Atomic

Job searching has re-introduced me to the joys of London commuting. The first shared cold of winter; trying to read on the tube when tired and uncomfortable; the cost of a travel card, which makes driving good value. And that slightly fetid light that illuminates the underground network.

Interview questions are often repetitive and self supporting. Frankly, it’s somewhat inappropriate that an IT company drags you half way across the capital to spot a missing semi-colon. If an IT company can't use IT to stop unnecessary journeys, then my guess is we are not close to becoming a less energy dependent society.

Energy saving has caught on over the last few years. I see that LPG is more clearly available at the pumps. Some roadside devices have solar panels - while normal for Arizona, it’s now less of a joke in the UK thanks partly to global warming. Everyone is up for recycling their waste these days. But this all is just peanuts; the real debate is the return of civil nuclear energy.

New Labour seems ideally suited to re-sell, or re-badge, nuclear power. How about New Clear Power? Or is it Nuke Liar Power? I suppose its more UnClear Power. Most people would chose to bleed to death very slowly as opposed to walk round with a primed hydrogen bomb that others call safe, and that is why coal and gas defeated nuclear power in the first place.

A lump of fossil fuel represents a great energy package - and it can still be dug out of the ground. While this remains true, no politician is going to waste their time explaining to an electorate why they should be martyrs to history and go without for the sake of the future. Or that was the thinking.

But burning fossil fuel is a dirty process, and that is the bigger issue today. A conventional coal fired station probably releases more radioactivity into the air than a properly working nuclear equivalent, in addition to the sulphur and carbon waste. Wind farms can contribute a trickle of energy to a Western nations constant energy thirst. But no, you can't run Britain on wind. If you wouldn't put a sail on a train and expect it to work, then erecting a few windmills and expecting them to run every major cities daily commuter services is clearly unreasonable. Nuclear Plants can and do provide a serious chunk of our power needs - the question is about their true cost.

Perhaps the disappearance of the Soviet Union has dimmed memories of the problems that creating a drifting radioactive deathcloud can bring. And seeing a plane flown into tower blocks makes the idea of nuclear terrorism with civil plants seem slightly arcane. There are just much more direct ways of getting a bang for your buck.

Maybe the stark unreality of alternative power has made everyone re-assess the once evil nuclear power. Electric cars are still not really here yet. Eco houses are just isolated architectural musings. Liberal Democrats are still naff. And buying power from the French is really quite galling.

Either way, when the idea of new nuclear plants was floated recently, complaints were muted. Apolitical youth are much less likely to wear badges these days. I don't know how many have any idea how power is produced in the first place. The banner wavers are more interested in complaining about McDonald’s abuse of cows. So maybe the way is open to start again after a short ignorable public debate.

Nuclear power does need to be respected, not necessarily feared. One day someone will come out with a good use for the waste. Probably. There will be some badly hushed up mini disaster. Definitely. But there isn't any point entering more decades of navel gazing while fossil fuel drains away. None of this stops research into workable mass market alternative energy anyway.

Meanwhile, there are some new fresh faced MPs from constituencies on the coast who are suddenly getting promotions and great starts to their careers. Guess what the payback will be? But I don't care - there won't be any plants built in London.