Tindale said: “It was kind of like a religious conversion”. Lord Smith commented: ”We’ve woken up to the very serious nature of the climate change problem”. Goodall said: “Nuclear power has substantial drawbacks, but the consequences of not embracing it are likely to be worse. We need to get real about energy”.

Lynas was the most forthcoming. “If we are really serious about tackling global warming…then we certainly need to consider a new generation of nuclear power stations.” The Greens’ anti-nuclear campaign in the 1970s and 1980s “may have caused more harm than good”, he added, “and will come to be seen as an enormous mistake for which the earth’s climate is now paying the price”.

All this is very welcome to SONE, but it is important we keep our feet on the ground. Their conversion has not so far been followed by any other high profile figure. Anti-nuclear Greens who reacted found their colleagues painfully misguided. Tony Juniper, a former director of Friends of the Earth, still maintained renewables, energy efficiency, cleaner, fewer cars, cleaner fossil fuels and micro-generation made a better package than nuclear.

Nor would the four have come over, as it were, but for their conviction that man is responsible for global warming – a so far unproven hypothesis. Many will say: “Yes, but don’t look gift horses in the mouth. Don’t let’s quibble. This quartet will make life much more difficult for the anti-nuclear lobby.” This may well be so, but nowhere did they give the slightest hint that value for money weighed with them. Notwithstanding temporarily plummeting fossil fuel prices, no other form of power generation can compete financially now or in the longer term with nuclear power when everything is taken into account. You might reasonably have supposed that, given our straitened circumstances and the concerns about fuel poverty, value for money would be a first consideration.

Unfortunately, Greens, whether reconstructed or not, have got carbon on the brain. We must eliminate it at all costs, they say. This warps all judgment and will prolong the slump if we are not careful. We simply cannot afford most of their mainly ineffective anti-carbon ideas.


BALANCE ALL WRONG
It would not, of course, matter much if only Greens had got carbon on the brain. They attract only about two per cent of the vote in general elections. Unfortunately, this peculiar form of dementia has reached epidemic proportions among politicians and is going to do untold damage – possibly even to nuclear power - if we don’t watch it.

Political – as distinct from commercial – interest is undimmed in pursuing Gordon Brown’s vision of creating a windy energy “Gulf” in the North Sea. Offshore wind power is by far its most uneconomical form yet European Ministers last month made establishing an offshore grid a priority. The idea is that spreading the gluts and dearths of intermittent wind power across the Continent will “preserve the reliability of the grid”. This has yet to be proven.

But would it not be more economical, increase competitiveness, provide greater security of supply and actually reduce carbon emissions if Europe went hard for nuclear power with more cross-border links?

Ah yes, but that raises difficult political issues across the Continent. It is easier to continue to invest in nice, harmless, subsidised wind, which blows for free. In any case, there is a new attraction in renewables, which effectively means wind. Our Government announced this month that developing a low carbon economy would create 400,000 jobs, thereby usefully combating the recession.

Of course, nuclear power is included in this policy but politicians in both major parties make little of it compared to renewables, energy efficiency, smart grids and power station carbon capture and storage which Centrica, incidentally, says is unlikely to work before 2030. In short, the policy balance is all wrong and the conversion to nuclear of four prominent Greens has done nothing to change it.

AWKWARD CHOICE LOOMS?
We may not be able to gloss over this policy flaw for much longer, given the recession. EDF and E.ON have warned the Government that they may be forced to drop plans to build a new generation of nuclear power stations unless it scales back its “unrealistic” ambitions for wind power. These require us to generate 35-40 per cent of our electricity by renewables from 2020 compared with five per cent now.

Their warning was contained in a submission to the Government’s renewable energy consultation. It was promptly seized upon by environmentalists who have consistently said that a nuclear programme will undermine renewables.

But it could also be – indeed EDF and E.ON confirm it – that renewables could undermine nuclear, especially at a time of financial stringency and tight credit. We cannot afford everything.

In these circumstances, politicians may soon have to choose. What do they want to do? Indulge the Greens at immense cost and to little purpose or show that at last they have their priorities right and give the country greater security of clean electricity supply at competitive cost. In other words, will they, as logic demands, go for nuclear’s value for money or is the political momentum behind so-called “green” non-answers too great? We should not be over-confident. Already Ed Miliband, Energy Secretary, has shown he puts his environmental credentials before the nation’s supply of electricity by postponing the long-overdue decision on a new Kingsnorth coal-fired power station until the autumn.

