Nuclear Research and Technology (Science and Technology Committee Report)

Earl of Selborne Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2017 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[The Earl of Selborne]

That this House takes note of the Report from the Science and Technology Committee, Nuclear research and technology: Breaking the cycle of indecision (3rd Report, Session 2016–17, HL Paper 160).

[The Earl of Selborne (Con)]

My Lords, the Science and Technology Select Committee report, Nuclear Research and Technology: Breaking the Cycle of Indecision, is the topic of our debate tonight. It is the latest instalment in the committee’s work on civil nuclear policy which goes back at least 20 years, the most relevant previous report being that of November 2011. The committee then recommended that the Government should set out a long-term strategy for nuclear energy and establish an independent nuclear research and development board which would advise the Government and monitor the Government’s progress against a nuclear research road map. Following that committee report, an ad hoc advisory board was formed under the guidance of Sir John Beddington, then the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser. The work of this ad hoc board led to the development of the 2013 nuclear industrial strategy and a nuclear R&D road map; so far, so good.

The committee’s recommendation that a statutory nuclear R&D board be formed was not accepted. Instead, the Government established the Nuclear Innovation and Research Board as a temporary advisory board for three years, with its term expiring in December 2016. Our committee therefore decided last year that it was an appropriate time to revisit this topic in the light of the Government’s forthcoming industrial strategy White Paper. We benefited greatly from the expertise of our committee clerk, Anna Murphy, our specialist adviser, Professor Tom Scott, and our policy analyst, Dr Daniel Rathbone. We are most grateful to them.

As noted in paragraph 19 of our report, the evidence showed that within its terms of reference, NIRAB has been widely regarded as a success. It was, however, handicapped by not being charged with responsibility for the full co-ordination of UK civil nuclear research, nor was it constituted to develop international co-ordination, and of course it had only a three-year timespan. Our report restates the recommendation from 2011 that a non-departmental public body should be set up on a permanent basis with a co-ordinating and supervisory role for nuclear R&D in the United Kingdom.

The nuclear sector desperately needs continuity and consistency for its research and development. The Clean Growth Strategy, published last Thursday, states:

“The Government has asked the Nuclear Innovation and Research Office (NIRO) to convene a new advisory Board, building on the success of the Nuclear Innovation and Research Advisory Board (NIRAB)”.


It is a relief to learn that NIRAB is effectively to be re-established, but it does not appear that the new advisory board will be given the wider remit we have called for, both in the 2011 and in the 2017 reports. Our witnesses seemed unaware that the Government still consider they are working to their 2013 road map. Time and again, our witnesses told us that the UK was missing a clear vision and strategy as far as the nuclear industry is concerned. We state in paragraph 52:

“In light of the strongly critical evidence we have received the Government needs to review and refresh the 2013 strategy for nuclear energy, in conjunction with the NIC”—


the Nuclear Industry Council—

“and take swift and concrete steps towards its further implementation”.

The current work on preparing a nuclear sector deal, referred to on page 37 of the clean growth strategy, would provide an excellent opportunity to review and refresh the 2013 strategy.

The strategic policy decision which needs to be addressed first and foremost was posed to us by the noble Lord, Lord Hutton, chairman of the Nuclear Industry Council:

“Do we want to be a top-table nuclear nation, which is the role we have always occupied and done so brilliantly in the last 60 years, or are we going to settle for some other role which might not be the full-spectrum range of capabilities that we have got used to?”


I profoundly agree with him that the Government must decide whether they wish the UK to be a serious player in developing nuclear generation technology as a designer, manufacturer and operator, or alternatively to restrict its interests to being an operator of equipment supplied by others.

Once the Government have made this overarching decision, other strategic decisions will flow from this to define a clear set of objectives and timescales with which the nuclear industry can align itself. We recommend, in paragraph 58, that,

“If the Government were to decide that the UK should be a serious player in nuclear fission, the following would be the minimum steps needed to achieve this: development of a domestic research programme that is of sufficient scope and scale to make the UK an attractive partner for developing new technology to support new nuclear build (including Small Modular Reactors) in the UK and abroad; participation in and contribution to international programmes (for example the Generation IV International Forum)”.


The Government’s clean growth strategy reports that £460 million will be allocated,

“to support work in areas including … advanced reactor design”.

Can the Minister explain whether that £460 million is all new money or includes what remains unspent from the £250 million allocated over five years in 2015 for nuclear research and development?

It would be madness to attempt to develop the next generation of fission technologies on our own. If ever there was a need for international collaboration, it is in this respect, and the Generation IV International Forum is fulfilling precisely that role. We stopped being an active member of that forum in 2006 for financial reasons. NIRAB and our committee have both recommended that we rejoin the forum rather than continue with observer status. Now that the Government have declared their intention to support work in advanced reactor design, the case for rejoining the forum has become overwhelming.

There is wide international recognition that the future of nuclear energy from fission is likely to depend on SMRs, whether using light water technology—as used in existing reactors—or Generation IV technologies, for which the timescale is much longer. Those noble Lords who were in the Chamber last Thursday to hear the Answer to the Oral Question of the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, on when the Government would report progress on the competition to design SMRs, will remember that the answer was “shortly”. The techno-economic assessment of SMRs was commissioned in May 2015 and completed in August 2016. This assessment is an essential piece of evidence for the public debate on whether SMRs have a role to play in the United Kingdom and in global markets for electricity generation, district heating, water desalination, and the production of certain chemicals. Should we seek to design and manufacture SMRs both for domestic and overseas markets? The delay in publishing the assessment is yet another example of the need to break the cycle of indecision. I have some sympathy with Jesse Norman MP, who in his evidence to the committee as the then departmental Minister for these matters stated that he did not think that the SMR competition should have been named a competition and that it was more a call for ideas across a much wider spectrum.

Chapter 5 of our report refers to the National Nuclear Laboratory, owned and operated by the Government but required to operate as a commercial business. We believe that the Government should make use of this resource for independent advice and provide a modest amount of core funding.

We then refer to the sorry situation of our membership of Euratom being deemed incompatible with Brexit. The die is now cast on this and the Nuclear Safeguards Bill is making its way through Parliament. When the Bill comes to this House, we must give it careful scrutiny. Unless it secures all the benefits—and they have been considerable—that we have derived from our membership of Euratom, we will face many problems, not least that of losing our lead in nuclear fusion research. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Selborne]

My Lords, I am very encouraged by my noble friend’s reply and the fact that, as I understand it, the Government are committed to rejoin, after several years, the Generation Four International Forum. What we have seen is a great signal to the nuclear community that we are setting our aspirations once more at something that is ambitious and recognises the expertise that we have in our science base in this country in matters nuclear.

We have had a very interesting historical lesson from all parts of the House, not least the Minister, and I was expecting it from the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, who is a great expert on these matters. It is not surprising that successive Administrations rather lost their way on nuclear when the public felt greatly disenchanted, for reasons we all understand.

Perhaps I am eternally optimistic, but from the Minister’s response just now, the clean growth strategy and the forthcoming industrial strategy White Paper, I do see some opportunities to have the question we posed—breaking the cycle of indecision—resolved satisfactorily.

It remains only for me to thank all noble Lords who have stayed to this very late hour, by my standards, to participate in what I have found a most interesting debate.

Motion agreed.

House adjourned at 10.46 pm.