The motion, adopted at conference, removes a “blanket opposition to nuclear fission” and instead commits the Green party of England and Wales to assessing nuclear projects alongside other low-carbon technologies.
Its electricity generation policy still prioritises offshore wind, onshore wind and rooftop solar as the primary sources of electricity, but allows elected representatives to support new nuclear reactors on a case-by-case basis.
This was one or the few areas I didn’t align with the Green Party before, as I believe that a bit of nuclear is kind of necessary to help round out less consistent energy sources as things stand. I think this is a reasonable stance.
Breeder reactors are conceptually cool but nowhere near economical enough to be a practical solution at present. Only two still exist in the world, and both are operated in russia - they were phased out for a reason.
Regardless, to run a breeder reactor you still need to separate out fission products from the waste, which we havent been doing since the 60’s or 70’s. The sensible thing to to with fuel is to reprocess it by PUREX/SANEX like we used to. But unfortunately we now have this giant build-up of screaming-hot unprocessed waste