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British climate and energy policy is incoherent and needs an overhaul, dumping carbon targets and building more coal and nuclear power stations to stop the lights going out, a pro-nuclear scientist said. A report entitled "A Pragmatic Energy Policy for the UK", by Professor Ian Fells and Candida Whitmill, said renewables would not fill the impending energy gap so old nuclear and coal plants had to be kept going while new ones were built urgently.

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. Who can blame them? It got me listening. But do their figures stack up? And what exactly was Sir David King, former government chief scientific advisor, up to when he uttered his dire warning? In case you missed it, here's that warning in full:

ONE of the front runners in the race to build a new nuclear power station at Wylfa looks poised to complete an £12bn deal for British Energy which could cool its interest on Anglesey. UK nuclear firm British Energy is expected to be snapped up by French power giants EDF (Electricité de France), which recently revealed it was buying up farmland around Wylfa, owned by the National Decommissioning Authority.

The government's nuclear programme will be a financial disaster according to a new report published today. It found UK taxpayers have lost £72 billion over the last 50 years to the country's failing nuclear industry. The report into the nuclear energy industry, published by Friends of the Earth, pours scorn on government claims about the potential of nuclear energy.

The threat of a nuclear attack on the UK in the 1950s caused concern over the supply of tea, top-secret documents which have now been released reveal. Government officials planning food supplies said the tea situation would be "very serious" after a nuclear war.

EDF, the French energy group, could be forced to sell some of its power stations in France to help to fund its £12.2 billion acquisition of Britain's nuclear industry, it admitted yesterday. EDF shocked investors by unveiling a fall of nearly 40 per cent in annual profits and warning that its debt pile had increased to nearly €25 billion (£22.5 billion) after a string of acquisitions, including those of British Energy, the UK nuclear generator, and America's Constellation Energy. Pierre Gadonneix, the chief executive, said that EDF, which is 85 per cent owned by the French State, was aiming to cut its debt by at least €5 billion by the end of 2010 and that much of this would be achieved through asset sales.

Money should go on health and education instead, survey finds The public wants Britain to scrap the Trident nuclear missile system but believes spending on health and education should rise each year, according to a ComRes poll for The Independent. By a margin of 58 to 35 per cent, people believe that the £25bn renewal of the Trident programme should be abandoned because of the state of the public finances. The finding will strengthen the hand of ministers who are pressing Gordon Brown to cancel or delay the scheme as Labour prepares to unveil public spending cuts.

FIFTEEN fires or coolant leaks have been reported in Cumbrian nuclear installations - accounting for almost 10 per cent of the total across the country, according to the government. Information released by the Department for Energy and Climate Change shows there have been 81 coolant leaks and 80 fires recorded at UK nuclear installations since 2001 - with almost one in ten in Cumbria. Four fires are listed for Barrow, including two from earlier this year when there was a fire on the submarine Ambush during welding/grinding operations and another on the bridge fin of Astute.

The £1.99 household product Cillit Bang is being used to help clean plutonium stains at the defunct Dounreay nuclear power plant in Caithness. Dounreay Site Restoration Limited (DSRL) said it would help reduce the £2.6bn cost of dismantling the site. The cleaner's use has also drawn interest from operators of other nuclear sites in the UK. A different domestic product has already been applied in the cleaning of contaminated glass tubes.

The Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (COMARE) is a quango that is supposed to be a watchdog on the health issues arising from the activities of nuclear installations in the UK. COMARE's terms of reference are "to assess and advise Government . on the health effects of natural and man-made radiation and to assess the adequacy of the available data and the need for further research". But how seriously does this body take its responsibilities? Not very, it seems. A recent authoritative health study commissioned by the German government entitled KiKK (Kinderkrebs in der Umgebung von KernKraftwerken, or Childhood Cancer in the Vicinity of Nuclear Power Plants) found increased leUKemias near all German nuclear facilities. The Environmental Health Sub-Committee of the West Cumbria Site Stakeholder Group, a group that discusses nuclear issues mainly concerning Sellafield, raised the findings of this study with COMARE and asked for its views. A one-page COMARE briefing was sent by Professor Alex Elliott, the COMARE chairman, and was read out to the May 2009 meeting of the Environmental Health Sub Committee as COMARE's official view. It is likely that other stakeholder groups near other UK nuclear sites were informed along similar lines. However the COMARE briefing was never published on its website.

Significant progress in the restructuring of the UK nuclear industry and an increasing regulatory focus on "high hazard" issues are among the highlights of a lengthy annual report published by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA). The report also provides details about the NDA's finances and some information about the environmental and safety performance of the UK nuclear industry - including an increase in radiological incidents.

Watching the US political drama the West Wing one night, Ed Miliband found he had something in common with Josh Lyman, who plays the deputy White House chief of staff. Both, Miliband says, have been exasperated by the infighting within the energy industry. The energy and climate change secretary recounts the episode in which Lyman crashes his SUV into a Prius, symbol of the environmentally conscious. As penance for such sacrilege, the White House staffer has to attend an industry summit where people are promoting different low-carbon technologies. "They end up having a big fall-out with each other," Miliband says. "Sometimes the UK debate feels a bit like that: the renewables lot say you should only do renewables and shouldn't do nuclear or coal. Nuclear people say all this wind will lead to big problems. Coal people say, 'Why are you going on about renewables and nuclear?'"

Paul Dorfman is with the Nuclear Consultation Group and a senior research fellow at the University of Warwick. The opinions expressed are his own. "Justification" of new-build nuclear power is a high-level assessment of whether the benefits of building new nuclear plants outweigh the detriments. Once the justification decision has been taken it will be difficult if not impossible to re-open this major issue. And there are real problems - for example, information on how radiation-waste and radiation spent fuel from any new nuclear build could possibly be managed, or the health impact of radiation-discharges will not be fully assessed until after the "Justification" decision is taken. "Justification" of new-build nuclear power will be decided even before the new reactor design is assessed.

Labour government plans for a new generation of unsubsidised nuclear plants have been left in tatters after the head of the UK's biggest nuclear generator warned that new nuclear stations will not be built unless the UK government steps in with financial subsidies. SNP Westminster Energy spokesperson, Mike Weir MP, seized on the admission by Vincent de Rivaz, UK boss of EDF Energy, as further evidence that nuclear power was unaffordable, unwise and unnecessary and that the SNP Government's drive for renewables was the only sensible way forward to not only create a green energy future but also provide jobs in these troubled economic times.

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