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Lawyers have charged £16million in the battle to get justice for Britain's nuclear test veterans. The money has been spent by legal teams for the UK Ministry of Defence and the veterans during a fiercely contested High Court action. It means the final bill could be much higher than any com-pensation eventually received. The revelation comes after a judge told both sides, who are meant to have been negotiating a settlement for the past six months, to start talks. Some 22,000 men, who were sent to Australia and the South Pacific to witness atomic bomb tests, allegedly suffered a range of health problems. Many of the 3,000 survivors have joined together in a major legal case to sue the MoD for negligence. But the case has descended into farce, with the MoD claiming a confidential offer has been made, but vets' lawyers saying they haven't received one. The High Court was told on Friday that costs are already at £15m for the three-year case, with a further £1m expected to pay for an appeal brought by the MoD which will be heard in May.

Lawyers have charged £16million in the battle to get justice for Britain's nuclear test veterans. The money has been spent by legal teams for the UK Ministry of Defence and the veterans during a fiercely contested High Court action. It means the final bill could be much higher than any com-pensation eventually received. The revelation comes after a judge told both sides, who are meant to have been negotiating a settlement for the past six months, to start talks. Some 22,000 men, who were sent to Australia and the South Pacific to witness atomic bomb tests, allegedly suffered a range of health problems. Many of the 3,000 survivors have joined together in a major legal case to sue the MoD for negligence. But the case has descended into farce, with the MoD claiming a confidential offer has been made, but vets' lawyers saying they haven't received one. The High Court was told on Friday that costs are already at £15m for the three-year case, with a further £1m expected to pay for an appeal brought by the MoD which will be heard in May.

"he first shipment of highly radioactive waste from the UK has left the Sellafield nuclear site, the BBC has learnt. It has been loaded onto a ship specifically designed to carry nuclear waste that will sail for Japan later. The waste is a by-product of nuclear fuel spent by Japanese reactors that was sent to the UK for reprocessing during the 1980s and 1990s. Some campaigners have criticised the shipments, saying they are dangerous. "It is highly irresponsible for the industry to still be sending this kind of material across the world," said anti-nuclear campaigner Martin Forward. "

"BRITISH taxpayers may have to foot the bill for a new generation of nuclear power stations that will be run for profit by a foreign firm. Billions of pounds of public cash could be needed to build the plants and put old ones out of action, an official report warned yesterday. French-owned EDF bought the Government's stake in British Energy last year. But ministers did not seek binding guarantees that EDF would fund new nuclear ­stations itself, the National Audit Office spending watchdog said. "

"Chilcot inquiry will be told Lord Goldsmith's top lawyer advised invasion was against the law Elizabeth Wilmshurst, the Foreign Office lawyer who resigned on principle on the eve of the Iraq war A senior Foreign Office lawyer who quit in protest at the invasion of Iraq will this week lay bare the sharp divisions within the Blair administration and its Whitehall advisers as Britain careered towards war in 2003. On Tuesday, three days before Tony Blair faces the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war, Elizabeth Wilmshurst will make perhaps the most explosive contribution to date by revealing the confusion and infighting between officials and ministers over the legality of deposing Saddam Hussein without United Nations support. "

The nuclear industry funds the special armed police force which guards its installations across the UK, and secret documents, seen by the Guardian, show the 750-strong force is authorised to carry out covert intelligence operations against anti-nuclear protesters, one of its main targets. The nuclear industry will pay £57m this year to finance the Civil Nuclear Constabulary (CNC). The funding comes from the companies which run 17 nuclear plants, including Dounreay in Caithness, Sellafield in Cumbria and Dungeness in Kent. Around a third is paid by the private consortium managing Sellafield, which is largely owned by American and French firms. Nearly a fifth of the funding is provided by British Energy, the privatised company owned by French firm EDF. Private correspondence shows that in June, the EDF's head of security complained that the force had overspent its budget "without timely and satisfactory explanations to us". The industry acknowledges it is in regular contact with the CNC and the security services.

The nuclear industry funds the special armed police force which guards its installations across the UK, and secret documents, seen by the Guardian, show the 750-strong force is authorised to carry out covert intelligence operations against anti-nuclear protesters, one of its main targets. The nuclear industry will pay £57m this year to finance the Civil Nuclear Constabulary (CNC). The funding comes from the companies which run 17 nuclear plants, including Dounreay in Caithness, Sellafield in Cumbria and Dungeness in Kent. Around a third is paid by the private consortium managing Sellafield, which is largely owned by American and French firms. Nearly a fifth of the funding is provided by British Energy, the privatised company owned by French firm EDF. Private correspondence shows that in June, the EDF's head of security complained that the force had overspent its budget "without timely and satisfactory explanations to us". The industry acknowledges it is in regular contact with the CNC and the security services.

Model for new UK reactors reveals damaging disagreements between Finland and French contractors From the outside, there is nothing unusual about the warehouse by the offices on Finland's Olkiluoto island, site of what should have been the world's first modern nuclear reactor. But inside, stacked on five kilometres of shelving, are 160,000 documents. "If a valve for the reactor is changed, it comes in a small box and a van full of documents," complains Jouni Silvennoinen, project director for Teollisuuden Voima (TVO), the Finnish utility that ordered the plant from the Franco-German consortium Areva-Siemens. The paper mountain helps explain why the reactor, which should have cost €3bn (£2.72bn) and been working this year, will now miss its revised completion date of mid-2012 and will cost at least €5.3bn. In the latest delay, Finland's nuclear safety regulator halted welding on the reactor last week and criticised poor oversight by the sub-contractor, supplier and TVO.

