Nuclear Technology

Lord Rees of Ludlow Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Rees of Ludlow (CB)]

My Lords, we should be grateful to the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, for introducing this debate. It is timely because the medium-term need for nuclear power is becoming more evident and because new reactor designs are attracting more worldwide interest. It is a timely wake-up call because the UK’s indigenous expertise in relevant technologies is becoming dismayingly thin. There is strong advocacy now to enhance R&D into other kinds of low-carbon energy generation—solar, for instance—so that these become more economical and come on stream more quickly. However there is surely an equal imperative for more research, development and demonstration in the nuclear power arena, in hopes of rendering it a more economical and acceptable base-load generator than it now is.

Fifty years ago, the UK was a world leader in nuclear technology. We developed Magnox reactors in the 1950s and gas-cooled systems during the 1960s and 1970s. Thereafter, the UK played a minimal part in developing new reactor designs. Our first PWR, Sizewell B, came on line in 1995, but it was also our last. In the mid-1990s the nuclear industry was privatised with the break-up of BNFL. Government funding for nuclear R&D then fell precipitously. Research on advanced reactor designs was shelved. Indeed, the focus narrowed to maintaining the existing fleet, decommissioning and waste management. Moreover, as we are all too aware today, any of our currently commissioned power stations will be state owned—but by the French or Chinese state and not by us.

There are some bright spots. As the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, said, we have ongoing expertise to build nuclear-powered submarines and we are international leaders in fusion research, which involves many issues in advanced materials, irradiation damage and so on that are relevant to fission as well.

Overall, however, the picture that emerged from the House of Lords Science and Technology Select Committee’s report four years ago was a deeply depressing one. The UK has a small and ageing population of experts. Our committee was told that it would be hard to replace the present generation of safety experts, who are highly regarded and widely consulted internationally, as the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, emphasised. Even worse, we were told that our scientists and engineers would have a mere “watching brief” over developments of SMRs and Generation 4 designs—hardly an inspiring enticement to young people making a career choice. It would surely seem imprudent, and a missed opportunity, for the UK to be so sidelined. There must surely be a step-change to reverse this trend. This is in large measure because, if we are serious about achieving 80% reductions in CO₂ emissions by 2050, as mandated by the Climate Change Act—as I think we should be—then nuclear power should be part of the mix. In fact, this conclusion is strengthened because the prospects for large-scale carbon capture and storage from fossil fuel-powered plants seem less bright than many of us hoped. Indeed, the DECC projections indicate that 30 to 40 gigawatts of nuclear power may be required—far more than the 16 gigawatts that current plans envisage. Were that to happen, the economics would surely need to improve. Standardisation would help and so, perhaps, would a revision of the presently over-stringent clean-up requirements.

Surely, however, innovation is key. I am not competent to assess the rival claims of the various designs; but there is no other high-tech area where one would be satisfied with 30 year-old designs. Even though the UK is one of many players, we should surely aspire to spearhead some of the developments. If we are to expand nuclear power by mid-century, we will need to make the optimal choices among the options. We are spending £2 billion a year in decommissioning Sellafield’s dreadful legacy of nuclear waste. In that perspective it is surely imprudent that the National Nuclear Laboratory cannot spend more than the current few tens of millions on R& D.

In its report the Science and Technology Committee described as “troublingly complacent” the ministerial view that the need for R&D capabilities and associated expertise in the future can be met without government intervention. I hope the Minister will comment on this.

Adapting Churchill’s famous aphorism about the Americans, one can surely hope that having made almost all possible mistaken judgments on nuclear issues over the decades, this country will at last do the right thing. This would be to spearhead enhanced R&D into fourth generation technologies so that when we really need them there is a chance that there will be an acceptable and safe option available.