Nuclear Energy

Viscount Trenchard Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford for introducing this most timely debate on nuclear energy. I declare my interest as a member of the advisory board of Penultimate Power UK and as a consultant to Japan Bank for International Cooperation, which is a shareholder in NuScale Power LLC.

I strongly agree with everything my noble friend said in his comprehensive and inspiring introductory speech. It could have been so different, as is so powerfully brought home by the useful 8th report from the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee of another place on delivering nuclear power. From 1955 until 1995, government policy strongly favoured the construction of nuclear power stations: 10 Magnox and seven advanced gas-cooled reactor plants, and one pressurised water reactor plant at Sizewell B, were built. However, only one new reactor has been approved in last 28 years: the 3.2 gigawatt plant at Hinkley Point C.

Today, nuclear power contributes roughly 15% of our electricity needs. That is expected to fall substantially before Hinkley Point C comes online, and the impending retirement of all our other nuclear power stations except Sizewell B means that, even then, the contribution of nuclear power to electricity generation will remain below current levels. I ask the Minister, why do the Government not recognise the need to increase substantially their plans for creating new nuclear capacity in this country beyond their current policy?

It is welcome that the energy security strategy, published in April last year, aims to achieve 24 gigawatts of nuclear capacity by 2050. However, the Government’s net-zero obligations will require an enormous increase in electricity generation as consumers are forced to purchase electric cars and replace their oil and gas-fired heating systems with heat pumps. Whereas today electricity accounts for around 20% of total energy consumption, that is forecast to rise to 40% to 50% by 2050. The Government believe that renewable energy can provide the bulk of this. They speak of nuclear as playing an important back-up role in providing firm baseload power when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine. Unfortunately, that is for much of the time.

The briefing paper produced by the Library contains many useful and relevant facts. However, I believe it is misleading in its contention that the share of electricity generation provided by renewable energy has increased from 3% in 2000 to 42% in 2022. I understand that the 42% figure was maintained for around half an hour on one day in June 2022. Last Thursday, I understand that the contribution from wind was just 4.6%, which illustrates the unpredictable contribution of wind to electricity supply. Furthermore, the use of renewables is also inflated by the fact that they receive grid priority, meaning that the grid will always take electricity from renewable sources ahead of that available from other sources. This distorts the comparative costs, which are already significantly distorted by renewables subsidies and the cost of linking wind and solar facilities to the grid. The intermittency of wind and solar energy illustrates all to clearly the lack of storage facilities for all kinds of energy, and there is no capacity for long-term electricity storage.

The Government acknowledge that intermittent renewable energy requires firm baseload back-up such as nuclear and gas can provide, so why do we not install much more nuclear capacity, which does not have such a need for back-up? We would not need to make over so many thousands of acres to unpopular wind and solar farms, nor ruin Constable’s beautiful Suffolk landscapes and other areas of outstanding natural beauty with even bigger electric pylons and power lines. It is unclear how the Government are going to realise their present target of 24 gigawatts and whether their ambition of one new reactor every year means a 1.6 gigawatt European pressurised reactor—such as the pair being built by EDF at Hinkley Point—or a 3.5 megawatt reactor by the Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation, which has taken over the U-battery project formerly pursued by Urenco.

It is unclear what powers will be available to Great British Nuclear, and what its remit will be, beyond running an SMR competition which is under way. This competition excludes high-temperature gas-cooled reactor technologies, as the UK and the UK alone classifies these as AMRs—advanced modular reactors—with which it brackets all other new technologies that are not light-water reactors, even though they are as ready for commercial development now as any of the technologies now undergoing the SMR competition.

Does the Minister accept that electricity is only part of the problem? There is little chance of achieving net zero without significant decarbonisation of industry; particularly heat required for chemical processes, paper, steel and glass, for example. Several AMRs can provide green industrial-grade heat, as well as power. For example, Japan’s HTGR technology, which JAEA showcased for commercial development at the IAEA conference in Vienna in 2019, is arguably the most flexible and best potential source of industrial heat, energy and hydrogen. The NLL is now working with JAEA on developing a demonstrator by the early 2030s. This could be an exciting new Japanese-British project and would mitigate the disappointment resulting from the collapse of the two other bilateral projects: Hitachi’s Horizon project at Wylfa and Toshiba’s NuGen project at Sellafield Moorside.

However, unless plans and ambitions for this technology, which was originally developed by the UKAEA in Winfrith, Dorset, in 1965, as mentioned by the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, are rapidly and radically developed from the present modest R&D project with the National Nuclear Laboratory, all the available nuclear sites will have gone and we will have missed the opportunity to be Japan’s partner for the rollout in the EMEA region of this extremely versatile and potentially cheap and efficient technology. We need a public-private joint venture consortium to develop this, in short order.

As a first step to try to keep open this exciting possibility, will the Minister discuss with the new Secretary of State whether she will, without delay, ask GBN to start comparing and assessing the leading HTGR technologies against the companies already in the SMR competition? There is no reason for them to be artificially held back and confined to the limited objectives of the AMR competition. The noble Viscount also spoke about the interesting MoltexFLEX reactor, which deserves more attention.

Lastly, I would like to hear the Minister’s comment on the total absence of a level playing field between UK-based applicants to the ONR going through the GDA process and their US competitors. American nuclear consortia are at a huge advantage to their British competitors because the US Government are much more generous, with an element of state funding. Neither does this help for rebuilding a UK skills base.

I apologise for going over my time and look forward to the Minister’s reply.