TONY Blair may be convinced the future is nuclear but he has a tough battle on his hands convincing even his own MPs.

Today the Prime Minister is warned by an inf luential group about the dangers of rushing into the construction of new nuclear power stations.

On the eve of the eagerlyawaited publication of the government's energy review tomorrow, members of the House of Commons Trade and Industry Committee accuse ministers of failing to carry out a "full and proper assessment" of future energy needs.

The cross-party body urges the government to ensure it has "broad political and public support" for its policy before pressing ahead with potentially farreaching decisions.

Struggling to convince his own MPs, Mr Blair has an even bigger battle to persuade the public. An ICM survey for GMTV published yesterday showed that only 38-per cent of people wanted nuclear power to play a role in meeting Britain's future energy needs.

The vast majority opted for renewables - some 79-per cent wanted solar to play a part, 76-per cent backed wind while half said they would like to see more efficient coal and gas-fired power stations having a role.

Almost three-quarters, some 72-per cent, of respondents, said that they would be concerned if a nuclear power station was built near them. Asked how they rated the safety of nuclear power, 16-per cent described it as "very safe", 42-per cent as "quite safe", 24- per cent as "not very safe" and 12-per cent as "not safe at all".

The government's review is expected to conclude that nuclear power is now viable and should play a role in meeting Britain's future energy needs alongside a five-fold expansion in "renewables" such as solar and wind power.

It will argue that without nuclear power, Britain will become dependent on gas for 55-per cent of its energy needs by 2020 - up from 38-per cent currently - with up to 90-per cent of that imported from potentially unstable regions such as the Middle East, Central Asia and Russia.

With the impending closure of older nuclear and coal-fired power stations, 25 gigawatts of new electricity generating capacity will have to be built by 2020. This is the equivalent of 30-per cent of current capacity. It is thought that the Department of Trade and Industry envisages building six modern nuclear power stations, each capable of generating 1.6 gigawatts of power.

With Scottish opposition seemingly inevitable, these are likely to be in England.

But at the same time, the reviewwill set out proposals to raise the proportion of electricity generated through renewables from 4- per cent to 20-per cent with support for technologies such as offshore wind farms currently seen as uneconomic.

In its report, the committee says: "A full and proper assessment of the projected future generating capacity should have been conducted to inform debate before the government undertook its review."

The option of extending the life of some existing nuclear stations could mean "the potential energy gap faced by the government will not be as severe as that which the current energy review assumes".

It stresses that if the government does opt for a new generation of nuclear power stations, all the costs of building, operating and decommissioning should fall to the privatesector investors who build them and not to the taxpayer.

In Scotland, where the energy issue is likely to play a major role in party politics up to next year's Holyrood elections, Jack McConnell has come under fire over nuclear new-build. The First Minister's position is that there will be no new Scottish nuclear power stations until the issue of waste management is resolved.

While last week David Cameron said that the Tories would develop a new generation of nuclear power stations only as a "last resort", yesterday Alan Duncan, the Shadow Trade Secretary, made clear his party would not halt new nuclear power stations if it won the next general election.

Ahead of next weekend's G8 summit, leaked documents yesterday suggested an action plan for "global energy security" is to be agreed at St Petersburg, involving a mass expansion of nuclear power.