SAVED BY THE MARKET
In fact, we may be saved nugatory expenditure by the market. If there is one thing that has distinguished the past month – apart from endless scare stories about global warming –it is the continuing commercial disenchantment with renewables.

Amid HSBC forecasts that the global wind industry will decline 20 per cent this year, the British Wind Energy Association is asking for even more Government help in next month’s Budget on top of the huge subsidies needed to get anyone to erect a turbine. As we write it has not been any more specific than loan guarantees as banks pull in their horns over project financing.

One of the wind industry’s problems is that with the fall of sterling the cost of imported turbines has soared. Centrica, with reputedly a £4bn wind power programme, has warned of a need to revisit projects because of their perilous economics after last year’s abandonment by BP and Shell of Britain as an area for developing wind power because of taxes and the planning regime.

As for micro-systems B&Q has recently withdrawn a turbine from sale because of customer dissatisfaction. A test report on 26 building-mounted wind turbines found that their load factor when running was a mere four per cent of maximum possible generation. And a recent Institution of Civil Engineers’ paper on building-mounted photovoltaic cells concluded that even with zero interest on a loan and no maintenance the pay-back time would be 40 years. The forecast life for the cells is only 25 years and only ten for the inverter unit.

Only a lunatic with no concept of the value for money would encourage investment in these things.

THE JENKIN QUESTION
In this context, a SONE member, Lord Jenkin, a former Minister for Energy, has asked a very pertinent question about the cost to Britain of the European 20/20 policy – 20 percent of EU energy from renewables by 2020.

In a Lords’ debate on February 24 on the Lords’ Select Committee on Economic Affairs report on “The Economics of Renewable Energy”, he pointed out the “extraordinary discrepancy” between the committee’s and the Government’s estimates of the cost by 2020. The committee said £6.8bn (or £80 per household) whereas the Government put it at £2-2.5bn.

“This ought to be cleared up”, said Lord Jenkin. “We cannot go on with that sort of discrepancy.” He wants Ofgem, the energy regulator, to be asked to get to the bottom of why the select committee, after taking masses of evidence, came up with a figure three times what the Government is prepared to concede.

The trouble with this carbon suppression game is that the end has come to justify the means and to hell with the cost. For our sakes as consumers – since we foot the bill – we hope Lord Jenkin gets his way.

HOW TO HIT THE TARGET
Incidentally, in the same debate Lord Jenkin told the Government how it might have a chance of achieving the “incredible” 20/20 target, assuming it gets on with building nuclear power stations: designate nuclear power as renewable.

He pointed out that three years ago Lord Sainsbury, as Science Minister, had told the House that in his view nuclear power should be regarded as renewable since there was 1,000 years’ worth of fuel in the earth.

Of course, the Greens would condemn this as too Sir Humphrey-like to be true for even Yes, Minister. We would merely point out that this would also be an economic, competitive, clean and safe way of going for the target. And it would create jobs – thousands of ’em.

NOT COUNTING THORIUM
We do not believe that Lord Sainsbury had thorium remotely in mind when he saw nuclear as a renewable source of energy. Now three years later his remarks have been underlined by the US company, Thorium Energy. It has just reported from Utah that the US Geological Survey has confirmed reserves of some 915,000 tonnes of thorium ore on its properties.

It believes its reserves could be three times as big but says: “Already identified and economically extractable and accessible deposits of highly concentrated thorium are large enough to supply the power needs of the entire USA for centuries through thorium-fuelled reactors.” India, which also has large deposits of thorium, long ago called for greater interest in the thorium route to nuclear power.

PETER AND THE WOLF
Judging from the alarmism that has marked the past month, you would not think that, even before we get the fast reactor, there are centuries of clean, competitive power available to the world. Most of the scaremongering has come out of Copenhagen where 2,500 scientists massed to warn us of impending climatic doom. It was all part of the stoking of the environmental pressure for a new UN agreement on combating global warming, post-Kyoto, in Copenhagen in December.

