Ireland has joined three northern European countries to launch an international campaign against the use of nuclear energy as a solution to climate change.
The group, which includes Norway, Iceland and Austria, has also called for an independent international safety review to be carried out on the controversial Thorp nuclear processing plant at Sellafield, which has been closed for nearly two years following the discovery of a large leak of nuclear waste.
Environment ministers of all four countries met in Dublin on Sunday and yesterday morning for talks amid a growing debate in Europe on the role of nuclear energy. In a joint statement yesterday they described nuclear energy as "economically and environmentally untenable".
The statement said: "We voice serious concern that nuclear energy is being presented as a solution to climate change. It is our collective view that the current debate seeks to downplay the environmental, waste, proliferation, nuclear liability and safety issues and seeks to portray nuclear energy as a clean, safe and problem-free response to climate change".
It said that the "inherent risks and problems" of nuclear energy remained.
The group, which will meet again in the autumn, also called on the British government "to desist from reopening the plant on the grounds that this will inevitably increase radioactive discharges, the risk of radioactive pollution and because of the consistent and long-standing poor safety performance at the plant over many years".
"We request that, at a minimum, the safety case for reopening Thorp be subject to an international expert peer review," the statement said.
Their comments came amid a renewed drive in many European countries towards the use of nuclear energy as an alternative to fossil fuels. Britain is proposing to build a new generation of nuclear power plants as part of its long-term energy plans, which will replace older facilities such as the Wyfa plant in Wales.
Advocates have argued that it is the only viable measure to reducing dependence on oil and gas. The Minister for the Environment Dick Roche said the aim of the new grouping was to counter this viewpoint and to push for large-scale investment in alternative energy research.
"There is a steamroller effect arising in the debate on nuclear energy at European level," he said. "However, there is no silver bullet for climate change."
Austria's environment minister Josef Pröll said there was a need internationally "to fight the renaissance of nuclear energy" which had come about because of climate change.
The Austrian government yesterday published an assessment by its scientific advisers warning that nuclear energy was not sustainable and was associated with a high number of environmental risks from mining and from the waste itself.