Nuclear Technology

Baroness Worthington Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2015 Grand Committee

[Baroness Worthington (Lab)]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, for securing this debate; at the time he could not have known how timely it would be. However, as he said, this should not be a debate about Hinkley, despite the temptations.

The title of the debate is very appropriate. It concerns how we assess the merits of different nuclear options. Like the noble Viscount, I have come to know about a whole range of different nuclear fuels and reactors in the time that I have been interested in this topic, and I certainly do not feel qualified to make decisions about their relative merits and which ones UK plc should pursue. It is a task for the Government to work out a way of doing this. I am intrigued by the noble Viscount’s suggestion of a nuclear bake-off; we could even get that televised. It is a very good analogy for something that needs to happen: some real-world experience with some of these reactors to see which ones can prove that they can safely bring down the costs and deliver a sustainable and competitive nuclear industry.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, I have a conversion story of having once been anti-nuclear. In fact, I was Friends of the Earth’s anti-nuclear campaigner for a period, until I realised that that was a silly idea. I then became very interested in nuclear power and deeply explored the different options, and I then became interested in novel or alternative nuclear. I am currently a patron of probably the world’s first pro-nuclear charity, the Alvin Weinberg Foundation, which I declare as an interest in this context.

I believe that there is a version of nuclear out there that has not yet been made commercially available to us and which we as a country, with such a rich heritage in R&D, ought to be involved in bringing into being, not just for our sakes but on a global scale. It is clear to me, as again the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, said, that the risk of climate change is so great that it should now be our overriding focus in decarbonising our energy systems. It is absolutely clear that nuclear can play a huge role in that. In fact, the two countries in the world that have demonstrated huge decarbonisation successfully have been France and Sweden, yet we seem to ignore that and instead look to Germany, which, through shutting down its nuclear, has made the carbon intensity of its power worse. It is evident that nuclear should be part of this.

The role that the UK can play is very important. In this case, the UK must see itself as part of Europe. Unfortunately, it does not appear that we will ever get consensus across Europe to pursue nuclear, because Austria and Germany have certainly set their minds against it. However, there will be at least nine other countries that we can collaborate with, and I think that we should now be asking Europe to enable us to do a process of co-ordinated co-operation with those member states which have pursued nuclear, to bring about harmonised regulatory standards.

When we think about novel nuclear and bringing new reactors to commercial reality, there will be absolutely no point in doing that if the total market for those reactors is in the region of 60 gigawatts in the UK. We have to have shared regulatory licensing so that we can sell into a bigger market, and we must be able to sell into other European countries. What can the Government do—and what are they doing—to pursue common regulatory standards across Europe so that we can open up a market that is far greater? The UK’s regulatory arrangements are world-class, which has been referenced by a number of noble Lords. We have a great reputation, which is why countries such as China want to come here to prove their reactors, and we have a wonderful regulatory system, which is based on outcomes, not on a tick-box approach to what a nuclear reactor ought to have, as is the case in the United States. The United States finds it very difficult to bring new designs forward because it has very rigid tick-box regulatory standards, so in fact US vendors are now looking to the UK as a place to have their new reactor designs tested. That is probably after they have done a prototype far more cheaply in China; but if they do it in China, they will still want to have it signed off and approved by a country such as the UK, which commands such international respect.

Therefore, I think that the UK has a huge role to play in bringing about a new wave of nuclear reactors. It is not fair to say that it is just regulation that has held this back. There has been quite a high level of conservatism within the industry and a tendency to stick with what it knows. The attitude of “if it isn’t broken, why fix it” has prevailed for a long time. It is now evident that certain things about the nuclear industry are not optimal. There is definitely a need to bring the cost down and to think again about the right scale on which to build our next fleet of nuclear.

I think that we have still not answered the question posed by the noble Viscount, which is so important—namely, how we are going to evaluate our options? I hope that this Government will start to do so, and that they will do so in a transparent and open way, and not start with any pre-judgment about what the answer might be. When it comes to scale, we can do anything from 3.5 gigawatts down to 10 megawatts if we want to, but what is going to be the optimal scale? Let us not rule out something at around a scale of 500 to 600 megawatts, which would slot in nicely behind coal units as they are coming offline and, indeed, would stick with the same scale as that of the Magnox reactors that we have seen closing. I do not want us to rush down to micro-scale in a vain hope that that will answer our problems. There is a whole range of options that we should evaluate. Indeed, there is a whole range of coolants that we can look at, including molten salts. In such a short time, we cannot get into the delights of molten salt coolant, but I am a great fan and I believe that it has huge merits.

I look forward to hearing from the Minister what the UK is doing to bring on R&D. I have one specific question. In the discussions with China that took place this week, was R&D mentioned? China is undertaking a huge amount of R&D. Can we collaborate with China on that?

I thank all noble Lords for an extraordinarily rich debate.