The Funniest Anti-Nuclear Claims of 2025

Short on mirth and merriment this Christmas? Let us provide you with festive cheer with our round-up of the daftest pronouncements made against nuclear energy this year.

Author: The Kernel and Rob Loveday

’Tis the season of Christmas cheer, and what better way to get a bit of mirth and merriment into our lives than to mock the afflicted — by which I mean anti nuclear activists.

So buckle up — here’s a round-up (in no particular order) of the five silliest things that nuclear activists have come out with over the past 12 months.

Oh, give it a rest, why don’t you… in other news, anti-nuclear turkeys vote for Christmas

1. Nuclear costs will last generations

Our first stop is in Somerset, UK, where EDF is building the mighty Hinkley C nuclear power plant. Sadly, the plant is behind schedule and over budget — partly through delays caused by Covid and other factors. But even with this much ammunition in their favour, anti nuclear protesters still seem to feel the need to resort to the occasional ‘pork pie’ to bash the project.

“Hinkley C will be paid for by our children and grandchildren,” said the spokesperson of the imaginatively named Stop Hinkley protest group recently. But this is inaccurate: cost overruns are real, but energy contracts, government guarantees and the complex way electricity markets and levies work mean bill impacts aren’t as simple as the slogan implies. It’s a political framing rather than a neutral technical statement.

2. Nuclear is a ‘trojan horse’ for fossil fuels

Next up, we head Down Under — where billionaire renewables enthusiast Simon Holmes a Court has been peddling his uniquely Australian take on anti nuclear whackaloonery.

His latest take is to claim that the Australian coalition government’s policy to introduce nuclear in the country is “a Trojan horse for extending fossil fuels”. Um, how, exactly, if Australia is looking to replace its coal plants with nuclear?? If he thinks those coal plants will be replaced with renewables any time soon, he’s wrong — unless he wants to see a renewables-heavy grid without baseload that will likely behave like Spain’s.

3. Discarding LNT will create ‘sacrificial victims’

Not to be outdone, US pressure group Beyond Nuclear have been drinking similar Kool-Aid, claiming that abandoning the Linear No Threshold (LNT) theory of radiation exposure will result in ‘sacrificial victims’. Cue a massive Gish Gallop of debunked tropes, most of them citation free (or linking to non peer-reviewed work by other anti nuclear pressure groups), but bonus bonkers points for linking to at least one debunked study and another one that’s nearly 70 years old. The reality is that LNT was never based on sound science in the first place — check out ‘The LNT Report’ for the full story.

Won’t somebody think of the children?? Or the poorly composited images?

4. We can’t trust nuclear companies

You can always rely on the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists for some daft pronouncements. Clearly in need of some alternative fodder to push to the media instead of their incredibly tiresome and decades-old ‘Doomsday clock’ gimmick(sometimes you wish the apocalypse would actually happen just so that you don’t have to listen to this tired old schtick anymore), a certain Matt Smith (thankfully not the former Doctor Who star) is dissing Holtec because… actually, I’m not entirely sure. Because the company wants to expand? Because it wants to build SMRs? The whole article is really just an disingenuous attempt to sling mud at a company in the hope that some of it will stick. And none of it does.

5. Nuclear will distract us from the ‘real’ solutions

Climate Action Network — one of Europe’s largest environmental pressure groups — put out a daffy report earlier this year in which they claimed small modular reactors (SMRs) would be a ‘distraction’ from “more realistic, lower-cost solutions such as renewables, storage, and demand side solutions”. Ah, ‘demand-side solutions’ — presumably, in their heads, meaning improved energy efficiency; but which in reality will more likely mean higher prices, rolling brownouts and the like (also known as rationing, but they’d never put it that way).

Mark Ruskell — joint winner of the Most Wrong About Nuclear award and the Most Egregious And Pointless Omission of the Definite Article awards 2025

6. ‘New nuclear a backward step’ says politician in country that’s had nuclear power since ::checks notes:: 1959

Oh, alright then — just because it’s Christmas, here’s a bonus one — from Scottish Green politician Mark Ruskell. In what must be an attempt on the world record for Most Inaccuracies In A Single Paragraph, he said earlier this year that: “New Nuclear energy would be a massive backwards step. It is a toxic and costly distraction from the clean, green renewable investment that we badly need to make. It is unsafe, unreliable and will not do anything to lower the obscene bills that households across our country are being hit with.” How sad that he’s chosen to ignore Scotland’s proud history of nuclear generation — one that began in the Fifties and which has not only provided low-cost, low-carbon energy but also jobs for life that the locals have loved.

So there we have it — for my money, the silliest things that have emanated from anti nuclear voices over the past 12 months. A resounding ‘bah humbug’ to the lot of them, though to be fair, in a way we’re glad they’re there — partly because we never tire of using the opportunity to rebut the pronouncements to anti nuclear activists, groups and ‘experts’ as a way to educate people and do some science outreach work. But partly also because they’re also always just so hilariously wrong.

Merry Christmas!

Anti-nuclear activists say the funniest things