Note: This piece needs to be treated with care. I was the victim of a sophisticated hoax. I apologize to anybody who was mislead. But I’m leaving the post here as a spoof of a spoof. It shows how even if the anti-Shell campaigning trickesters got their way, it would not address the problems in Nigeria in a sensible or realistic manner but would actually make things worse.

Yesterday “Shell” (go to hoax press release) said it was going to clean up the Niger Delta, compensate local communities for past injuries, and institute a local stakeholders’ program that will help lift the region out of poverty. That sounds like good news. But what if the real victim is the truth? Read on ›

At the Senate hearing into the Gulf of Mexico oil spill BP, Transocean and Halliburton disputed each other’s account of what caused the accident. It was a messy affair. But in it I glimpsed the makings of a much-needed corrective PR campaign. Read on ›

Terrorists are spoiled for choice. Their targets are very varied: wedding parties in Jordan; tourists in Bali; train and bus passengers in Madrid and London; skyscrapers in New York. Radioactive material from nuclear power programmes is bound to be in the frame, not least because the public has a horror of it. Read on ›

Horizon, the BBC’s science flagship has – rather belatedly – reported research which suggests that low-level radiation is not a risk to humans. This should reassure people worried about the “victims” of Chernobyl and the danger posed by the rest of the nuclear power industry. Read on ›

Dateline 1995: As the world prepared for the 10th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, the world’s media began a memorial feast of disaster stories. Here I review three classic examples. Read on ›

Present energy technologies all pose long-term “problems”. These are called “inter-generational” risks. So let’s not kid ourselves: whether it’s climate change or radioactive waste, decisions we take now will effect our grandchildren, and their grandchildren. Read on ›

On Saturday 25 March, 2006, The Guardian published a front page story by John Vidal, its environment editor. Headlined, “Chernobyl ‘may have killed 500,000‘”, it cited a forthcoming report by Greenpeace International and various scientists and institutions in Ukraine and Belarus. Read on ›

Ukraine is piggy-in-the-middle, caught between Russia and the West. Its nuclear prospects are exciting on several fronts – but its overall energy-dependency means it has to be diplomatic. Read on ›

Veteran journalist Martin Bell’s account of the TMI accident of 1979 relied on his own memories of the event and on archive material and fresh interviewing, but Bell has ignored a mass of evidence, which would tell a very different tale to the one broadcast on 17 June, 2006, in BBC Radio 4’s Archive Hour. Read on ›

Amnesty International has accused Shell Nigeria of human rights abuses, spreading pollution and other crimes against corporate responsibility (CSR). It provoked Paul Holmes, editor and publisher of The Holmes Report, to argue that companies will and should be held to the same standards globally. That’s a naïve response. Read on ›