The announcement of the government's rehash of its revised "net zero" policy is careful to distinguish between renewable energy and nuclear power - perhaps civil servants are still in charge of one government office? However, Energy Security Secretary Grant Shapps is not so punctilious. He has declared that nuclear is a renewable source.
Electricity generation by nuclear fission is dependent ultimately on mined uranium, of which there is a finite, if not precisely-known, amount. There are technologies for extracting more power from spent fuel, but they are not, to the best of my knowledge, used in the UK, and there is a limit on the lengths to which one can go. (On the other hand, lithium, cobalt and other elements required for today's high-performance electrical storage, are also derived from mining, but because they are not transmuted in use, can be recycled as a plant in Norway has shown. About 5% is lost in the process, but in future we may depend more and more on the process as there is less of the stuff in the ground.)
Presumably the minister has reclassified nuclear as "renewable" in order to exempt it, along with genuinely green technologies, from the energy price cap. I am a supporter of nuclear power and regret successive governments frittering away our lead in the field by burking development. However, misusing language a la Nineteen Eighty Four can only diminish public trust.
Updated 2023-03-31
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