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Defence Secretary John Hutton said he was committed to keeping nuclear weapons in Scotland during his first visit to Faslane in his new post. Mr Hutton said the naval base on the Clyde, which is home to the Trident nuclear submarine fleet, was a "vital part of our country's defence." First Minister Alex Salmond wants to rid Scotland of nuclear weapons.

Determination of Holyrood government to refuse planning permission for reactors is sidestepped Prime Minister Gordon Brown last night reignited the row over nuclear power north of the border with a statement hinting that the Scottish Government's refusal to consider new reactors may not be the end of the issue. Asked how many should be built in Scotland, he said: "These are matters for decision." He made no reference to the Scottish Government's decision to refuse planning consent for such developments in Scotland.

Scotland's energy future should be based on non-nuclear sources. The SNP today welcomed a report from the Parliament's Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee which supported the Scottish Government's plans for Scotland to build a clean, green and renewable energy future as SNP MSP Rob Gibson called for the UK Government to release £150 million of potential investment in Scotland's energy future. In their report the Committee state that;"Scotland does not need a new generation of nuclear power stations to be constructed and sees Scotland's energy future as one that seeks to increase markedly investments in energy efficiency, in renewable energy, in cleaner renewable or fossil-fuel fired thermal plant, such as combined heat and power and district heating, energy-from-waste plants and which, if necessary, supports the construction of a new generation of larger fossil-fuel fired plants with carbon capture technologies."

Newsnight Scotland looks at a row between Westminster and Holyrood over nuclear energy on the day the UK cabinet met in Glasgow.

A campaign to route a railway line to the far north of Scotland across the Dornoch Firth has won backing from a nuclear organisation. The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) said the Dornoch Rail Link would boost the local economy. The link was mentioned in its submission to Scottish Government consultation on new transport projects.

Audio presentation BBC Scotland's Good Morning Scotland programme looks at the arguments against new nuclear power stations.

Fresh evidence has emerged of police efforts to recruit paid spies within environmental groups after the Guardian revealed that police in Scotland are running a network of hundreds of informants inside pressure groups. Anti-nuclear protesters in Scotland said yesterday that military police had offered them cash in exchange for information. One protester said he was offered money on top of his jobseeker's allowance - a move sanctioning benefit fraud - if he gave military police the names of people planning environmental action. One activist from Plane Stupid revealed that members had been given £20 by police.

A Highland castle attacked by Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army and later a site of experiments on radioactive liquid is at risk of collapse. Engineers have carried out a structural survey of 16th Century Dounreay Castle following concerns over safety. They said the ruins, which form part of the estate now managed by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, had badly eroded lintels and precarious masonry. Historic Scotland has been informed of the latest survey results.

The first container carrying spent nuclear fuel rods has left the Chapelcross plant in southern Scotland. Over the next three years it is expected about 300 similar journeys will be undertaken to remove 38,000 spent rods in total. It is part of the £800m decommissioning process at the Annan plant which ceased energy production five years ago.

ALEX Salmond, the First Minister, has been persuaded to allow an independent study into whether Scotland needs nuclear power. The admission came in his government's response to a report last year by his Council of Economic Advisers. However, ahead of a meeting today with the council chaired by the former RBS chief Sir George Mathewson, Mr Salmond insisted that his g ADVERTISEMENT overnment's opposition to nuclear power had not changed.

FEARS have been raised that Scotland is losing its key decision makers in the international business world after a £12.5 billion buyout of British Energy was announced yesterday.

THE construction of the world's largest tidal farm off the north of Scotland could put lives at risk by disturbing thousands of radioactive particles from the Dounreay nuclear plant, a government adviser has warned. Dr John Large, an independent nuclear consultant who has advised the UK government, fears that laying cables to connect turbines to the national grid would release nuclear waste buried in the seabed.

Britain's nuclear submarine fleet has been hit by a series of serious safety breaches involving repeated leaks of radioactive waste, broken pipes and waste tanks at its home base in Scotland, according to a confidential report. The 400-page internal report, released under the Freedom of Information Act, admits a catalogue of safety failures at Faslane naval base, the home of Britain's Trident nuclear deterrent, saying they were a "recurring theme" and ingrained in the base's culture. The worst breaches include three leaks of radioactive coolant from nuclear submarines in 2004, 2007 and 2008 into the Firth of Clyde on the west coast of Scotland. Two radioactive waste tanks were found to be a "significant" and "growing" radiation hazard and needed to be taken out of service. The revelations in the report, obtained by Channel Four News, are so serious that it has led to the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (Sepa) warning that it would consider closing the base down if it had the legal powers to do so. Britain's Ministry of Defence is legally exempt from the civil radioactive safety regulations, but Sepa said it was pressing for powers to inspect and control Faslane's nuclear operations.

