Civil Nuclear Road Map Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateNigel Evans
Main Page: Nigel Evans (Conservative - Ribble Valley)Department Debates - View all Nigel Evans's debates with the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero
(6 months ago)
Commons ChamberI promise the hon. Member that I will not. As someone who is very pro-nuclear, I believe that one big issue is that we have loads of reviews, and identify all the problems and what we will do, and then never actually do it. If we do get around to building a station, we build one—not a number of them; just one. Then, a number of years after that, we might build another one, but to a completely different design. That is how we keep going in this country. Does he agree?
Mr Beresford, I think the name you were struggling to find was Ernest Rutherford.
It was Ernest Rutherford. The Government Whip, the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell), is the genius, not me.
Thank you. The Whip has saved me! I had actually worked it out and was going to bring it up. The other thing that rather kicked my memory was that when I went out to the same place last September, I stayed at the Rutherford hotel. Oh dear; my English and English literature are better than my physics, I concede.
I agree with the right hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami). That is the point that KBR and others are making: this is an opportunity that we have the distinctly British possibility of missing. KBR is going in particular for AMRs. It has come back to me and complained, as it will to the Minister—just to prepare him for that meeting—about our clumsy development consent order, which delays everything, is bureaucratic and problematic, and could be considerably easier. As a result, we are slipping behind some of the rest of the world. For example, the United States advanced reactor and advanced modular reactor technology developer, TerraPower, has a financed match programme well under way that will achieve power generation in the US by 2030. We have that opportunity, and we have the right attitude, but we are not doing it.
I stop at this point, having made my complaint and missed Lord Rutherford’s name. We owe our nation the facilities to produce the extra 40% of power that we will need when the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow. The water will keep running, but that is a very minor part of our power. We do not have those facilities, and if we miss this opportunity, we will hand our children a low-grade state. While I welcome the road map, it is not enough. It does not move fast enough, and it does not contain the funding we need, but it does have the co-operation of the industry, which will bring its money bags with it. As such, I invite the Minister to come along and talk to some of the key people in a short roundtable discussion. Lord Rutherford will be there in the walls behind us.
Before we go into the wind-ups, I remind Members that there is a second debate, which we would like to get on to as quickly as we can to give other Members as much opportunity to discuss their issue as possible. I ask Members to leave two minutes at the end for Philip Dunne as well.