Moderator: Polar bears are facing extinction this century if the Arctic continues to melt at its present rate, according to the latest Arctic impact assessment this week. Yet more evidence to support the Chief Scientist's claim that global warming is a more serious threat to humanity than terrorism. A growing number of prominent environmentalists see nuclear power as the way to tackle global warming and to provide our future energy requirements. On Tuesday, the head of the CBI, Digby Jones, was supporting the calls too, with his call for six new nuclear power stations to insure the UK meets its targets for cutting carbon emissions. And there's growing public acceptance that something has to be done, but is nuclear really the way ahead? And would we ever be in the position that the Green movement would wholeheartedly embrace something seen by them as intrinsically evil?

Rob Edwards is the nuclear correspondent for the New Scientist magazine. Rob Edwards, prominent Greens are calling for a move to more nuclear power - this must be causing dissent in the Green movement. (1m00)

Rob Edwards: Yes, it is causing dissent. In some ways, it's not surprising; in some ways it is. I think what's happened is a few old-guard environmentalists have recently spoken out in favor of nuclear power.This is an interesting development, but of course it has its roots, as all these thing do, in history. Few people remember that when nuclear power was starting up in the 1950s and '60s, it was enthusiastically backed by anti-nuclear weapons campaigners. Because they wanted to turn swords into plowshares - Atoms for Peace - to kind of atone for the terror of the atomic bomb. In a way, the environmentalists who are speaking out now in favor of nuclear power are those people's successors.

Moderator: So will we see a big divide, a wedge, driven through the Green movement?

Rob Edwards: Obviously there's a split, but I don't think it's a very major split, just a wedge to the edge of the Green movement. I think the overwhelming majority of the modern-day environmentalists do, as you say in your introduction, abhor nuclear power, because it produces radioactive waste, because it's expensive, in some circumstances it could be dangerous, because it's linked to nuclear weapons. And there are a few obviously who take an important view, but they are in the minority. In modern-day lingo, nuclear power just isn't sustainable, most environmentalists think.

Moderator: Why has it become such a hot topic now?

Rob Edwards: Again, you hinted at that in your introduction. It's climate change. The big thing that's changed is that there's wide-spread acceptance now that human-made pollution is disrupting the climate. And it's undoubtedly the case that nuclear power produces less of the kind of pollution that causes climate change, mainly carbon dioxide, than coal, oil, or gas-fired stations produce. So those who have a liking for nuclear power feel that this is a good time to speak out in favor of it. Another factor is that our nuclear power stations are elderly, getting older. Some of them have already been decommissioned and the rest of them will have to be decommissioned over the next ten, twenty, thirty years. So we've got to be thinking about what to replace them with.

Moderator: As we mentioned, high profile environmentalists have declared recently for the nuclear option, and the most recent is the Right Reverend Hugh Montefiore, the former Anglican bishop of Birmingham. He aired his views in the Catholic newspaper, The Tablet, and promptly lost the post he has held for twenty years as trustee of the Friends of the Earth. (3m26)

Hugh Montefiore: The Earth is hotting up with rising ocean levels, melting ice fields, and 25 000 deaths in Europe last year from heat wave. The Government's Chief Scientific Officer tells us that global warming is a worse danger than terrorism. Global warming gases come mostly from fossil fuels. These gas levels are still rising and world energy demand is predicted to increase by 60 % in the next 25 years.

As a theologian I believe we must play our full part in safeguarding the future of the planet, and I myself have been a committed environmentalist for many many years. (4m05) How can the world reduce these gases by the 60% needed to keep the planet comfortable for life ? The speed at which the Earth is heating up has made me change my mind in favor of nuclear energy.

Wind power can help but it can never achieve the desired result on its own, and in any case wind is intermittent so conventional backup is needed. Solar power won't help us much in our Northern latitude. Burning straw and other matter to produce electricity will not do the trick. Wave power, marine technologies and nuclear fusion are nowhere near commercial viability. Taking carbon out of fossil fuel is only a possibility. Hydrogen fuel requires electricity to make. Great reductions could be made in domestic, commercial and industrial uses of energy, but the required stringency would be quite unacceptable. We may be able to achieve the Government's target of 10% renewable electricity by 2010, but how on Earth can we achieve 20% by 2020? (5m17) Whereas even more than 60% will be required by 2050 if we take into account the huge increases of energy which will be needed by developing countries. Until energy from renewable sources is eventually available, we can only achieve our target with the help of nuclear energy.

