Science and Technology: Economy

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, I concur in the praise that has been accorded to the proposer of this debate and to the maiden speech. I wish to discuss the failures of Britain to profit from its own technological innovations, which has been an enduring pathology.

Long ago, the Civil Service developed a methodology of cancellation aimed at projects for which it could not envisage immediate and secure returns. To understand the development of that mindset, we may cast our minds back to the early post-war years, when Britain was at the forefront of a wide range of scientific and technological innovations. Britain was endowed with a large and vibrant aircraft industry, which had been sustained by the demands of the war. Under the aegis of the Ministry of Supply, it had been devoted to the mass production of a limited range of military aircraft. After the war, the constituent firms acquired their independence. Many of them had active design offices and there was a proliferation of military prototypes that sought and received government support.

However, the expense was exorbitant and in 1957 the Minister of Aviation, Duncan Sandys, called a halt to military aviation. It was decreed that henceforth military aircraft should be replaced by guided rocketry. Surface-to-air missiles were to replace interceptor aircraft and ballistic missiles were to replace bombers. The project was successful in staunching the expenditure and in curtailing the aircraft industry. Some projects for manned military aircraft did survive, only to face later cancellation, and we aimed to purchase American aircraft instead.

The Civil Service also turned its attention to other expensive technological endeavours, of which those of the nuclear industry were the most prominent. Britain had been a leader in civil nuclear development, beginning with the Magnox reactor, which was succeeded by the advanced gas-cooled reactor—AGR. The development of the AGR was protracted and problematic but eventually the design was perfected and such reactors remain in operation today, albeit they are approaching the end of their life. However, such a prejudice against the AGR had been derived during the process of its development that it was abandoned at precisely the time that it had reached perfection. The next reactor to be commissioned in the UK, of course, was the American pressurised water reactor, such as at Sizewell B.

Our nuclear industry is currently subject to a weak attempt at its revival, but this is also subject to the familiar pathology. We are seeking to restore our electricity generating capacity by harnessing wind and solar power and by using nuclear reactors to provide a baseload of generating capacity. This is to be provided mainly by small modular reactors. There are four contenders for the favoured design: three from American companies and one from a British company. The American contenders benefit from substantial subventions from the American Government and our Treasury is glad to have been relieved of the costs of developing these reactors.

All of the SMR reactors embody a tried and tested pressurised water technology that is fit to be replaced by the superior technologies of fast closed-cycle reactors, molten salt reactors and advanced high-temperature gas-cooled reactors. There have been projects within the UK aimed at developing these technologies, which threaten to go into abeyance or to be withdrawn to other countries through lack of government support. It is likely that Britain, which pioneered these technologies, will be depending on foreign suppliers for its future technology.

I would like to instance many other cases where we have failed to exploit British technological developments, but there is insufficient time to do so, as I have been strongly reminded. However, as a footnote, I will mention that I recently travelled on an Italian Pendolino tilting train on the west coast main line. This is a straightforward derivative of a cancelled APT—our advanced passenger train.

King’s Speech (4th Day)

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

Monday 22nd July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, the incoming Government are right to express dismay at the state of our nation and the economy, and to be cautious about the prospects for achieving the growth that might alleviate some of our problems. Our productive capacity is so attenuated that any economic expansion is bound to encounter obstacles that will limit it.

The expansion of the building industry in pursuit of new housing will create a scarcity of building materials that will lead to sharp price increases. Also, since Brexit, the lack of skilled labour in the industry has worsened.

The expansion of our electricity-generating capacity, via windmills and solar panels, will demand equipment that is not manufactured in the UK. Such an expansion that depends on imports is bound to lead to a problem with our balance of payments.

A recent report commissioned by the Conservative Government extolled the virtues and even the necessity of foreign inwards investment. According to the report, this should provide the funds to sustain investment in industrial infrastructure and alleviate problems with the balance of payments. The report seems to have found favour in some quarters of the Labour Party. I fear that this report has encouraged a common delusion. Inwards foreign investment has rarely been directed at creating and sustaining industrial infrastructure. Instead, it has been aimed at acquiring the ownership of British enterprises. Such foreign investment has been favoured by our financial sector, which derives an income from mediating the sales of our assets. One of its effects has been to increase the demand for the pound in the currency markets, which has enhanced its value. The overvaluation of sterling has made it difficult to sell our manufactured goods abroad; this has been one of the principal reasons for our economic decline.

One way of addressing the problem would be to require our central bank to purchase foreign currencies at times when they are cheap and when the pound is overvalued; this should depress its value. This method of controlling the exchange rate is widely practised by other countries. However, ever since the debacle of Black Wednesday on 16 September 1992, when the UK was forced out of the European exchange rate mechanism, it has been a nostrum of Conservative Governments never to intervene in this way in the currency markets. Such inhibitions should not constrain the present Government.

