Britain could have solved the energy crisis 70 years ago, but we ignored it - Lady Judith McAlpine

As the daughter of the man responsible for the building of the world's first commercial atomic power station - at Bradwell (Calder Hall was not originally intended to provide power to the grid), I have absorbed all the negative information about atomic energy and then global warming since I was eight or nine years old.

For 50 years, I argued with people who thought "nuclear" was somehow dangerous. Then I married Bill McAlpine who, while mostly known as a builder who saved Flying Scotsman, helped to establish and chair "Supporters of Nuclear Energy".

At last, I thought I would be able to change people's minds. We had already suffered a Labour government that had panicked and cancelled our Nuclear programme for no better reason than a percentage of the public prepared to absorb misinformation rather than discover facts for themselves.

The later German Government was even more blinkered! Could none of these idiots realise that we had given the world the means to produce safe, clean energy? Each station we designed was an improvement on its predecessor, and, generous to a fault, we gave the plans of the previous one to any country that asked. Our engineers travelled the world showing others how to do it.

Then suddenly, we had no jobs to offer our bright young atomic energy students and off they went to work in countries with strong governments that knew what was best for their country and continued to build atomic power stations.

We even ended up buying power from the French, who pointed out at one memorable lunch that they had no need to help me get a new power station built at Bradwell as "We build our nuclear stations on the coast, we sell you the power: and if they go 'pouff!' you get the fall-out anyway".

Of course, this was only a good joke because we all knew they would not go "pouff!!" because atomic energy is inherently safe.

Chernobyl was not a nuclear accident but a pair of incompetent idiots who would not have been let loose on a power station in any other country.

Yes, there was a "leak" and a few lives were lost but a hydrographer friend of mine went in, with another, five days after the blast - with practically no protective clothing and both are still alive and bonking away in their retirement.

If you go to Chernobyl now, you will find something like the Garden of Eden and a geiger count no greater than you may find in Dorset. Remember the Fukushima tsunami? People still mention "the nuclear catastrophe" and when I ask "Which one?" and "Were people killed?" I get blank stares. They mean there was a crack in the reactor housing. Then I ask: "How many did the Tsunami kill?" The answer seems to be about 19,500. Work it out!

I know there is so much nonsense being talked about, but there is something pernicious about the way that misinformation becomes reality and our facts become something to be sneered at by those who know better but know nothing.

The young can, to a point, be forgiven as they are fed all this misinformation the way they are fed everything else. "These are facts: swallow them, they are good for you. Don't question a person with no authority whatsoever who is feeding you these 'facts' - just swallow them. It works!"

I see the long-suffering expressions on the faces of the young as I try to explain that there is no way that we little humans can be responsible for the climate, let alone the "weather" and that there is a big thing called "sun" and that actually controls our climate, that electric cars are pointless unless we very quickly build vast numbers of small atomic reactors (see above).

That wind is almost pointless unless it is just a windmill grinding corn because the cost of the things is ridiculous. I have exceeded my word count but hope I have made my point.