High Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactors

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

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.