There's little doubt that nuclear power could be produced safely and cleanly. There's also little doubt that it seldom has been. The contrast between the way things are and the way they should be threatens to split the environmental movement from top to bottom.
The movement has many roots, but one is the terror of nuclear weapons in the 1960s, and the recognition that the atomic power industry in its early days was little more than a cover for weapons manufacture. "Nuclear power – no thanks" was the defining slogan of the older generation of greens. It a rational response to the greatest threat to life on Earth. Their continuing repulsion was justified by a shocking series of accidents and leaks, not only at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, but also at Dounreay, Sellafield and many other sites.
Today, while the threat of nuclear war hasn't disappeared, it is less urgent than the prospect of climate breakdown. The two industries – weapons and power – were split up (though in reality long after it came into force) by the Euratom treaty and modern reactor designs are much safer than their predecessors. As nuclear energy produces less carbon dioxide per unit of electricity than coal or gas, and as uranium mining, though hideous, causes less damage than opencast coal, the argument has changed. Now the issue comes down to this: whether the nuclear waste will be disposed of safely, and whether it can it be done without the massive use of state funds.
Until the government chooses a site and produces detailed plans for a nuclear waste repository, neither question can be answered. To commission a new generation of nuclear power stations before we know what will happen to the waste we already have offends the most basic environmental principle: you don't make a new mess before you've cleared up the old one.
There's no mystery about how it should be done. No argument against a deep repository in a geologically stable rock formation withstands examination. The notion that some future generation might accidentally dig up our nuclear waste pile is preposterous: if our descendants possess the knowledge and technology required to mine through thousands of metres of backfill and break through all the layers of defence to find this worthless treasure, they would also possess the knowledge and technology required to understand the warning signs.
Nor do I have a problem, unlike some Guardian colleagues, with the notion of shoring up the carbon price, to allow this or any other low-carbon technology to become viable. The price of carbon has always been an artefact of policy, and the absence of a floor price – below which it cannot fall – is a persistent impediment to green investment of all kinds. If the government really intends to guarantee that the price will be €30 or more, as reported in yesterday's Guardian, this is something we should welcome: it cannot assist the nuclear industry in this way without also assisting the renewable and energy-saving industries.
Ideally it would simply set the carbon floor price, lay down the wider environmental criteria, then let the different technologies fight it out.
But the persistent trouble with nuclear power – like any other potentially polluting industry – is that doing things the right way is expensive, while doing them the wrong way is cheap. My newfound complacency about nuclear power – it's ugly, but not nearly as bad as a global climate crash – was shaken by the discovery last month of a shipwreck off the coast of Italy. The ship was one of 42 believed to have been scuttled by the 'Ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia. Most were sunk off the coast of Somalia.
The wreck appears to be stuffed to the gunwhales with Norwegian nuclear waste, despite the fact Norway has some of the strictest environmental regulations on Earth. The UN has pointed out that it costs roughly 400 times as much to dispose of dangerous waste legally as it costs to look the other way. The temptation to cut corners often proves overwhelming. I would choose nuclear power over coal, and nuclear dumping over climate breakdown, but I would rather have neither.