Prince Charles played his part in the Brazilian rainforest where he said we had a mere 100 months to save the planet from irreversible warming. Lord Stern jumped on the bandwagon saying his report underestimated the risks and the damage from inaction. And from Copenhagen, the scientists threw everything into the media pot from acidic seas to polar bears and melting ice caps to rising oceans.

There will be a lot more of the same before the Copenhagen summit, even though Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN’s Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, conceded that Barak Obama would face a “revolution” if he committed himself to the deep carbon cuts being called for. If this is so, then what is the point of asking for the moon – unless you want a revolution in the USA?

Even if you take the Thatcher view that politics is the art of making possible what is thought to be impossible, it seems counter-productive constantly to cry “Wolf”. It certainly takes no tricks in these days of financial stringency to demand ever more expensive dubious “remedies” and largely to ignore, unlike our patron, Professor James Lovelock, the signal role that nuclear power could play in combating global warming. They would carry much more weight if they got real, to quote the British Green apostate, Chris Goodall, and demanded a global nuclear power programme. What’s stopping them?

THE BRITISH DILEMMA
Britain perhaps symbolises what is stopping the world effectively tackling the problem of global warming, assuming it believes it is serious. It is the clash between the idealists and the realists. If The Independent is any guide – and it covers the idealists’ cause in minute detail – it is to be found in tensions within the Government.

On March 8 its Sunday edition claimed that the Chancellor was frustrating the launch by Lord Mandelson (Industry) and Ed Miliband (Energy) of a “low carbon industrial revolution”. They had been demanding billions – no doubt because they thought it would be popular and create jobs – and the Chancellor had been pleading poverty, for which he seems to have a good case, given the hundreds of billions chucked at the banks. The result was that the Mandelson/Miliband initiative had about as much bang in it as a waterlogged squib.

Then on March 17 The Independent reported that after six months Miliband’s Department for Energy and Climate Change was beset with organisational problems, vacancies and a backlog of paperwork. The two bits of the department are apparently still housed in different buildings.

None of this should come as a surprise. We know something of the chaos that surrounded the formation of the old Department of Energy in a fully blown energy and political crisis in1974. But at least that department did not have double vision. Its responsibility was solely for energy supply. The new department has a divided focus with one lot of protagonists claiming they can do without nuclear and the other only too well aware of the limitations for supply of the other’s pet remedies.

Those of us who despaired when the Department of Energy and Climate Change was formed are not surprised.

NOW THE GOOD NEWS
After all this, it comes as wonderful solace to record what is going on, in spite of this department’s split personality, to bring about a nuclear renaissance.

The background noise is certainly improving after the departure of Industry Minister and nuclear enthusiast, John Hutton. The Prime Minister called for a new international system to help non-nuclear states, including Iran, to acquire civil nuclear power to cut carbon emissions. He foreshadowed detailed international proposals on civil nuclear power, disarmament and non-proliferation, fissile material security and the development of the IAEA.

Lord Mandelson said he wanted to make the UK the best place to develop civil nuclear technology and build a low carbon business. And Mike O’Brien, Energy Minister, at a nuclear supply chain conference in Derby, saw a fleet of new nuclear plants as a multi-billion pound opportunity for the UK economy.

Nuclear jobs At a suppliers’ conference in Birmingham Areva opened up to British firms, in competition with the world, 70 per cent of the work involved in building its reactors in Britain. There was some criticism that the French group will produce nearly one-third of the components in France. But what did people expect? And in any case, it might be a very good thing if it overcomes bottlenecks. Westinghouse, which the Government sold to Toshiba just when business was looking up, says it intends to source as many components as possible in the home market.

On-line bidding has started for nuclear power station land next to Magnox stations at Wylfa, Bradwell and Oldbury where the NII has permitted the re-start of Unit 1. This is now likely to run through to the end of next year. After nearly 18 months out of action all four reactor units at British Energy’s Heysham and Hartlepool AGRs stations are back on line, restoring 2,350MW to the grid.

Talking points
•    Calvert Cliffs 2 PWR in the USA sets a new world record for continuous operation of 693 days
•    The average American now receives five times more radiation from medical procedures than 25 years ago, representing nearly half his average dose compared with 0.1 per cent from the nuclear industry.