Nuclear Energy

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Howell, for introducing today’s debate on this very important subject. I am in no doubt that provision of a base electrical load using nuclear power is crucial for our nation, not least because of the vast increase in electrical requirement as the next decades unfold, as has been mentioned. I do not think the general public realise how huge that increase in demand will become.

Nuclear power is at present the only guaranteed carbon-neutral power source that can operate day and night, whatever the weather. I think everyone is aware of that, but it is important to remind ourselves. Perhaps in the future tidal might be a similar thing and able to do that, but it has not been working well and still has a long way to go. Concern is often rightly expressed about disposal of the small amounts of radioactive waste produced by power stations. Suffice it to say that work continues on the issue of disposal of the small amounts of nuclear waste using the geological disposal facility. As I understand it, it is progressing but needs to be hastened. I ask the Minister to give us an update of where we have got to on ensuring that disposal capability.

The provision of a secure baseload of green electricity is of national importance. The work to achieve it should be seen as such, and in a similar way to the national deterrent programme—the continuous at-sea deterrence—it should become a national endeavour involving all departments of state, because they all have some interest in it. Looking at these future issues, expenditure on nuclear power seems far more important than something like HS2, for example, and the Government need to bite the bullet and expedite work on it.

How our nation, which at one stage led the world in civil nuclear power, is now reliant on Chinese, Japanese, French and American expertise is a national disgrace. I will not go into that now, but it is appalling when you think that we led the world. This needs to be turned around and we need to generate the scientists, engineers and designers to ensure that we are never again in this position.

As regards large power stations, I do not completely see eye to eye with the noble Lord, Lord Howell. I believe we need three—Hinkley Point C, Sizewell C and probably Bradwell B—online as quickly as humanly possible. It is all very well to say they take a long time. Yes, they do, but for the last 30 years we have been saying that; if we had done something then, we would have them operating now, so we should move ahead with those. However—and this is where I have to take a new line, down the middle—we should also embark on a major programme of small modular reactors.

One of the benefits of large power stations is that the national grid power line infrastructure is already in place on these sites. This is not the case with new offshore wind farms and other energy options. Other things we need to look at, but not as urgently as the small modular reactors, are the advanced modular reactors that can produce hydrogen and so on. There is considerable scope there for the future.

As the noble Lord, Lord Howell, said, Rolls-Royce has been producing nuclear reactors for Royal Navy submarines since the late 1950s when the first one was built. That expertise is highly relevant to production of SMRs. It would be extremely unfortunate, in terms of resilience, for those used in this country to be designed and built overseas, not least because of the whole issue of having scientists, engineers and people capable of doing all these things. To see it going to someone other than Rolls-Royce would be extraordinary. As an aside, people talk about fusion; although this is attractive, I think it is a very long way off.

The complications of having Chinese involvement in what is a crucial part of our critical national infrastructure has to be unravelled. It should never have got to the position it is in, and no doubt there will be huge problems, particularly as regards Bradwell B power station, which I believe may have to be of a completely different design in future.

With the right leadership, political direction and public/private partnership, there is still just time to provide the civil nuclear power our nation needs. There just needs to be the absolute focus to achieve that. If noble Lords think back, we did a similar thing when we opened up North Sea oil and gas in the late 1970s and 1980s; think of the huge national benefit that came out of that. I believe there is no time for delay.