Select Committee on European Scrutiny Twenty-Ninth Report


9 Decommissioning the Joint Research Centre's nuclear research facilities

(25699)

9818/04

SEC(04) 621

Commission Communication: Decommissioning of nuclear installations and waste management — Nuclear liabilities arising out of activities of the Joint Research Centre (JRC) carried out under the Euratom Treaty

Legal base
DepartmentTrade and Industry
Basis of considerationMinister's letter of 9 July 2004
Previous Committee ReportHC 42-xxv (2003-04), para 3 (30 June 2004)
To be discussed in CouncilNo date set
Committee's assessmentPolitically important
Committee's decisionCleared

Background

9.1 The Commissions Joint Research Centre (JRC) has a number of ageing nuclear research facilities, and its original management policy was one of keeping them in a state of safe conservation (abeyance). However, the Commission considers such an approach to be very costly, and, in a Communication[15] in March 1999, it proposed a long-term action programme under which obsolete installations would be decommissioned. It also proposed that this work should be funded, not by additional resources, but by transferring credits from research and development to a newly-created budget heading.

9.2 At that time, the UK accepted that the decommissioning of obsolete nuclear installations needed to be addressed, but had expressed serious reservations, partly because of the suggestion that money targeted for research should be diverted to cover decommissioning costs, but also because it considered that the Commission had failed to justify its conclusion that decommissioning, rather than maintenance and surveillance, was the cheaper option. However, the document was cleared, after the Government had said that the Research Council was being asked to agree that the Commission should undertake further work to produce a long-term plan, based on an in-depth technical analysis of each site by an independent panel, with a separate budget line being established to fund this work.

9.3 In May 2004, the Commission produced this further Communication. This deals with the implementation of the programme between 1999 and 2003, and sets out an action plan for the longer term, which makes clear the Commission's intention to maintain its original approach, and to decommission all the existing installations. The Communication also makes it clear that the costs of the decommissioning programme have risen sharply since the original evaluation.

9.4 In our Report of 30 June 2004, we noted that the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Science and Innovation at the Department of Trade and Industry (Lord Sainsbury of Turville) had simply said that there was a clear need to decommission obsolete nuclear installations at the JRC sites, and to have decommissioning plans in train for the closure of those installations still in use. He added that the proposals made here appeared to provide an acceptable way forward in dealing with this issue, and that there were no direct financial implications for the UK arising from them. However, to the extent that this approach differed from that taken by the Government previously, we said that we would like to know the reason for this, and also to have an indication whether the UK accepted the significant increase in the estimated cost of the programme, and whether its previous concerns that funds earmarked for research were being diverted to this programme had been addressed satisfactorily.

Minister's letter of 9 July 2004

9.5 We have now received a letter of 9 July from the Minister, in which he says that the UK's attitude to decommissioning is itself more proactive than it was in 1999, exemplified by the proposed establishment of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority on 1 April 2005. He adds that, following on from concerns raised by the UK and others that the original proposals had not been subject to external validation and analysis, the Commission agreed to submit its proposals to a lengthy process of independent evaluation by an international consortium of eleven experts, and that the proposals have been revised to take account of the consortium's advice. He says that the Government feels that the proposals as they now stand, including their cost elements, have been thoroughly examined by these outside experts in a way which meets the spirit of the UK's earlier concerns.

9.6 On the question of cost, the Minister says that, whilst the Government has noted the substantial increase, it is prepared to accept that these costs — which he points out were vetted by the consortium and agreed by the JRC's Board of Governors — can be justified, not least because of increasingly stringent national requirements in the countries where the reactors in question are located. He also points out that, as the UK requested in 1999, the bulk of the funding for this activity is now from a specific dedicated budget line, rather than out of under-spends in the Framework Programme for Research, though a small element of funding for decommissioning activity is included in the Sixth Framework Programme's budget for Euratom actions carried out at the JRC which amounts to €290 million for the years 2003-06. He says that this arrangement was accepted with considerable reluctance by the Council and European Parliament when that Programme was agreed, and that the intention is that in future all decommissioning expenditure should be completely separated from JRC research budgets.

Conclusion

9.7 We are grateful to the Minister for this further information, and now clear the document.





15   (20239) 8245/99; see HC 34-xxvii (1998-99), para 5 (21 July 1999), HC 23-ii (1999-2000), para 11 (1 December 1999) and HC 23-x (1999-2000), para 7 (1 March 2000). Back


 
previous page contents next page

House of Commons home page Parliament home page House of Lords home page search page enquiries index

© Parliamentary copyright 2004
Prepared 29 July 2004