The Lancet is one of the world's most highly respected and influential general medical journals. Latest Journal Impact Factor (JIF): 109.0 (2025 JCR, released June 2026, based on 2025 citation data). This is a significant increase from 88.5 the previous year. It ranks #1 in the "Medicine, General & Internal" category (Q1), ahead of competitors like the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).
In the Lancet today:
By focusing narrowly on reactor operations, portraying reactor hazards as “extremely small”, and ignoring nuclear energy’s other dangers, Talha Burki’s World Report1 supports the mendacious narrative that nuclear power is a “safe, clean, and affordable” solution to both rising electricity demand and climate change.2
Uranium, the fuel of nuclear power, is radioactive and carcinogenic.3 It endangers health across the entire nuclear fuel cycle. Uranium miners suffer increased risk of lung cancer. Nuclear fuel production workers are exposed to uranium hexafluoride and radon.4 Reactor operators and nearby communities are exposed to radioisotopes; in the USA, 115 000 cancer deaths since 2000 are attributed to residence near nuclear plants.5 All reactors produce waste that will remain radioactive for millennia.6 Reactor decommissioning liberates this waste, exposing workers and communities.
Nuclear power is unique among energy sources in its potential for catastrophe—meltdown, fuel diversion, and weaponisation. A life-cycle analysis of 388 nuclear plants finds that all reactors, large and small, are susceptible to nuclear incidents.7
Nuclear power is not climate neutral. Nuclear power releases 66 g of greenhouse gases per kWh of electricity, which is far less than any fossil fuel, but more than any renewable. Most greenhouse-gas releases occur during uranium mining and milling.8
Nuclear power is neither cheap nor affordable. The levelised cost of nuclear energy has increased by 47% since 2009.2 Current economic analyses do not count health-related costs and underestimate construction costs. Construction of the most recent US reactor cost over US$35 billion,9,10 more than twice its original budget.
By contrast, the cost of renewables has plummeted. Since 2010, solar power costs have decreased by 90%, wind by 70%,11 and batteries by 99%.12
Nuclear power is economically viable only when it receives massive subsidies, tax breaks, and liability exemptions. Nuclear power is a dangerous distraction. It is time to move beyond it and invest in renewables.
Full text and sources at: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(26)01304-8/fulltext?rss=yes
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Talking-up Scotland 
Do you think that anyone in the Scottish (sic) Labour Party will have read this article ?
Or will that well kent medical tosser , Michael Shanks, refute the findings as SNP scaremongering ?
Or , more likely , will they simply ignore this as it does not fit the agenda paid for by their Nuclear Paymasters ?
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Sadly no but we do what we can – keep sharing
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Well that puts the case beyond reasonable doubt. We must prevent further nuclearisation of our country and get rid of the toxic installations already here. Westminster can spend its billions removing Trident from Faslane instead of their planned “upgrade”.
C’mon Scottish Government. Let’s see a bill in Holyrood banning new nuclear and removing existing plant and cleaning up the toxic waste.
Strange that Westminster always has billions for weapons but taking children out of poverty? “The country can’t afford it”
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