Science and Technology Committee: Nuclear Research and Development

Lord Jenkin of Roding Excerpts

Tuesday 19th June 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, has given a splendid introduction to this debate. I might add that he was an excellent chairman of the committee and mention one particular contribution. One weekend he took home what many of us regarded as not a very good summary of our report and came back with an electrifying one. That substantially laid the foundations for the report’s success and its result.

Given the response from the Government, which I shall refer to in a moment, I do not hesitate to say that this has been a very influential report, perhaps more so than some other science and technology reports of recent years. I hope that I am not breaching a confidence when I say that the Minister of Energy asked the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, and me, two co-opted members of the committee, to go and see him. He wanted to discuss one or two impacts of the report. The right honourable gentleman confessed to us that the report had drawn attention to some significant gaps in the Government’s policies for nuclear energy and, in particular, to the need for more research and development. Certainly, the contrast between what the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, rightly called the complacent evidence given to our inquiry by the Government and the far more positive, constructive tone of their response is truly remarkable and very welcome.

This debate is the occasion for looking forward to what is to come and, like the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, I will have some questions for the Minister. It is still clear that there are challenges. Last Thursday I was privileged to host a reception in the Palace at which the University of Manchester and the Dalton Nuclear Institute celebrated their recent award. I might add that Manchester had the foresight to embark on a new nuclear research and training programme well in advance of the previous Government’s change of heart, with the notable speech by the Prime Minister at the Royal Society. Manchester started in 2005, when some of us felt that we were batting away in the dark, banging for a new nuclear programme and not being listened to. The result of the university’s far-sighted decision was the establishment of the Dalton Nuclear Institute. Earlier this year, the institute and the university were awarded the Diamond Jubilee Queen’s anniversary prize in recognition of their,

“internationally renowned research and skills training for the nuclear industry”.

They have every entitlement to be extremely proud of that.

At the reception last week, the director of the institute, Professor Andrew Sherry, who gave some very compelling evidence to our Select Committee, listed what he saw as seven grand challenges over the next decades. I will draw attention to some of these and ask the Government where we are getting to on them. Andrew Sherry’s seven grand challenges are: decommissioning and clean-up; geological disposal; current and new-build reactor systems; spent fuel management; plutonium management; safeguards and security; and future nuclear energy systems, especially the generation 4 system, to which the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, referred. That is a formidable agenda by any standards. However, the Government’s response to our report, and the accounts that I have heard of the work of the R and D advisory board, are encouraging as far as they go. Of course, we await the strategy paper and the promised road map, both of which are strongly recommended by the Select Committee and accepted by the Government. Many of our own more detailed recommendations have to await those documents, although the signs that they will be favourable are good. However, I am very glad that when he gave his response to the committee’s report, the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, indicated that we may well want to return to the issues in the future if we are not satisfied with what we see. This is a hugely important area of government policy and this Select Committee is probably as well qualified as any to press the Government to get on with it.

I would like to ask the Minister about two of the seven challenges. One concerns plutonium management and the other future nuclear energy systems—the fifth and seventh items on the professor’s list. As everybody well knows, plutonium stocks are the long-term legacy left behind after decades of uranium-based nuclear generation. They must be dealt with. They can no longer simply be bequeathed to future generations. We have to find a solution. The Government are consulting on this but they have made it clear that their preferred solution is to build a new Mox plant—a mixed oxide plant—because the one at Sellafield has never worked properly, even though the French have had a very successful Mox plant in France. However, it is already clear that while this would progressively consume the plutonium stocks, it would be unlikely ever to pay for itself by the sales of Mox fuel.

There is an alternative solution, which I have discussed with the Minister and officials in his department—the so-called PRISM process being put forward by GE Hitachi. It would burn the plutonium as a fuel and at the same time generate electricity, so it should pay for itself. It is in fact a new generation nuclear reactor. I understand that GE Hitachi has offered guarantees, and it tells me that it is in detailed discussions with the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. I was reassured a few months ago by officials at DECC that they are treating it very seriously. Can my noble friend tell us anything more about that and about when we might have a decision? I recognise that the Government’s preferred decisions is the Mox plant, but there seems to be what might be a more valuable way forward through the GE Hitachi PRISM.

In this context, I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, to her position on the Front Bench. I think I am right in saying that this is her first time in Grand Committee. We look forward to hearing her speech. I have had a number of exchanges with the noble Baroness since she joined the House, and she has sought to persuade me that the future for the nuclear industry should be based not on uranium but on thorium. It is a perfectly respectable argument in the right places. It has greater resistance to proliferation and other advantages, but I have also discussed this with experts at the National Nuclear Laboratory, and I am persuaded by the force of their arguments. This country has decades of practical experience with uranium. We have developed our widely recognised expertise in the uranium fuel cycle, and there are likely to be ready supplies of uranium all over the world, as far as can reasonably be seen. Thorium may be a proper process for a country that is starting up and has no history equivalent to ours, but I have to point out respectfully to the noble Baroness that I do not think it could possibly be appropriate in this country.

The second thing I shall talk about is future nuclear energy systems. Our evidence convinced me and, I think, most members that UK participation in international programmes—the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, has already mentioned the Gen 4 proposals—is essential if we are to present ourselves as having a long-term nuclear future and the credibility, to which the noble Lord referred, that will be needed if we are to work with other countries. For this, we must restore our reputation as world-class experts with a coherent and cohesive R and D programme. We took a lot of evidence about this. We still have great strength in certain fields, notably the fuel cycle field, but without such a programme, the rest will just dissipate and disappear.

