A lofty pair of bombproof towers that rise out of the parched ground of a concrete suburb, the Renaissance Ramada Hotel and Convention Centre hardly bespeaks the romance and piety Christian pilgrims come to Jerusalem to find. Nonetheless, it was here that conservative Anglicans gathered in the final week of June for a major ecclesiastical reform. 

The Global Anglican Future Conference - Gafcon - was in many ways the culmination of a decade that has polarised the mostly latitudinarian, liberal Anglicans of the West and biblically orthodox, evangelical "believers" of the Global South. The latter are boycotting the once-a-decade Lambeth Conference, which convened on July 16. It is, as expected, the most sparsely attended since the event's inception in 1867.

For years now I've heard how France stores all its nuclear waste in a single room at La Hague. It never quite believed it but now I do now. Two weeks ago, I got to stand in that room.

What they say about France is true: the country has mastered nuclear technology. It has the lowest greenhouse emissions of any industrial nation while importing only half as much natural gas from Russia as either Britain or Germany. There are even signs around Paris directing you to stations where you can recharge your electric car. It's time Britons took note of these things. There's going to be no way to deal with global warming or the looming oil shortage without nuclear energy.

France's nuclear reprocessing centre sits on a promontory overlooking the English Channel. Here, spent fuel assemblies arrive from France's 59 reactors plus a few others in Belgium and other countries.