You are here: Parliament home page > Parliamentary business > Publications and Records > Committee Publications > All Select Committee Publications > Commons Select Committees > Scottish Affairs > Scottish Affairs

UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 259-i

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

Scottish Affairs Committee

 

 

implications for grangemouth of bp's plans for its petrochemicals business

 

 

Wednesday 19 January 2005

MR NORMAN HARRISON, MR SANDY McWHIRTER,

MR MARC MURRAY and MS BETH TAYLOR

Evidence heard in Public Questions 1- 55

 

 

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

1.

This is an uncorrected and unpublished transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House

 

2.

The transcript is not yet an approved formal record of these proceedings. Any public use of, or reference to the contents should make clear that neither Members nor witnesses have had the opportunity to correct the record. If in doubt as to the propriety of using the transcript, please contact the Clerk to the Committee.

 

3.

Members who receive this for the purpose of correcting questions addressed by them to witnesses are asked to send corrections to the Committee Assistant.

 

4.

Prospective witnesses may receive this in preparation for any written or oral evidence they may in due course give to the Committee.

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Scottish Affairs Committee

on Wednesday 19 January 2005

Members present

Mrs Irene Adams, in the Chair

Mr Alistair Carmichael

David Hamilton

Mr John MacDougall

Ann McKechin

John Robertson

Mr Mohammad Sarwar

Mr Michael Weir

 

________________

Memorandum submitted by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority

 

Examination of Witnesses

 

Witnesses: Mr Norman Harrison, Director, Mr Sandy McWhirter, Head of Programmes, Mr Marc Murray, Technical Assistant to the Director, UKAEA Dounreay; Ms Beth Taylor, Head of Corporate Communication, UKAEA (Harwell), examined.

Q1 Chairman: Good afternoon. I am sorry to have kept you a few minutes; that is just that we had a division at four we had to wait then to see if there was a second one. Mr Harrison, could I welcome you and your colleagues to the first public evidence session on our inquiry into meeting Scotland's future energy needs, which has arisen in part from the useful and informative visit we paid to Dounreay in November last year. For the record could I invite you to introduce your team to the Committee.

Mr Harrison: Yes, indeed. Thank you very much, Madam Chairman. I will introduce myself first. My name is Norman Harrison, and I am the Director of the Dounreay Division of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority. If I can introduce my team - Sandy ---

Mr McWhirter: I am Sandy McWhirter. I am the Dounreay Programme Manager responsible to Norman as Director.

Ms Taylor: I am Beth Taylor. I am Head of Communications for UKAEA.

Mr Murray: I am Marc Murray. I am the Technical Assistant to the Dounreay Director.

Q2 Chairman: Before we start the detailed questioning do you have anything you would like to say by way of an introduction?

Mr Harrison: Yes, indeed, Madam Chairman, I have a brief introduction I would like to make, if I may. Really the UKAEA today has two main roles. Our main task is the decommissioning, restoration and regeneration of our former nuclear sites. In Scotland that is at Dounreay, and in England at Harwell, Winfrith, and Windscale in West Cumbria. We are also responsible for the UK's fusion research programme. Decommissioning a site like Dounreay is a complex and technically challenging task, and we have a dedicated and highly skilled workforce in Caithness to do that. I am very pleased - and Madam Chairman made reference - that some members of the Committee have had the opportunity to see for themselves the work that is going on there, and I thank you for your comments about that. As a small aside I would be very pleased to welcome those of you who were not able to come on that occasion to visit the site at Dounreay, clearly at your convenience, and as another slight challenge try and avoid Januaries - the wind and the snow makes life a little difficult for travellers. At Dounreay we have a 30-year programme of work ahead of us, but completing that programme will mark the end of a major source of employment and economic input for the far north of Scotland. We recognise this as a real concern to our local community. We live in that community, and actually it is a great place to live, Caithness. We are committed to that community. We are working with community organisations to identify and support developments that will provide opportunities for growth as the decommissioning effort at Dounreay winds down. We hope very much that we can be helpful to the Committee in looking at those aspects of your inquiry and at some of the waste management issues which need to be resolved for the successful completion of our site restoration programmes. We also hope that the Committee will recognise that there are some areas - and the example in my mind is the future electrical generating mix - where the UKAEA as a company does not have a particular role to play and we may not be able in that particular area to contribute a great deal to your thinking. Thank you.

Q3 Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr Harrison. In 2000 the Dounreay site restoration plan envisaged restoration taking 60 years at a cost of £4 billion. However, in 2004 it was announced that decommissioning would be completed by 2036 at a cost of £2.7 billion. These are very different forecasts. Why is there such a difference? Were the original forecasts very wildly inaccurate? Is decommissioning more straightforward than you first thought, or have your staff simply become more proficient in what they actually do in the job?

Mr Harrison: Thank you for the question. Sandy, do you want to field the question?

Mr McWhirter: Yes, certainly. We are not comparing like with like. The original decommissioning forecast for the Dounreay site took the site from its state in the year 2000 right the way through to full decommissioning. However, as you will probably gather in your second question associated with waste management, there is no long-term strategy for the long-term management of intermediate-level waste, so the plan that we published this year is an interim state for the Dounreay site where the intermediate-level wastes arising from the decommissioning would be stored on the site pending the availability of such a national strategy. That was the first thing. The second thing is no, I do not think decommissioning has become any easier; and, yes, we have got an awful lot better at doing it. What we have done is found better and more cost-effective ways of carrying out the decommissioning, and what that has enabled us to do is to bring scope forward into the earlier years. The effect of that is to reduce the cost and reduce the timescale for decommissioning individual facilities, and a very large percentage of that significant saving that we have made is associated with what we call hotel costs, because as long as it exists, it needs to be maintained, it needs to be kept wind- and weather-tight, and in some cases it requires security cover. Whenever you have knocked it down, it does not need that. So it is one of these situations where more gains you more.

Chairman: In the light of that could we look at future job prospects. Ann McKechin.

Q4 Ann McKechin: Mr Harrison, we were commenting about the fact that the actual timescale has now dropped by almost 30 years, and in the original timescale of 2063 even your youngest apprentice would have had a job for life, whereas now nobody under the age of 30 can be confident about their future job prospects. I just wonder if you might like to comment about the job implications.