Seeking to expand our exports should be part of the strategy for industrial recovery. We should also seek to invest in the technologies that will be essential to a green industrial revolution and to provide such technologies to the rest of the world. Advanced nuclear technologies will be a vital element in seeking to decarbonise our energy supply. Here there is a tale of woe to be told. Unless we take steps to support projects to develop new nuclear technologies, we shall have to depend on foreign suppliers.

I will mention three leading UK projects to build fourth-generation nuclear reactors. They are from Moltex Energy, Copenhagen Atomics, and newcleo, and we are in danger of losing all three of them to other countries. Moltex has sold much of its intellectual property to the Canadians, and is now going slow with its UK development through lack of resources. Copenhagen Atomics, which had also been calling itself UK Atomics, is withdrawing its resources from the UK. Newcleo has been constrained to go to France for its nuclear fuel. Our Office for Nuclear Regulation has declined to embark on a generic design assessment of the reactor, declaring that it would be premature to do so, albeit that the equivalent French agency, the Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire, is doing so with alacrity.

The message is that unless we make immediate declarations of support for these endeavours, we shall have no projects to supply the next generation of nuclear technology, which promises enhanced safety and facilities for disposing of nuclear waste. It looks as if we, who were once the leaders in civil nuclear technology, will have to rely on other nations to provide the technology in the future.

King’s Speech

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

Tuesday 14th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, I will talk about nuclear technology. The Government must sustain the nuclear industry by ensuring that a sufficient number of nuclear power plants are built to maintain the supply of our electricity. They must also support the development of innovative nuclear technologies to assist in the decarbonisation of our industries.

The privatisation of the electricity industry appeared to validate the opinion of the Conservatives that private industry could be relied on to maintain the nation’s energy infrastructure. With the benefit of newly exploited North Sea gas, the private electricity companies began to replace existing coal-fired power stations with combined- cycle gas turbine plant. These could be constructed rapidly and demanded much smaller capital investments than the plants that they replaced.

At a later date, the same companies began to respond to the Government’s incentives to construct offshore electricity-generating wind farms. The Government’s incentives have been far less successful in inducing the electricity companies to invest in nuclear power plants. The problem here has been the size of the necessary capital investments and the long duration of the construction period that precedes the generation of any revenues.

In the view of some commentators, most of the nation’s requirements for electricity could be met by wind and solar power, which appear much cheaper to deploy than nuclear power. It is claimed that as much as 70% of demand can be satisfied in this way. However, these are intermittent sources of power: often the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow, and then no electricity can be generated by these means. At such times, the deficit is currently being met by gas-powered electricity. This is an effective recourse only when the so-called renewable sources of power generate less than 30%, on average, of the total supply of electricity.

Moreover, gas is a fossil fuel that emits carbon dioxide. In the absence of a means to capture its emissions, gas cannot continue to be exploited for this purpose if we are to meet the objective of decarbonising the economy. If the demand for electricity is to be met at all times and if we are to depend solely on the renewable resources of wind and solar power, there has to be a means to store the energy. It is widely believed that the most appropriate means of achieving this is to use any available surpluses of electricity to generate hydrogen via a process of electrolysis. The hydrogen would be used to power fuel cells and turbines to generate electricity and would find other industrial uses.

However, to accommodate the intermittence of the renewable sources of power, if they were to become the dominant sources, would require major capital investments in technologies that have yet to be realised. Large amounts of hydrogen would have to be stored over a long period to meet the eventuality of a prolonged dearth of wind and solar power. When the costs of constructing and maintaining the necessary infrastructure are added to the costs of the renewable sources of power, they no longer appear cheap. Projects to establish such facilities, if they were to be undertaken by the private sector, would encounter the very difficulties that have beset the projects to build nuclear power stations. They would require large amounts of capital and the financial returns would be deferred for far too long.

Nuclear power, which is capable of generating a constant supply of electricity, suffers from none of the problems of intermittence that affect the so-called renewable sources of power. It should be relied on in future to satisfy most of the demand for electricity. Nuclear power is a mature technology which has been exploited for almost 70 years. However, in deploying it today, we should exploit some new technologies. There are three distinct purposes that can be served by nuclear power plants, and they demand different kinds of nuclear reactors.

First, we need nuclear power stations that contribute electricity to the grid. Various reactors are on offer for this role, mainly pressurised water reactors. At one end of the spectrum are the EPRs, rated at 3,300 megawatts of electrical power, which are to be deployed in the mega power stations of Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C. At the other end is the small modular reactor of Rolls-Royce rated at about 470 megawatts of electrical power. We should persist with Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C, but they should be succeeded by a fleet of SMRs from Rolls-Royce, which should be distributed widely throughout the country. Pressurised water reactors are described as third-generation reactors. In due course, they should give way to a fourth generation of reactors, some of the leading examples of which are currently under development in this country.

