Blair should expand nuclear power: adviser

By Katherine Baldwin

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s Tony Blair should give the
go-ahead for an expansion of nuclear power generation to help
stem climate change, the prime minister’s chief scientific
adviser said on Sunday.

Adviser David King also rejected suggestions Blair was
abandoning the idea of targets on greenhouse gas emissions,
which will be discussed next week at a United Nations
conference in Montreal, Canada.

Blair has signaled a willingness to consider sanctioning
new nuclear reactors to cut carbon dioxide emissions but he
faces opposition from environmentalists and parts of his Labour
Party.

“We have to make decisions very quickly and I think the
important thing here is to give the green light to the private
sector utilities to give them nuclear as an option,” King told
BBC Television.

All but one of the UK’s nuclear power stations are due to
close by 2023. The government is due to publish new plans on
how to curb the country’s use of electricity and fuel in 2006.

But Environment Minister Margaret Beckett said nuclear
power raised problems of cost and waste disposal, although she
rejected suggestions she was “anti-nuclear.”

“I’ve always accepted … that particularly because of
climate change, we could come to a position where we and other
governments were driven back toward nuclear … We can’t afford
to close the door on nuclear,” she told the BBC.

The decline in nuclear power was jeopardizing efforts to
cut greenhouse gas emissions, King said. Nuclear power will
contribute four percent of Britain’s energy needs by 2010
without new reactors, from 21 percent now, he added.

VOLUNTARY EMISSIONS TARGETS

But Beckett said any move on nuclear power would not help
Britain meet short-term emissions targets.

Projections show Britain will miss its domestic target of
cutting CO2 emissions by 20 percent compared to 1990 levels by
2010, although it is on track to meet obligations under the
international Kyoto protocol.

Blair has put climate change at the heart of Britain’s
presidency of the Group of Eight rich nations this year but
environmentalists have accused him of rowing back on emissions
targets after he recently called for a “more sensitive” set of
mechanisms going forward.

The U.N. meeting in Montreal from November 28-Dec 9 will
look at ways to widen Kyoto to non-participants including the
United States and developing nations like China and India after
2012.

King said Blair still believed developed countries should
follow mandatory Kyoto targets but said Britain would press
developing countries outside Kyoto to adopt voluntary targets.

“We believe absolutely that the targets set and fixed in
Kyoto are targets the developed world ought to be following, he
said. “India, China, Brazil, South Africa and Mexico, what we
are saying to those countries is come and join the discussions
and we are not telling you in advance that you are facing
targets.”

Environmentalists say voluntary targets are not worth the
paper they are written on.

But Beckett said it was not possible to impose mandatory
targets on developing countries and that a more flexible
approach was needed.