Nuclear Energy

Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, many of whose comments I thoroughly endorse. I am particularly grateful to my noble friend Lord Howell for securing this timely and important debate and for introducing it in his usual thoughtful and well-informed way. I draw attention to my interests in the register, notably my role as an independent consultant to Terrestrial Energy, a Canadian technology firm developing advanced nuclear technologies. I, too, am a member of Legislators for Nuclear.

It has been frustrating to read the recent extensive criticism of the Government’s work to cut emissions to reach our net-zero targets. The expressed view that commitment to our green policies is waning is a false narrative. In all the media chatter about green levies on energy bills, heat pumps and targets on zero-emission vehicles, many seem to have forgotten that one technology in particular will do most of the heavy lifting—the one the Government can now be seen to be standing behind fully and completely, namely nuclear power.

The recent establishment of Great British Nuclear is a critical start on this pathway; it will be instrumental in both meeting our net-zero targets and reducing our dependence on energy imports. It also heralds a strong commitment to establish a supply chain that can be exported worldwide—and doing so in areas of the UK that desperately need levelling up: for example, north-west Wales. To continue the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, save for the lack of a robust uranium supply chain, the UK could be completely self-sufficient throughout the nuclear lifecycle.

On nuclear fuels, the UK has manufactured fuels for reactors for decades, ensuring the long-term operation of our current fleet. Urenco and Westinghouse are now investing in new skills and infrastructure to manufacture a range of higher-enriched fuels for a future reactor fleet at Capenhurst and Springfields in the north-west, and the National Nuclear Laboratory continues to develop advanced fuels to support our future reactor fleets.

The recent announcement that the Government are planning to award funding as part of the nuclear fuel fund for advanced nuclear fuel processing facilities is welcome. We may soon be able to regard that store of nuclear waste at Sellafield as an asset—a potential fuel source for some of the newer Generation IV nuclear technologies, as well as batteries. Projections suggest that, by 2050, around half of our final energy use will be from electricity. This itself represents a fourfold increase in production compared to today, which is why the Government have set such ambitious and ground-breaking targets for nuclear, but I question whether it is enough.

A secure future electricity supply is only part of the story. While nuclear power can be a major source of reliable baseload low-carbon power for an electrified future, it can also be a low-carbon energy source to assist with hydrogen production for use in many sectors, particularly those where decarbonisation is required but where it is difficult to do so because of the lack of alternatives to fossil fuels. Sectors such as aviation and shipping, and industries such as steel-making and agriculture, drive our economy, and their successful decarbonisation is not only fundamental to our continued economic success but, unless we are successful in doing it, we will fail to meet our legal obligation to achieve net zero by 2050.

Just as in electricity production, nuclear-generated industrial heat can play a pivotal role in the production of a whole range of other energy products, including sustainable aviation fuel, hydrogen and ammonia, and in the UK we are making this possible. When we talk about ensuring a secure energy supply, we need also to be thinking about low-carbon fuels which, when produced by nuclear heat and electricity, can enable us to continue our increasingly energy-intensive lives in a future-proofed and sustainable way. Some of these fuels are also direct replacements for current carbon-intensive versions, requiring little or no costly and time-consuming infrastructure upgrades.

Under this Government, nuclear has been included right across the board to support decarbonisation in many hard to abate sectors. This includes the publications we have all seen such as the hydrogen strategy, the sustainable aviation fuel mandate, the net-zero innovation framework, and the heat and buildings strategy—the list goes on. All include consideration of the viable role that nuclear can play in achieving net zero across all areas of our energy system, far beyond electricity.

Nuclear energy can provide the direct-process heat to decarbonise our industrial clusters, responsible for 16% of our greenhouse gas emissions—that is, if we can also unlock opportunities for siting small modular reactors close to those clusters. That is where the planning situation has to be considered. The heat from nuclear reactors can deliver low-carbon fuels, such as sustainable aviation fuel. Aviation is one sector that is extremely difficult to decarbonise. However, with nuclear energy as the primary energy source, the UK can produce mass-scale sustainable aviation fuel—SAF—for net-zero flights. Current engines can already run on SAF-mixed fuels; our challenge is to make enough to decarbonise the aviation industry.

The Department for Transport recognises that nuclear energy produces a particular type of SAF, known as power-to-liquid, which combines water and air through a chemical process to produce aviation fuel. This is predicted to fuel up to 45% of all aviation by 2050, yet today the amount we produce is next to zero. The opportunity for the UK to capitalise on this market through the application of nuclear energy is immense. If we start now, this can be a reality as early as 2035, raising the ceiling on SAF production, delivering on government SAF targets, creating well-paid UK clean energy jobs, driving exports and positioning the UK as a world leader.

Nuclear technology can also decarbonise other methods of transport and industry by producing hydrogen. Hydrogen is often touted as the golden solution to our climate change problems; it is probably the most talked about solution beyond electrification. Not in itself a source of energy, like electricity it needs to be manufactured through a production process driven by energy, and we need huge amounts of it. Every day in the news we see progress made in the decarbonisation of sectors by developing point-of-use technologies, hydrogen buses, trains, cars and so on. However, to achieve all this requires the production of staggering amounts of hydrogen—far more than renewables and electrolysis alone can provide. The Climate Change Committee said that to achieve net zero we need 270 terawatt hours of hydrogen by 2050. That is the equivalent of creating within 30 years a hydrogen economy the same size as the total amount of electricity we use today on the grid.

While we have made strides in nuclear’s future for our electricity system, it has a role far beyond electricity. The role of nuclear energy to decarbonise the other 50% of our future energy system is real—delivering large-capacity heat and electricity from a land-area footprint with orders of magnitude smaller than wind and solar. We need to make the UK the best place in the world to invest in commercial projects that leverage nuclear energy for system-wide decarbonisation, driving economic development and supporting levelling up the whole of the UK. Above all, in my opinion, we need to back all forms of nuclear technology, from fusion to fission, from gigawatt to micro, and from SMR to AMR, That probably puts me in the same camp as the baseball player of the noble Lord, Lord Howell.

Finally, the noble Lord, Lord West, is correct: there has been a very real worry globally about the lack of engineers, scientists and skilled workers necessary to keep the industry operating and properly regulated. The announcement in July of the creation of a Nuclear Skills Taskforce underlines the strategic approach the Government are pursuing in creating the next stage of our nuclear story. It will set up the industry for success and prosperity, making sure that our nation’s ambitions for nuclear can power up Britain and our energy security for decades to come, helping us to achieve net zero by 2050, and beyond.