The second purpose, which is to power industrial processes, can be served by much smaller reactors. The British MoltexFLEX molten salt reactor, which is simple and robust, can fulfil this role. It was originally proposed as a marine reactor and it will generate 50 megawatts of thermal power. Another reactor that could serve this purpose, which is rated at 100 megawatts of thermal power, is being developed jointly by Copenhagen Atomics and UK Atomics. The fuel of this reactor is thorium, which is described as fertile as opposed to fissile. Once the reaction is under way, thorium generates fissile uranium and creates very little waste.

The third purpose that can be served by the new generation of reactors is consuming the existing stocks of plutonium. The newcleo reactor, which can be described as a lead-cooled fast reactor, has this capability. Alternative versions will generate 50 or 200 megawatts of electrical power. This is a project with British, French and Italian backing. The newcleo reactor can also consume MOX fuel that is a mixture of uranium and plutonium, which is generated from the waste of conventional pressurised water reactors. A variant of the Moltex reactor, which is of interest to the Canadians, also has this capability. It is described as a waste burner and will generate 300 megawatts of electrical power.

These are all fourth-generation reactors endowed with passive safety. Their proponents are keen to describe them as British projects, but each is of interest to at least one other country. I fear that, unless our Government undertake active sponsorship of these projects, their ownership and intellectual capital will be ceded to those other countries. Financial subventions are required that seem modest in comparison with the money wasted by purchasing unusable personal protective equipment during the Covid pandemic.

Sites must be designated where the prototype fourth-generation reactors can be located. Alternatively, a technology park could be created to host these reactors. If the necessary support were immediately forthcoming, these reactors could be up and running by 2030, which could be some time before the completion of the Sizewell C power station. However, if the necessary support is not forthcoming, the projects are liable to emigrate to other countries, and we would be in the position of importing the products of technologies that originated in this country.

Science and Technology Superpower (Science and Technology Committee Report)

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

Wednesday 7th June 2023 Grand Committee

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

I express my appreciation to the staff and the leadership of the committee.

British science is in a parlous state. We are in the process of crippling our academic institutions, which have traditionally fostered our scientific discoveries. We are also losing the technological industries that have stimulated our inventiveness. Many are quietly disappearing, if they are not falling into the hands of foreign owners, which is often a prelude to their eventual demise.

During the committee’s inquiry, a plethora of reviews were under way concerning the governance of science and technology in the UK. These included the second review by Paul Nurse of the R&D organisational landscape, the Tickell review into research bureaucracy and the Gluckman review into the research excellence framework, which audits the research activities of universities.

The second Nurse review, which was delivered after the publication of the report of the committee, contains some interesting revelations. The first of these, as other noble Lords have mentioned, is that there has been a systematic underestimation of the percentage of GDP that the UK devotes to research and development. For many years, it was thought to be a mere 1.7%; it now appears that it is close to the OECD average of 2.5%. The second revelation is that the amount of R&D directly sponsored by the UK Government is well below the OECD average and far behind that of most research-intensive nations.

In putting this finding into perspective, it helps to take a long historical view. The country that emerged from the Second World War was endowed with a wealth of government research establishments and with many scientific and technological projects that were supported by the Government. The aviation industry was in receipt of large subventions. It was generating numerous prototypes of advanced military and civil aircraft. To restrain these expenditures became an obsession of the Civil Service. It developed a methodology of project cancellation that became more effective with the passage of time.

The restraint of government expenditure on research and development extended far beyond the aviation industry. It greatly affected Britain’s nuclear power industry, which was brought to a virtual halt. The restraint also affected many of the research establishments that had been supporting industry in both the public and the private sectors. Britain’s computer and telecommunications industries collapsed through a lack of support. This litany can be continued with many other examples. The advent of the Conservative Administration of Margaret Thatcher saw the culmination of this process of governmental disengagement, and there has been no significant re-engagement subsequently.

A truth that the report does not acknowledge sufficiently is that a nation cannot aspire to become a scientific superpower if it lacks a basis of scientific and technological industries that are ready to call upon the skills of the research workers. Britain has a severely attenuated industrial base. The decline of British industry has been a gradual and an inexorable process, to which several factors have contributed. The foremost of these has been the failure of our export industries, for which the persistent overvaluation of our currency has been largely responsible. The resulting balance of payments problems have been addressed by the Government’s encouragement of so-called inward financial investment, which has amounted to the sale of our infrastructure and industries to foreign owners. Among the companies that have been most attractive to foreign investors are those within our high-tech industries.

In the absence of a commercial and an industrial stimulus, British research and innovation is liable to retreat into British universities, which are also in peril. It is a familiar nostrum that, although British universities have been excellent at pure research, they have been less successful at applying it in practical contexts. The blame has tended to fall upon the academics and hardly at all upon industries that might have been their clients. The nostrums of the knowledge exchange framework and the demands for practicality that have arisen within the research excellence framework are a testimony to this tendency.

Universities are now in severe financial straits. Their staff, who have suffered severe erosions of their incomes and growing insecurity of their employment, are frequently on strike. The prospects for British science are poor, at a time when, in consequence of Brexit, many foreign academics have left the country and when senior academics are inclined to discourage their research students from thinking of joining the profession.