the constant threat of further attacks.
You won’t have heard much about this. Every single country with nuclear facilities wants to keep a lid on any discussion; compliant nuclear-friendly media toe the line. The International Atomic Energy Agency holds its increasingly laboured breath, just hoping that Russia decides to keep the vast nuclear power plant at Zaporizhzhia off its target list – on the grounds that it still hopes to switch it back on one day as a 100% Russian-controlled asset.
Again, work it out: every single Defence Department in every country with nuclear power stations is urgently revising its risk register after the attack on Chernobyl – given everything we now know about drone warfare from Ukraine.
Forget the reactors themselves (theoretically engineered to withstand a Twin Towers-style attack); think used but still highly radioactive nuclear fuel rods stored in situ at hundreds of reactors. Barely protected, let alone hard engineered.
REDUNDANCY + VULNERABILITY = DECLINE AND DEMISE.
How utterly appropriate, therefore, that the grandiosely-styled Policy Exchange Nuclear Enterprise Commission should choose this moment to release a new report, ‘The Nuclear State’, to turn all today’s bombastic rhetoric about a ‘nuclear renaissance’ into solid ‘anti-drift mechanisms and hard-wired institutional reforms’. Bless!
Sorry to have to repeat the obvious for anybody extolling the wonders of a nuclear renaissance on the 40th Anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, but the truth about zombies is that they are actually dead. They may still be walking around, often quite scarily, but they are – definitively – dead.
Image credited to: IAEA 02790015 (5613115146) (cropped), IAEA Imagebank / USFCRFC, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
Jonathon Porritt 24.4.2026
