Yesterday, the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) released their annual report and, as surely as night follows day, the news is that the bill for decommissioning and cleaning up our existing nuclear plants is rising. And rising. And rising.

In fact, we could have funded two London Olympics just from the rises in the estimated costs over the past two years.

Although no one really has a precise figure (and the NDA admits it can't tell us what the final bill will be), the estimate now stands at around £73bn - about the same amount as the Apollo Moon Landings cost*.

Today is the deadline for bids to takeover British Energy, the country's beleaguered nuclear operator. Leading the pack of foreign companies hoping to get their hands on BE's nuclear sites is the French government owned Electricité de France, or EDF as they prefer to be known on this side of the Channel.

Now, EDF is hoping to bag large tranches of UK land at nuclear sites - not for BE's financial integrity or for operational performance, but to add the UK to its nuclear catalogue. Put simply, they reckon building a new reactor on British soil will pull punters into their atomic showroom.

More gloomy news from Cumbria, where yet another pall of tenebrous darkness has descended over the hapless nuclear monolith that is Sellafield. This particular cloud comes in the form of the hugely expensive and much-vaunted MOX Plant, whose job it is to turn reprocessed material (mainly in the form of plutonium and depleted uranium) into new MOX fuel.

In theory MOX, which stands for mixed oxide, can then be exported overseas and used to power some reactors in countries like France and Japan. In theory, that is. Because in practice it turns out the plant isn't producing much of anything. Apart from headaches for its operators.

The cost of taking nuclear plants out of service is spiralling out of control. Is this just poor financial management, or does it have wider implications? Written by Greenpeace Executive Director John Sauven for comment is free.

This week, the National Audit Office released its damning assessment of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority's (NDA) ability to estimate the true financial cost of decommissioning and cleaning up the UK's fleet of ailing reactors and contaminated facilities. As costs for decommissioning appear to spiral out of control - rising sharply from £56bn to £73bn over just a few years - the burden on the taxpayer grows ever more. And it doesn't end there. The NDA has also been made responsible for disposing of the UK's stockpile of legacy wastes which is estimated at an additional £10-20bn. The industry argues these increased costs have arisen in the face of "significant challenges", but the echoes from this announcement are all too familiar from a sector that has been plagued with industrial and financial incompetence.

Our political unit has been trawling through the fine print of this morning's nuclear White Paper. Here's their initial analysis, outlining some of the more subtle ways the government has understated the real risks to the taxpayer and the lack of clarity on economics:

• The White Paper shows how nuclear companies will be able to cap their liabilities, leaving the tax payer exposed if estimates for dealing with waste change.
• It openly admits the government will have to provide extra money if cost estimates are wrong.
• It uses questionable financial estimates to build the nuclear economic case.

If you didn't see Newsnight last night it is well worth watching online.

Following leaks from yesterday's cabinet meeting, the media is reporting that the government is going to give the green light for new nuclear power stations in a Commons statement tomorrow. The panel stand off that followed the news report ripped holes in the government's rationale for new nuclear power and was perhaps the only news on nuclear I've seen recently that has put a smile on my face.

Read more »

See all updates about nuclear power.

Now here's a surprise: the government was being 'economic' with the truth when it promised that we, the taxpayers, wouldn't have to foot the extortionate bill for new nuclear power.

It turns out that we, the consumers, will be picking up our fair share.

Yep, the day after the papers reported a 15 per cent energy price hike, we're being told to brace ourselves for more hikes if the government succeeds in dragging us down the nuclear road.

More bad news for British Energy (BE), the UK's biggest nuclear electricity generator (when their creaking fleet of reactors actually happen to produce any power, that is). They've discovered that faults unearthed at two of their reactors pose more of a "complex issue" than previously thought and so the reactors are going to be offline for the foreseeable future. This news sent BE's shares tumbling by 10 per cent. Or as The Independent put it shares "went into meltdown".

A few weeks back BE announced that during a routine inspection "an issue related to a wire winding" was found in the boiler of the reactor unit at Hartlepool nuclear power station. This was rather unexpected and BE, as a Daniel come to judgement, took what it described as "a conservative decision" and shut the reactor at Hartlepool, as well as its sister unit at Heysham 1. Just as a precaution. Things were expected to be ship shape and bristol fashion very soon, so don't panic Mr Mainwaring. Indeed.