Yeodall talked at great length on the subject of safety, and in particular the safety of the population of Huntspill, the local town. He talked as if Huntspill were the hub of the universe, and should the rest of the world fall apart, the fact that Huntspill would not be eradicated by its power plant – from which, incidentally, it received no power – would make it all better again.

‘When we talk about dangers to the public of radiation, we define the individual member of public as a “fence-post man” – that is to say, an individual who spends all the years of his life, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, on the station boundary, eating fish reared in the station effluent and drinking the effluent water. This person would in one year be subject to about the same amount of radiation as someone who lives on the fortieth floor of a high-rise building, or who once flies in an aeroplane from London to New York. In more technical terms, he will receive a dose of radiation that is less than one per cent of what is considered to be a safe annual dosage.’

Yeodall beamed out at his audience. They still weren’t impressed. Many of them had flown a good deal further than from London to New York to get here, and they weren’t happy to hear they had received any dosages of radiation at all, however slight. If he’d gained a point earlier, he’d just lost it now. He launched a volley of statistics about the cost-effectiveness of nuclear-generated electricity. His audience had been blinded by statistics before; they all knew that any competent statistician could make his figures prove anything he wanted them to prove. They were getting bored; they were getting fed up with sitting on the hard plastic seats, watching large and dreary slides appear behind Douglas Yeodall’s head, and trying to translate the language as this well-meaning fellow droned on. They wanted to get to the meat, to the bit where they could ask questions, where they could do some ripping apart; and then bugger off and have lunch.

‘One hundred and fifty million diagnostic procedures a year are conducted with radioactive isotopes produced in power stations such as this,’ he said. He was into the benefits of medicine now, and the audience began to take more notice; they were interested in survival, as everyone is interested in survival.

‘Cobalt-radiation treatment units have extended the useful lives of people throughout the world by an estimated eleven million years; over the next twenty years, this could jump to over fifty million years. Without nuclear power stations providing cobalt as a waste by-product most of this cobalt treatment would not be possible, as the cost of producing cobalt would be out of reach of even the richest hospitals.’

Seven hundred journalists scribbled onto their note pads. Yeodall had scored his second point.