Nuclear Debate - Day 2

Labour links to nuclear:

- Ian McCartney, the former chairman of the Labour Party and former Trade Minister, is paid at least £110,000 to be a senior adviser at Fluor, which is bidding for a £5 billion contract to run Sellafield.

- Richard Caborn, former Sports Minister and former chairman of the Trade and Industry Select Committee, was appointed in November as an adviser to a consortium which is bidding for, you guessed it, the £5 billion contract to run Sellafield.

- Yvette Cooper (Min for Housing and Planning) and Ed Balls (Sec of State for Children, Families and Schools) are married. Cooper's father, Tony Cooper, is a board member of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and a former chairman of the Nuclear Industry Association.

Where any uranium might be mined:

Would consumers really want nuclear power if the reality of the uranium mines was brought home to them? Would the cabinet, in fact, like to work in one? Greedy companies like the French Areva and the Australian Paladin are striking deals to plunder uranium with a haste not seen since the 1950s, and similar disregard for consequences. This is creating conflict between locals and governments, who are rushing to do deals with scant regard for the wellbeing of the people affected in the mines' locality.

Polly Toynbee wonders:

Will the companies pay the uninsurable full cost of a serious accident? Who pays for further flood defences, since all the sites are by the rising sea? Here's one clause in yesterday's white paper: "In extreme circumstances the government may be called upon to meet the costs of ensuring the protection of the public and the environment." Everyone knows that. The government has baled out every reactor built so far.

Jeremy Warner, of the Independent, is skeptical:

As long as the price of carbon remains a market-driven variable, investors will be reluctant to join the present enthusiasm for new nuclear build. Some go so far as to insist that they wouldn't invest at all in the absence of a "nuclear obligation", similar in nature to the existing "renewables obligation", which would force suppliers to source a set proportion of their generating needs from nuclear.

Finally, 26th April is the anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, and a anti-nuclear march, from London to Geneva will begin.