There is a constant beeping sound as we are led through the building. A sign on the wall marks the “Toxic Release Assembly Point,” another sign with arrows is marked the “Criticality Run.” I am at the UK National Nuclear Laboratory in Preston in Lancashire, so you would expect the security and safety protocols to be rigorous. The prime minister and the Energy Secretary Ed Miliband are here too. The nuclear scientists I talk to are full of enthusiasm and passion; a sense they are researching a future of carbon-free energy with a transformational capacity. They are doing exciting work on potential cancer treatments too. But critics fret about safety, cost and nuclear waste – it is a sector with sceptics to convince after the disasters at Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986 and Fukushima in Japan in 2011.
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