new nuclear

This week two more energy companies abandoned their plans to build new nuclear power stations in the UK. It’s left the government’s energy strategy in tatters – and it’s time for them to admit that the future is not nuclear and start investing in cleaner, safer renewable energy.

I've spent the weekend with a young family who had been forced to flee their homes after the nuclear meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi. Akiko and Makoto Ishiyama had come to the UK to speak at a rally at Hinkley Point in Somerset on the first anniversary of the Japanese earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster.

If you took the forced bonhomie of last week’s pact between David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy on civil nuclear power at face value, you'd think that we were heading for a nuclear renaissance. But this won’t be enough to put the wheels back on the nuclear gravy train.

Despite the growing shift of support away from nuclear energy in Europe, EDF is stubbornly pushing forward plans to build a new nuclear reactor in the UK, without sufficient consideration for all the relevant risks.