France and Britain announced plans on Friday to set up a joint forum aimed at strengthening co-operation in civil nuclear power at a time of deep concern over European energy supplies and global warming.
The announcement, made at a summit between French President Jacques Chirac and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, increased speculation that London was planning to build a new generation of nuclear plants to replace Britain's ageing reactors.
"One thing is for sure, this policy, for reasons of energy security, is right at the top of the agenda," Blair said. "But there is of course another reason why energy policy is dominating thinking around the world and that is the challenge of climate change," he told a joint news conference with Chirac. The agreement bound the two sides to no more than exchanging ideas on issues such as decommissioning and waste management.
But it adds to growing signs that nuclear power, the image of which has suffered hugely in Europe in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster two decades ago, is making a comeback.
Blair's government is due to publish a review of Britain's energy needs this month which is expected to back the construction of new nuclear power plants, although he said he did not want to prejudge the outcome of the review.
Britain's nuclear power stations supply 20 percent of the nation's electricity, while in France nearly 80 percent of electricity comes from its extensive network of nuclear plants.
"Nuclear energy is one of the ways of responding to the energy problems of tomorrow," Chirac said. "It is legitimate that two countries like France and Britain are keen to work together, think together and come to the same conclusions."
As leaders of Europe's two military heavyweights, Blair and Chirac also pledged to maintain their close co-operation in peacekeeping operations in the Balkans and Afghanistan and discussed several initiatives in defence technology.
In addition to a joint aircraft carrier development plan, they pledged to work together in missile development and said they would look at co-operating on unmanned "drone" aircraft.
The two leaders have had frosty relations during their years in power, particularly over the 2003 Iraq war, which France opposed. However, the occasional spats have not prevented the two countries working closely on some key dossiers, like seeking to defuse the crisis with Iran over its nuclear ambitions.
"There is a chance now with the way things have changed in the past couple of weeks to get a diplomatic solution and that's what everyone wants to see," Blair said.
Britain, France, the United States, Germany, Russia and China presented Tehran with proposals this week they hope will persuade it to halt uranium enrichment, a process the West fears Iran will use to build atomic weapons.
As well as fears about a bomb, tensions with Iran have been one factor behind the recent rise in oil prices, underlining how closely linked security and energy issues have become.
During the recent unusually cold winter, Russian gas supplies to the Europe Union were disrupted, increasing fears Europe was over-dependent on one supplier, forcing EU states to consider ways of diversifying their energy sources. Blair said that if Britain did decide to build more nuclear stations, French expertise would be an important asset.