Nuclear Energy

Lord Ravensdale Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ravensdale (CB)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Howell, on raising this debate, and on the penetrating way in which he introduced it. I declare my interest as a project director working for Atkins in the nuclear industry. I am also a co-chair of Legislators for Nuclear and chair of Midlands Nuclear. The Sizewell B nuclear plant, which the noble Lord secured when he was Energy Secretary, has now been operating for almost 30 years. In the industry we are now working on a potential life extension to 2055, which will take the life of the plant up to 60 years. This really shows what an incredible asset nuclear reactors are for the country.

We have seen great progress with policy in recent years, with the 24 gigawatt commitment from the Government and the formation of GBN. We are now into the really difficult part: delivery. There is still ferocious debate about the future energy system and the right mix of technologies to best balance the energy trilemma of security, sustainability and economy, with the economics of nuclear coming under particular focus. What is really needed to start with is a more sensible discourse around costs. Across the media and in debates here and in another place, we regularly see the view put across that renewables are cheap and everything else is expensive, which is somewhat simplistic.

Perhaps one way of cutting through this debate is a simple thought experiment, where we have a grid that is reliant solely on renewables for generation—which is certainly technically feasible. Those renewables may be cheap in terms of cost at the generator, but how do we manage intermittency? The consensus of studies done to date points towards the necessity of long-duration energy storage: probably hydrogen stored in salt caverns if we are going for a low-carbon option. The scale of that storage requirement would be absolutely enormous—up to 100 terawatt hours. To put that into perspective, the amount of energy that would have to be stored is considerably more than that released by the largest thermonuclear weapon exploded to date. The engineering challenges and technical risk in constructing such a system, using technology that has not yet been demonstrated at scale, would be extremely challenging. The cost per megawatt hour of that system would be far more than the levelised cost of electricity figures we routinely see quoted for renewable electricity.

So the picture is much more complex than simply comparing costs at the generator. We live in a radically uncertain world and we cannot rely on modelling estimates of the costs of unproven technologies. We should be pursuing a broad range of proven technologies, including nuclear and renewables, rather than putting all our eggs in one basket. Critically, we should focus on system costs rather than costs at the generator. I hope that is something we can all agree on.

Continuing the trilemma theme, energy security is critical here. We are well positioned in the UK in that we have the expertise and facilities for the complete nuclear fuel cycle following the importation of uranium: conversion, enrichment and fabrication of the fuel itself. However, we know that Russia dominates aspects of this cycle. For example, it has around 45% of global enrichment capacity. To ensure that fuel supplies are secure, drawing on lessons from the war in Ukraine, the Government should consider legislating to mandate that all fuel used in the UK is from western sources within a defined time period. Could the Minister say in his summing-up what consideration the Government have given to legislating in the area of our nuclear fuel supply?

I also hope we can also move to start seeing the stock of plutonium at Sellafield as an asset rather than a liability. There is an intriguing possibility here, in addition to recycling that store into nuclear fuel. Within that stockpile are tonne quantities of an isotope called americium 241, which could be used as a fuel source for nuclear batteries of the type that power the Mars Curiosity rover and the Voyager probe. To date, these have been fuelled with an isotope of plutonium that is extremely costly to manufacture and made only in the United States and Russia.

Americium-powered nuclear batteries could open up a whole new industry in the UK and create thousands of jobs. The National Nuclear Laboratory is currently planning a facility to extract kilogram quantities per year, but a strategy from the Government is required on how we seize the economic opportunity here. And it is not just the economic opportunity; it demonstrates the wider value that nuclear brings beyond power generation into things such as medical isotopes, and we need to get the public on board. Can the Minister say what plans there are to progress with a strategy for seizing this unique opportunity for the UK?

On how we actually deliver nuclear, I will say something about our supply chain development. Rightly, there has been a lot of focus recently on our skills base in delivering the aspirations of the Government, but that needs to be matched by investment in our supply chain. The successful Fit For Nuclear programme, run by the Nuclear AMRC, which is part of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult, provides a good starting point. Since 2013 the programme and its predecessor have helped UK companies win over £2.5 billion of new contracts, has created or safeguarded over 9,700 jobs, and has secured almost £100 million in private sector investment. It is important that we build on that and put in place the funding to address bottlenecks, invest in shared testing and demonstration facilities and develop the tools needed to provide the integrated supply chain planning capability that we need as a country to support nuclear new build. If we fail to do that, the opportunity to deliver long-term UK economic benefit will be lost; we risk driving up costs and exposing ourselves to global markets and international supply chains. Can the Minister confirm that the Government will urgently provide the funding needed to support the development of a UK nuclear supply chain capability and seize the resulting opportunities for UK industry?

Finally, I will speak briefly about planning. There is a real need to increase the speed of nuclear projects going through the planning system, particularly if we are to increase radically the speed of delivery of nuclear. For example, the environmental statement for Hinkley Point C ran to 31,000 pages, and that for Sizewell C to 44,000 pages. Those are just two examples, but, clearly, we will not deliver new nuclear quickly if we do not have some fundamental reforms to the planning system and how large net-zero projects are progressed. That is something I am looking at for smaller projects within the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill. Can the Minister say what the Government are doing about reforms to the planning system for large nuclear?