Radioactive Waste Management: Science and Technology Committee Report

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Thursday 10th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I genuinely welcome this report by the noble Lord, Lord Broers. I had not realised that this was the fifth in the series—I had counted up to three. I highly recommend that he keeps on the same track and that we have more, especially because of the timescale that has already been mentioned. Reading it afresh earlier this week, I found it quite strange because it referred to evidence from “the Minister” and that was the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. I wondered whether I had gone through a time warp or whether matters had changed yet again somehow. The fact that this report has taken almost a year is, as the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, has said, a symptom of the problem, although I clearly understand that there was a general election in between.

This is a really important core subject. The previous Government were and this Government are entering into an era of new nuclear capacity, so there will be waste from that new industry. We already have significant waste from the current nuclear industry, the so-called legacy waste. I looked up how much we have and it is 1,700 cubic metres of high-level waste, 92,000 cubic metres of medium-level waste, rising to 3 million cubic metres of low-level waste. That is quite a challenge.

One thing that concerns me most about the nuclear industry is not so much security, important though that is, but the fact that we have not yet solved the problem of waste, not only from something that we have already created but also as regards the new era we are entering into. When we looked at the draft national policy statements for nuclear power generation, I was concerned that in part 2 of that report it simply said:

“Annex B of this NPS sets out how the Government has satisfied itself that effective arrangements will exist for the management and disposal of the wastes produced by new nuclear power stations”.

It goes on to say in another paragraph:

“The question of whether effective arrangements will exist to manage and dispose of the waste that will be produced from new nuclear power stations has therefore been addressed by the Government and the IPC should not consider this further”.

As a rational human being, let alone parliamentarian, that concerns me greatly. With this new programme, we already have a problem with waste, yet even in the planning process we assume that we have solved the problem when clearly we have not. That is why I welcome this report and I welcome very strongly the Government’s response to it, which I think has been extremely positive on the recommendations. I support the fact that CoRWM should become increasingly independent, that it should steer its own programme, that there should be milestones and transparency and that there should be an annual parliamentary report, which is particularly important because of the timescales.

I come back to timing, and the committee’s concern in its report that this matter is not given sufficient urgency. During debate in Grand Committee on the national policy statements, we were all shocked when my noble friend said, because the policy was inherited from the previous Government:

“The revised draft national policy statement reflects that we currently expect the geological disposal facility to be ready to take new build waste in 2130”.—[Official Report, 13/01/11; col. GC 151.]

Looking backwards, that is the equivalent of the 1890s. That is my greatest concern from the report. It begs the obvious question—I know that my noble friend has similar concerns—of where we now think that those timescales will lie. The year 2140 is not so far away, but if we are talking about another 120 years until we can cope with the waste created by new build, we have a real problem in our planning for the industry.

That is all I want to say about the report except to follow up some questions that arise from it, which have often been mentioned by other noble Lords. First, on waste minimisation, my noble friend said that he had commissioned a cost-benefit analysis of Mox. I would be interested to hear if he has an update of that. In waste disposal internationally, Finland has moved on with its Olkiluoto facility. Have the Government learnt any lessons from that which mean that our facilities can be brought forward? Are the Government thinking further about fusion technology? I know that there are all sorts of questions about that, but that is a way to use nuclear waste for further energy and to neutralise its effects. Lastly, I come back to the question of the timescale. It is not right that we move ahead with a new nuclear programme until we are a little more clear about how we are to clear up the mess that we have already created.