In April fell the tenth anniversary of the disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Ukraine. There were reports of two separate new leaks from the Chernobyl plant, which is now scheduled for closure. A cloud of radioactive gas and steam from a reactor on the Volga River also contaminated six square kilometres of central Russia. And in July yet another leak at a Ukrainian plant killed a worker and caused contamination.
The overall impact of Chernobyl has been to mute the world's enthusiasm for nuclear power: only one new plant is under construction in the US, none in Canada and just four in Western Europe. The growth area is in Asia where South Korea is building six reactors and both India and Japan five. But protest in Asia is mushrooming too: in February the Indonesian Government showed its usual disdain for people protesting against a planned nuclear plant; while in October huge anti-nuclear riots broke out in Taiwan after Parliament voted to restore funding to a stonewalled nuclear-power plant. There were also protests in the rich world.
On the nuclear-weapons front there was much progress but also considerable frustration. In January President Jacques Chirac announced the end of France's globally condemned nuclear-testing programme in the South Pacific. France aimed to carry out the tests to gather all the information it needed for future weapons development before agreeing to a unilateral nuclear test-ban treaty. China followed the same course: its own last test took place in July, in the same month that the World Court declared that nuclear weapons are contrary to international law. In August 61 nations gathered to try to thrash out the terms of a test-ban treaty - but were stymied by India, a known though 'unofficial' nuclear power, who refused to sign up to it. This remains a major problem but all the other nuclear or near-nuclear powers have endorsed the treaty and a moratorium on testing is in place while the lengthy ratification process goes on.
Former Soviet republics revealed in March that they could not account for a large percentage of the hundreds of tons of bomb-grade uranium and plutonium once listed in their stockpiles. The nuclear nightmare hasn't lifted yet.