At my comprehensive, there were only three of us in my year, which had 300 children. Sam Baker, 39, has edited Cosmopolitan magazine for two years, and is a former editor of Company. It doesn't bother me that much but this isn't the case at all - men must speak of the gentler side.In a nutshell, my philosophy is this:Inner peace leads to outer peace.. According to some estimates, energy consumption could be cut 20 per cent if households and businesses were properly incentivised to become energy efficient. That amounts to the whole of nuclear's present contribution to the energy mix.No, the truth is that there simply won't be any new nuclear build until the Government in some way underwrites it.This doesn't have to be through the mechanism of direct subsidy.

Only the last of these conditions looks like being met any time soon.But even if all conditions are eventually satisfied, is it really likely the private sector would be willing to take on the entire risk of financing, building and operating the new plants when the future course of supply, demand and prices is so uncertain? Somehow I doubt it.The Prime Minister hardly helps by promising alongside his new commitment to nuclear a "big push" on renewables, and a "step change" to encourage energy efficiency. First and most important is that planning permissions are forthcoming in a speedy manner. Nor is anyone going to build fresh nuclear capacity while there is no long-term provision for waste disposal. Third, the transmission network has to be modernised to enable the new stations to connect to the grid, and fourth, the Government must give a clear-cut policy commitment.

If coal and gas are charged for their carbon costs, the numbers look better still.Areva attaches only four conditions to its insistence that new nuclear can be built without subsidy. The higher capital and operating costs are cancelled out by lower feed fuel costs. Indeed, a study in 2004 by the Royal Academy of Engineering claimed that even taking account of much heavier capital costs, nuclear was only marginally more expensive than gas and quite substantially cheaper than coal-fired generation. Furthermore, they produce much less nuclear waste, making disposal too less of a problem than it was.In a submission to the Government's energy review, Areva, the French nuclear power station builder, went so far as to say "there is no need for any financial support or subsidy from the Government for new nuclear build" This is a view widely shared in the nuclear lobby. Costs are now more predictable, and the latest reactor designs are more efficient. So who picks up the bill? The nuclear industry insists that the game has changed fundamentally since Britain first waded into nuclear power generation.

None the less, we've plainly got an anxious couple of months ahead as investors try to figure out from which direction the economic winds are going to blow Small wonder the MPC is at sixes and sevens. These are choppy waters.Go-ahead for new nukes, but who pays?Never mind the continued opposition of some environmentalists, the Prime Minister's commitment to put a new generation of nuclear power stations "back on the agenda with a vengeance" raises the bigger question of how on earth they are going to be paid for.The great bulk of Britain's post-war civil nuclear programme was hopelessly uneconomic; it could never have been justified at all had successive Governments realised what the costs to the taxpayer would be.Even counting this investment as sunk capital, nuclear struggles to cover its operating costs when electricity prices are low - witness the insolvency four years ago of British Energy, the main repository of Britain's existing nuclear power stations.This time around, there are to be no subsidies from the taxpayer; that much the Government has made clear. That comes only if US consumption really does take a beating. If markets are already beginning to price in a sharp slowdown, do interest rates need to rise at all? It's an interesting chicken and egg question, for if interest rates don't need to rise, then equity markets may not need to fall.For the time being, the turmoil of the past four days still looks like more of a correction than the start of a prolonged bear market. As interest rates rise, commodity prices fall, punctured by the realisation that higher interest rates mean lower demand. These companies are in the front line of any weakness in the world economy. In its place are fears of a global slowdown triggered by higher interest rates, and possibly even a recession in the US if consumption nosedives.The reason why the London stock market fell proportionately more than others yesterday is because of its high weighting of oil and mining stocks.