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I think the BBC Grandees have been leant on.
I wish people wouldn't leap to conspiracy theory bullshit about stuff they don't agree with in the media.
Biomass is commonly considered to be renewable, and is treated as such in incentive schemes across Europe. Quite a few people are questioning if it should receive the same treatment, and some legislators are considering whether it should be reclassified. But for the moment, it remains treated as a renewable for the feed-in tariffs etc etc.
And R4 clearly just misspoke re the nukes, maybe through ignorance or sloppy editing or maybe through the fact it's a live transmission and people make mistakes during live broadcasts. None of the print stories have made this mistake, including on the BBC website.
h2o-
Perhaps I could have been clearer with a line break.
The 'leant on' applies much more to the dubious inclusion of fission in the renewables basket.The US wood pellets were originally, I seem to remember, claimed by Drax to be wood waste from normal timber processing. (Quite why this could not be burnt in US coal-powered stations was never explained). More recent coverage suggests that some of the Drax-bound pellets are from (supposedly) sustainably managed woodland, but, all the tree growth, not just the processing waste.
mespilus
I think the BBC Grandees have been leant on.
Much as they used to accord Nigel Lawson's fake charity equal weight on climate change discussions, the pro-Nuclear lobbyists appear to have bamboozled non-scientist Governors/Directors/Heads of 'Better' into being unable to differentiate between renewable and 'low carbon'. Fission can just about be classified as 'low carbon' as long as you ignore the carbon embedded in uranium extraction & processing, and the processing of spent fuel rods and the interminable storage of nuclear waste.
Renewable should really be just wind, solar, wave, hydro and pumped storage.
Shipping wood pellets across the Atlantic for the Drax biomass seems arcane to me.