IN reply to the letter Tony Blair Sleepwalks Into Nuclear Option (May 20), consider this:

Nuclear power has been active in Britain for at least 50 years.

It supplies 20/25 per cent of our electricity. How can that be replaced by alternatives which will never reach such proportions?

France has about 50 per cent of its domestic energy provided by nuclear plants and even sells electricity to Britain.

Are we as a country going to depend on gas and oil from unstable countries who already have huge demands from the rest of Europe? Or on oil in its various forms from the Middle East, which is in a terrible mess and will be for decades.

Alternative "renewable" power (wind, wave, solar etcetera) will not provide much more than now for many years. The private companies providing this find it too expensive, and investors cannot expect much income.

In the many years nuclear power has been developed, it has advanced in technology and has been quite safe. A huge number of developments are still going on around the world, including recycling nuclear waste for reactors.

Who knows how global warming will affect wind, wave, solar electricity suppliers? The other 56 countries of the world that have domestic nuclear power will certainly develop their second generation of nuclear power plants.

To say that Britain is generally worse at insulation than the rest of Europe is rather sweeping. Many countries are less developed than Britain and in a poor financial state. Who knows what the situation is.

Telling people to insulate their homes has been going on for at least 30 years. How much longer before there is a result?

J Beisly,

Osprey Close,

York.

Updated: 09:46 Tuesday, May 23, 2006