Energy: Civil Nuclear Power

Lord Broers Excerpts

Thursday 9th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Broers (CB)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Howell, and the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, on their excellent speeches.

It is now accepted that the relentless increase of CO₂ in the atmosphere is a serious problem that needs urgently to be stopped because the greenhouse heating effect that it causes results in sea-level rise and climate changes that are intolerable. To do this, we must reduce and, preferably, eliminate man-made CO₂. The only way to do this, at present, without making major changes to our way of life or reducing the world’s population, is to use truly carbon-free means of generating power and heat. Unfortunately, at present, there are no such sources.

Wind, solar, and nuclear fission sources can be close to carbon-free once they are built and installed, but carbon is released in their construction and installation. Wind and solar sources are inherently intermittent in their output and must be backed up with continuous sources or used in conjunction with mass storage. The two leading options for backing them up are nuclear fission—the subject of this debate—and fossil fuel plants that capture and store the CO₂ that results. The capture and storage of CO₂ is yet to be demonstrated at scale, and its use continues the burning and consumption of fossil fuels, which I regard as unacceptable.

Many means of storage are being explored, such as batteries and pumped-water storage, but so far none has been demonstrated at scale; they will add significantly to the cost of the power produced. Hydroelectric sources are ideal but available only in certain geographical locations.

Nuclear fission has been used for generations. For example, it has allowed France to produce essentially carbon-free electricity for decades. However, it is thought by many to be unsafe and too expensive, and there are no practical ways to dispose of the radioactive waste it produces. I believe there are solutions to these three drawbacks that make nuclear the best option for backing up wind and solar power and allowing us to meet our 2050 obligations. I will treat them in turn.

First, on safety, the safety record of nuclear power in terms of fatalities has been orders of magnitude better than that of any fossil fuel sources, but several people died directly because of radiation illness in the accident at Chernobyl in 1986, and there is speculation that many may subsequently have died of cancer induced by the radiation. However, the plant at Chernobyl was regarded by nuclear engineers in the West as an accident waiting to happen. The design of the plant was known to be inherently flawed, and its operation should not have been allowed. Modern plants are designed to be proofed against such accidents.

The more recent flood damage to the Japanese nuclear plant at Fukushima caused by the giant tsunami has not yet resulted in any fatalities and would not have occurred if the flood barrier around the plant had been higher. The building of adequate flood protection is possible for all nuclear plants at a relatively modest cost, and is included in the design of modern plants.

Most recently, there has been a leak of radioactive gas at one of the new EPRs in Taishan, China. These reactors have been designed by EDF in France and are the same as those being built at Hinkley Point. Gas leaks from fuel rods have occurred at other nuclear plants around the world over the years, and the situation is handled by removing and replacing the rods. It is not a serious disaster as such. However, this process is expensive and time-consuming, and the situation in Taishan needs to be monitored carefully to make sure that similar leaks are avoided in other EPRs.

Despite these issues, the risk of accidents associated with nuclear plants is lower than that from other power sources. In 2020 there were 442 nuclear plants operating around the world, so the statistics are there to look at.

I will now discuss cost. The cost of modern full-scale nuclear plants has increased because of the extreme measures taken to avoid accidents and to take account of the perceived political and practical risks in their construction. The noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, mentioned financing costs. The financing cost of the new reactors being built at Hinkley Point has been said to be almost half their total cost, with the result that the cost of the electricity they produce rose to more than £90 per megawatt hour. The Government have now proposed that the regulated asset base model be used for nuclear plants. Combined with the efficiencies associated with building identical plants, this should reduce the cost from large plants beyond Hinkley Point to about £60 per megawatt hour.

This is still 50% above the nominal cost of wind and solar power. However, when one considers the full cost of backing up and connecting these intermittent and distributed sources to the grid and that they have relatively short lifetimes—for example, wind turbines are currently expected to have 20-year lifetimes, compared with nuclear plants that are expected to last for 50 to 60 years—the cost difference is considerably reduced. This is especially the case for small modular reactors, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Howell. These SMRs are based on reactors that have been used in nuclear-powered submarines for the last 60 years. It is pleasing that the Government recently announced the support they are providing to the consortium led by Rolls-Royce to build SMRs in the UK. It is estimated that SMRs should reduce the cost towards £40 per megawatt hour.

Finally, I come to the storage of radioactive waste. I declare an interest: I participated as a member of the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology in the committee’s inquiries into the management of nuclear waste in 2004 and 2010 and chaired the committee’s inquiry in 2007. The committee’s first inquiry was in 1999.

The management of nuclear waste is a very large-scale task in the UK because of the huge quantities of waste produced by the early reactors in the late 1950s and 1960s. This waste was stored in water tanks at Sellafield and its extraction from the tanks, encapsulation in stainless steel containers and storage underground are going to take decades. This legacy waste will have to be managed whether or not new nuclear plants are built or whether or not we have nuclear power. Reactors today produce less waste and waste that is handled more easily. This is a long and complex subject with different methods being used for the various forms of waste, but there is general agreement that environmentally sound solutions can be found for the management of radioactive waste with deep geological disposal being used for the longer-term waste. There has been endless procrastination by Governments over the past 50 years in addressing this problem, but at last progress is being made towards identifying suitable deep geological sites in the UK.

I conclude that if we are to react quickly enough to avoid the imminent dangers of climate change we will have to use a combination of wind and solar power, backed up with, and the grid anchored, by nuclear power. If we do not follow this strategy we will have to continue to burn fossil fuels in the hope that we can find scalable methods for capturing and storing the CO₂—or have the lights go out on nights when the wind does not blow or blows too hard.