Nuclear Regulatory System

Lord Ravensdale Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I agree up to a point with what the noble Lord has said. Our big power stations such as Sizewell and Hinkley Point C are part of the answer. He is quite right to say that alongside that the small modular reactors are necessary. He will know that Rolls-Royce has three which have gone through the generic design assessment. Two additional GDA requesting parties have met the threshold to enter and there are others at other stages of the process. He is quite right to point out the need for small modular reactors, which can be done more quickly and are part of the answer to our energy needs, but nuclear has to be a part of that. Small modular reactors will be a part of it, alongside the big stations such as Sizewell and Hinkley.

[Lord Ravensdale (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a chief engineer working for AtkinsRéalis. The report rightly mentions the planning system environmental regulations, as the Minister said, as a barrier to the nuclear rollout. Of course, we have a legislative vehicle for any changes going through your Lordships’ House at the moment in the form of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. Will the Minister say what plans the Government have to really join the dots between those two things and ensure that we take the opportunity with that Bill to ensure that it delivers on some of those recommendations? If we have to wait for a future planning Bill to come through, we simply cannot afford that time.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I agree with that and the Government are responding to that request. We are not waiting to legislate through the planning Bill. EN-6, the current framework within which these decisions are made, listed eight sites designated for nuclear applications. EN-7, as I mentioned in my Answer to my noble friend, will be published as a draft, as I understand it, by the end of the year and will soon be put into place. That will change those planning regulations to ensure that any site can be used to be apply for a nuclear designation. Of course, it will have to go through the planning process and be subject to all the safety regulations, but it will open up a number of sites for people who want to have small modular reactors or other nuclear provision—sites that, at the moment, they are excluded from applying for. I think that is good progress.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Ravensdale Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ravensdale (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as an engineer in the energy industry and as director of the cross-party group Peers for the Planet. It was most welcome to hear in the gracious Speech the Government’s specific commitment to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. There is a vast canvas of challenges that the Government need to think about to meet that target, so I will focus on a few key issues for our future energy system.

The 2050 energy system scenario of the Committee on Climate Change has two key elements: variable renewables—for example, offshore wind—and low-carbon baseload or firm power. There is a fairly low risk with renewables in that, if we keep on with our current build rate, we will get to where we need to be by 2050. However, there are significant risks with provision of the low-carbon firm power. The Committee on Climate Change recognises that we need firm power, and lots of it, to counter the intermittent nature of renewables and ensure that we have an economically viable overall energy system. There are two options for that firm power: nuclear, or gas turbines with carbon capture and storage—we need both.

I will make three overall points. First, carbon capture and storage is absolutely central to the net-zero scenario of the Committee on Climate Change, which envisages capturing around 176 megatonnes, or million tonnes, per year of carbon dioxide by 2050. That massive number is not even the main issue; it is that our capture capacity today is precisely zero. The technology itself is well understood but there are many uncertainties on cost and systems integration—between extraction, transport and storage of CO₂—and the amount of CO₂ that can be captured, the capture rate of the technology on a large scale. This is why we urgently need a carbon capture and storage demonstrator project to start deployment of that technology in this decade. Failure to provide CCS could be the single biggest risk in achieving the net-zero target. Can the Minister provide more detail on the scope of the plans to provide a carbon capture and storage cluster in the UK and the timescales involved?

Secondly, on nuclear, the key issue here is pricing and affordability. Government and industry need to do much more to reduce the cost of the technology. The key routes to doing that are looking at the finance model—the regulated asset base funding model that is being investigated is one of those—repeatability, namely producing the same design of plants over and over again and getting the efficiency gains from that; and finally, technological innovation, for example modular build, which we are seeing in the proposals for small modular reactors. All those provide a route to getting to the £60 per-megawatt-hour level which we need for the technology.

I believe new nuclear is essential for zero-carbon emissions by 2050; it is the only mature option for low-carbon firm power generation, and an urgent refresh of plans is required to increase nuclear capacity in the UK. After recent pauses and cancellations, we have only a single new nuclear project under construction in the UK. Can the Minister update the House on the actions the Government will take to increase new nuclear capacity in the UK?

Thirdly, we need to think about management and governance of the energy system as a whole because having the rapid period of change, and added complexity in the system, to achieve zero by 2050 is unprecedented. There have long been calls for an independent energy system architect, whose purpose would be to look at that system as a whole and flexibly deliver the optimum system for zero by 2050. Those arguments were developed in a report of the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee back in March 2015. The Government should revisit this really important idea because business as usual will not be sufficient to deliver this incredibly complex system.

Others have made the case much better than I could on why we are pursuing this, particularly in the powerful contributions of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford and my noble friend Lady Hayman. Now we need to focus on the how.