Nuclear Power

Debate between Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick and Charles Hendry

Wednesday 4th July 2012 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Charles Hendry)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Brooke, and I am grateful to the hon. Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie) for securing this timely debate. Transparency and openness are an important part of the discussions that we need to have about nuclear. In that context, I want to start by making a couple of corrections to what she said. We are not down to just one major nuclear player alongside EDF. Centrica, the UK’s biggest energy company, is a partner in its consortium, and other major European players, such as Gaz de France and Iberdrola, as well as other international players, are considering how they can be part of the nuclear renaissance in the United Kingdom. This is an area that has attracted a significant amount of investment from major companies, and it continues to do so.

On another issue of transparency—to pick up on a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat)—I hope that the hon. Lady would also accept that, if she rules out the least costly large-scale, low-carbon source of generation, the consequence for her constituents, particularly those who are off-gas-grid customers and have a greater reliance on electricity, would be a rise in their bills, because of their reliance on higher-cost sources of generation. That is an integral part of understanding the economics of this debate.

The challenge of building new nuclear is undoubtedly significant. Since 1995, when Sizewell B began generating electricity, no new nuclear power station has been built in Britain, which demonstrates the challenge of ensuring that the first new nuclear power station is followed by a full nuclear programme. Although new nuclear power stations are being built elsewhere around the world, some of them have gone over time and over budget.

Tackling the nuclear legacy is a national priority, as the hon. Lady has said. We are keen to see it dealt with with a degree of vigour that has never been seen before. We want to ensure that the current and previous UK nuclear fleet is cleaned up and decommissioned properly as the various sites cease operation. To do that, we must understand and learn from the lessons of the past on nuclear decommissioning.

That is why the previous Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne), commissioned a report, which was published in March, by Professor Gordon MacKerron of the university of Sussex, on the history of managing nuclear wastes and decommissioning. Professor MacKerron paints a warts-and-all picture of the UK’s nuclear history and explains why we have such a difficult legacy of old facilities and waste to manage. He found that delays by Government and public bodies in tackling nuclear liabilities led to a progressive escalation of costs and a deterioration in facilities, which has only begun to be addressed in recent years.

The cost of decommissioning those old nuclear facilities today is high for two primary reasons. The first is the post-war military and research origins of the UK nuclear industry as this country raced to build a nuclear deterrent. We are dealing with many of those costs today. The second reason is that those responsible—in Government and industry—gave too little priority to clean-up. As the hon. Lady has said, half the Department of Energy and Climate Change budget is spent on that, and the amount will rise to two thirds of our budget in due course. We are absolutely adamant that there should be no financial constraints on dealing with those legacy matters. To all of us involved in these policy issues, an unparalleled commitment to clearing up the legacy of the past is an integral part of having permission for a new-build nuclear programme in the future.

It is necessary to understand that the UK’s civil nuclear legacy is quite unique, as it is made up of a range of experimental facilities created up to 50 years ago. The poor condition of some of the estate and the high cost of dealing with it now reflects the unfortunate fact that, historically, decommissioning challenges were overlooked and ignored. However, that also means we are moving into the sector ahead of many other countries. There is a very important business opportunity for British companies in the sector to win international contracts as other countries start their decommissioning programmes as well.

Of course, with new nuclear power will come nuclear waste. The cost of managing our existing nuclear liabilities is significant. The current discounted estimate of the cost of managing that programme is some £50 billion. That is why we are so committed to finding a long-term, cost-effective solution for managing and disposing of our radioactive waste going forward. The Government’s policy for the longer term is a safe and secure management of higher-activity radioactive waste by placing it in a geological disposal facility. That is the internationally accepted way forward and it is the Government’s policy, which continues on from the work of the previous Administration.

[Ms Ritchie]

On the potential disposal site for radioactive waste, will the Minister indicate where it might be located and which countries the waste might come from? There are concerns in my constituency about that because of the geological fault line that lies in Cumbria and the clear, direct parallel with my constituency straight across the Irish sea in South Down.

[Charles Hendry]

Let me give the hon. Lady a complete assurance that we are looking at managing our own legacy waste, which includes one of the biggest stockpiles of plutonium in the world. Alongside that we are looking at whether there are ways to reuse that plutonium as a fuel. We are looking for volunteer communities and have identified some in Cumbria who are prepared to work with us to see where appropriate sites might be. However, that would only happen if we are absolutely clear about the geological safety of the sites being proposed. We are just beginning to carry out such a process. We want to move it forward faster than has been the case so far, but that can only happen if we are absolutely satisfied about the environmental, geological and geographical matters that relate to it. Builders of new plant will have to put funds into an independent fund to ensure that their own costs associated with their nuclear waste in due course can be managed within that programme. This is an integral part of the process moving forward.

I want to focus now on why I believe we need new nuclear in this country and how that ties in with the concerns the hon. Member for South Down has raised about market reform and why that is such an important part of this process. We estimate that in order to have a low-carbon economy where we have sufficient generation to ensure security of supply we will need up to 70 GW of new low-carbon generation by 2030. To put that in context, the ambition of the industry in the nuclear sector is for 16 GW by 2025. The overwhelming focus, therefore, is on a range of other low-carbon technologies alongside nuclear, including carbon capture and harnessing our own renewables. It is completely wrong to suggest that we are focusing only on nuclear. We see that as a very important element within a much wider and more balanced programme.