Nuclear power is the Betamax of the energy world

We need to stop being distracted by this techology and focus on promoting and investing in renewables

• 
  
• 
  

Active and spent nuclear fuel rods underwater. Photograph: Timothy Fadek/Corbis

In my first month as the new Green party leader, I've spent lots of time talking about pressing economic and social issues - the need for the minimum wage to be a living wage, how benefits should be available to all who need them, and how costly and destructive the privatisation of the NHS will be.

But with the government's energy bill on the horizon, serious questions around the coalition's wobbly-looking commitment not to subsidise new nuclear, and an anti-nuclear protest at Hinkley Point on 8 October, I've also spent lots of my time explaining why I think renewable energy - wind, solar and, in the future, tide and wave - combined with energy conservation, provide an excellent way forward for British energy.

I talk about the fact that the first two are technologies that are ready to scale up right now, providing jobs and affordable supplies for Britain. And about the fact that we know exactly what all of their "fuel" supplies will cost indefinitely into the future - ie nothing.

I talk about the way they can provide a decentralised, resilient energy system that is able to withstand climate or other shocks. And I discuss how nuclear is a distraction from the need to promote and invest in renewables.