Previous estimates that
it would take a squillion, gazillion years to make safe Scotland’s nuclear legacy
were revised downwards this week. The agency charged with hiding, I’m sorry, I meant
to say, with "disposing" of the glowing detritus of nuclear power, is now
claiming that the whole rather expensive process will now be completed a lot quicker.The
revised estimate is thought to be based on applying revolutionary "covert carpet
technology", now explained in tedious detail by Professor Beaker speaking to The JT
via satellite from his lead-lined bunker on Antigua.
"The new technology involves waiting until no-one’s looking and just sweeping
the offending isotopes under the carpet. The "carpet" in this case being the
soil covering the Scottish bit of the planet."
It is thought that this good news is in no way related to the prospect of the
government suffering collective amnesia and re-commissioning another generation of nuclear
power stations, as Professor Beaker, pausing only to arrange a sailboard lesson, now
explains :
"While it's not been previously possible to include the words "safe" and
"cheap" in a sentence with nuclear power as its subject, this bit of PR on
behalf of the industry is designed to make the prospect of building a new generation of
glowing money pits more palatable. While a five-year-old could see through this bit of
flim-flam in jigtime, unhappily very few five-year-olds are charged with overseeing energy
policy."
With nuclear power now fifty years old, the current estimate for cleaning up the crap
currently stands at 52 billion of your earth pounds UK-wide, a "bargain" in
anyone’s book, provided you reverse the conventional meaning of bargain.
