The fact that we have to take everything about SMR technology on trust is important because for almost a century, the unfulfilled promise of the nuclear energy industry has left a trail of destruction in its wake. While carbon-neutral from a certain perspective, any claim that nuclear energy has been good for the environment can only be financially motivated. Apart from the obvious catastrophic impact of the Fukushima and Chernobyl disasters, in the ten years from 2006-2016, Greenpeace found 166 “near misses” at nuclear power plants in the USA alone.

It isn’t that this election has failed to become one about the climate emergency. In many ways, it is worse than that. It is one where our main political parties have failed to understand how to address the growth in social injustice and the interconnectivity of the issues creating the climate and biodiversity crisis.