THE sale of Westinghouse, the nuclear-power company, has all the makings of a nasty little dust-up between Whitehall and Washington. BNFL, the British government’s nuclear arm, bought it for a song six years ago when atomic power was about as fashionable as flares.

Now high oil prices and climate change — two giant trends neatly embodied in hurricanes Katrina and Rita — have put nuclear power firmly back on the agenda. China wants to build new reactors, as does the US, and I would not bet against Britain doing the same once the main refuseniks in the cabinet have been booted upstairs to the Lords.

All this makes the once- unloved Westinghouse something of a hot item. Not only did it build half the reactors in operation round the world today, but it is the only company with a design that has received the stamp of approval from US regulators. No wonder it has attracted a dozen bids from a who’s who of international power, including General Electric, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Toshiba and Korea’s Doosan, as well as private-equity players.

Westinghouse was valued at about $1 billion (£563m), but with so many bidders, the final price could end up well north of that, and provide a welcome injection to Gordon Brown’s overstretched budget.

But there could still be a fly in the ointment. Although it is British-owned, the American government is likely to regard Westinghouse as a US corporation because its headquarters are there, its employment of American nationals, and its possession of some very sensitive nuclear technology.

That means the deal will probably have to be cleared by the US Committee on Foreign Investment, the panel that recently played a role in the Chinese attempt to buy the American oil company Unocal. If the committee blocks the highest bid, just because it happens to be from an Asian company that the US doesn’t want to see gaining too much nuclear expertise, it will be a sore test of the transatlantic relationship. BNFL’s job is to get the highest possible price for the British taxpayer, and Blair should insist to Bush that it is left free to do so.

Equitable debacle

VANNI TREVES, Equitable Life’s chairman, has become the Santa Claus of the legal world. His bungled attempt to seek compensation through the courts against the society’s former auditor, Ernst & Young, has clocked up a £50m legal bill for the two sides.

The policyholders, many of whom have personally lost hundreds of thousands of pounds in recent years, last week watched even more money disappear. The cost of the failed action works out at £50 a head.

Treves has not covered himself in glory and, despite his protestations that he has the support of his board, he looks increasingly isolated after this very public failure.

Now Equitable is chasing after the 15 former board directors it believes are culpable for the society’s financial demise. Next month it will start proceedings on a £1.7 billion negligence claim. It is a waste of time.

As we explain on our front page, most of the directors don’t have the money to pay up: forcing them into bankruptcy wouldn’t achieve much. Some of those directors are locked into “no win, no fee” deals with their lawyers. Which is why the lawyers are reluctant to reach an out-of-court settlement.

I have sympathy with Treves and Equitable’s policyholders and I agree that someone should pay for the disastrous way the society has been run. But it cannot be attributed to a single board or an auditor. Equitable’s demise resulted from a combination of poor management, bad judgment and zero luck, stretching back over many decades.

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