The
Chairman: I am afraid that I must now call a
halt to proceedings. I apologise to colleagues who
wanted to ask supplementary questions, but I could not reach you all. I
want to thank the witnesses very much for their evidence. Could you
kindly leave so that the next set of witnesses can take your
places? Good
afternoon, gentlemen, and thank you for appearing before the Committee.
I should tell the Committee that the description in the papers in front
of us for Dr. Mike Weightman is not accurate. So, gentlemen, could you
please introduce
yourselves? Dr. Ian
Roxburgh: I am chief executive of the Nuclear
Decommissioning
Authority. Dr.
Mike Weightman: I am Her Majesty’s chief
inspector at the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate and a director of
the Health and Safety
Executive. Keith
Parker: I am chief executive of the Nuclear Industry
Association. Paul
Spence: I am head of strategy at British
Energy.
Q
103Malcolm
Wicks: As you might know, I have been persuaded that
nuclear should be part of the future energy mix. Do you accept that
there is widespread public suspicion and distrust of the nuclear
industry and its secrecy? If so, how do you think that we can create
greater transparency in order to win public confidence at a time of
concern about safety and
security? Dr.
Mike Weightman: I would use slightly different
terminology. From a regulatory point of view, the industry must earn
the public’s trust, as too must the
regulator in its regulatory arrangements and its
fulfilment of them. We have been pushing the industry to do more on
that, particularly in relation to new build. Indeed, over the last few
months, we have arranged with them to put their safety cases into the
public domain, to invite comments from the public and to answer them.
We are overseeing that process. When we come to our views about the
various steps that we are looking at under the generic design
assessment, we will take account of its approach when putting forward
our independent view. For me it is not only about informing the public;
we also have to earn their trust. I think that that is a crucial
component of our thinking, as
regulators. Keith
Parker: On behalf of the NIA, which represents
companies throughout the industry, I think that what the Minister says
is broadly correct. In the past, there has been a degree of public
suspicion of the industry. It has not been entirely trusted and has had
a reputation for secrecy for reasons that I think are broadly
historical. It came from its sort of military background. There were
instances of apparent cover-ups in the past. I think that the
perception of the industry has changed quite significantly in the past
few years, and certainly the industry itself is going out of its way to
engage much more readily with the public and moving away from a
situation in which it just spoke to itself because it felt very
comfortable doing that. We are going out and debating the issues,
putting our case in public forums. That willingness to engage has
improved people’s perception of the industry and their
understanding of the case for
nuclear. Dr.
Ian Roxburgh: May I add one small comment? As the
Minister will know, it is part of the NDA’s remit that we are
bound to be open and transparent. We were meant to represent a break
with the past, and I think that in large part that has been achieved.
It is also fair to say that the communities that we work in are
actually quite comfortable with matters nuclear as a general rule. We
have two Members on the Committee here today, Jamie
Reed and Albert Owen, who represent constituencies that are lobbying
the NDA quite hard that they should not be left out of the possibility
of site review for new nuclear plants, so there is another side
to
it.
Q
104Charles
Hendry: Could you tell us what your current thinking is
about the potential life extensions of the current fleet of nuclear
power stations, so that we can have an accurate understanding of when
they may come out of commission? Also, do you agree with me that, if
there is going to be a new fleet of nuclear reactors, it will be viable
only if a number are built to the same design, rather than one of one
design, one of another and two of another, and that we therefore need
to break from the tradition that we have had in this country? Do you
also agree that in the design approval process, we should not add on a
huge amount of extra work and cost, as happened with Sizewell B and
elsewhere and in Finland, which would make them essentially
unaffordable?
The
Chairman: Who would like to answer
that? Paul
Spence: The question of life extension is clearly one
that I should respond to, as we operate the gas-cooled reactors and
pressurised water reactor. We have made our corporate strategy clear:
to seek to
life-extend those stations as long as we can, provided
that we can convince ourselves that it is safe,
technically feasible and economic to do so. Since our restructuring we
have reviewed the options for life extension for Dungeness and, mostly
recently, for Hinkley and Hunterston. In the case of Dungeness, we
extended it from 2008 to 2018. For Hinkley and Hunterston, which were
scheduled to close in 2011, we have announced a further five-year
extension to 2016. We expect to review the position for the next two
stations that are due to close, Hartlepool and Heysham 1, which are due
to close in 2014. We expect to review that three years before closure
date and form a view at that point about whether there is further
possible life extension of those
stations. To
pick up your second question, about standardisation, one feature of our
current fleet is that, although they are all called advanced gas-cooled
reactors, they are all subtly different, or in some cases markedly
different. We are on record in a number of places as saying that we
think it will be extremely desirable for the UK to adopt designs that
are like international designs and drive, as far as we possibly can,
for those stations to be built to a standard, accepted international
design. We believe that that offers the greatest margin of safety and
the greatest prospect of attractive
economics.
