UK Boosts Nuclear Lobby in Global Warming Battle
Date: 13-Jul-06
Country: UK
Author: Jeremy Lovell
While climate change has been near the top of the world's agenda since Britain's presidency last year of the Group of Eight (G8) rich nations, energy security has also become an issue due to unrest in the Middle East and volatility in European gas prices.
Both will feature strongly at this weekend's G8 summit in the Russian city of St Petersburg.
Scientists expect global temperatures to rise by at least two degrees Celsius over the next century due mainly to carbon gases from burning fossil fuels for power and transport.
Nuclear power, say the protagonists, emits no carbon gases and so is an answer to global warming and as uranium fuel can be stockpiled for years, supply security is also not an issue.
But while Britain's review of its future electricity industry on Tuesday gave backing to a new generation of nuclear plants, it flatly refused to offer public money or incentives.
"We are looking at anyone coming forward to pay the full costs of planning, building, operating, decommissioning -- the lot," Trade Minister Alistair Darling told reporters.
Nuclear power accounts for 20 percent of Britain's electricity, but that is due to slump to just 6 percent as all but one of the ageing plants closes within 20 years.
The nuclear industry, which has only recently seen its star in the ascendent after years on the wane after the explosion at Ukraine's Chernobyl reactor in 1986, welcomed the announcement.
The US Department of Energy said recently it expected the world's nuclear energy generating capacity to surge by around 20 percent over the next 24 years with several new plants under construction or in the pipeline from China to the United States.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, an advocate of nuclear power, told BBC television's Newsnight programme on Tuesday that nuclear power was part of the global answer to global warming.
But environmentalists said it was not, and scientists warned that despite protestations to the contrary, private finance would not be forthcoming without guarantees.
"Nuclear power is unsafe, uneconomic and unnecessary," said Tony Juniper, head of Friends of the Earth lobby group.