As rebranding jobs go, it’s hard to beat. Somehow, the nuclear lobby has managed to convince politicians that the industry is not only green, but “clean”.
Just about all of them have fallen for it, not least our energy supremo Ed Miliband. Here he is last month: “Homegrown clean energy from renewables and nuclear offers us a security that fossil fuels simply cannot provide”. On the energy security point, fair enough. But isn’t he forgetting something about nukes that you don’t get with windmills and sunbeams?
Luckily, the National Audit Office is not so easily taken in, as it’s just proved with a nice reality check: its latest report on Sellafield, the radioactive waste dump in Cumbria owned by the state-backed Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA).