Two high-ranking Christian Democrat politicians in the Netherlands have called for the country to keep the nuclear option open and not risk becoming overly dependent on energy from abroad.

The Dutch junior minister of the environment, Pieter van Geel, questioned the wisdom of closing the country’s sole nuclear plant, Borssele, in the light of what he called “the climate policy challenge”. He said the closure would cost the government "hundreds of millions of euros" that would be better spent on developing clean energy.

And in a speech a day earlier, on 14th February 2005, the foreign minister Bernard Bot said that if the Netherlands should close Borssele as proposed in 2013 , it would only increase the country’s dependence on outside sources of energy.

The Christian Democrat Party has up until now avoided getting involved in the nuclear debate. The decision to shut down the Borssele reactor in 2013 had been a political compromise to the D66 (Democraten 66) junior coalition partner when it joined the government in 2003. A spokesperson for D66 said his party would not yield to the change of heart and would insist on going ahead with the 2013 shutdown.

Mr Van Geel was charged with the implementation of the pledge to close Borssele. He had previously always said he was unwilling to re-visit the nuclear debate and that the shutdown of Borssele in 2013 was a firm decision. However, yesterday he said he wants to re-open the debate on the wisdom of closing a safe nuclear plant in the light of the climate policy challenge.

In his speech, Mr Bot warned that with the current reduction of natural gas reserves in the Netherlands, the country’s dependency on oil, gas and coal from outside Europe is increasing. “I do not say we should build new nuclear power plants, but we must strongly continue the research into nuclear energy. Wind and solar energy will not be sufficient.”

Mr Bot said that in the UK and France there is less of a taboo surrounding the use of nuclear energy and that dependence on energy from conflict areas such as the Middle East could result in problems not just for the Netherlands, but for Europe. He said Europe was in danger of “missing the boat” economically with developing nations such as China and India in the ascendancy.

Political parties in the Netherlands have varied opinions on nuclear power. The agreement between parties that make up the governing coalition of Prime Minister Jan-Peter Balkenende states that Borssele should close in 2013. The majority of representatives who sit in the lower house of the Dutch parliament are against nuclear power and want to see greater use of sustainable energy sources, such as biomass and solar energy. However, the Liberals and Mr Balkenende’s Christian Democrats, say that it is necessary to have a mix of sustainable energy, hydrogen and nuclear in the long term.

In 2003, the head of ENECO, one of the largest energy distributors in the Netherlands, called for nuclear power to return to the political agenda.

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