High Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactors

Debate between Lord Vallance of Balham and Viscount Hanworth

Monday 19th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

We have two MOCs with Japan. One, as the noble Baroness rightly said, was signed in 2023, and a second, on HTGRs and fuel, was signed in 2024. We have regular meetings with our Japanese counterparts. Japan has long been held as an important collaborator for us in nuclear. The last of those meetings, the 14th, was held on 3 December last year, and we will continue with regular interactions with the Japanese, who we certainly view as extremely important partners, particularly in this area.

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, our much vaunted nuclear revival is based on the deployment of pressurised light-water reactors. These are grossly inefficient in their use of uranium fuels, which will be in short supply within a decade. They will need to be replaced by safer and more efficient reactors, such as thorium reactors and fast-neutron reactors that breed their own fuels. However, within the past 12 months we have seen the departure from the UK or the closure of projects aimed at developing such reactors. Are there any remaining prospects of developing advanced reactors in the UK, or will we be dependent in future on foreign technologies based on technologies pioneered in the UK?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

My noble friend is right that there are many different technologies coming along, and one of the reasons why we put the advanced nuclear framework together is to make it possible for all those technologies to have a pathway through to production in the UK. This is an important moment, when private-sector leadership of nuclear is real and can happen because of the new designs. We welcome all the different technologies as part of that framework, which, as I say, will be published shortly.

Nuclear Regulatory Taskforce Review

Debate between Lord Vallance of Balham and Viscount Hanworth

Thursday 27th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I am absolutely delighted that the Opposition Benches have a feeling of urgency about this, because we certainly have not had it for the past 13 years. We have urgency; we have announced that we will have small modular reactors, and they are going ahead. Work will start on them next year and they are not dependent on the read-out from this review, which is also urgently needed for the reasons stated: we have a far more complicated system of regulation than we need.

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, I fear that the revisions to the nuclear regulatory framework have come too late. We have lost to other countries the projects to develop fourth generation nuclear reactors that were intending to conduct their criticality tests in the UK. Can the Minister envisage any way of bringing these projects back to the UK?

[Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)]

I think both the previous question and this question refer to something which is a big problem: we have neglected nuclear in this country for far too long and it is important that we get moving on it, both with small modular reactors and with advanced modular reactors. That is why there are plans for both of those now. EN-7, which was laid before the House as a strategic framework for this, lays out the need to be much more forward leaning on both of those and get them into this country as soon as we can.