Small Modular Nuclear Reactors

Lord Ravensdale Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I cannot confirm any individual projects, but I have said that we are proceeding with making final investment decisions in the next Parliament on two further nuclear reactors.

[Lord Ravensdale (CB)]

My Lords, I work in the nuclear industry and one of the biggest issues I am currently seeing is a lack of available skills to undertake the work. We are doing our best to recruit, but we simply cannot find the skilled engineers to meet the demand we are seeing. Does the Minister agree that a sector-wide skills strategy is needed to demonstrate how we will deliver the more than 100,000 new jobs in the industry that will be needed by 2030?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble Lord makes an important point. There are a lot of very skilled engineering jobs. We have made some errors in the past on our nuclear strategy, which resulted in a lot of very skilled employees leaving the country and the industry effectively closing down. We are resurrecting the industry now and it will be a longer-term process to build up the skills base, but the noble Lord is right.