Originally Posted by
soay
... but not so obvious that the emissions from diesel engines would be locally so bad for health. ...
I think that is a difficult to sustain position. The impact of diesel pollution and the challenges of making abatement equipment that worked for start/stop local journeys has been well understood for a long time.
There is a common view that the risks of climate change are of such an existential nature that it is worth taking significant pain now (local pollution, forgone development, lower material output, etc, - but not the use of nuclear power) to attempt to reduce the longer term impact. I suspect it was this conscious trade-off that drove the recommendations.