How the return of nuclear power can help get us to net zero

Nuclear power was the future once – and now it seems it is again as governments look for ways to meet their net-zero targets.

Sizewell nuclear power station
New nuclear technology will be one of the “50 shifting shades of green”
(Image credit: © Getty Images/iStock)

What’s happened?

The very modest success of the COP26 climate summit has refocused attention on the role of nuclear power as an almost zero-carbon, reliable source of non-intermittent energy that could prove crucial to meeting net-zero targets. “Nuclear power is the only carbon-free source that can deliver round-the-clock power, on demand, almost anywhere,” says the Financial Times.

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Simon Wilson’s first career was in book publishing, as an economics editor at Routledge, and as a publisher of non-fiction at Random House, specialising in popular business and management books. While there, he published Customers.com, a bestselling classic of the early days of e-commerce, and The Money or Your Life: Reuniting Work and Joy, an inspirational book that helped inspire its publisher towards a post-corporate, portfolio life.   

Since 2001, he has been a writer for MoneyWeek, a financial copywriter, and a long-time contributing editor at The Week. Simon also works as an actor and corporate trainer; current and past clients include investment banks, the Bank of England, the UK government, several Magic Circle law firms and all of the Big Four accountancy firms. He has a degree in languages (German and Spanish) and social and political sciences from the University of Cambridge.