Nuclear energy

But the fraud at the heart of the economic case for nuclear power has received less attention. The murky world of nuclear economics reveals how an inherently unreliable and unsafe range of military-born technologies have been sold to the public on the basis of ideologically driven fantasies of strategic energy security and creative accountancy. From the start there has never been any intention to take account in any nuclear energy programme of the calculation, let alone funding, of the long-term decommissioning and waste management costs.

On 11 March the biggest earthquake in Japan's recorded history struck off the coast of north eastern Honshu and the resulting tsunami wreaked havoc for millions of people. More than 25,000 have been reported dead or missing and many more are coming to terms with the human and economic cost, and the reality that they'll never be able to return to their former homes. The sheer scale of the damage and the resulting debris is mind-boggling.

A further casualty of this natural disaster may well be the plans to expand the use of nuclear power. Japan is the third largest user of nuclear power, with over 50 nuclear plants which provide over a third of its electricity. The magnitude 9 earthquake was greater than the plants were designed to withstand - yet such earthquakes could certainly have been foreseen.