Civil Nuclear Road Map

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Monday 15th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble and learned Lord is absolutely right: Scotland has an excellent long tradition of support for nuclear power. Sadly, that is not shared by the existing Scottish Government. We would like to have discussions with them on this, but they seem to have set their face against nuclear power. Of course, some of the planning powers are devolved, so they are entitled to take that decision. However, speaking on behalf of their friends in England and Wales, I am sure we will be very happy to help them out with power in the future, with the many cross-border connections.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I begin by welcoming the Government’s launch of the consultation on amending the contract for difference bidding, which will potentially allow repowering of onshore wind to be included within it. Of course, that could potentially see us finally getting new onshore wind, which we have not seen for so long—the cheap, affordable facilities that can be spread around the country. That can be done very quickly, if the Government sort that process out. But as the noble Lord, Lord Lennie, said, we are talking about the suggestion of small modular reactors and the final investment decision in 2029. The Minister in the other place said that we would not be looking at them until well into the 2030s. Are the Government not simply being distracted from the solution to our energy issues and energy security, which is renewables?

Given that the last estimate I have seen for the nuclear clean-up of our old nuclear is a cost of £260 billion—an estimate made by Professor Stephen Thomas at the University of Greenwich—and that the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority has just been warning that ageing equipment at Sellafield means that there is a serious risk of a fire there, should we not clean up the old mess before we risk creating new ones? Will the Government make sure that there is no public cost in any future clean-up, if indeed we see any new nuclear?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

Yet again on this subject, the noble Baroness sets up a false choice between either nuclear or renewables. We are in favour of doing both; they both have a contribution to make to our diverse energy system. I bow to no one in my support of renewables. I think that wind and solar are great, and they are relatively cheap compared with fossil fuel sources; they will make a massive contribution to our energy supply in future. But they are intermittent, so it is important to have baseload capacity as well. You cannot run your whole energy system on wind and solar, however much the Greens would like to tell us you can. We need other sources as well—we need diversity, we need storage, and we need nuclear. We can do both.