There is an article by Steve Kidd on the Nuclear Engineering International website (here) that complains that the global warning issue has been pushed as a reason to support nuclear power with absolutely no success.
Kidd contends that “The problem is that nobody has ever built a nuclear power station to curb carbon emissions. The industry’s PR effort has got seduced by the environmental case, but this has been a major mistake. This is perhaps an understandable one given the prominence of the debate about climate change, but it has become a fatal distraction.”
Nuclear power plants, he claims, were all built to provide cheap and reliable power with environmental gains being secondary.
Unfortunately he then goes on to say that we can solve the problem by ditching the linear no threshold hypothesis (LNH) to remove the public fears about radiation. Just is just daft. The LNH is supported by the ICRP, not necessarily because it is believed but because it is “the best practical approach to managing risk from radiation exposure and commensurate with the precautionary principle” (ICRP 103-36). I can’t see the public’s long engrained radiation dread (Paul Slovic) disappearing overnight if ICRP change their policy and I can’t see any reason why ICRP would change its policy.