It is reliable, safe, efficient, and pollution-free.

There are 442 reactors in the world producing electricity today. Our Government proposes to phase out nuclear energy as our present reactors, producing 20% of our electricity today, become obsolete. 80% of French electricity comes from nuclear energy. We must plan now for more reactors. In any case, for our own security, we need a variety of sources of energy.

Modern reactors have a vastly improved design, approved by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The permissible dose for nuclear operatives is less that the natural radiation in Cornwall. There are now safe ways of disposing nuclear waste, as the House of Lords Select Committee has agreed. The Government says nuclear is expensive, but think of what London Olympics would cost. (6m46) The real reason why the Government has not taken the nuclear option is because it lacks acceptance due to scare stories in the media and the stone-walling opposition of powerful environmental lobbies. But to avoid global catastrophe, nuclear energy is essential. In my view, there is no other way.

Moderator: The Right Reverend Hugh Montefiore.

Bruno Comby is the president of EFN - Environmentalists For Nuclear Energy, and joins us from Paris; and Zac Goldsmith is the editor of the Ecologist Magazine and is here in the studio. Zac Goldsmith, does Hugh Montefiore have a point? (7m30)

Zac Goldsmith: I wish environmental groups were as powerful as he says. If they were, we would not be in the situation we find ourselves in now. Climate change is as big an issue as he says and we do need to cut emissions dramatically and very quickly. I think most environmentalists, all environmentalists that I know, would accept that if nuclear power was the only option we would have to hold our nose and we would have to accept it. But we have to explore every other possibility first, because nuclear power comes with a whole tangle of enormous costs. And I'm not just talking about the financial costs. And the fact is that so far we have not even begun to explore those alternatives.

Moderator: But Hugh Montefiore went through quite a list there, wind power is never going to deliver the energy we need, biomass... we haven't even got started on an awful lot of these renewables. We need to move quickly.

Zac Goldsmith: Yes, we do need to move quickly, but let's be realistic about it. If we decided now to embark on a new generation of nuclear power plants in this country it would take many years before we had anything generating electricity, and that even discounts the need for planning - these things are very dangerous, so the whole process you would have to go through which would translate to many years of waiting. Now the fact is, and I think that this is indicative since the year of my birth, 29 years ago, there has been 180 billion pounds spent on research and development alone in nuclear energy by the OECD countries. Now you compare that with what has been spent on renewable technologies and in exploring these things, then it's just peanuts. Tiny tiny amounts have been invested, tiny amounts in tidal and wave energy. The thing that is always neglected in this debate about nuclear power is the very, very important possibilities we have with energy conservation.

Moderator: Hugh Montefiore did say "conservation, yes, but the required stringency would be unacceptable".

Zac Goldsmith: I'm not sure that's true. You know, the Clinton administration did a study, which was backed up by the Bush administration but hasn't been translated into action, which shows that if the 500,000 buildings currently owned and occupied by the Federal Government had $5-billion invested in them in terms of energy conservation, they would save, just in terms of their energy bill $1.7 billion a year. Now you find me any business opportunity which promises returns of that sort and guarantees it year after year, that's a no-brainer It's something that should be translated into action - new buildings, government buildings, businesses and so on. (9m55)

Moderator: Let me bring in Bruno Comby here. Bruno, you are president of the organization Environmentalists For Nuclear Energy, so obviously you support the stance taken by Hugh Montefiore. How do you call yourself an environmentalist yet support nuclear energy?

Bruno Comby: Yes, of course, I fully support what Hugh Montefiore told us, and there are in fact very good reasons to be in support of nuclear energy for ecological reasons. Our association now gathers 6000 members and supporters in 50 countries and is growing rapidly because there is a rapid movement in the public opinion understanding our point of view. Now we are facing an urgent situation. The planet is warming up. It's a global effect. We are burning in just 50 years the oil that nature took 100 million years to fabricate. And after the era of oil, our civilization has to change. It's a dramatic climate change which is going to happen. So what do we have as an alternative? Renewable energy and the alternatives and the conservation of energy, as Zac Goldsmith told us; and on this point I agree with him. We should better use the energy and have some energy conservation, but this will not solve the problem. We still need significant amounts of energy and the renewable energies which are the wind and the sun are inconstant and produce only small amounts of energy. Another massively available source of energy is urgently needed, and the only one that is available is nuclear energy. (11m30)

Moderator: But what about the down sides of nuclear energy? The cost, the depletion of uranium and the carbon dioxide actually produced in the mining uranium in the first place, nuclear waste and the fact that nobody really knows categorically what kind of damage the radiation can cause.

