He might sound like a cheesemaker telling us all we must all eat cheese but Bill Coley, the chief executive of British Energy, is urging the British government to press on with a new fleet of nuclear power stations.

We can't meet our climate-change obligations without nuclear. It's just got to be done

It’s only to be expected. Coley is the chief of a nuclear company, and with its profits down 50 per cent, he’s probably a little desperate as well. He’s never going to read or acknowledge the independent Poyry findings that the UK doesn’t need any new power station let alone nuclear ones – his shareholders would go berserk. The thing is, British energy can’t even look after the nuclear reactors it’s already got, let alone any new ones.

In May this year, the Sizewell B reactor experienced an ‘unplanned’ shutdown. Cracks have been found in the boiler tubes of the Hinkley Point B and Hunterston B reactors meaning they have to run at reduced power. Reactors at Hartlepool and Heysham are out of action thanks to corroding wiring. That’s a big ’to do’ list for British Energy before they start thinking about new reactors.

Another item on the list should be the layers of radioactive silt lying on the bed of the Irish Sea close to the Sellafield nuclear plant in north-west England. The fear is that should a nuclear power plant be built there, the silt will be churned up by the reactors cooling intakes (many coastal-based reactors use sea water to cool the reactor). Somebody should warn Norway to prepare for another influx of radioactive lobsters.