BRITAIN: British prime minister Tony Blair has launched a fresh review of UK energy needs which will specifically consider the case for the development of a new generation of nuclear power stations.
However, Mr Blair has "genuinely" not made up his mind in favour of nuclear, according to energy minister Malcolm Wicks, who insists his review will not be "a case of nuclear versus. . . renewables".
Echoing Mr Blair, the minister said the review - barely three years after the last major investigation into the country's energy needs - would look at all the options and consider nuclear along with renewables, coal, gas and new technologies before reporting back next summer.
"We will examine the evidence and the wide range of options, and there is no single solution," insisted Mr Wicks: "It is not a nuclear review. There is therefore no foregone conclusion about nuclear or anything else."
It had been widely reportedly that Mr Blair has been persuaded by the government's chief scientific adviser that building a new generation of nuclear power stations is the only way to meet Britain's energy needs while sticking to targets on climate change.
However Mr Wicks told BBC Radio 4's World at One programme it was "genuinely not true" that the prime minister had predetermined the outcome of the review.
In asking him to head it, Mr Wicks said, the prime minister had signalled only that "it is time the government made up its mind" on the issue.
Mr Blair announced the review as expected in a speech yesterday to the Confederation of British Industry's annual conference. The prime minister was delayed for almost an hour and then forced by a Greenpeace demonstration to deliver his speech to business leaders in a different hall. In the speech Mr Blair said renewable sources could fill some but not all the country's energy gaps.
Declaring energy policy "back on the agenda with a vengeance", Mr Blair told delegates: "Round the world you can hear the heavy sound of feverish rethinking. Energy prices have risen. Energy supply is under threat. Climate change is producing a sense of urgency."
Reflecting that sense of urgency, Mr Wicks said: "By 2020 the UK is likely to see decommissioning of coal and nuclear plants that contribute about 30 per cent of generating capacity. We are now rapidly approaching key decision points for investing to replace that lost capacity. And climate change becomes ever more urgent as new research is produced. It is a reality that no country should ignore."
Conservative spokesman Bernard Jenkin said the government should remain "neutral" on the issues in the energy review, while Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy declared himself "sceptical" about it and warned that a decision to commission a new generation of atomic power stations would result in a "nuclear tax".