Nuclear Power: Dungeness

Debate between Damian Collins and Judith Cummins

Tuesday 24th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Judith Cummins (in the Chair)]

I will call Damian Collins to move the motion, and then I will call the Minister to respond. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for 30-minute debates.

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered nuclear power at Dungeness.

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairship, Mrs Cummins. It is also a pleasure to raise the future of nuclear power at Dungeness, which has been an important issue for me for my nearly 13 years in the House of Commons and for hundreds of my constituents.

Dungeness has had a footprint in the nuclear industry since the 1960s. The original Dungeness A power station was commissioned in the 1960s. It started its productive life in 1965, and then its decommissioning was started in 2005. That was followed by Dungeness B power station, which went into energy production in 1985 and has only recently come to the end of its operating life after an extension. It is now in defueling, following decommissioning. It is operated by EDF Energy.

The footprint of the nuclear industry in my constituency is believed to be about 1,000 people—people working on the further decommissioning of the A station and the operation and defueling of the B station. As the Minister knows, when energy production stops and defueling starts, nuclear power stations are not like any other business; we cannot just turn the lights off and shut the business down. In fact, the last quarter of the operating life of a nuclear power station is the process of defueling and decommissioning, so there will still be hundreds of jobs at Dungeness linked to the nuclear industry for some time to come.

The nuclear industry has become a very important part of the economic life of Romney Marsh in particular. Surveys that were done when the nuclear power stations were owned by British Energy showed that Dungeness was one of the most popular locations in the country in terms of community support for the nuclear industry and the power station. It has maintained a very active stakeholder community engagement group, which is linked to and works very closely with the operation of the power station.

When I was first elected to Parliament, one of the issues I raised in my maiden speech was the need to secure a long-term future for the nuclear capacity of Dungeness. It meets many important criteria for supplying energy in this country. South-east Kent—Dungeness peninsula is the most south-easterly point of the United Kingdom—is an area of high energy demand. Given the increase in housing numbers, industrial activity, business activity and new investment, that is only likely to grow, so the power station is located in a place where we need energy. Demand is growing, and the cost of supply from a power station such as Dungeness, which is only 70 miles or so from London, is much cheaper than it is from other locations on the grid. There are grid connections in Kent, particularly in Sellindge in my constituency, which also has energy connectors that link to France and the continent. There is capacity in the grid for supply, which is not the case in many other areas. Dungeness has therefore met many of the criteria that would make it incredibly suitable for future energy production.

When work was done in 2011 to look at new nuclear sites, Dungeness was not included on the siting list, but it was not explicitly excluded. The reason for its non-inclusion was that it was considered too constrained a site because of the very high level of environmental protection around the nuclear facility. Dungeness village and power station sit on a shingle peninsula, which is the second largest of its kind in the world—the biggest is Cape Canaveral, the home of NASA—so it is a very unusual feature. The ridges of shingle that have built up over many years of coastal erosion on the channel coast are specially protected. They were part of a specially protected area designation when we were a member of the EU, which is the highest level of environmental protection. That does not mean that we cannot do things there if there is an outstanding national interest to do so, but we normally have to have exhausted other options.

The size of the footprint of modern power stations such as Hinkley Point C or Sizewell C meant that the size of the land available at Dungeness where development might be possible was too constrained. Indeed, the energy companies that would be building those power stations said there were sites that were more suitable for that reason. However, it was not that flood risk might have been an issue. That is often mentioned because of the position of Dungeness and the need to constantly update and secure its flood defences because of the shingle banks that surround the site. That has never been the case and there was no objection from the Environment Agency to new nuclear at Dungeness. Indeed, the site at Dungeness needs to be protected for 100 years, whether there is energy production there or not, as part of its long-term decommissioning.

After the Fukushima disaster, Mike Weightman conducted a review of nuclear sites around the country, which considered that it would be wise to add another couple of metres to the shingle bund around the site for further protection and to future-proof the sea defences. That has been done, so it is, and remains, a secure site. The question is whether there is room at Dungeness for new nuclear.

When the 2011 site review was done, Dungeness, in addition to Bradwell, was placed on a list of two sites that were not taken forward, but on which the Department said it was open to an energy company coming forward with a proposal, which it would look at. When that work was done, the idea of small modular nuclear reactors as a serious source of new energy was not envisaged. The site review only really considered the type of very large reactors that we are seeing built at the moment and not the smaller ones. If that had been considered at the time and if that technology had been an option, there would have been more options at Dungeness.

