There is nowhere to put the rods in Germany, and if they are returned to its nuclear power plants they will have to close, putting thousands out of work.THIS WAS too much for Mr Schroder. The German Chancellor, Gerhard Schroder – who fully backed Trittin’s mission – last week abruptly withdrew his support, plunging his coalition into crisis.The U-turn happened because Stephen Byers, Britain’s new Trade and Industry Secretary, told Trittin that he would send the fuel rods – 35 trainloads of them – straight back to Germany. This threatened to deal the complex a fatal blow, as Germany is its second biggest foreign customer But this weekend Mr Trittin is in retreat. Each radioactive enough to deliver a fatal dose in less than two seconds, the rods have been waiting to be “reprocessed” at the Cumbrian nuclear complex. But last week they were at the heart of an extraordinary international drama, tinged with nuclear blackmail, that has left the world’s greenest cabinet minister looking distinctly blue.
Jurgen Trittin, the new German environment minister, is a Green from the fundamentalist wing of the party, who went canvassing by bicycle, wearing shorts, sneakers and a T-shirt bearing a smiley face.

Ten days ago he was stalking confidently into the offices of British ministers, moustache bristling, resplendent in a natty three-piece suit to deliver an ultimatum.Sellafield, he said, must stop reprocessing the fuel rods, and Germany was going to stop sending them there. Some 650 tons of used nuclear fuel – in more than 300,000 slender, powder- grey rods, each about nine feet long and half an inch thick – lies in containers, shielded by the water from the outside world. It’s much safer, so I allow her to do things I would never have dreamed of letting her do in Buckinghamshire.. There is a terrible beauty about the scene. Deep in the heart of Sellafield, on the edge of the Lake District, stands a vast artificial lagoon – big enough to float a liner – full of shimmering turquoise water. Sunk in it is some of the most dangerous and controversial material on the planet. You can’t get off the island sometimes, when you need to – never mind when you just want to.

But the air is clean and my daughter has a lot more freedom here. We bought the plot next to it and hoped to extend the house to turn it into a hotel. After we bought it we were told we should really knock it down and start from scratch, which we did

Living on the island makes you more hardy. We walk to places that we would have used the car for when we lived in the south. You have to be content because there are as many advantages as disadvantages. We had a couple of holidays here before we saw a property we liked It was a house that had been uninhabited for 17 years.

“It’s difficult to say if we’ll stay here for ever, but we certainly want to put down deep roots I’m not interested in isolation I’m interested in integration.”. We lived in Bledlow Ridge in Buckinghamshire, just outside High Wycombe. Our reason for moving to Mull was that my husband had had family on Iona and for most of his youth he came to the islands for holidays. My husband’s degree was in hotel management, and I ran a small hotel in Windsor, but we’d always wanted to do something together. At the luxury end of the market, Pacific Island Investments offers celebrity homes entirely surrounded by water. Current deals include a 460-acre former plantation in the South Pacific ($660,000), and a 5,434-acre atoll in French Polynesia, with its own interior lagoon ($12.2m).For the Isle of Mull’s most recent arrivals, however, retreat and seclusion are not part of the plan “It’s not isolated here,” says Stephen Ashworth.

Last year, Clawinch Island, off the coast of Co Longford, sold for pounds 175,000 – an unremarkable price for a suburban semi in the south of England. If you have a fantasy about retreating to a private island, buying one may not be as expensive as you thought. Real estate companies such as Vladi Private Islands in Hamburg may be able to sort you out for less than pounds 3,000. Public appeals for volunteers will be made in a fortnight’s time, but applications are already coming in.The price-tag for the island of pounds 1m, suggested by the Sun, is probably way over the top. Lion Television, a company set up by Jeremy Mills (responsible for Airport and Hotel), have been commissioned to produce Castaway, a docusoap which will follow the lives of the selected inhabitants, and chart the rise (or fall) of their community. In Golding’s novel, a gang of marooned children revert to savage tribalism.