Euratom

Lord Hunt of Chesterton Excerpts

Thursday 20th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, for introducing this important debate and for the masterly way in which he did so. I declare an interest, like some of my colleagues, having worked in various aspects of atomic energy. I am chairman of the advisory committee of Tokamak Energy, which is a private sector fusion project.

Euratom has several vital roles which affect us—from timescales of a few hours, as we have been hearing in medical examples, to a long-term programme of dealing with nuclear waste of up to 100,000 years. Some people may remember the famous interchange between the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury, and one of our Welsh colleagues here who asked if he really believed in transmutation. The point is that we have a very wide range of interests in working with Euratom—or whatever is done to continue that work.

The other aspect, of course, is fission. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, rightly pointed out that fission power is a significant part of our power. Importantly, it is not just 20% of our power but continues when, for example, renewable power is unable to operate. Fission power is very important throughout the world.

The important point about Euratom is, of course, that it not only provides the fissile material for reactors but deals with nuclear waste. Nuclear waste brings us to the 100,000-year question. Are we going to put our waste in geological reserves, or are we going to deal with it in a long-term scientific way, destroying it so that it will have a short half-life? That is one of Euratom’s programmes. It is the only organisation in the world that is thinking in a long-term way about the different ways of dealing with nuclear waste.

Finally, Euratom has a very important role in co-ordinating the European contribution to the global project on fusion. Fusion energy, as you may know, uses water. There was the famous joke of the Giles cartoon in the 1950s, saying, “Are we going to run out of water?” because we were so effective at using this energy. We are not going to run out of water, but the fusion programme is very important and produces no waste. The fusion processes may be one way of getting rid of waste, of which we have a great deal from the fission process.

Euratom leads the global experiment, which started with JET, which is still at Culham. That will transfer into ITER, which is the international Tokamak in France. The UK plays a major role in these programmes, and how that will happen has to be negotiated. There was an article in the newspapers about the UK fusion programme.

Interestingly, we are now developing a private sector approach. If you are going to have a private sector operation, it needs a regulatory framework, and the way we work with Euratom should include that aspect. Also, as other noble Lords have said, Euratom is vital for the UK’s involvement in the International Atomic Energy Agency. We look forward to hearing from the Minister how that will continue.