Wylfa Nuclear Power Project: Taxpayer Liability for Safety

Ronnie Cowan Excerpts

Tuesday 24th July 2018 Westminster Hall

[Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Robertson. It is less of a pleasure, however, to scrutinise the shoddy deal that taxpayers are being offered on the Wylfa power station. My hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) asked a serious question: why nuclear now that so many renewable energies are available? If we invested in them properly, we would see the renewable sector move into a new field, a new area of prosperity that would be more clean and bountiful, so why are we not investing in all the alternative clean energies as well? Why are we repeating the mistakes of the past? Asbestos was going to be a great new product, but now we live with the dangers and the costs it caused.

My hon. Friend stressed the line we were fed that without Hinkley coming on line in 2017 the lights will go out. The lights are on, the air conditioning is working overtime and Hinkley is still not contributing to that. The hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) said he had produced a booklet, which I really look forward to reading, that promotes nuclear and clean renewables. I hope it will be better than the booklet that was produced by the UK Government in the ’70s that said, “In case of nuclear attack, hide under a table.” [Laughter.] It said hide under a table or in the cupboard under the stairs. I remember reading it as a child and being pretty frightened.

[Albert Owen]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Ronnie Cowan]

Certainly. I have been waiting for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention.

[Albert Owen]

I was born and raised on Anglesey. My children were born and raised on Anglesey. Safe nuclear generation has been with us for 40-odd years. That is the reality. Silly scaremongering about atomic power and nuclear bombs does not do justice to the spokesman for the SNP.

[Ronnie Cowan]

As I was born and raised within a short distance of Hunterston power station, I understand that people worked on building that station, but we are talking about power that can cause so much destruction that we cannot possibly comprehend it. I agree we need a balance, which is why I support wind, wave, tidal, solar and hydro as part of the mix. I want us to progress so that we do not need nuclear as part of the mix. That is the ideal situation that we should work towards.

The hon. Gentleman correctly highlighted job creation, but obviously the jobs are where the investment is. He highlighted the lack of support for the Swansea tidal bay, which is an absolute travesty by this Government. It was a great opportunity to invest in renewable energy and see where that could take us. How many jobs would that create in Swansea and how many within the supply chain around it?

[Mr Sweeney]

The hon. Gentleman talks about a comparison with asbestos and the idea that nuclear energy generation is somehow inherently toxic. What does he say about the integral fast reactor or the small modular reactor technology that consumes nuclear and therefore solves the problem that he claims exists? That is surely to be welcomed and embraced.

[Ronnie Cowan]

As I said, we are working towards a mixture of renewable energy. Ideally, if we could do away with the potential dangers, we should do so. One can say that about absolutely any industry. The coal mining industry was a dangerous business. We always worked to minimise the dangers, which is what we should do in the case of nuclear energy. If we can do it with nuclear as part of the mix, that is what we should work towards. We should invest in new measures to see if we can attain that. We should learn the lessons of Hinkley, a point made by the hon. Member for Ynys Môn. I hope we will learn the lessons of Fukushima as well.

The hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Sweeney) said that nuclear was once seen as the future in the United Kingdom. He is right: it was once seen as the future. It was also seen as the future in Germany and Japan, but they have moved on. Unless we want to be left behind in areas of technology, we have to move on as well.

[Albert Owen]

On that point about Germany, an alliance or agreement with the Greens meant that they shut their nuclear capacity down, but now emissions have gone up as they import gas from Russia. They also import coal from Poland.

[Ronnie Cowan]

Obviously the Germans decided to bite the bullet while they heavily invest in renewable energy. If we do not do the same thing, in five or 10 years from now they will be way ahead of us and we will look back and ask why we did not do that.

We should be alarmed at a report in The Times that states that Hitachi will refuse to pay its fair share for nuclear accidents at Wylfa, with directors supposedly wanting

“safeguards that reduce or eliminate Hitachi’s financial responsibility for accidents at the plant”.

This is the same company that has been accused of lying to the US Government by concealing flaws in one of its nuclear power plants. It is a company in which a whistleblower said after the Fukushima disaster:

“When the stakes are raised to such a height, a company will not do what is safe and what is legal.”

It is a company that may be expected to pay only €1.3 billion in the event of a nuclear incident, even if such a disaster costs the UK hundreds of billions in damages. Pursuing nuclear energy is a folly, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun has clearly outlined. Like so much of its ideology, Tory thinking is stuck in the 1950s. UK Government policy on energy seems to be no different.

Support for renewable energy has been slashed while taxpayers are expected to foot the bill for truly eye-watering levels of funding for nuclear stations such as Wylfa. That is irresponsible and avoidable. I was always under the impression that the Tories were the party of small government and of making prudent financial decisions, or so they like to tell us. Yet they saddle the taxpayer with more and more and more debt. Wylfa is just another example of a poorly negotiated deal for the taxpayers that the UK Government are supposed to represent. Of course, that is only considering the immediate financial and environmental impact. It goes without saying that the UK Government, by committing to Wylfa, are burdening future generations with the toxic legacy and cost of nuclear waste. I can think of few greater impositions of a Government on the rights of an individual than that.

I recently read with interest that survivors of the Fukushima disaster visited Wales to warn against the building of new nuclear reactors. In their first-hand testimony they outlined the devastating impact that the disaster had on local agriculture, with some people still unable to return to their homes seven years after the incident. Is a serious nuclear incident likely at Wylfa? Perhaps not, but having the station at all makes it a possibility. Why take that risk when the operator of the station may not even be liable for costs in the event of an accident? Why take that risk when the company in question was forced to pay a fine in response to allegations that it had lied to US regulators over safety concerns? Why take that risk when other sources of energy are available? We need urgent reassurances regarding the contract—the costs, liabilities and environmental impact.

Finally, are the UK Government serious about developing an energy policy fit for the 21st century and beyond? If so, they should abandon their nuclear obsession and look to the Scottish Government for world-leading ideas on the best transition for our nations into being responsible producers of energy.