Model for new UK reactors reveals damaging disagreements between Finland and French contractors From the outside, there is nothing unusual about the warehouse by the offices on Finland's Olkiluoto island, site of what should have been the world's first modern nuclear reactor. But inside, stacked on five kilometres of shelving, are 160,000 documents. "If a valve for the reactor is changed, it comes in a small box and a van full of documents," complains Jouni Silvennoinen, project director for Teollisuuden Voima (TVO), the Finnish utility that ordered the plant from the Franco-German consortium Areva-Siemens. The paper mountain helps explain why the reactor, which should have cost €3bn (£2.72bn) and been working this year, will now miss its revised completion date of mid-2012 and will cost at least €5.3bn. In the latest delay, Finland's nuclear safety regulator halted welding on the reactor last week and criticised poor oversight by the sub-contractor, supplier and TVO.

"Yesterday's decision by the UK government to withdraw its proposed loan of £80m to Sheffield Forgemasters is extraordinary. No other move could have had quite so much effect on the plans for nuclear power. Forgemasters wanted the money to buy a 15,000 tonne press, a necessary piece of equipment to make the pressure vessel at the centre of a power plant. Without the money, it says it will not proceed with its expansion into the nuclear market."

"Skills gained from decommissioning the Dounreay nuclear plant could be turned to the dismantling of defunct oil and gas platforms, an expert has said. Simon Coles, a member of industry forum Decom North Sea, said 80% of the skills at the Caithness site "overlapped" with those needed in the oil sector. Two years ago, it was estimated that work breaking up redundant rigs could be worth £30bn by 2040. Most of the 470 offshore structures in UK waters will need to be scrapped. "

Britain no longer has any stake in the production of its nuclear warheads after the Government secretly sold off its shares in the Atomic Weapons Establishment in Aldermaston. Ministers agreed to sell the remaining one-third ownership to a Californian engineering company. The announcement, which means that Americans will now produce and maintain Britain's independent nuclear deterrent, was slipped out on the eve of the parliamentary Christmas holiday. Officials refused to say how much the deal raised.

Designs for new nuclear power stations that could be built in this country will be under public scrutiny from today. EU law requires that before any new nuclear power station is built, their designs must be 'Justified'. This involves a generic assessment to determine whether the overall benefit of the practice of ionising radiation outweighs any associated health detriment. Minister of State for Energy and Climate Change Mike O'Brien said: "This Justification process is yet another example of the facilitative actions the government is taking to support new nuclear power in the UK. At the same time it gives people the opportunity to have their say on the benefits and detriments of the practices involved."

A COMMUNITY watchdog group is calling for more information about a German study which suggests that there are clusters of childhood leukaemia cases near nuclear power station sites. The Sizewell Stakeholder Group - set up to improve liaison between the nuclear site, the local community and regulators - wants to know if there is any uk implication. The new study, commissioned by the German Federal office for Radiological Protection, looked at childhood cancers in the vicinity of the country's nuclear power plants.

Britain's nuclear submarines are "completely useless" against modern warfare, and the £20bn spent on renewing them is a waste of money, retired senior military officers said yesterday. The former head of the armed forces Field Marshal Lord Bramall, backed by two senior generals, argued that the huge sums being spent on replacing the delapidated submarines that carry the Trident ballistic missiles could be better used to buy conventional weapons which are badly needed by the armed forces. "Nuclear weapons have shown themselves to be completely useless as a deterrent to the threats and scale of violence we currently face or are likely to face, particularly international terrorism," the group said in a letter to the Times. "Our independent deterrent has become ­virtually irrelevant, except in the context of domestic politics."

OPERATIONS and work practices at Sellafield will be put under the microscope by the site's new owners. af nuke lab Nuclear Management Partners (NMP), which took control in November, said it is now ready to "engage and energise" the workforce. That means high-powered teams of experts from NMP's consortium companies in America, France and the uk will be called in to scrutinise and assess methods being used across six core areas of the site over the next three months, starting in February.

The UK Government has announced the lifting of a ban on exporting sensitive nuclear technology to India. Firms had up until last month been banned from supplying equipment and material on the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) "trigger list" to India. But the government says that items intended for civilian nuclear projects can now be exported.

Nuclear bosses have been accused of trying to "bribe" Sellafield staff not to strike by threatening to withhold a £1,500 loyalty payment. British Nuclear Fuels Ltd (BNFL) staff at other UK nuclear sites have received the cash when those businesses were sold to private sector.

Residents living near existing nuclear reactors only have "qualified support" for new power stations, a study shows. While most locals trusted the operators of their nearby power station, some had a strong distrust of the UK Government and the nuclear industry, it added.

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.

Recent allegations that a dash for wind would cause a big increase in fuel poverty crumble when you do the numbers, says Oliver Tickell. Nuclear is the real worry "Wind power could put another half million people into fuel poverty" - shock, horror! That was how BBC Radio 4 promoted last week's The Investigation into the future of wind power in the UK.

The industry may well be 'back with a vengeance', but taxpayers could be unwittingly subsidising its growth Today, several hundred nuclear industry executives will gather in London for the British-based World Nuclear Association's annual symposium. A major session - The nuclear renaissance: redefining the global framework - chaired by Keith Parker, chief executive of the UK Nuclear Industry Association (NIA), will be devoted to the new opportunities expected as new nuclear build is back on the energy agenda, "with a vengeance", in the words of former prime minister Tony Blair.

The Government is committed to a new generation of nuclear power stations to fill Britain's energy gap. But Tom Burke says the new nuclear policy is fundamentally flawed and is based on a misunderstanding of nuclear power's economics. # John Webley on wind power: Government's economic insanity # Ten UK nuclear power stations by 2020 # Nuclear power . . . what's the problem? Gordon Brown does not dither about nuclear power.