Nuclear waste could be stored permanently at up to four locations across Scotland, it has emerged. The Scottish government has launched a consultation exercise on the issue. It believes waste should be stored close to existing nuclear facilities, reducing the need for waste to be transported long distances. Scotland's civil nuclear sites are located at Dounreay, Hunterston, Chapelcross, Rosyth and Torness, near Dunbar. "

Records show Dounreay waste storage plan despite government promises The Scottish Government has been accused of turning the country into the world's "nuclear dustbin" amid claims foreign nuclear waste could be stored at a plant in the Highlands. Details released under freedom of information legislation have revealed more than 600 tonnes of the waste is to be kept in Scotland, despite promises by governments and the nuclear industry that it would be sent back to the countries from where it came.

Records show Dounreay waste storage plan despite government promises The Scottish Government has been accused of turning the country into the world's "nuclear dustbin" amid claims foreign nuclear waste could be stored at a plant in the Highlands. Details released under freedom of information legislation have revealed more than 600 tonnes of the waste is to be kept in Scotland, despite promises by governments and the nuclear industry that it would be sent back to the countries from where it came.

"NEARLY a quarter of a century after the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl in the Ukraine exploded and spewed radioactivity across the world, it has finally stopped making Scottish sheep too "hot" to eat. For the first time since the accident, levels of radioactive contamination in sheep on all Scottish farms dropped below safety limits last month, enabling the Food Standards Agency (FSA) to lift restrictions. Controls on the movement and sale of sheep have been in force since after the explosion in 1986. The Chernobyl reactor near Kiev scattered a massive cloud of radioactivity over Europe after it overheated, caught fire and ripped apart because of errors made by control room staff. It was the world's worst nuclear accident, and has been blamed for causing tens of thousands of deaths from cancers. Peat and grass in upland areas of Scotland were polluted with radioactive caesium-137 released by the reactor, blown across Europe and brought to ground by rain."

"Not Wales, or Scotland….they want renewables The Welsh Assembly Government's new Energy Policy Statement 'A Low Carbon Revolution', sets out an approach to accelerating the transition to a low carbon energy economy in Wales, focusing on efficiency measures and the use of indigenous renewable forms of energy such as marine, wind, solar and biomass. It claims that by 2025 around 40% of electricity in Wales could come from marine sources and a third from wind. In addition to local community-level micro-generation projects, it proposes the use of offshore wind around the coast of Wales in order to deliver a 15 kWh/d/p (per day per person) of capacity by 2015/16 and to capture at least 10% (8 kWh/d/p) of the potential tidal stream and wave energy off the Welsh coastline by 2025, and it wants onshore wind to deliver 4.5 kWh/d/p of installed onshore wind generation capacity by 2015/2017. It will back small-scale hydro and geothermal schemes, where they are environmentally acceptable, in order to generate at least 1 kWh/d/p, and wants bioenergy/waste to deliver up to 6 kWh/d/p of electricity by 2020- 50% indigenous/50% imported- also offering an additional heat potential of 2-2.5 kWh/d/p."

A Thurso Church of Scotland minister is calling on the Scottish Government to end the long-standing uncertainty over what is to happen to the country's intermediate active nuclear waste. The Rev Ronnie Johnstone said a decision is long overdue about what is to be done with the stockpiles of waste at Dounreay and other sites. Mr Johnstone said people in the far north want a clear steer on whether the debris is to remain indefinitely on site, or is to be sent to a national waste dump. He said the situation is muddied by the contradictory positions of the UK and Scottish Governments and Highland Council.

An emergency planning zone around a former nuclear power station in Caithness has been reduced from three miles to less than one. The smaller area circling Dounreay has five neighbouring households within its boundary, instead of more than 200. The zone is covered by detailed plans to deal with the worst-case radiation emergency that can be "reasonably foreseen". Dounreay said the reduction reflected a lower risk posed by the site.