Mr Harrison: Yes, thank you. The reality of the work that we are carrying out at Dounreay is to decommission the complex reactors and research facilities at Dounreay and then demolish the associated buildings; so by definition we are not looking at an ongoing business. In terms of value to the taxpayer and - I will come on to it later - the skills that we are employing of staff there, the drive for the site restoration at Dounreay is to look to accelerate that programme, enhancing the skills of our staff as we do that, and saving, as from the previous questions, considerable amounts of taxpayers' money. In terms of the employment position, the actuality is that the bulk of the work to decommission the site, previously on the 2063 programme and continuing on the 2036 programme, would be to do the bulk of the work in the next 20 years. The 2063 DSRP programme had a very long tail-off to 2063, while the present programme has a much sharper tail-off to 2036. So, yes, the rundown in employment has been accelerated, but the basic shape of that rundown - i.e. the rundown after the next 20 years - is actually the real change in that. In terms of employment at the site - and I think members who had the opportunity to read our submission will have seen the graphic representation of the rundown - that shows at high level in that form what the rundown is. We employ in round figures about 1200 UKAEA staff on the site at Dounreay, and you can see a rundown of some 200 numbers over the next four or five years, with then a stable plateau of employment, and after that a continuing rundown. We employ, in round figures again, about 1500 long-term contractors on the site, and the rundown of contract labour will follow a very similar profile.

Q5 Ann McKechin: You are still taking on apprentices at Dounreay - we saw that when we were on the site. Are you finding that young people are less enthusiastic about starting apprenticeships or their careers at Dounreay because of the fact that perhaps in 20 years' time there is not going to be that facility there?

Mr Harrison: I have not seen any reduction in enthusiasm; in fact a continuing level of enthusiasm; and in no way as a trite response, there are not many industries that can predict continuation of employment for the next 20 years. Because of the geographic issues and the relative remoteness of Caithness and Sutherland I have to make sure that that is not a trite comment, because in other areas there are other industries to redeploy the skilled workforce. We have made an absolute commitment to recruitment of apprentices and a continuing recruitment process with graduates, and that, I think, for the length of time, firstly, that we need to decommission Dounreay and the level of skills, which is a very challenging and skilful process, that is the appropriate thing to do. That probably leads us in to other areas and perhaps other questions to come yet, how we might contribute to the skill base in Caithness and North Sutherland post-Dounreay. I do not know if my colleagues want to add any more to that.

Mr McWhirter: I think I would do. The point about apprentices is a very, very important one to us. The craft apprentices that we take on - about five per annum - are serving recognised craft apprenticeships which are recognised by the respective trade unions across the country, so the skills that these youngsters are developing are not in any way specific to Dounreay. There are mechanics, they are electricians, they are mechanical fitters, and those skills are applicable anywhere. Just to support entirely what Norman says, I do not actually remember the numbers, but I was responsible for some of the recruitment of the apprentices in the last couple of years, and one of the major challenges we had was reducing the applicant list to a sensible size. So there has been no diminution of interest in taking these positions up.

Q6 Ann McKechin: In the memorandum obviously you point out just how vital Dounreay is to the economy of Caithness, but you also point out that you are not the only major employer in the area. For the benefit of the Committee could you just remind us what other types of employment are currently available in the area, apart from the site.

Mr Harrison: There is a manufacturing company, Norfrost, who are based in one of the smaller satellite towns away from Thurso, and - somebody correct me - they manufacture refrigeration units, and they employ of the order of 350 people. There is a specialist battery factory based in Thurso which employs of the order of 200 people; there is a call centre managed by British Telecom, once again of the order of 100 people. Beyond that we have a number of engineering contract firms which are not exclusively but heavily reliant upon Dounreay, and give it a tremendous service, actually. We are talking I think of low hundreds in terms of employment - Sandy?

Mr McWhirter: You are right.

Mr Harrison: The rest of employment is dispersed in agricultural and small business units.

Mr McWhirter: I think it is perhaps worthwhile pointing out the adjacent nuclear facility at Vulcan, which is the Royal Navy's reactor test establishment to support its submarine fleet, which is quite a significant employer, and the nearest thing there is to Dounreay-type of employment.

Ms Taylor: I did just want to mention - again it is relatively small numbers, but to me it seems like something that could be the kicking-off point for a different sort of employment - that we actually have our pensions office, which supports not just current UKAEA pensioners but about 40,000 people altogether who have previously been associated with UKAEA. That is based in Thurso. It has a fantastic record as a pensions deliverer. It did get the go-ahead under the Energy Act last year to bid for, for example, the NDA pension and other public service pensions, and we would love it if that was an opportunity of diversifying the kind of employment available.

Q7 Mr Carmichael: I am interested in this question of what happens when you get to the stage further down the line. If I can maybe just explain the way my mind is working, we are told in the North Sea, for example, in the offshore oil and gas industry, that we have now a critical mass of expertise in the North-East, but even when there is not the same level of exploration and production in the North Sea you will have a base there of expertise that is exportable. The work that you are doing at Dounreay really is leading the world, I suppose, in many ways. You are the first to do it. Is there going to be the same opportunity for yourselves and for other contractors when you have that body of experience which nobody else will have to the same degree, to sell that to other parts of the world and other parts of the country, albeit you could still be doing it from Caithness?

Mr Harrison: Sandy - again I am relying on your information there.

Mr McWhirter: I think it is worthwhile pointing out that between the 1950s and the 1990s Dounreay was where it was happening in the nuclear industry. It was at that time the cutting edge of nuclear technology. Anyone who was in research and development in the nuclear industry wanted to be associated with that project; it led the world. Whereas Dounreay today, Dounreay is at the cutting edge of nuclear technology; it is back where it always was. The only thing that is significantly different is the nature of nuclear research at the moment. It is now in the decommissioning mode, and as you rightly point out - I would not be so immodest as to suggest that we are leading the world, but we are certainly up there with the best, and that has attracted a tremendous amount of interest globally.

Mr Murray: Can I just say a couple of things on that. We are working very heavily with the Caithness and Sutherland Enterprise - CASE - to help Caithness become a centre of excellence for decommissioning, and we have undertaken a number of key initiatives to try and boost that image. We became the anchor tenant with the Forss Science & Technology Park, which is a £6 million investment in the private sector. We have structured out tendering process to help allow local companies to compete with international firms on Dounreay decommissioning contracts to allow them to gain that experience and bid elsewhere internationally. There is one factor, for example, the JGC - the alliance who are bidding with an international consortium in America to decommission some American facilities. We have also been heavily involved in the success of the test and trials facility at Janetstown, which was a catalyst for a £7 million investment at Caithness and Sutherland Enterprise, and we are actively promoting nuclear decommissioning opportunities to businesses throughout Scotland, with TTI and the Highlands & Islands Enterprise and Scottish Enterprise, to exploit the synergy of skills between nuclear, oil and gas and the renewables industry sector, alongside the nuclear sector.

Mr Harrison: One of the points where I would add to that, and it in many ways may sound slightly contradictory, in as much as our endeavours to accelerate the timescales and reduced the costs of the decommissioning effort required at Dounreay, is that it actually enhances the marketability of our workforce in terms of the clear high profile for the skills that they are employing, and makes them a far more marketable entity.

