London ? The British government embraced nuclear power as a key energy source in the coming decades in a new policy unveiled Tuesday, angering environmentalists eager to promote renewable power sources such as sun, wind and waves.

Prime Minister Tony Blair says atomic power will allow Britain to go green, arguing the country can make cuts in its emissions of the pollutants blamed for climate change if it moves away from fossil fuels and includes nuclear power plants in energy plans the next 30-40 years.

“The challenges are so great that we cannot afford to rule out any low-carbon energy source that could help,” Trade Secretary Alistair Darling said as he laid out the blueprint before lawmakers.

Environmentalists quickly slammed Blair for backing new nuclear plants despite safety issues and concerns about waste disposal, stressing that Britain lags behind other European nations in developing renewable energy sources – such as solar or tidal power.

Germany, the world’s largest producer of wind power, will shut down all its nuclear plants by about 2021.

“Nuclear power is unsafe, uneconomic and unnecessary,” said Tony Juniper, the British director of Friends of the Earth. “We can meet very demanding carbon dioxide reduction targets and we can do it quickly – without nuclear.”

Blair, who has been talking about nuclear energy for several months, also argues that Britain needs nuclear power to meet rising demand and to reduce the country’s dependence on imports from the Middle East, Central Asia and Russia – particularly since its North Sea oil reserves are diminishing. Moscow unnerved many European nations this year when it briefly shut off supplies to Ukraine.