Nuclear Technology

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

Thursday 22nd October 2015 Grand Committee

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, the demand for electricity is highly variable. It varies throughout the diurnal cycle of 24 hours and over the weeks, the months and the seasons of the year. The need to satisfy a demand on a large scale first arose in this country in the 1920s and 1930s. The nation responded rapidly by gathering the electricity generators into a centrally controlled system that was supported by an integrated network of electricity generation known as the national grid. The result was an ample generating capacity that was exploited effectively by the ability of the grid to supply power to the places where it was most needed, by transmitting it at high voltages with minimised losses.

Our national system served us well in this manner until the 1990s and became the envy of the industrialised world. In the 1990s, our electricity supply industry was privatised with the intention of creating a competitive market. The perverse outcome was that, very soon, the industry fell into the hands of a few large producers and into foreign ownership. In this era, the problems created by the variable demand were met by a new technology of gas-powered generation that was sustained by an ample supply of North Sea gas. It seemed to the proponents of privatisation that a centralised control of the nation’s electricity supplies was no longer needed and that the market system was appropriate to the purpose.

These fortunate circumstances are at an end. We no longer have an ample and cheap supply of gas that can be relied upon to fuel a flexible electricity supply. If we are to meet our targets for decarbonisation, we cannot continue to satisfy the base load demand with the output of coal-fired power stations. Nowadays, our demand for electricity is being met increasingly by the intermittent supply of wind power and by other renewable resources, including solar power. The problems of intermittency might be overcome if we could expect the sun to shine when the wind ceases to blow. However, the inverse correlation between these two sources is a weak and an insufficient one. Moreover, this Government seem to be intent on destroying our solar-powered resources by the removal of the subsidy incorporated in the feed-in tariff.

We might be able to mitigate these problems of an intermittent supply if we could depend on supplies from beyond our national boundaries. For these to be available, there would need to be a super grid that could transmit the power from remote locations at very high voltages. Under the conditions of a free market and given the difficulties of international co-operation, such a facility is unlikely to materialise within the foreseeable future. In such circumstances, it is difficult to see how we can easily satisfy our demand for electricity. Nevertheless, we can speculate about the ways in which the Government are intending to address the problem.

To supply the base load, they appear to be relying on the new nuclear facilities which they are hoping the French and Chinese will create for us. To meet the peak demand, they may be hoping to rely on supplies of gas that might be purchased on the international market or magicked out of the ground on which we stand by the process of fracking. At present, neither of these recourses seems to be viable. The gas from fracking is not yet available and it is doubtful whether it ever will be available in a significant quantity.

The plans for the French nationalised electricity company to build a massive nuclear power station at Hinckley Point is mired in problems, both of a political and of a technical nature. The project is exorbitantly expensive and it is likely to be affected by considerable delays. We are told that we may have to wait until 2033 to see the commissioning of the power station at Hinckley Point.

The proposals to place our nuclear future in the hands of the Chinese fills many people with grave anxiety. What other recourses are available to us to meet the demand for electricity and for power more generally? It is plausible that we should be able to meet the needs by deploying our own technical resources and by reinvigorating our nuclear industry. With sufficient government support, and possibly in collaboration with the industry of a partner nation, we should be able, within a reasonable period of time, to realise a programme for developing a small modular reactor that can be manufactured in a central location and installed on the sites of existing and defunct nuclear plants. It has also been suggested that, if these reactors were more widely dispersed and located close to centres of population, they could provide district heating via pipelines of up to 30 kilometres in length. This would greatly reduce our reliance on gas for heating, thereby contributing significantly to the process of decarbonisation.

The ability to design and construct small modular reactors within the UK has existed for many decades within Rolls-Royce and its supply chain. Rolls-Royce has produced nearly 100 reactor cores for UK submarines with an outstanding record of safety and performance. These have been conventional pressurised light-water reactors of a tried and tested design. We need to embark upon the development of such a reactor immediately while there is an opportunity to do so in advance of our competitors.

If time were available, I would also talk of the need to embark upon the development of a further generation of reactors capable of disposing of the nuclear waste of the previous and of the current generations of reactors. These would be fast breeders and thorium molten salt reactors. The next speaker might touch on these matters.