Q8 Mr Carmichael: So the future for Dounreay is exporting expertise rather than importing waste?

Mr Harrison: That is a good question. Exporting expertise, making use of the expertise, exporting it as opportunities would arise. In terms of your question of importing waste, that issue sits around the deliberations of the Committee for Radioactive Waste Management.

Ms Taylor: I think it is probably just worth saying, though, there is absolutely no intention of importing waste into Dounreay.

Q9 John Robertson: Mr Harrison, in your submission you stated that that "As required by its forthcoming contract with the NDA in April, UKAEA is currently working on the development of a Dounreay socio-economic plan to assess the effect of its newly accelerated decommissioning strategy". However, you are involved already in a number of socio-economic initiatives, some in support of the Caithness and Sutherland Enterprise. Could you summarise the efforts UKAEA are making in helping alleviate what will be a major problem?

Mr Harrison: I am good at passing this around. Sandy again, please.

Mr McWhirter: It is a requirement under the Energy Act that the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority should give appropriate heed to socio-economic impacts of its operations, and the NDA has in turn quite rightly required the incumbent licence holders -in our case UKAEA - to come forward with annual socio-economic plans. We are quite fortunate at Dounreay because we were already very proactive in this area, and indeed we commissioned the production of our socio-economic baseline, which was published in June 2004, and that looked forward to the economic prospects as then perceived to the year 2016, so we have already carried out that baseline work proactively before the Energy Bill was even passed. So that baseline is available. The UKAEA is a non-departmental public body, and we are effectively owned, as you will probably be aware, by the shareholder executive. We have plans that we are producing at the moment for the structure and business arrangements for the UKAEA post-1 April, and those plans have been exposed to our shareholder executive, and they are under consideration, so some of the business plan initiatives that we have are yet to be approved, and indeed some of them have not yet been seen by the shareholder executive, so it would clearly would be inappropriate for me to make any formal commitment. However, I think it might be an idea to give you some idea of the kinds of things we are looking at. There is Professor John Fyfe, who is a renowned expert in dealing with communities that have been adversely impacted upon by the closure of local industries, and specifically the coal industry. We have engaged his services in support of the efforts of the Caithness and Sutherland Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise to help them in that area. Our position is not quite as dire as the situation that John Fyfe has walked down in the past. Most of these industries are given notice of probably a year or even less of the closure of the major employer in the area. In the case of UKAEA, instead of having a cliff edge of a year, we have a gradual rundown over a period of about 30 years, so it is a bit less challenging. Nonetheless, Professor Fyfe will be supporting the Caithness and Sutherland Enterprise. The kinds of areas that we would hope to be able to work in as a company post-1 April would obviously be in managing our existing site. There is also work that I think Marc alluded to, in using our decommissioning skills in non-nuclear decommissioning - petrochemicals is a good example, where many of the skills are very similar. Of course those initiatives can be carried out in Caithness and Sutherland in Scotland, in the UK and indeed elsewhere. So that perhaps, I hope, gives you some idea of the scope of the initiatives that we are looking at in an effort to replace the work at Dounreay.

Q10 John Robertson: That is quite interesting, but I am interested more in the kind of work you are doing with the Caithness and Sutherland Enterprise and the Highlands and Islands Enterprise, because you have already cut back the amount of time you are going to take to decommission, as we have already said earlier, and my fear is that because these businesses locally are thinking "I've got 30 years' worth of work" they are not looking at it with any kind of urgency. What are you doing to make sure that everybody in the areas knows that, while it might be 30 years today, it might be 20 years tomorrow?

Mr McWhirter: That is a very good question. I would have to say that UKAEA has only recently embarked upon this kind of endeavour. In the past they have been the nuclear operator or research and development establishment, and nuclear decommissioning establishment. It is only very recently that we have had a requirement to go through the socio-economic planning cycle. Nonetheless, as a responsible employer we have been trying to minimise the impacts of our operations over the years. I actually have a meeting with the chief executive of Caithness and Sutherland Enterprise on Friday to begin this process, because it is very new, and I would not wish to deceive you into thinking that we are significantly advanced in our thinking. This is the first year of the plan, and we are going at it in a responsible, measured way. Our view is that we would be better to ask Caithness and Sutherland Enterprise how we might best work, rather than to proactively do it ourselves.

Mr Harrison: There is another point, and it is more of a general point. I think the stimulus of our looking at accelerating the decommissioning programme, reducing the costs, it has been, for organisations like the Caithness and Sutherland Enterprise, an enormous wake-up call. That is not a derogatory comment about them, it is a stimulus to say we have raised the profile of this issue; the timescales are still on our side to look and develop ongoing employment in the area - so that is my overview take on it. It is an alert call to the whole area.

Q11 John Robertson: It is a very good point, and it is well made, and hopefully you will look at these things, but will you keep the Select Committee informed of any work that you do?

Mr Harrison: Yes, absolutely.

Chairman: Thank you very much.

Q12 Mr Weir: Just to follow up on that, you mention in your submission on page 4 that it is expected that competition will be introduced for the management of the Dounreay site in the next five years. Given that decommissioning is by its very nature a long-term thing, can you tell us first of all what the effects of the contract with the NDA coming into effect on 1 April are likely to be, and also the opening up of competition; and if there is a contract for the management of the site within the next five years, how long is that contract liable to be? Is whoever gets the contract likely to be there for the full spate of the 30-year decommissioning programme or are we going to have a series of operators and lack of continuity in this programme?

Mr Harrison: That is a very interesting question. Do you want to go first, Beth?

Ms Taylor: I do not think I am going to be terribly helpful on this, because I think the answer is that we do not know, and we wish we did. In a way this is all to be determined by the NDA, which is only just in the process really of informing itself at the moment. Certainly there are negotiations going on at the moment for the length of the first contract, and although I do not think anyone has signed and sealed on the dotted line, we are looking at just a few short years, basically, for that contract. After that I think we would only be guessing, if we talked about contracts.

Q13 Mr Weir: Is it fair to say that the uncertainty about the length of contract is obviously going to feed into any plans you have with Caithness and Sutherland Enterprise for future projects? You are going to be looking at the relatively short time span of the contract you have, rather than over a 30-year period.

Mr Harrison: I think there are a number of parts to that response. Dounreay this year will be celebrating its 50th year of being, and that represents enormous continuity for the UKAEA in terms of its relationship with the community in Caithness and North Sutherland. The next part that has occurred to me - I would say this, wouldn't I? - I have every intent that the UKAEA will continue long term in that relationship. That leads back then to a question about length of contract and future competition, and certainly what we as a company are doing, we are gearing up and looking very closely - and the gearing up is reflected in accelerating the programme, the reducing of costs, some of our breakthrough thinking that we are carrying out as a company. I think that reflects our determination to continue and prove our worth both at Dounreay and at other sites and, if you like, in layman's terms, do the best possible job we can in selling our competence and commitment to the NDA, with the real intent that we will see out that decommissioning programme right to the closure point of the programme.

