You couldn’t make it up. The Ferret‘s recent exposure of the Britain Remade group, a supposedly, self-described ‘grassroots’ pro-nuclear group has tow directors both of whom are directors at Stonehaven Group Holdings Limited.

Stonehaven‘s lobbying work for clients includes EDF (a major French nuclear energy company that owns Torness power station in Scotland and stands to benefit from lifting the nuclear ban).

Who are they?

Pandora Lefroy has worked at Stonehaven for over ten years and is currently the firm’s managing partner.

Rachel Wolf is the chief executive of Public First (a consultancy firm acquired by Stonehaven in 2025), and she now sits on the board of the wider Stonehaven Group Holdings Limited.

While we’re here, just how reliable is French nuclear power?

On June 16^th 2022, Reuters and the New York Times (headline below) reported that in France- frequently cited by nuclear lobbyists as a successful example of nuclear investment-  at least 50% of nuclear reactors were off-line as a result of corrosion.

The same report  confirmed that the struggle to complete the construction of the now notorious  EPR reactor at Flammanville was 4 times over budget (nearly 13Billion Euros)  and over 10 years late.  Failure of materials and welding were cited as the key problems.

The implications for the UK government’s  similar project at Hinckley Point in Somerset are stark reminders of  the fundamental problems associated with  nuclear power: faulty designs,  failure of materials, containment and welding and – above all- insurmountable corrosion.  Its lethal vulnerability to natural disasters (Fukushima) , human error (Dounreay, Sellafield, Chernobyl) and missile attack (Zaporizhzhia) is a separate but very serious issue.

Nuclear protagonists also refuse to acknowledge the unimaginable costs of decommissioning and nuclear waste disposal. In 1976, Westminster accepted the findings of the “Flowers Report” that “There should be no commitment to a large programme of nuclear fission power until it has been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that a method exists to ensure the safe containment of long-lived highly radioactive waste  for the indefinite future” .

In 2022 the UK government still has no proven method  for safe storage of high level nuclear waste. On the contrary, highly radioactive, potentially lethal particles of nuclear spent fuel now contaminate the beaches and sea-bed around Dounreay in Caithness. According to SEPA- they are irretrievable. At Sellafield  there are leaking ponds of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel rods for which there is still no solution. That kind of environmental destruction- for most people-  makes nuclear power an unacceptable risk.  The days of Scottish communities being nominated as expendable areas for such experiments with nuclear, fracking or any other gamble with safety- are over.

There is -indeed- an alternative, cleaner, safer and more reliable future.