Well, what do you know? Another news story has
broken which demonstrates that the UK’s nuclear industry is not the
robust, well-managed machine our ministers would have us believe. The
government has sneaked out a report assessing the working practices of the
Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) which is managing the clean-up of
existing power stations and waste. They were clearly hoping no one would notice
as there’s no doubt that many people have been caught with their pants
anklewards.

Setting aside the spiralling costs of nuclear
waste management (which are now about the same as the bill for the Apollo
moon landings), we find the NDA in a sorry state of mismanagement. Staff
apparently lack basic financial skills and were confused about accountancy
terms, leading to severe errors in the balance sheets. I’m happy to report that
employees in the finance team have been sent for retraining to brush up on
their times tables.

It’s not just specialised knowledge that’s
lacking. Simple tasks like taking notes at meetings seem to have been
overlooked, to the extent that major decisions made between the NDA and the
Treasury have gone unrecorded, leading to gross misunderstandings over budgets.
Everyone has since agreed that it would be a good idea to write these things
down and put them somewhere safe. Like a filing cabinet.

The audit goes on to say that there are
"inherent risks" in the way the NDA operates, pointing out that half
of its income is dependent on unreliable sources such as fuel reprocessing at
Sellafield’s Thorp plant (closed since a
leak was discovered in 2005) so perhaps a more stable financial model might
be in order.

Given all this, investing in less volatile and
more reliable sources of energy might seem appropriate. But oh dear, it looks
like the government is still set on knobbling those in favour of its twin
obsessions, nuclear and coal.

The proposed EU renewables directive -
legislation designed to set minimum levels of energy generated from renewable
sources across Europe - wants to see the UK getting 15 per cent of its energy
from clean sources by 2020. A section has been included in the directive to
ensure that "member states shall
also provide for priority access to the grid system of electricity produced
from renewable energy sources", but British ingenuity has been focused on
changing "shall" to "may".

A
teeny tiny change, you might think, but in practice it would remove any
obligations on our government to make sure renewable sources were given access
to the National Grid before others such as, well, nuclear power and coal. And
it’s a stance at odds with the energy strategy launched by Gordon Brown last
month which promised to "[remove] grid access as a barrier to renewables
deployment". But then maybe someone didn’t take minutes at that meeting.

And
I can’t finish without mentioning the fourth
leak from a French nuclear power station in just two weeks. Safe, reliable
energy, no doubt about it.

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