Nuclear Energy: A Professional Assessment

At a number of meetings of the Watt Committee Executive, I mentioned my embarrassment at being asked repeatedly by all sorts of people, “What does The Watt Committee on Energy think about nuclear energy?” At the Executive meeting on 20 October 1981, Mr G.K.C. Pardoe, our Deputy Chairman, suggested an answer: we should form a working party to produce a summary of the position, all the way from the uranium mine to the disposal of nuclear waste. It would be as professional and objective as the time available permitted. It would deal with the question from the British standpoint—a similar text produced by the Americans or the French might be very different—and would stress facts, rather than opinions, leaving it to the reader to draw his or her own conclusions.