Nuclear Safeguards (Fissionable Material and Relevant International Agreements) (EU Exit) (Amendment) Regulations 2021

Lord Redesdale Excerpts

Tuesday 13th April 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Redesdale (LD)]

My Lords, this is one of those SIs that you cannot find any reason to object to, so I will be extremely brief. While it talks about co-operation, it is unfortunate that Toshiba cancelled the Moorside project in 2018. Since then, two further projects have been cancelled at nuclear power plants.

Of course, this SI is relevant to the EU exit regulations. One of the issues raised was that, by moving away from Euratom and joint co-operation with our EU partners, we are in effect increasing costs to those organisations that would want to undertake development of nuclear power plants in this country. It seems that EDF is the only viable alternative for nuclear power plants at the moment, but could the Minister give an indication of how much the new regulations are costing industry, or maybe write to me?