Nuclear Foolklear

Just before Dan Cruikshank on BBC 2 last night, there was (the final?) part of a series called It's Not Easy Being Green about a family who went Old Testament environmental, from the input to, er, output, as it were. I didn't see much of it, but what they were doing last night was installing a wind turbine in their (large) back garden. It was on the top of a tall frame rather than being affixed to their roof (which is what you have to do in an urban environment), but it really was quite straightforward.

In one of their sheds was a big green box containing - I assume - storage batteries and power transformer. This was connected to the turbine. And then from the green box - liderally! - a simple power cable and plug, which just went into the mains. It still gobs my smack, but it really did seem ridiculously easy.

So why aren't we all doing it? Why, instead, is the prime ministrone areseing on about what his posh friend George calls the nukular option?

As Tony Benn said, nuclear power is not clean, it's not cheap, and it's not safe. Doesn't matter if it runs for fucking fifty years without a mishap. Or sixty. Or a hundred. Eventually, Something Will Go Wrong. Leaks, explosions, negligence. And you always have the problem of the waste, which they want to bury in the ground. There's even talk of sending it to Australia (because it's so geologically stable) and burying it in the ground there. But first you have to get the waste to the place where you want to bury it, and for that you need transport. And containers. And you need to get it into the containers, reliably and safely, for year after year, and transport it, reliably and safely, year after year, to where it will be buried - and have to remain, reliably and safely, until the end of the time, or until Arsenal win the Champions League, whichever is sooner.

Now, have I missed something, or has someone invented a container that will never, ever, corrode or leak, for 50,000 years? Because, if they claim to have done, did they invent it 50,000 years ago and have been testing it ever since?

Transport to Australia? What in? An aeroplane that might crash? Or an "unsinkable" merchant ship manned by drunk Philippino or Russian sailors? A Royal Navy ship manned by drunk British sailors? What? Through the Suez Canal, yeah? Or round the Horn?

These issues don't matter to Mr Blair, because soon his mothership will return to Earth and take him back to his home planet.

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In other news, has anyone seen How I Met Your Mother on BBC2 Sunday night (before Top Gear)? Quite nice, I think, and it's got that Alyson Hannigan in it.