Q14 Mr Weir: Do you not accept that by nature, if you are working a short-term contract - there is a fundamental difference with the NDA and a short-term contract than there is in a state monopoly, as has existed with UKAEA until fairly recently, and that is going to impact on how you look at things for the future?

Mr McWhirter: I do not actually think that is likely to be to much of a problem. I would respond in the following way. A very significant proportion of the money that we spend at Dounreay is spent with contractors, and many of the jobs that we will be kicking off during the currency of what we expect to be our contract duration will themselves last for many years - major construction jobs such as a new waste management and treatment facility, which will take several years. So those jobs, once the UKAEA on behalf of the NDA has contractually committed, will go ahead. The second thing - and this is subject to ongoing discussion and structuring of the organisations - there will be a site licensee company which will be responsible for the safe operation of the site, and that company we would expect to have a degree of constancy throughout the programme that Norman has referred to, irrespective of who wins the managing contract. So the number of people who would be likely to be impacted upon by a change in top management would be relatively small.

Chairman: Thank you very much. Alistair?

Q15 Mr Carmichael: You can hardly be happy about a situation where you have a contract starting on 1 April, and you do not know yet what the terms of it are going to be.

Mr Harrison: For the first contract - and the contract has been referred to the 'dowry' contract - although we do not have an absolutely clear picture, our understanding is that it will be a high probability of being a two year contract with the option on a performance basis to extend for a further year. So the high probability is that it is going to be two-plus-one years for the first contract - which will be allocated to ourselves as the present incumbent of the site.

Q16 Mr Carmichael: But ten weeks out from the starting date of that contract you still do not know that for certain.

Mr Harrison: The contract is not signed, that is why I am not saying --

Q17 Mr Carmichael: Forgive me - 'contract' also suggests an agreement. If something as basic as this is not yet confirmed, your view seems to be to take it or leave it.

Ms Taylor: We do know for certain that we will be the people who hold this contract; that has always been clear from day one. We do have an agreed work plan for the first year, and to a lesser degree of definition for the second year as well, so I do not think there will be a kind of vacuum on 1 April; but it is certainly true that the final details are still up for grabs.

Q18 Mr Sarwar: How successful have you been in finding alternative employment for your current workers in the Caithness area and other parts of Scotland?

Mr Harrison: I was just mentally moving around the question, because certainly our immediate workforce is fully committed to the decommissioning effort at Dounreay. I was just thinking whether - Beth?

Ms Taylor: It is not really other parts of Scotland. I wonder if we could talk about other parts of England, because we do have these two southern sites - Harwell, and Winfrith in Dorset - which are much more advanced in the decommissioning process, so the number of people who work for us now at those sites is trivial compared to what it used to be when we were a big research organisation. We have actually been quite successful, I think, in that as we pulled back the decommissioning work and cleaned up the site we have been quite successful in turning these two sites into science and technology parks, so we are now back up to about two-thirds the same number of people who were employed by us at the height of our research programme are now working on those sites but they are not working for us; they are working for new companies like QinetiQ, like Ingensis, I think it is called, who have come on to our sites to use the facilities that are available to use, the land that is available. That has been a real success story. We know it is going to be much more challenging in Dounreay for all sorts of reasons, but to me that just says it is possible to have left (?) after a nuclear site.

Q19 Mr Sarwar: Do you have any plans for the people who are going to lose jobs, how to find jobs for them?

Mr Harrison: Certainly within the developing business plan of the UKAEA we have real aspirations to take on new business, and we would look within our existing skill base for redeploying staff from both Dounreay and our southern division sites. That is still in the future, and the plan is still in a fluid development.

Mr McWhirter: Can I just support that a little bit too. What Norman says is obviously right. The situation we find ourselves in is not without precedent, although it is a little bit different. Some years ago a whole section of the UKAEA workforce was devolved into what was then AEA Technology, and that was very successfully floated off, demonstrating that there are skills available in these nuclear establishments that have market interest. Indeed, the battery factory that Norman referred to there is a success, principally because of technology that was developed by these people who were employed at Dounreay and at our southern sites; so there are certainly precedents there. The last thing I would say on this subject is we are blessed in Caithness by the existence of a tremendous communications infrastructure. I do not mean roads and rails when I say that; I mean computer communications. Much to my chagrin at the time a hole was dug all the way up the A9, and into that has been put a very large number of high bandwidth fibreoptic cables. One of the characteristics of the workforce that you will see on page five of our submission is that a high percentage of them are professional staff, so there is clearly the opportunity to take on consultancy work there. With these high bandwidth communications there is no need, or less need, for the staff to actually go to the customer; consultancy is something that can be delivered over fibreoptic links. So it is not exactly the same thing, but not without precedent.

Q20 Mr Sarwar: Presumably most of your employees live in Thurso, which is too far away from any major centre of employment? Once Dounreay is decommissioned, of course these people will move away to find jobs in other parts of Scotland and the United Kingdom. Do you not think that Thurso will become little more than a ghost town?

Mr McWhirter: I think if we did nothing that would certainly be the case, but as I think we have demonstrated in the statements we have made on the socio-economic development plan, we plan to work with both the local enterprise agencies to ensure that that does not happen.

Mr Harrison: I do not think this is a direct answer to your question, but painting the picture of a society in Caithness and North Sutherland, there is a culture that a number of people work on the oil and gas rig industry, and they are itinerant, working away from home and then returning home for fixed periods. That in my mind is not an ideal situation for any area of society, but it does reflect the flexibility and tenacity and the skills of the population there to take on additional work and take it on an itinerant nature if necessary. That does not answer your question, but it is just painting a bit more of the picture.

Q21 Mr Sarwar: When members of this Committee visited Dounreay they were told that the famous fast reactor sphere would not be dismantled but retained, possibly as a science exhibition or education centre. Is this still the intention? If so, how many jobs do you think such a centre might provide?

Ms Taylor: I would just like to just mention the Caithness Horizons project, which is linked to this, and this is where we decided about two or three years ago that rather than invest money in refurbishing our rather elderly visitor centre next door to the site we would put money into a partnership with the town council and the Heritage Society, and we hope there are other people like the Scottish National Heritage that will join us eventually, but we are the core three partners, to refurbish Thurso town hall and create there a real high quality visitor centre, which is about a lot more than Dounreay but would include the Dounreay story, that hopefully could be the start of building more on the tourist potential of Caithness. Lots of people will tell you that Caithness has just as many natural and archaeological attractions as Orkney, and yet if you look at what the Orcadians have managed to do compared with what Caithness has done, then they are owed a huge compliment. It would be so lovely if - it needs more than just this project, but we do hope that this project could be a kicking-off point for a tourist industry in Caithness.