How can this be done? One of our proposals was that, quite apart from the overseeing board, to which the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, referred, we need a top, high-level hub around which other research facilities in the country can act as spokes. I have discussed this at some length with the National Nuclear Laboratory and, of course, with the Dalton Nuclear Institute, but there are other institutions. There are ISIS, Diamond Light Source, the universities and so on. We need this hub. In my view, a combination of the National Nuclear Laboratory and, as a university participant, the Dalton Nuclear Institute would provide very welcome technical leadership. As has been said, we have world-class resources. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, has already referred to the commissioning of the remaining phases of the nuclear laboratory at Sellafield. I, too, went to see them. My noble friend Lord Wade and I went, and they are hugely impressive, but empty. It is an enormous waste to leave them unused and unoccupied when they could help to establish our credibility as having a long-term future.

I ask the Minister what is happening there. Can he give us some understanding that these facilities will be commissioned and perhaps some idea as to how they might be paid for? We had useful evidence that they are very attractive to foreign companies and Governments that would want to do research on highly active materials. They have all the equipment and facilities to do that. However, we need to have this properly organised with an integrated and accessible hub—what the National Nuclear Laboratory described as,

“a focal point and lead organisation to coordinate work on behalf of the Government including international collaboration”.

There is much else in the report that we could refer to, but these are two very important issues in a very important report, and I hope the Minister will be able to offer us some way forward. As I said earlier, my impression is that the advisory board is doing well as far as it goes. However, the Government will need to press this forward vigorously and make sure that the hopes that have been aroused by their response to the report will indeed be realised.

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

My Lords, I welcome this report, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, has said, is extremely well written and constructed and should lead to new long-term policies. I also welcome the unusually constructive government response, by which I refer to the generic feature of government responses, which do not always welcome all sorts of recommendations. This is a good step forward. The report is, of course, mainly concerned with nuclear fission power and the UK context, although it does note the evidence of the director of the UK fusion programme and there is also evidence in it from the director of the Atomic Weapons Establishment. I will come back to these questions but will just declare my own interest. In my own meandering career, I have worked on various nuclear issues such as the fast breeder reactor, fission-related problems and fusion technology. I am now a consultant and adviser to Tokamak Solutions, a project with government and private funding that is looking at possibly linking fusion and fission.

As the report says, the UK has very considerable capabilities in the basic sciences and technologies needed for the nuclear industry. In many areas, the UK was a leader and has a great tradition of collaboration between universities and government or industrial laboratories, which I have participated in. One of the features of having this dual approach to development and research, which is, of course, common to all other countries but which has seen a huge decline in the UK, is that it enables projects to start in the applied area. They then go into the universities, which advise them, and they then turn into research projects, funded by research councils, to establish the basic principles and publish the results in the scientific literature.

Some of the areas where the UK did particularly important work was mathematics, such as that relating to the optimisation of nuclear reactors that began in Harwell. The work there has established the basic methods around the world in many areas of technology including fluid flow, structures in nuclear engineering, electrodynamics and safety. Not everyone knows that Dalton was a meteorologist before he became a chemist. Dalton’s meteorology, as well as his chemistry, was important for safety.

The other important point I want to emphasise is that the model proposed in this report is essentially one of a board, with one or two centres, and university departments. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, has, quite rightly, picked up what I also want to emphasise, which is that having a very significant hub makes a huge difference. There was an educational rumpus in the British system around 1990, when Mrs Thatcher—the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher—was still Prime Minister, over whether climate change research would have one major centre, collaborating with universities, or all the funds would be distributed among existing laboratories. The controversial decision was taken to have the Hadley Centre, which turned into a world-leading institution. In the past, we have had world-leading centres that have been major hubs. The recommendation is not as strong as it might be in this report. Indeed, this has been the basis of leadership in the United States, France, Germany—until it withdrew—and Japan. We should remember the lessons of those countries.

In respect of that point, I worked in the Central Electricity Generating Board laboratory, which is now a housing estate, like many of our former laboratories. The privatisation programme in Britain led to a lot of housing estates taking over laboratories but none of the money from those estates ended up in science. It ended up in various places, which we shall talk about.

On the UK activities of this hub programme, it is essential that it does not just advise the Government. On this, I differ from the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin. It must be seen to be a realistic organisation that works with industry. It must have contracts with industry—that is important—or it will not have credibility.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

I am sorry; I did not intend to imply the opposite. The noble Lord is absolutely right.

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

I see. The hub must be very practical and involved in engineering. I am sorry to sound like a broken record but we used to do that in the old CEGB. We were dealing with problems in power stations and designing new power stations, as well as carrying out research. That led to world-class respect.

The other important point is that there is the possibility of our hub or network using the extraordinarily advanced international computational facilities at the Atomic Weapons Establishment and, as I learnt yesterday from the Financial Times, the new engineering facilities being built at Rolls-Royce for the Trident programme. These will have extraordinary abilities, which we should involve in our programme.

I have a little anecdote on this. When I was a trainee, I was clambering around on a new railway engine that was being built in Vickers. All our equipment there was stamped, “Nuclear facilities: not to be used for any other purpose”. That is the kind of collaboration from which we rather want to move away. The United States has the major nuclear laboratories. It has always combined R and D work on the civil and defence aspects of nuclear energy. I do not see why we should move more in that direction in the UK.

Finally, responsibility for forward strategic planning, which needs to be explicit in the terms of reference of the board and maybe this hub, should include R and D programmes concerned with nuclear waste. This should involve not only geological repositories but new technologies. My noble friend Lady Worthington will doubtless touch on this. It is clear from Russia, China and Korea that it is important to use materials other than uranium, and that, even with uranium, we must find technologies that will use our existing waste as well as new waste. Can we really accept that the UK’s nuclear waste will be stored for ever, until the next ice age, about which the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, will perhaps tell us? Surely this is the moment when we should have new institutions with very long-range objectives—at least as long-range as those of other countries, which are certainly working on that timescale.