'Many of the big-ticket decommissioning items are at Sellafield on the Cumbrian coast. Sellafield was built in the Forties to make the British bomb. Only later did we decide to use the power of the atom to generate energy as well. And Sellafield remains where we send the nastiest military and civil waste, such as plutonium-laced ‘spent fuel’ that has done its work in the power stations.

Sellafield is a nuclear cesspit. As Huhne said: ‘When waste started piling up, we crossed our fingers and hoped it would all go away.’ It didn’t.

I toured there recently. They are almost proud to call it the most concentrated nuclear dustbin on Earth. Among much else, it contains three scary open-air ponds. Their constantly circulating waters keep cool hundreds of tons of highly radioactive reactor fuel and debris that were hastily dumped there half a century ago.'

Read more: The Insanity of Nuclear Power: The Most Toxic Pond in Europe: Sellafield Will Cost £10 Billion to Make Safe