Advanced Modular Reactors: Criticality Tests
Viscount Trenchard Excerpts(9 months ago)
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Viscount Trenchard (Con)
My Lords, the noble Viscount makes a very good point. Can my noble friend the Minister explain why Japan’s high-temperature gas-cooled reactor technology, endorsed by my right honourable friend Greg Hands in 2021—which is inherently safe, internationally licensed and has been operating for more than 10 years—has been consigned to the back burner as part of the AMR research, development and demonstration programme? This technology needs to be brought forward into the GDA process now, or it will be too late to make its much-needed contribution to the decarbonisation of industry.
Lord Callanan (Con)
I refer my noble friend to the answer I gave to my noble friend Lady Bloomfield. We have selected high-temperature gas reactors for research and development purposes in the AMR R&D and demonstration programme.
Cleaner Energy Technologies
Viscount Trenchard Excerpts(1 year, 9 months ago)
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Lord Callanan (Con)
We give a value to carbon and use that to inform our policies, not least through the ETS. We have supported a number of early-stage technologies. Offshore wind was extremely expensive when we first started supporting it; now it is very cost-competitive and we are confident that we will end up in the same position on hydrogen.
Viscount Trenchard (Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister agree that the only way even to get close to the net-zero targets is to make major changes to the current energy policies to enable a substantial increase in both the number and speed of deployment of nuclear reactors?
Lord Callanan (Con)
I certainly agree with my noble friend that we need to expand both the potential and the deployment of nuclear reactors, and we are doing just that. We recently passed the Nuclear Energy (Financing) Bill, for which I am grateful for the House’s support. We have invested several hundred million pounds in the new Sizewell plant and are supporting Rolls-Royce to develop the next generation of small modular reactors.