Voices for the United Kingdom’s capitalist rulers have expressed increasing concern about their sources of energy in the coming decades. They seek to gain a competitive edge over their international rivals and to lessen their dependency on imported natural gas and oil, particularly from “unstable” countries.

The Times of London said in an editorial, “It is time to push ahead with a new generation of reactors.” It pointed to “dwindling” stocks of oil and gas in British-controlled waters of the North Sea; the rise of world oil prices; the fact that most of the country’s 12 aging nuclear power stations, which provide 20 percent of electricity in the United Kingdom, are to be decommissioned by 2023; and that many coal-fired power stations, which generate another 30 percent, will close within two decades because of European Union rules on pollution.

The Times editorial did not mention an additional factor—the reluctance of the wealthy rulers of this country to use coal given the militant history of the miners union.

The government’s review is expected to “lead to new nuclear power stations coming onstream within 20 years,” the Financial Times reported. It will also look at ways to give “incentives” to private companies to bear the risks of building such plants.

Digby Jones, director-general of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), a bosses’ organization, said, “If this nation, the fourth biggest economy on earth, is going to play a full role in the 21st century, we have got to stop hesitating” about nuclear power. According to the CBI, “energy requirements are now top of the business agenda.”

The government’s moves have prompted debate among capitalist politicians. Opposing the Labour Party government’s course, former Labour government minister Michael Meacher told the BBC news agency, “We need nuclear like a hole in the head.” The Daily Telegraph reported November 30 that Meacher is among 50 Labour and Liberal Democratic Party members of Parliament and some government ministers who “are deeply opposed to any return to a nuclear energy programme.”

The organization Greenpeace disrupted Blair’s November 29 announcement at a CBI conference, forcing the prime minister to make the speech in a side room. Greenpeace declared that it opposed nuclear power as “costly, dangerous and a terrorist target.”

The British government’s moves “could presage a dramatic shift in energy policies” in Europe, where no nuclear power stations have been built since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine, the International Herald Tribune stated. There has been a growing debate on nuclear power among Britain’s imperialist rivals in Europe. In Finland, which has four nuclear plants, the government has decided to build a fifth reactor—the first ordered in Europe for almost 20 years.  
 
 
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