There is land available—I would argue that there is actually land even available in the brownfield site for Dungeness A—where small modular reactors could be located. Just to give an idea of the advance in technology, one SMR would probably produce more electricity and energy than Dungeness A did in the 1960s. The idea of three or four SMRs at Dungeness, which could easily fit within land that was already disturbed during the operation and construction of the existing nuclear site—it does not have the highest level of designation—could easily be seen producing the type of power that Dungeness B has produced for many years.

As the Government consider the siting of new nuclear power stations and the site list update required for 2025, special consideration should be given to the future of nuclear power at Dungeness and, in particular, its suitability for SMR reactors. Officials at the Department, or the Minister himself, might say, “We could just roll over the existing nuclear site list and, of course, if others want to make the case for additional sites, they can do that.” I am sure the Minister’s door will always be open to that sort of persuasion. However, it sends a signal to the market if the Government have confidence to say that there may be certain sites within the nuclear estate that are suitable for large reactors and others that might only be suitable for SMRs; that, furthermore, there would be no objection in principle to certain areas of land within nuclear sites such as Dungeness being made available; and, to give certainty, that it would be possible to work within the environmental constraints on the wider Dungeness site if SMR development were limited to certain key areas. We believe that there are areas on the site where that would be possible. The industry needs to be given that certainty.

I regard the entire estate of nuclear sites in the UK, both civil and military, as national assets: sites for the future where, in particular, technologies such as SMRs can be deployed. There is overwhelming local support for that from the community that has benefited for many years from its association with the nuclear industry as well as from our local authorities. Kent County Council and Folkestone and Hythe District Council have published a joint statement today supporting my efforts in raising the issue in this debate. They are also willing to do anything they can to help secure the investment at Dungeness from a new SMR provider, such as Rolls-Royce, though there may be other companies as well.

In trying to give certainty to the nuclear industry on the siting of SMRs, it is also important that we look at the land available and who owns it. The land at Dungeness A is owned by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, a public body. The land at Dungeness B is owned by the operator EDF Energy. When it finishes defueling, it will hand over the power station to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority to commence the advanced decommissioning of Dungeness B. It will not necessarily hand over or be likely to hand over the entire landholding for Dungeness B. That raises an important issue for the future: if a provider, be it Rolls-Royce or another company, came along and said that it thought there was the possibility of having SMRs at Dungeness, but it required using land that is not owned by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority or by a combination of NDA land and land owned by EDF, could that make progress without the consent of the landowners?

The NDA is a public body, which makes the decision-making process slightly easier. Where land is owned by other energy companies, which may not wish to use it themselves, can the company effectively land-bank that land, or is there a process whereby it should receive a fair commercial compensation for its value and allow another company to progress with the site, even if EDF did not want to? I am not saying that that would necessarily be a barrier, but I do not think that we, as a country, would want to be in a situation where we can see the potential of nuclear energy to secure a clean supply of baseload energy and we can see nuclear sites, which are national assets, where SMRs are suitable, but the development and investment cannot take place because of disputes between the landowner and the company that wants to invest. I would hope that that is something that we can resolve.

I have some questions for the Minister on the future of nuclear power, and particularly on the potential for SMRs at Dungeness. Can he give us some certainty over the role of sites such as Dungeness as part of the site review list, and will consideration be given to having SMRs at Dungeness? Ideally, Dungeness will be included on a new site list agreed by the Government for 2025. Will the Minister and his officials agree to meet me and representatives of Folkestone and Hythe District Council, and of Kent County Council, to discuss what more can be done at the local level to support the process of securing Government support for the principle of having SMRs at Dungeness?

When I discussed the suitability of the site with the SMR delivery team at Rolls-Royce, they said that the SMRs are constructed to sit on a bed of shingle, and anyone who has been to Dungeness knows that one thing we do not lack is shingle. The Minister is more than welcome to come and join me for fish and chips at the Pilot Inn in Dungeness, and to look at the site for himself. He will see what an excellent location it is. The grid connections are there, the community support is there, and there is land available for this new technology. We just need to give a signal to the nuclear industry that this is a site that has Government support. Ultimately, it will be up to the nuclear industry to take that forward, but at least there are no artificial barriers in place that might restrict a business in doing so.