Bruno Comby: well, for the cost, just look at the price of electricity in different countries. France has the cheapest electricity in Europe, much cheaper than most countries around it, and it's electricity is almost wholly nuclear. About the mining, there is an important number - it's the factor of one million. With one gram of uranium you will produce as much energy as with one ton of oil or gas. It's a factor of one million - that's something ! Therefore the impact on the environment is a lot smaller. You can produce the energy for modern countries with just a few uranium mines while you need tens of thousands of oil wells to replace that. So the impact of the mines on the environment is much smaller, but also the impact of the waste because the amount of the waste is accordingly very small. And the waste is not dumped into the atmosphere like it is when you burn oil and gas, dumping CO2 directly into the atmosphere which is considered as a garbage can. We have only one planet - we need to preserve it, not pollute the atmosphere. Nuclear waste are confined, produced only in very small amounts, they can be reprocessed and be safely deposited and they self-degrade with time. (12m55)

Moderator: Zac Goldsmith, what Bruno and Hugh both seem to be saying is that the nuclear option is the lesser of all the evils and given the time considerations, this is urgent.

Zac Goldsmith: It's a lesser evil than climate change, but climate change is one hell of a big evil, so it's all relative. But it's just not true, some of the things we have just heard. The French energy sector is very very heavily subsidized. And if you internalize the costs, all the various costs associated with nuclear energy, it would be many times more expensive than it is now. For example, the waste bill in this country at the moment, which remains to be paid, is about 50 billion pounds; that's something which most people within the industry expect to increase by 500% in the next ten years. We interviewed Michael Meacher for The Ecologist recently - his job is in the Ministry of the Environment - is to look after nuclear wastes in this country. He said "I'm presiding over a problem for which there's no solution." The fact is that there is a solution for the nuclear waste, but it's a political solution, not a technological solution. In other words you dump it where people are less likely to complain about it. But there is no safe way to treat this stuff.

Moderator: Bruno Comby, there's also the security issue, is there not? (13m59)

Bruno Comby: Of course. I would like to underline that our association is in favor of civilian use of nuclear energy but absolutely not military use. But it should not be mixed together - there is no country in the world which has developed nuclear bombs using civilian nuclear power plants - not even one example. Civilian nuclear energy should be used and should be developed and we must remain very careful and cautious to prevent the military uses. These are two separate issues that can be dealt with. There's the International Atomic Energy Agency which has a lot of staff members to do this and does it very well until now. So we need to take the solution that is available - we have no more time available to dream about imaginary solutions that don't work. Let's take for example the European Pressurized Reactor - the new reactor that France is going to build on the coast of Normandy. If you want to replace that by windmills, then you have to line up the windmills all the way from Genoa in Italy to Barcelona in Spain; these windmills are not small - they are twice as high as the Cathedral of Paris.

Moderator: O.K. I just want to bring back very briefly Rob Edwards from the New Scientist. Rob, this is not just an environmental argument - it's also a moral argument. (15m12)

Rob Edwards: Absolutely, and I would take issue with something that Bruno Comby just said. It is inescapable that nuclear technology can be used for civil or military purposes, and it's at the heart of some of the things facing the world today. The biggest problem, the biggest is climate change, the idea of spreading nuclear weapons. Britain and Europe is trying right now to keep Iran from spreading the development of enrichment technology - the very technology that we use here in England, at Katenhurst(?), to make fuel for our power stations. Now that's a morally untenable position; we can't go around the world telling people to "do as we say and not as we do". And that, to me, raises the really big question. Your piece here has dealt with that question in some interesting details. But the question we have to ask ourselves, and this is a very difficult question is "We're facing climate change, we're facing nuclear weapons proliferation, we've got the risk of carbon pollution, we've got the risk of plutonium spreading Do we really want to jump out of the carbon frying pan and into the plutonium fire? That's the question we have to answer.

Moderator: And that's a question we'll have to come back to. Rob Edwards, Zac Goldsmith and Bruno Comby, thank you.