Mr Harrison: It is actually a great compliment to Orkney, the way they have organised the tourist attractions, but this is not point scoring; there are more archaeological sites in Caithness than any other county in the UK, it is just that a lot of them are not terribly accessible, and this is certainly not a developed tourist industry.

Chairman: I am sure Alistair Carmichael is not going to bite --

Mr Carmichael: You will bear in mind the importance of quality as opposed to quantity.

Chairman: I was wrong. He did bite. Did you want to come back on this, Ann McKechin?

Q22 Ann McKechin: Yes. Since we have asked for evidence we have actually had quite a large number of submissions that have come in from the Caithness area, including the Dounreay Action Group, and they perhaps seem to be a little more sceptical about the proposals for alternative employment and economic development. A number of them, their argument is that there is an argument for Dounreay to be established as a fully serviced and licensed nuclear site and for a new nuclear energy site to be created in the UK with Dounreay being foremost because of the skills and experience which have already accumulated over the years. I appreciate that obviously you are not responsible in any way for commissioning of nuclear energy units or for the policy in this regard, but clearly it is a subject of concern in the local area, and clearly there seems to be perhaps some level of support. I do not know if you want to comment on how you think that is, and whether you would want to have a nuclear energy plant on the site, and whether or not that is feasible.

Mr Harrison: I think I gave some high-level views and, as you rightly pointed out, the UKAEA. our focus at Dounreay is the environmental restoration of the site, and our business has no input to the debate about future nuclear generation or indeed the building of one. But as a personal opinion it is beyond doubt that the skills both to construct and commission a modern nuclear power plant undoubtedly exist in Dounreay, and certainly if such a programme were to exist I am sure it would be seriously considered. I emphasise that that is a personal view. I do not know whether my colleagues want to add anything to that?

Mr McWhirter: I think we all have very personal views, and there is a theory that says if you lock ten nuclear engineers in a room for more than four hours you will end up with ten separate reactor systems being designed, and they will all be different, and they will be different to anything else that has ever been invented. I think we have to look at the Dounreay site and see what it is. It never was a nuclear power station. Some of the infrastructure that is there may well be able to support a nuclear programme, but it would need to be modified very significantly. What I am perhaps more excited about would be the skill sets that we have in our workforce, because we are having some difficulty at the moment, as you can probably gather, with the costs associated with nuclear decommissioning. You may ask why that is the case, and the answer is very simple: that is that the plants that were designed in the 1950s and 1960s were designed to operate; they were never, ever designed to be decommissioned. We now know how difficult it is to know what the tricks of the trade are. The number of times that people say "Gosh, if only they had!" - and we know now what they ought to do. My view is that if the UKAEA has any role whatsoever to play in the renaissance of nuclear power it would be to feed in the expertise that we are now gaining in decommissioning in order to have a solution for the design of the new build.

Chairman: Can we move on now and look at the management of radioactive waste. David Hamilton?

Q23 David Hamilton: Chair, I am not going to continue the debate about nuclear energy, because that would take us to the $20,000 question - or I should have said the $20 billion question - so I am not going down that road. In your paper - I think it was page eight - you indicate three types of radioactive waste produced at Dounreay: exempt, low level, intermediate level. Can you explain to us in more detail how low-level and intermediate-level waste are currently being managed and disposed of? I take the view that the vast majority of the public out there, like many of the politicians, do not distinguish between all the different parts of nuclear. I think this is a most important area, and I would like to get some clarity in relation to that part of it.

Mr Harrison: I can go down the areas in turn, really. When we are talking about low-level waste, certainly we are producing - we have in the past and we will be as we decommission the site - large volumes of low-level waste. I have some figures here: 33,000 cubic metres of low-level waste have been disposed of historically. The historical disposal route for low-level waste was in the form of pits excavated and constructed on the site, running through the teens of years of our disposal of low-level waste on the site. Those pits - there were in fact six in total - are now full, and those pits have now been sealed over. Our next approach, as we produce new volumes of low-level waste, is we are looking to establish an approved route to transfer volumes of that low-level waste to the repository at Drigg in West Cumbria, as one route for disposal of waste. Secondly, we are entering into and progressing through a process - more initials, I am afraid - BPEO - the best environmental option - for disposal of low-level waste. One of the significant options that we are considering is on the site of Dounreay, for disposal of Dounreay low-level waste, we are looking to establish a further depository where it can be stored in what would be potentially a retrievable manner. It would be stored in underground storage areas, so that is a very high-level view of our approach to low-level waste. One area that is very important in this business that we are in of environmental restoration - it is a curious business that produced waste - and it is very important both environmentally and managerially in terms of the cost that this waste is streamed appropriately. What we have at Dounreay and we have expertise elsewhere in the company is the expert knowledge on how best to stream this waste. You can appreciate that if a large container of material was categorised as low-level waste, if in fact half of that is exempt waste which can be disposed of in a normal licensed manner into normal landfill, the cost of that exempt disposal is considerably less as opposed to disposal of low-level waste. So it makes damned good environmental sense to put great effort into the streaming of this waste, and extremely good cost sense in saving money again for the taxpayer. That represents a big managerial effort for the site to correctly and appropriately produce these waste streams. Beth, do you want to give any more detail on the LLW BPEO before I move on to ILW?

Ms Taylor: Yes, if this is of interest. It is one thing which we were very proud of, actually, that we went through this. The point of this Best Practical Environmental Options process is really to compare apples and pears, as I understand it: you have to balance costs and things like transport against any impact on the environment on the volume of waste you produce, and the only way to do that is to weigh all these different impacts according to how people feel about them. So although Norman and his experts I trust to tell me what those impact are, we or they do not have any better handle on what the best balance between the different attributes might be, so it is really important to get people, get the public, involved in that, really. We did go through a process with the low-level waste BPEO where we had a number of different panels of stakeholders who all sat down, took a day, went through this, evaluated where they felt the right balance ought to be, and they then wrote this up and put it out into the public domain for comments from other people. For us, this is not something we have been used to doing, and we are quite proud at what we have done with it. That is the BPEO which we hope will be published, I think, next month now.

