Voodoo Economics and the Doomed Renaissance of the Nuclear Industry

This Friends of the Earth research paper by Paul Brown, former environment correspondent of the Guartdian, exposes how badly the nuclear industry has performed over its entire 50 years of unfulfilled promises, and the already escalating bill to the taxpayer. It takes its name "Voodoo Economics" from the term coined by George Bush Snr to describe Ronald Reagan's economic policy because it promised to lower taxes and increase revenues at the same time. This term has subsequently been used to refer to the use of economics based on contradictory ideas and gobbledegook/hocus pocus.

The economics of new nuclear power stations for the UK do not add up. It is not possible to achieve what the Government says it will do - build a new generation of nuclear stations in England without public subsidy.

New build will not be possible without large sums of taxpayers' money being pledged, and extending the unlimited guarantees to underwrite all the debts of the existing and future nuclear industry.

Contents include:

* Executive Summary
* Introduction
* Part 1: Sellafield - A flagship run aground
* Part 2: The dreams, promises and predictions for the nuclear industry, and how they turned out -A chronology
* Part 3: British Energy - subsidies, liabilities and deficits
* Bibliography & Sources

Paul Brown, former environment correspondent of The Guardian researched and wrote this paper when a Press Fellow at Wolfson College, Cambridge during 2007/08. The Fellowship was sponsored by British Petroleum. The views expressed in this paper are those of the author.