Blair takes nuclear option in bid to solve Britain's energy problem

New nuclear power stations will figure in a big range of fresh measures to combat climate change and improve Britain's energy security, the Government said yesterday, sparking a furious row with environmentalists.

After months of leaks, hints and speculation, ministers confirmed that new atomic plants would be built - by the private sector - to help reduce UK emissions of greenhouse gases, and cut future dependence on imported energy supplies, such as Russian gas.

The announcement brought criticism from green groups who have long been opposed to all things nuclear. Organisations from Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace to the Government's own environment advisers, the Sustainable Development Commission, expressed dismay. Many environmentalists attacked what they said was Tony Blair's personal preoccupation with nuclear power.

Labelling the decision "a disaster", the director of Friends of the Earth, Tony Juniper, said nuclear power was "unsafe, uneconomic and unnecessary".

But business and labour were behind the Government, with the CBI, the TUC and the unions all broadly welcoming the move. "While there are strong lobbies for and against almost every part of the energy mix, the only long-term solution can be a balanced approach," said the TUC general secretary, Brendan Barber, adding that the Government had got the balance right.

The new nuclear initiative is at the heart of Mr Blair's long-awaited Energy Review, looking at Britain's energy policy for the long term, and published yesterday - although it is three years since the last Energy Review was lukewarm about the nuclear idea. But in that time Mr Blair has changed his mind profoundly about nuclear's role, influenced by two key close advisers - Geoffrey Norris, the industrial adviser to the 10 Downing Street policy unit, who has stressed the importance of energy security, and the Government's chief scientific adviser, Sir David King.

Sir David has convinced Mr Blair that dangerous as a nuclear world might be, a global warming world is infinitely more dangerous, and that despite its problems, nuclear energy is an essential tool for cutting the emissions of the gases causing global warming.

While coal, gas and oil-fired power stations produce large volumes of the principal greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO2), atomic plants produce virtually none. At the moment the nuclear sector produces about 20 per cent of Britain's power as low-carbon electricity, but this will shrink to about 6 per cent by 2020 as old stations close.

Sir David does not think that other low-carbon, renewable energy technologies, such as solar, wind and wave power, can fill the "energy gap".

The review did not say how many nuclear plants were expected to be built, although most observers think it will be about six.

But it stood firmly behind the policy, saying: "We have concluded that new nuclear power stations would make a significant contribution to meeting our energy policy goals."

The private sector will "initiate, fund, construct and operate" the plants, and cover the cost of decommissioning them, and the disposal of their radioactive waste, the review said. The Government, for its part, will address "potential barriers to new nuclear build", including making the planning system simpler. But there was no suggestion of government subsidy, or putting a floor under the price of nuclear electricity - or any hint of how the new plants would actually be financed.

Yet although the nuclear proposals brought most reaction yesterday, the Energy Review contained a substantial range of other initiatives designed to put Britain on the road to Tony Blair's long-term climate change target of cutting CO2 emissions by 60 per cent (on 1990 levels) by 2050. Officials said that when the new measures were implemented, they would cut Britain's CO2 emissions by 21 to 25 per cent below 1990 levels, by 2020.

They have the double purpose of saving energy and making the energy that is used less carbon-intensive, and many of them - not least the new plans for decentralised energy and local "microgeneration" of electricity - are proposals that environmentalists have long been calling for.

New energy-saving measures unveiled yesterday include: driving the least efficient domestic electronic goods out of the market, and phasing out the "stand-by" function on televisions and computers; providing incentives for large organisations such as supermarkets, hotels and local authorities to cut carbon emissions; trialling "smart" electricity meters giving information on real-time energy use and real-time pricing; making new housing developments low carbon, or carbon neutral, over the long term.

New measures to provide more low-carbon energy include: a review of how to produce energy locally rather than at centralised power plants; encouragement of microgeneration techniques such as household wind turbines or solar panels; an increase in the renewables obligation, forcing energy suppliers to buy more electricity from renewable sources, with extra incentives for emerging technologies such as tidal power and more work on the technique known as carbon capture and storage, which removes the C02 from power station emissions and buries it underground.

Furthermore, the Government is proposing a number of new ways in which the planning system can be streamlined so that big new energy projects are not involved in planning enquiries which can last several years - as has been the case in the past.

Even while striving for a low-carbon future, the Government is also looking to secure future supplies of Britain's own fossil fuels. It is convening a coal forum to examine the long-term future of UK coal production and coal-fired power, and it is taking a new look at how to make the most of remaining supplies of North Sea oil - and the more difficult-to-access oil reserves west of Shetland on the so-called Atlantic Frontier.

Objections to atomic power

Even the peaceful use of nuclear energy raises profound green objections. The main one is what to do about the radioactive waste produced in an atomic reaction, which in some forms is the most dangerous substance on earth.

It remains dangerous for millennia - the time it takes for a given amount of plutonium to decay by half is 24,000 years - and there is still no agreed long-term disposal route for the nuclear waste produced in Britain.

Green activists are also much exercised by the potential for cancers and other illnesses from radiation that leaks into the environment, and are not reassured by the nuclear industry's sorry history of not coming clean about accidents.

It was a long time before the truth emerged about Britain's first big nuclear accident, in 1958 at Windscale in Cumbria (now renamed Sellafield).