Mr Harrison: Yes. In the area of ILW in terms of the long-term solution a committee, which you will be familiar with - the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM) - the long-term solution sits with them, and they will be making recommendations to ministers next year in 2006. But the issue for myself and my team at Dounreay is that we are producing intermediate-level waste - ILW - at the site as we decommission. Our job is to get this ILW waste into a stable form that makes it safe for long-term storage or disposal. A typical example would be in a purpose-built stainless steel drum, if it is a liquid-based ILW. We mix it in a chemical process, but essentially mix it with cement and make it into a solid mass where it is stable, it is contained within the drum, and in the right storage facilities, it is then in a stable manner and can be stored for a long period. Our plans show a small number of secure stores on the site, designed - it is a sort of civil engineering question this, how long does a concrete structure - how long is the integrity worth? - but we have said we will target 100 years for these ILW waste stores with the sound and reasoned view that the recommendations next year from the Committee for Radioactive Waste Management will be such that on a national basis decisions can be made, structures built, et cetera, et cetera, for the national solution to the ILW waste.

Q24 David Hamilton: When is that report scheduled for next year? When is that report scheduled to be brought forward? You said 2006.

Mr Harrison: 2006, yes.

Q25 David Hamilton: The early part of 2006?

Mr Harrison: That is a good question.

Q26 David Hamilton: The reason for asking, Chairman, is that when the nuclear debate is taking place this to me is a key element. It is not just about whether they build power stations or whatever; it is about how they dispose. If you answered that question, that is why the report I think is very important, and that question deserves to be brought back - that would actually assist many politicians.

Mr Harrison: I think we can come back to you with the exact date of that.

Ms Taylor: It is an issue for CoRWM, actually, and I do not know whether you are taking evidence from them as well; but we could certainly come back with more information.

Chairman: Do you want to come in on this, Mike?

Q27 Mr Weir: You were saying that they will be reporting next year, but as I take it at the moment there is no long-term strategy for getting rid of intermediate-level waste. One of the things when we visited Dounreay that concerned us was evidence of what had been chucked in the shaft, if I can put it that way, over the years, and leakage of intermediate-level radiation, if we understood it correctly, from that shaft. How can you reassure the Committee that irrespective of what CoRWM is going to come up with next year, that the leakages from the Dounreay shaft will be stopped and there will be no recurrence of that?

Mr McWhirter: I hope I have some good news for you here. The Dounreay shaft contains intermediate-level waste - that is true. The rock in the vicinity of the Dounreay shaft is extremely impermeable; water does not flow through the rock. It does, however, flow through the very thin fissures between the Caithness slabs, and that results in a very, very small quantity of radioactivity ending up in the environment. By the time, of course, it reaches the environment it is so dilute that it is no longer intermediate-level waste, it is low-level waste. Nonetheless UKAEA recognises that the shaft is an inappropriate disposal facility, and before we can remove the material that is in there it is necessary to stop water getting into the shaft. We have in the past looked at a number of geological methods to stop water getting in, and we have now fixed on a new technology involving high-pressure grout into the area, and we have a project underway now, two years ahead of programme, to inject a grout curtain around the shaft to prevent it leaking. The effect of that in fact is to remove the principal hazard which is posed by the shaft, which is a hazard to the environment rather than a hazard to anyone in the immediate vicinity. So the answer there is to stop the water getting into the shaft, that stops the water getting back out, by using technology that is now available. That actually has a very, very good impact on the environment. At the moment we remove in the order of 20 cubic metres of water per day from the Dounreay shaft. This is filtered, processed as appropriate, and discharged to the sea. Once we isolate the shaft from the environment, even that modest amount of radioactivity will not reach the sea, so the shaft will be rendered relatively benign until we get the material out of there.

Q28 Mr Weir: Do you still intend to remove the material from the shaft?

Mr McWhirter: Yes.

Q29 Mr Weir: How long is that likely to take?

Mr McWhirter: The reference strategy shows a programme of about seven years, however there are many unknowns associated with the Dounreay shaft. I think it is important that Members of your Committee should realise how the hazards associated with some of these plants change over a period of time. As you rightly pointed out and observed in your question, the current problem with the Dounreay shaft is an environmental one. Once we isolate the shaft from the environment then that problem has gone away. When we start to remove the material from the Dounreay shaft, the hazard then moves away from the environment for the people who operate the removal equipment and, more specifically, those who maintain it. We have a duty of care to use the ALARP principle - as low as reasonably practicable - to minimise the radiation levels et cetera that people are exposed to by removing the material and, indeed, maintaining the equipment. We are still trying to get the best possible equipment, the best possible methodologies, to remove material from the shaft. The current thinking is one of bulk removal, maceration and then, as Norman pointed out, planting it into a cementitious grout in a stainless steel box. On that basis, the removal programme should be in the order of seven years.

Q30 Chairman: Thank you very much. I think we saw the start of that when we were at Dounreay.

Mr McWhirter: You would have done, yes.

Q31 Chairman: I think we also heard that nobody quite knew what was down there, that there are no specific records of what has gone down the shaft, is that right?

Mr McWhirter: That is true. I think we have to remember that the shaft itself was licensed actually as an intermediate-level waste disposal facility, not a storage facility. In a disposal facility there is no need to keep records, or at least that was the thinking of the day, on the basis that you would not ever retrieve it. In a library you keep very detailed records of where the books are so you can recover them but if you were to just chuck them in the bin you would not take any notice at all. Yes, there are some levels of uncertainty. Having said that, for a variety of other reasons associated with the cell material movement we do have records that indicate how much we feel is in there and we can infer a whole load of other stuff.

Mr Murray: Can I just add to that. It demonstrates the sort of challenge that we have ahead of us that UKAEA is tackling now in order to environmentally restore the nuclear legacy at Dounreay. The time when the shaft was filled up, I was not even born. There is an element there that we are restoring the environment, we are using the best technical approaches and techniques in order to do that and we are getting there. We have provided a programme which is funded, which is on an appropriate timescale and we are doing a very good job of it.

Q32 Chairman: You have now made the rest of us feel very, very old.

Mr Harrison: Including myself.

Q33 David Hamilton: Can I come back to the grouting of the shaft. I am not an engineer, I am an ex-miner. The last colliery that I worked in was just 3,000 feet deep and they brought a South African company in, which was the best in the world, to try to grout to stop water coming into the shaft. That was ten years ago. Over a million pounds was spent but they could not contain the water, a million gallons a day were coming through the shaft. How confident are you that technology has developed and evolved in that period of time that you can actually stop the water moving through the shaft?

Mr McWhirter: We are very fortunate because we are only 65 metres deep. If the shaft was 3,000 metres deep we would have similar problems to those in the coal industry, I would think. There are new grouting techniques that involved, in the first instance, cementitious grout that is very, very fine and goes into the cracks and forms an adequate seal with the differential pressures that would be consistent with a 65 metre deep excavation. There are also chemical techniques that we could employ as well if that was less than satisfactory. It is important to realise that we remove about 20 cubic metres of water from the shaft, nothing like the volumes you would be removing from a coalmine, and even if it were only 95 per cent effective that would reduce the quantity that would need to be removed to a miniscule amount.

