A POLL commissioned by the Nuclear Industry Association has found that slightly more people would now support the replacement of Britain’s ageing nuclear power stations with new ones than actively oppose it. Opposition appears to have halved from 60 to 30 per cent in three years.

This is hardly a ringing endorsement of a flawed technology but is remarkable when political discussion of energy policy issues is so petty, pusillanimous and parochial. The Government’s White Paper put global warming at the top of its agenda but put its faith in wind farms. Ministers did not plan for any nuclear stations but claimed to have an open mind, should nuclear power be needed at some point in the future. The White Paper just projected Britain as a good boy in backing the Kyoto treaty, which seeks to curb carbon emissions.

The drawbacks of wind farms are now becoming apparent. Like other energy sources, they carry an environmental cost. They also require back-up fossil fuel power stations and, even on optimistic projections, would merely replace nuclear power, leaving the three-quarters of electricity generated by fossil fuels virtually unchanged.

The global warming debate remains controversial. It may be the greatest environmental threat to human life, as many eminent scientists insist, or insignificant relative to natural forces that vary climate and create or destroy lands and people. In that case, America would be right to reject potential damage to its energy-dependent economy, which could shrink world growth and keep the odd billion people in poverty.

The Kyoto treaty attempts a compromise, which makes it easy for, say, Russia to join up, knowing that mass closure of its old industries meets its commitments for decades. If there were a war on global warming, like the war on terrorism, perspectives would have to widen.

Britain may have the world’s fourth-biggest economy, but UK power consumption is two-thirds of India’s and a quarter of China’s. The rapid expansion of those two countries, both of which already depend on fossil fuels for 80 per cent of their electricity, requires rapid construction of many dozens more coal-fired power stations. Forecast expansion in coal-fired power over the next decade is almost equal to the world’s total nuclear output. Additional use of natural gas will not be far behind. UK nuclear output is 3 per cent of the world total, less than South Korea’s or Germany’s, 30 per cent of Japan’s, a quarter of France’s and a little more than a tenth of America’s.

Worldwide, hydro dams, the main form of renewable energy, rank with nuclear but cannot be expanded rapidly where power is needed. To stop global warming accelerating, drastic reform would be needed. Europe would probably have to undergo mass conversion to the French model, where four-fifths of power is atomic, and then rely on renewables to supply all the growth in demand.

Agonising over whether to replace a few UK reactors at some point some years in the future has become academic in more ways than one. British Energy, the UK’s principal nuclear generator, regained its stock market quotation this week, after virtually going bust and ditching its original shareholders. After debt conversion, it has a £1.5 billion equity value.

That capitalisation is roughly the cost of one big new nuclear station. British Energy in its present form could not take the risk of building one. When Margaret Thatcher planned electricity privatisation, she insisted on competition but protection for nuclear power.

The stock exchange-style power market since introduced by Ofgem, the industry regulator, made any capital-intensive minority form of generation much riskier. It duly sank British Energy during a period of unsustainably low market prices. In a free market. any new capacity would be predominantly gas fired, because its costs vary with the price-setting majority.

Tony Blair did for wind power what Baroness Thatcher did for nuclear. Under any market-clearing price system, government would have to give artificial protection and guarantees to stimulate the heavy investment needed to build any new stations, not just permit them.

BNFL, the state company, has a waste-reducing new reactor design to offer. But the state could hardly build a station itself under EU competition rules, and it is not easy to see who else might. Germany has an anti-nuclear policy so the two big German-owned utilities would probably not volunteer, let alone UK energy suppliers such as Centrica. Electricité de France, the best candidate, would see more sense in expanding the cross-channel electricity supply cable and would use a French reactor.

Sadly for members of the Nuclear Industry Association, the Government’s assault on global warming is only a gesture to appease green lobbyists. It is not meant to be taken seriously.

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