Russia’s space agency is turning the clocks back to the 1950s. In a move straight from a bad Cold War-era science fiction movie, it is ‘planning to build a new spaceship with a nuclear engine’. Yes, (*big, serious film-announcer’s voice*) an ATOMIC ROCKET! Russian space chief Anatoly Perminov said a ‘preliminary design’ for an ATOMIC ROCKET! could be ‘ready by 2012’. It will ‘then take nine more years and 17 billion rubles ($600 million, 400 million euros) to build’ the ATOMIC ROCKET! Let’s ignore for the moment the wisdom of throwing megawatt-class nuclear reactors into the sky (the thought of one re-entering the atmosphere at 25,000 feet per second is certainly a sobering one). Instead, if we factor in the usual nuclear projections and predictions, the ATOMIC ROCKET!’s design should be ready sometime around 2020. It should be built sometime around 2035 and maybe, possibly, fly sometime around 2040. All for a cost of 75 billion rubles.

Meanwhile, the public and the private came together for French president Nicholas Sarkozy this week. Nicholas is famed for his tireless globe-trotting as the nuclear industry’s most ruthless salesman (rumours that he’s about to star as Ricky Roma in a remake of Glengarry Glen Ross have been denied). He just loves seeing tons of public money being wasted on useless white elephants. We did wonder where he got the idea for his nuclear boondoggles until we read about his personal presidential shower. It cost 245,000 euros of public money and he never used it. It’s a dirty business, the nuclear industry. When will Nicholas come clean?

And so to Iraq. ‘The Iraqi government has approached the French nuclear industry about rebuilding at least one of the reactors that was bombed at the start of the first Gulf war.’ This week, in continuing violence, 150 people were killed in two suicide bombings which raised questions about the competence of the country’s security services. The government has called for international support to help it combat terrorism. The country’s politicians are divided on laws needed to conduct national elections in January next year, and so threatening the country’s constitution. A new nuclear reactor? What could possibly go wrong?

(You can read more exciting Tale of Nuclear Insanity here, here, here, here and here.)