A day after Japan announced its commitment to atomic power for its energy policy, the UK's Committee on Climate Change (CCC) announced that nuclear power will remain the cheapest way for the UK to grow its low-carbon energy supply for at least a decade.

But under the EU targets the UK is still to achieve a 15% share of renewables by 2020, and a 34% cut in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels.

By 2030, according to the CCC, renewables should provide 30-45% of the nation's energy or, to be able to comply with the government's long-term target of a cut of at least 80% in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, nuclear and renewables would each have about a 40% share.

This would require an additional two or three nuclear reactors to be built in Britain on top of those developers are already planning to build. As of this year, the United Kingdom operates 19 nuclear reactors at nine locations.

Japan, who earlier has announced it will stick to nuclear energy, has currently a total of 54 nuclear reactors which authorities have ordered to review for safety after a massive earthquake and tsunami struck its northeast coast last March.

Last month, United Nations Chief Ban Ki-moon warned against nuclear energy.

"To many, nuclear energy looks to be a relatively clean and logical choice in an era of increasing resources' scarcity. Yet the record requires us to ask painful questions: have we correctly calculated its risks and costs?" he said at a conference in Kiev, calling for a global debate on the safety of nuclear energy.

Ban warned the effects of climate change were likely to lead to more disasters like that at the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan which was dubbed at an equal level of severity as the Chernobyl in 1986

"Climate change means more incidents of freak and increasingly severe weather and with the number of nuclear energy facilities scheduled to increase substantially in the coming decades, our vulnerability will only grow," the UN Chief said.