Nuclear Energy

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in following the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, I feel that I need to begin by defending the House of Lords Library and its briefing. Noble Lords might wish to follow the link provided in that briefing to the source of the figure of 42% of electricity generated from renewables in 2022, which links to BEIS’s Energy Trends: UK Electricity ET5.1 document, which shows clearly that that is the annual figure.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Howell, for securing this debate and agree with many of the concerns he expressed about our current nuclear programme, its costs, its delays and the many problems with it. The House of Lords Library briefing looks at how we have seen a significant decline since the 1990s, when 24.5% of electricity came from nuclear. That is down to about 14% now. This is a dinosaur technology that was tried out in the 20th century, has proved to be a failure and is on the decline.

Our energy future very clearly is in renewables and, to use a phrase I do not believe I have heard mentioned today, energy conservation. The cleanest, greenest, best possible energy we can have is the energy we do not need to use. We need to look forward to a future of social innovation and innovation in the way we operate our societies that demands less energy, which will leave all of us better off in the pocket and in terms of the environment in which we live.

I referred to the decline of this dinosaur of the 20th century, but we are still very much bearing the costs. One of the first costs to look at in the UK context is the fact that the current estimate for clearing up the mess left by the industry from the last century is £260 billion, and that figure just keeps going up and up. We have referred a great deal to the problem of skill shortages in the nuclear sector. We have a huge problem with the shortage of skills for that clean-up, which is where a great deal of expertise naturally needs to be delivered.

It is also interesting that this debate was secured at the point where there is great controversy about what is happening at this moment in Fukushima, in Japan, where wastewater is being released from the destroyed nuclear plant. The figures are truly mind-boggling: there are currently 463 million gallons of contaminated water being held on that site, and they are collecting more contaminated water—26,000 gallons a day. One of the big concerns is the impact on the Japanese fishing industry, just one of the many ways in which nuclear has been a blight for many of the communities in which it has been sited.

A number of noble Lords have referred to the costs. There are many figures I could cite but France is often seen as a nuclear leader: Flamanville 3 cost €12.7 billion, a cost that more than quadrupled from the original quote in 2004. Something else that has not come up is the geopolitical cost. Many noble Lords will be aware of the recent coup in Niger. Niger supplies 15% of France’s uranium, and a fifth of the EU’s uranium stock comes from Niger. Uranium mining there was undoubtedly a political factor in instability. This is a real problem area.

To come back to the UK, an issue with Sizewell B is that the fuel comes from Russia, as does a great deal of EU fuel, with the obvious issues that I do not need to raise. Namibia is another potential source, but it reflects many of the same problems that are relevant to Niger. If we look to Australia—somewhere else that is often cited—we see that Rio Tinto, a mining company with a very dubious history, has recently been forced to fork out a significant amount of the cost of 750 million Australian dollars for the rehabilitation of the Ranger uranium mine, which sits right in the middle of the Kakadu National Park and has been of great concern to the aboriginal inhabitants of the area as to the impacts. So we really have a situation where this is a dinosaur of the past.

I will pick up a couple of points raised by others in the debate. The word “baseload” keeps popping up. I will go to a quote that I go to often. In 2015, Steve Holliday, CEO of National Grid, said:

“The idea of large power stations for baseload is outdated”.


We are looking to a new, flexible, functional electricity system that works with what is available. It is a different kind of model—a model in which nuclear is a huge problem due to the lack of resilience and flexibility, as well as the lack of reliability.

The noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, talked about the land that might be required for solar and wind. Of course, if we put solar panels on our roofs, that is not taking up any extra land at all, and we should see a Britain with roofs covered with solar panels. We would love to take up some land for onshore wind—the cheapest source of electricity available to us—if the Government would actually allow that to go ahead, as so many people from so many parts of the sector are pushing for.

We need to look at some of the Government’s actual models and the way they have been looking at this issue. The current power sector model—the dynamic dispatch model, which is used to justify current policy decisions—cannot model long-duration storage and is being replaced. I have already talked about how it is difficult and inflexible; that is the practical reality. EDF has suggested that Sizewell C EPR reactors could load follow and is exploring the option, but that has never been done before in the UK.

I come to one final main point—as far as I am concerned, this is the absolute killer argument against any new nuclear. If we look at the history of Flamanville and other recent builds of nuclear reactors, we see not only that the costs have exploded but that the construction time has gone on and on. Then we have the issues of reliability.

The fact is that we are in a climate emergency. Renewables are there now. All those roofs are sitting there ready to have solar panels put on them. We need to act fast and now with proven technologies. Nuclear has been a continual disaster. It has been continually unreliable. We need an energy future based on renewables and energy conservation.