Going nuclear?

This is a bit interesting and in my opinion it at least shows that European leaders are pondering all alternatives to that of relying on Putin's tap and overseas suppliers.

"The overwhelming majority of leaders at last week's European Union summit, including Tony Blair, strongly backed a revival of nuclear power as the answer to Europe's growing dependence on overseas supplies and to combat climate change.

Only Germany and Austria explicitly rejected the nuclear option in secret summit talks, according to senior German diplomats, who pointed out that Angela Merkel, the chancellor and a trained physicist, favoured it personally but was bound by her Social Democrat coalition partners to reject it."

Andris Piebalgs, EU energy commissioner and author of this month's green paper on a common energy policy, made it plain in an interview that a revival of atomic power was not the "silver bullet" for meeting Europe's triple objectives of security of supply, sustainable development and competitiveness.

"There are no silver bullets and you cannot believe that, if you build new nuclear power stations, that will solve everything," he told the Guardian. "Countries with expertise are well placed to replace existing plants or build new stations but we should not say that nuclear energy will meet all three objectives cheaply and efficiently. It has huge costs and lots of complications, including the issue of waste and final storage."

So no silver bullet but surely a pragmatic solution to those countries already in possession of the technology. The rub is that nuclear power probably not is publicy popular.