PM: nuclear power can save climate - Yahoo! News UK



A NEW generation of nuclear power plants will form part of the solution to combat climate change in Britain, according to Tony Blair.

The Prime Minister gave his strongest signal to date that he would back a resumption of the nuclear industry as ministers were forced to admit they would fail to meet their target of cutting carbon emissions by 20 per cent by 2010.

But his remarks came as a group of Labour MPs, headed by Edinburgh North MP Mark Lazarowicz, attacked nuclear energy as a costly

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and dangerous alternative, claiming that extracting uranium would use more energy than it would generate.
Mr Blair continued to press the case for "new technologies" - including nuclear - on his tour of Australia and New Zealand. At a press conference in Canberra with John Howard, the Australian premier, Mr Blair said businesses needed incentives to grow in a "clean way".

He said: "Clean coal technology, carbon sequestration, renewable energy, the new generation of nuclear power, all of these things I think are going to be part of the mix that we use for our future energy requirements."

Mr Blair gave another keynote speech on the environment in Auckland, where he called for a "technological revolution" as radical as the internet to combat climate change.

The UK needed to make a decision this year on energy and climate change, not wait another five years, he said. Mr Blair vowed to use 2006 to push for a new international framework to supersede the Kyoto protocol when it expires at the end of 2012 but warned that countries would not accept anything that would hamper economic prosperity.

His comments were part of a pre-emptive operation to soften resistance to nuclear power ahead of the conclusion of the government energy review in June.

Alistair Darling, the Scottish Secretary, insisted renewable forms of energy could not meet all of Scotland's needs at a conference in Glasgow on Monday - and signalled that nuclear power would be part of the future.

Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, also waded in yesterday by suggesting that not signing up to the Kyoto protocol was un-Christian. "There are choices we can make, each one of us, to change things now, and I think what the Bible and the Christian tradition suggests is that those who have a challenge before them and don't respond bear a very heavy responsibility before God," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

The government's endorsement of nuclear as being part of the future energy mix came ahead of the publication of a report today by a group of SERA, a campaign group made up of eight Labour MPs. They highlighted the "new offensive" by the nuclear industry to sell itself as a clean and environmentally friendly source of energy, despite the unresolved problem of nuclear waste and the risks of accidents and terrorist attacks.

Mr Lazarowicz said: "Nuclear power is neither safe, secure, cheap nor renewable. As long as the debate remains focused on the fors and againsts of nuclear power, the full potentiality of renewable energy will not be realised."

Mr Blair's environmental credentials were also put under scrutiny by a projection from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, that the UK would only manage to cut emissions by 15-18 per cent by 2010.

Margaret Beckett, the Environment Secretary, said ministers would not abandon their flagship environmental goal but she added: "It has proved to be a more difficult task than we had hoped, to reach the targets that we had originally set."

Tony Juniper, of Friends of the Earth said: "Tough action is needed to tackle climate change, but once again the government has caved in to short-term pressures and produced a totally inadequate response." The WWF said Mr Blair's credibility on climate change lay in tatters.

By: GERRI PEEV -- 29-Mar-06


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