Nuclear spin

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Welcome

'Welcome to NuclearSpin, a website that tracks the companies, people and organisations behind the campaign to build new nuclear power stations in the UK and worldwide.

It aims to give you information on who is influencing the debate about nuclear energy, and the tactics that they use to persuade the public we need more nuclear power.
Hinkley Point C in Somerset, England. Source: Flickr/CCSA

Become a contributor

NuclearSpin is a free encyclopedia, written collaboratively by a wide variety of volunteers and independent researchers, and is part of Powerbase.

If you'd like to help us expand and update our NuclearSpin site, please email our editor Melissa Jones. All contributions, big or small are welcome.

About us

NuclearSpin was set up in 2006 to track a massive lobbying campaign launched by the nuclear industry. In that same year, the British Government began a public consultation which raised the possibility for the first time in many years that new nuclear power stations could be built.

Even though the High Court ruled in 2007 that the Government’s consultation was "misleading, seriously flawed, manifestly inadequate and procedurally unfair", and its plans to build a new generation of nuclear power stations were "unlawful", Ministers still pushed ahead.[1] [2]

NuclearSpin showed how the Labour Government helped the nuclear industry and documented the close links between nuclear insiders and powerful politicians, such as Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Planning Minister Yvette Cooper.

In 2008, the site was expanded to look at the industry campaign for new nuclear in other countries, expose The Secret Pro-Nuclear Push In British Schools and explain why Nuclear is not the Answer to Climate Change.

Nuclear power is now central to the British government’s plans for future energy. But our politicians are not being straight with us about the cost of nuclear power or its safety.

For example, the coalition agreement between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in May 2010 said there would no public subsidies for nuclear – but the Government is now discussing “contracts guaranteeing subsidies for up to 40 years”.[3] We explore this in our 2012 briefing paper Broken Promises: Subsiding the Nuclear Industry.

The Government also colluded with the Nuclear Industry Association to play down the safety implications of the nuclear accident at Fukushima in Japan in 2011.

In July 2012, the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee concluded that public does not trust the Government to tell the truth about nuclear. It said 'the Government's position as an advocate for nuclear power makes it difficult for the public to trust it as an impartial source of information'.[4] This site is designed to help you see through the nuclear spin.

NuclearSpin categories

Source:Flickr bagalute

NuclearSpin news

Nuclear spin.png This article is part of the Nuclear Spin project of Spinwatch.

NuclearSpin investigations and documents from this website have been covered by:

Briefings

To help people understand key issues, NuclearSpin publishes a series of briefings.

9 May 2012: Broken Promises: Subsiding the Nuclear Industry

Older briefings can be found in our series of in-depth analysis pieces.

You can also search for other articles on the nuclear push at the Spinwatch site.

Notes

  1. Deborah Summers, Government loses nuclear power case, The Guardian, 15 February 2007,
  2. BBC News, Nuclear Review "Was Misleading", 15 February 2007,
  3. Juliette Jowit, Nuclear power: ministers offer reactor deal until 2050, ‘’The Guardian’’, 18 February 2013
  4. Science and Technology Committee, Devil's bargain? Energy risks and the public, First Report, 9 July 2012