Q34 David Hamilton: To allow you to get the material out of the shaft that you do not require.

Mr McWhirter: Yes.

Q35 Chairman: Can you perhaps tell us how many instances there have been of radioactive waste and readings that have been found on the beach adjoining Dounreay or on neighbouring farmland?

Mr Harrison: In terms of particles that have been found on the adjoining beach at Sandside Bay, it is of the order of 50 particles. I will give you an exact figure but it is 50 give or take a couple. Somebody jump in if I am way out.

Ms Taylor: It is in the 40s but could we send a detailed statement after this meeting?

Chairman: Yes, thank you very much.

Q36 John Robertson: You have to appreciate that the biggest thing the population has is fear, fear of radioactivity, albeit as small as you say it is, that is leaking out into the water. Can you tell me how far away have they detected measurements? Does it stop at Orkney and Shetland or does it go further to Norway or whatever?

Mr Murray: We have undertaken surveys from Dunnet Head across to Melvich, just along the coast, of the far shore environments. Basically there is a cache of particles just off the Dounreay coast. You will appreciate that the Pentland Firth between Caithness and Orkney is very, very fast moving and essentially if a particle was to move into that it would be lost within the environment, it would not be detected, it would move into deep water. From an environmental point of view, that is probably the best thing that could happen to it because it would be within deep water and it would never be detected again and never come into contact with the natural environment in that sense. In essence, we do believe that there is a cache of particles just off the coast of Dounreay within a sandbank. We undertake diver surveys every summer in order to try to detect where those particles are and try to retrieve them and to monitor the movements of the particles by clearing areas and then going back and re-surveying those areas. In terms of the quantities of particles the extent is unknown at the moment because it is an historical feature from the site. We do believe that the release happened during the 1950s and 1960s. At the moment there is no way of knowing when that release occurred and how much was there, the quantity. Certainly outwith the near shore environment at Dounreay there have been particles detected to that extent.

Q37 John Robertson: Correct me if I am wrong, but I am sure I was told that this cache of radioactivity that you are talking of is on the move and what started fairly close to the shore has moved out.

Mr Murray: We are fortunate within the Dounreay environment in that there is a central movement which should keep it within a certain area. If it goes without that area then it is lost within the Pentland Firth. We have never found any particles outwith that area.

Q38 John Robertson: We were told that when you send your divers down to check that your divers are getting further and further out. It is not that the cache is going away, it is just that it is moving.

Mr Murray: Perhaps what is happening is that we are extending our diver surveys. What we are trying to do is to develop techniques for remotely operated vehicles to go out because there is probably more danger in a diver spending so many hours underneath the water and the danger of a diver being killed rather than coming into contact with a particle. We are trying to develop a remotely operated vehicle approach so that we can undertake wider surveys. We cannot tell you within a parameter percentage how confident we are where those particles are but we have a very good idea where they are to the near shore environment and there are further studies ongoing. We can provide you with further information on that if you want.

John Robertson: That would be helpful.

Q39 Mr Weir: We have heard these terms bandied about of "management of waste", "disposal of waste" and "storage of waste" and there seem to be conflicting opinions as to what should be done with waste, whether it should be stored on the surface or buried in a repository. I wonder if you can address the question of what is the qualitative difference between storage and disposal. For intermediate-level waste it does seem to me that there is no such thing really as disposal, it is stored for a long period, presumably in some sort of secured site, it could not just be buried in the ground in a drum and left there. Would it be unfair to summarise UKAEA's position as being to put the waste in a drum, cover it with cement and leave the decision of how to deal with it ultimately to politicians and civil servants? What is the difference between disposal and storage in these circumstances?

Mr McWhirter: That is an interesting question and it is one where the general public can easily become confused.

Q40 Mr Weir: Not just the general public.

Mr McWhirter: I take your point. The difference is the statement of intent, that is all. The intent of storage is that it is something that you put in a place with the express intent of removing it to do something else with it at some future date. Disposal implies that you put it in there with the express intent of never taking it back out again. There were two options in general that were being considered, but I believe that CoRWM has widened the portfolio of options somewhat. Essentially they came down to deep disposal or above ground managed storage. At the moment, pending a decision in the long-term strategy, generators of waste, like ourselves, have had to opt for above ground managed storage until any other decision is made available. The hazard itself, as Norman said, is confined, we have stabilised it. I would like to pick up on a misinterpretation, and it may be my misinterpretation. We do not put it in a drum and bury it in cement, we take the material and mix it with cement and put it in the drum.

Q41 Mr Weir: We saw that at Dounreay.

Mr McWhirter: The difference is quite marked, as I am sure the Committee will appreciate.

Q42 Mr Weir: Would you accept the proposition then, whether you call it disposal or storage, that effectively these drums will have to be kept in some sort of secure repository for a large number of years?

Mr McWhirter: Indeed.

Chairman: Can we move on to how to meet the shortfall in energy output.

Q43 Mr Weir: We have heard in the paper by UKAEA, very interestingly, about nuclear fission and nuclear fusion. Presumably one means splitting the atomic nucleus and the other means joining it together, from straight logic.

Mr Harrison: Indeed.

Q44 Mr Weir: What is the difference? It talks about being safer and cleaner. One of the great problems with nuclear fission is the problem of waste, as we have been discussing, the possibility of weapons grade material and the proliferation of weapons grade material. Does that apply with nuclear fusion? Do the same problems arise? Is there waste produced? Is there a military application with fusion as well as fission?

Mr Harrison: No.

Ms Taylor: This is one of the key advantages that everybody sees for fusion as opposed to fission. Having said that, we do have to recognise that it is not a developed technology in the way that nuclear power, fission power is. The reason that it might be worth developing is because it has got these inherent advantages of safety; it genuinely feels safe. As I understand it, the problem is keeping the plasma together rather than a problem of controlling the reaction as it is with fission. Environmentally, fusion is of hydrogen isotopes so the actual product of it is not radioactive isotopes. Where there is waste produced in the fusion reaction is just radiation of the material around the reactor but none of that is these long lived isotopes that give us such a problem with what is the eventual waste route. My understanding is that they are all isotopes that would decay within a period of 50 or 100 years, so there is not a huge waste disposal issue as we are currently struggling with on fission.

Q45 Mr Weir: What about the actual fusion? It sounds very Star Trek to me and I am struggling to understand all of this. It sounds like Captain Kirk's plasma reactor or whatever.

Ms Taylor: That is it actually.

David Hamilton: I hate to tell you but that killed Spock.

Q46 Mr Weir: He came back to life, it was okay. Is there an inherent explosive danger in fusion as it could be argued there was in fission? Is there a weapons element to a fusion reactor in the same way there is to a fission reactor?

