More than £70 billion to clean up Sellafield

The silos and ‘ponds’ at the Cumbrian nuclear plant are filled with old equipment and highly toxic waste. Nuclear Management Partners (NMP) are not sure exactly what is in there and are reported by the Guardian as saying, ‘Record-keeping in the past was not what it should have been.’

NMP is a private consortium that has awarded itself £230m in dividends – but shortly before Christmas, it was set to face the public accounts committee, chaired by Margaret Hodge. Among other questions, NMP will be asked why it has had to repay £100,000 for expenses wrongly claimed. Hodge has already remarked that the consortium has been spending cash ‘like confetti’.

But never mind the financial jiggery-pokery. From Arran’s point of view, we have a vast, leaking, radioactive dustbin full of toxic muck not very far south of us. And the Gulf Stream flows northward, from Sellafield to Arran. Does this not give a certain urgency to our views on the preferred ways to produce power? By contrast, wind-generated energy is now providing 40% of Britain’s needs. It uses free fuel, and it poisons nobody.