MINISTERS will have to take a decision within five years on whether to build new nuclear power stations if Britain is to reach its targets for cutting greenhouse gases, the Government’s chief scientific adviser has cautioned.

Sir David King, the Government’s chief scientific adviser and the head of the Office of Science and Technology, told the annual conference of the Chartered Institute of Building Services Engineers last week that the nuclear question needed to be tackled sooner rather than later.

After giving a speech on the problem of climate change, Sir David told an audience of hundreds of engineers that while it was important to try to make energy efficiency savings and develop renewable sources of power, it would also be necessary to review the situation on nuclear power within the near future.

“The Government is saying we will come back and look at that when we’ve seen how well we are doing on energy efficiency gains and renewables. But the timescale to do that is relatively short. I do think five years or less is when we’ve got to make a decision,” Sir David said.

“As we move ahead to 2020 we move from a situation where we currently have 27 per cent of our energy from nuclear on the grid to a situation where we would only have Sizewell B operating and that would produce about 5 per cent of our energy.

“That’s a substantial gap to make up if we are going to go for carbon-free techonologies and I don’t think that carbon-free technologies will be sufficient to make up the gap over that period of time,” Sir David said.

The scientist’s comments come after disclosure in The Times last month that DTI officials have research which shows that half of the country’s energy will have to be produced by nuclear power if Britain is to have any hope of meeting its Kyoto commitments.

Nuclear power is suddenly back on the political agenda because of fears that Britain will fail to meet climate change targets without it.

Nuclear power currently provides a fifth of Britain’s electricity, but the nation’s nuclear plants are ageing and all but one of these are due to close by 2023, with the first large advanced gas-cooled power stations at Dungeness, Kent, due to shut in 2008.

At present there are no plans to replace the generators that shut, despite the fact that nuclear generators do not produce climate-changing carbon dioxide emissions.

The Energy White Paper that was published in February last year launched a policy of “not now but not never” towards new nuclear generators and made a commitment that no new nuclear building would be signed off without wide consultation.

Hopes that renewable energy sources, including onshore and offshore wind power, will replace nuclear power look increasingly misplaced.

A government target of generating 10 per cent of electricity from wind farms and other projects by 2010, up from 3 per cent now, is expected to be missed.

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