Saved by the Atom

In March this year, John Hutton, Business Minister, announced to UNITE, a trade union with 26,000 members in the energy sector, that not only will we be replacing the existing 24 reactors, which give us some 20 per cent of our electricity, but we will go much further and presumably attempt to achieve what France has done, with more than three-quarters of its electricity coming from nuclear generation. We will, announced Hutton, create not just a £20,000 million industry, but also 100,000 new jobs. As a reference point, he referred to Sizewell B which – post 1994 – took seven years to build and employed 4000 people in its construction, from some 3000 British companies.

Phew, problem over. We can forget our hand-wringing as to whether or not the ‘renewables’ will make it and all that discussion about unsightly wind turbines littering the landscape, especially given their unpredictability and whether or not the wind is blowing.

Were it as easy as that. We are again being deceived into thinking that nuclear power will somehow enable us to keep going with our consumer lifestyles without jeopardising our futures because of global warming or indeed because the world is running out of...

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