Nuclear Energy (Financing) Bill

Debate between Lord Howell of Guildford and Lord Teverson

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th March 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

We all agree with the principle that the polluter pays. I believe that we also have a principle in life that we should not pollute if we have no way of solving that pollution during the time for which we are planning. The issues here are complex, but I do not think they are necessarily quite so straight- forward as the noble Viscount describes.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I had rather a nice time working with the Liberal Democrats in the Cameron Government, when, in an enlightened way, they were strongly in favour of nuclear power. It appears that they chop and change from time to time, but those were the days.

Before I speak further, my noble friend Lord Trenchard has reminded me that I should have made it absolutely clear that I have an indirect interest to declare, in that I advise Mitsubishi Electric, which is concerned with the power sector and indirectly therefore with nuclear construction. I suppose that I also have a sort of interest in the sense that I was Secretary of State 40 years ago and tried to build nine new reactors, of which only one, Sizewell B, was ever built. I think that I am allowed to reflect to this Committee that things would be much nicer for us if we had got the other eight built as well. They were all low-carbon and would have helped greatly in the present crisis, but that is all history.

On these amendments, it is absolutely true, as the noble Lord, Lord Oates, observed, that the radioactive waste issue requires careful handling and examination, and it must be addressed fully and with all the knowledge that we can bring to bear to establish and meet the many understandable concerns about it.

As for value for money, we will come to that in the next amendment. Of course, there are enormous difficulties in defining what value for what money, but we can debate that in more detail in a moment.

What is not true is to imply that there has been no technical solution to the absolutely safe—nothing is 100% but it is highly safe—burying of high-radioactivity nuclear waste for thousands of years. It is certainly more than 40 years since the late Walter Marshall explained to me that vitrification and burial two or three miles down in a stable geological formation was very nearly foolproof. There was a faint possibility of corrosion of the glass vitrification case around the radioactive material, but otherwise it would be safe for hundreds of thousands of years. He added, rather cynically, that if before then people wanted to dig it up and eat the glass, they may have more problems than radioactive waste. The vitrification option is there; it can be done.

In the great debate going on in America about the Yucca Mountain development as a waste disposal centre, I noticed that the statistics produced—I have the precise figure here—say that all but one in every 10,000 waste packages going into the repository, if it is built, would be secure for more than 150,000 years. So we are talking about the most minute dangers. The danger is there, but it is minute, and has to be weighed against all the other problems—we will come to value in a moment—of abandoning an area of low-carbon electricity which will be reliable, will stop a great deal of the suffering that we have today, and will be not only a stepping-stone to but a crucial adjunct and back-up of the renewable and clean energies that we all want to see dominate when conditions allow.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

There are all sorts of ways of dealing with intermittency. Interconnectors have been quite effective, and I congratulate the Government on their policy of increasing those. Energy storage has been mentioned, in terms of hydro. On baseload, I agree that there are other ways of doing that in terms of geothermal starting, although I understand that is very young. There is a whole plethora of other strategies that work here.

I purely wanted to suggest that one of the most important matters here to the people outside this Room is the cost of energy and how we deal with fuel poverty in terms of this specific financial model, and to emphasise that the argument is not just around nuclear versus renewables.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, surely no one is suggesting that these are alternatives, or if they are then that is not what any sensible assessment would allow. Of course the aim for a decarbonised world has to be sought through many forms. All that is being said is that to leave out one of the major areas of decarbonised electricity is asking for trouble, unless one can begin to assess the enormous costs of trying to fill it in in areas where it may not even be available.

The example of Germany is one that the noble Lord should perhaps bear in mind. The rumour is that, having tried to do without nuclear power and got down to its three remaining nuclear stations, there is strong talk that if it is to move into the new world that we are facing now, which has all sorts of implications for the future, a large chunk of reliable low-carbon nuclear capacity must be either retained or developed to add to all the other highly desirable things for net zero and all the other projects, including of course energy efficiency and a far greater use of every kilowatt of electricity for output, which is the secret of considerable improvement without too much electricity. If that is what is being argued, we are all for it, but nuclear electricity is an unavoidable part and to drop it seems a bit odd and very high-cost indeed.