Article written and published on April 30th 2006 on www.BBC.co.uk for the energy debate in the UK and in view of the radio debate on the BBC which took place on May 5th, 2006.

ENVIRONMENTALISTS FOR NUCLEAR™ is in favor of all clean energies including, before anything else, energy conservation and renewables. But biomass requires energy to produce it, and all cultivable surfaces available on Earth would not suffice to replace oil. Wind and solar power are intermittent, unpredictable and dilute, therefore they simply cannot replace oil and gas to power our cities and industry. Given that hydroelectric resources are built pretty much to capacity and coal is the greatest polluter (+15,000 persons continue to die in coal mines each year), nuclear is, by elimination, the only viable solution. Nuclear is safe, clean, reliable, competitive, produces very little CO2 and no sulfur or nitrogen oxides. Because uranium is a million times more compact than fossil fuels &endash;and the minuscule amount of nuclear waste produced is confined&endash; nuclear energy has zero impact on the ecosystems. It can replace our dwindling supplies of oil and gas. In fact, there's no choice: it's the only way our civilization can survive the end of oil and gas. Those who pretend the contrary are dreamers or mistaken, but certainly not environmentalists.

Bruno Comby, President of EFN - Environmentalists For Nuclear Energy, www.ecolo.org