Mr McWhirter: It is important to understand what the fuels are. The fuel in a fission reactor is either uranium or plutonium. The fuel in a fusion reactor is hydrogen, the stuff that is in water, and there are isotopes of hydrogen. There are a number of options open that are being explored by our research teams at Culham. The material that goes in there is almost limitless in its supply because water is hydrogen and oxygen, so there is an almost limitless supply, which is one of the other endearing features. The fusion reaction is the reaction of the sun, that is all it is. Yes, it is true that the hydrogen bomb is the reaction of the sun but it starts off with an atomic bomb in the middle and a fusion reactor does not have one of those. As Beth says, it feels safe under all circumstances. There is a very small, modest amount of radioactive material as a result of irradiation of the components of the reactor. Typically you are looking at cobalt, which is irradiated to a form of so-called Cobalt-60 which decays to half its quantity every six years if you compare that with the fission products from a fission reactor which has got 30 years and compare that with plutonium which has got 24,000 years.

Mr Harrison: In terms of the availability of a commercial fusion reactor to produce steam and drive a turbine and make electricity, I would not want to mislead the Committee. We are 30 years away conservatively and possibly longer.

Ms Taylor: I think 30 before you could have a reactor.

Q47 Ann McKechin: Apart from your research into nuclear fusion, are you currently involved in any other initiatives in identifying alternative forms of energy to replace nuclear power?

Mr Harrison: No, not in the UK.

Q48 John Robertson: That was a quick question and answer, I was not ready. If nuclear fusion does not provide a viable way of generating electricity, what are your thoughts on how best to replace nuclear power? Would it be through more use of fossil fuels or of renewable forms of energy or something else?

Mr Harrison: We are back in the area of personal views. Formally the UKAEA does not have a view but I am very happy to give you my view and I guess panel members have their own views equally. I have always been a supporter of a mixed energy policy. There is a balance to be driven somewhere between nuclear, regenerables and coal and gas. My personal view is that the balance should be about 20 per cent nuclear, about 40 per cent coal and gas, and the balance of wind power and potentially wave power. Keeping open energy options does not close out any given option. That was a quick résumé of my view and I will invite Marc or the others to give their views.

Mr Murray: My own personal opinion is that I have got enough work to do in decommissioning without considering other forms of energy. That is my sole purpose.

Chairman: Good answer.

Q49 John Robertson: When we were at Dounreay I noticed there was a wind farm nearby. Do they get many problems from environmentalists? You must have had them over the years, are they getting the same problems that you had?

Mr McWhirter: They do not have any problems with environmentalists but they have a lot of problems from us because the characteristic of the windmills is that when the sun gets behind them it sets up a flicker in the offices in the Forss Business Park which gives people nausea and headaches so one of them has to be shut down every once in a while when the sun is in the wrong place.

Mr Harrison: As a practical comment from somebody who looked at this in detail, I lived for a period of time in East Anglia where there are beautiful, traditional windmills still in working order, and they are very impressive too. In terms of availability, when the wind does not blow a windmill is not available and when the wind blows too hard it is not available. The reality is an extremely low availability and, therefore, extreme high cost of the electricity it produces.

Q50 John Robertson: It has been said they should put them up in this place!

Ms Taylor: You did say we could offer a personal opinion.

Q51 John Robertson: Of course.

Ms Taylor: Before we leave it on this note, could I just say, and it is because I started my career on renewals in energy efficiency, I still believe that they could make an enormous contribution so long as we are not looking for one big answer for everything. In a way that is the danger of having had this huge coal generating capacity and then a big nuclear one, we are always looking for one big answer that solves everything. You would not get that with renewables in efficiency but you would go a long way with a lot of small answers.

Mr Harrison: It does not half up the ante in Caithness. If you see physically what a 2.5 or three megawatt wind generator looks like, if you had 60 of them built around the back of your property you might develop a view on the worthiness of this as a way of producing electricity. It has provoked very strong views in the local community.

Q52 Mr Sarwar: Assuming that something other than nuclear power provides the UK's electricity in the future, do you consider that it could be as reliable and as efficient as what you have described in your paper as "fusing atoms to reproduce the energy that powers the sun and stars" and which "offers a safe and environmentally benign alternative to fossil fuels"?

Mr McWhirter: That is a very good question. It is a bit philosophical, if you do not mind me saying so. What you are asking me to do is to say that something that has not yet been postulated could possibly be more efficient than something that does not yet exist. Fusion itself does exist as a physical phenomenon but capturing it and harnessing it in a way to provide reliable electricity is not yet with us. At the moment it has zero reliability. Would anything that could come up other than nuclear have better reliability, I would guess it must have but at the moment, since I do not know what technologies we are looking at, it would be very difficult for me to comment further.

Q53 Chairman: That concludes our questions to you. Norman, can I thank you and your team for your attendance here this afternoon. Before I declare this session closed, do you have anything you wish to say in conclusion?

Mr Harrison: Thank you. If I may and I will be brief. First of all, thank you very much for the opportunity to contribute. I think we have welcomed the Committee raising the profile of these issues and probably loaded with hindsight, perhaps the day after tomorrow, we will realise how much we have enjoyed inputting to it ourselves. I would like to think, and perhaps anticipate, the Committee's support for the UKAEA, who in turn are supporting the NDA, in delivering the responsibilities set out in the Energy Bill. Another part is really to restate our commitment at Dounreay in our investment in young people by maintaining our current levels of apprentice training and graduate improvement. That is a commitment from me and my team. The UKAEA at Dounreay are fully integrated with the local community and, in fact, we are the community. We believe we are better placed than anyone to safely decommission the Dounreay site while recognising and supporting future employment needs within the communities of Caithness and North Sutherland. It is something that I and my team are totally committed to. Lastly, I would like to restate my invitation to Committee Members to visit Dounreay. You would be most welcome and we could show you the work that we are carrying out there. Thank you very much indeed.

Q54 Chairman: Can I just put you on the spot before you go and ask was the then government mistaken when it terminated the fast reactor programme? I know it is the one you do not want to answer.

Mr Harrison: I can answer it economically. No, it was not mistaken in an economic sense.

Q55 Chairman: Not economically. In any other sense?

Mr McWhirter: Can I offer an opinion on that?

Mr Harrison: Yes, please, it gets me out of that.

Mr McWhirter: No, it was absolutely spot-on. Dounreay was never set out to be a nuclear power station. It was set up to demonstrate the feasibility of fast reactor technology and it did that. By 1994 it had done pretty much everything that it needed to do. By that time new reserves of oil and gas, et cetera, had been found, the cost of gas had fallen and there was no need at that time for fast reactor technology. All of the intellectual property rights associated with that technology exist, they are here for the nation's future, and if at some time in the future fast reactor technology is necessary it can be brought to bear then.

Chairman: Thank you very much. Can I thank you very much for your attendance today.