The
Chairman: Would anyone else like to
respond? Dr.
Mike Weightman: If I may answer from a nuclear
regulatory perspective, clearly the operators will have to demonstrate
that the life extension that they propose is safe.
There will be some technical limitations on issues such as graphite
cores, which we will have to consider very carefully to ensure that we
have the confidence on those life extensions. I need to be sure that
Members are aware that there are various steps to go through to secure
approval, so that we protect the people of the UK. Similarly, on taking
forward standardised designs—I shall not comment on the
commercial aspects of that, but merely on nuclear
safety—clearly, if you have a replicated fleet then you can
learn more from events that occur across that fleet, because they will
be equally applicable to all the stations. So there are some safety
benefits from that.
In terms of the design approval
process, it is clear under international conventions—and,
indeed, under the International Atomic Energy Agency
safety standards— that nuclear safety is a national
responsibility. We are set up to protect the people and society in the
UK, and we have to fulfil that duty.
That does not
mean to say that we do not take account of other nuclear regulators
worldwide. Indeed, we have good relationships on a bilateral basis and
a multilateral basis, and more is being done at international level to
secure greater co-operation. However, some of the changes in design
that occur from country to country reflect some of those national
concerns. We know that the Finns have different concerns to the French,
but also some of those changes reflect different operators. Some of the
changes in Finland in the finished design of the European pressurised
reactor compared with the French design are to do with the operator
wanting to gain access to some of the areas, which meant that they had
to be reassessed. Indeed, there will be a third variant of that design
which has gone into the US system as well.
It is a more complex picture
than just a regulator being imposed on some things. Clearly in the UK
we have looked at our safety standards recently, reviewing them against
the IAEA safety standards themselves, so that we have an international
underpinning of ours. Perhaps we can go forward on a more firm basis
than just looking at our own standards.
Q
105Dr.
Stephen Ladyman (South Thanet) (Lab):
Clause 41 requires a costed programme of
decommissioning to be submitted when you apply to build a new nuclear
plant. First, are you all content that the framing of that clause and
associated clauses is sufficiently comprehensive to ensure that the
programme is robust? Secondly, what are the industry and the regulatory
side doing to ensure that you understand what will be involved in that
decommissioning, and the costs involved? Thirdly, what efforts are you
taking to ensure that you are learning from international experience,
in order to ensure that that costed programme is robust?
Last, but not least, in so far
as the regulator will have to oversee the process, and as you are
probably pretty stretched at the moment looking at safety cases and
given the relatively small number of people that you employ, what level
of your resources are you going to put into making sure that the
decommissioning plans are robust and well
costed?
The
Chairman: You have four questions, gentlemen. Who would
like to kick
off? Dr.
Ian Roxburgh: I am prepared to be
brave—probably braver than I should. The first point is that the
Government have made it clear that they are establishing what I
understand to be an advisory group, which is to work through the very
important issues that you have enumerated. We already have significant
experience. We have just heard from Mr. Hendry about
life extensions. The Nuclear Decommissioning
Authority has a duty to the Government to police those extensions, in
the sense that when approving an extension you must still be able to
meet the extra liabilities that accrue through the lifetime of that
extension. It must make good business sense, and the regulator has made
the point that it also has to make good safety sense.
I personally am content. We
have a system that has already proven itself to be robust. We have the
nuclear liabilities fund. I have read these documents a couple of times
before, and I have skimmed them again; they ask the right questions. I
personally believe that it is a good approach that can
work.
Dr.
Mike Weightman: May I make a general comment, and
then try to answer the individual questions? We welcome the proposals
in the Bill. We feel that they make much more transparent and robust
the assurances on corporate finance, for instance, and matters that the
Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform considers at
present before granting a licence. So we think that they are a good
step forward. On
whether clause 41 provides enough areas or is sufficient, I think that
generally it is, without having looked at it in great detail. We have a
simple licence condition around decommissioning—licence
condition 35—that predominantly says that the licensee shall
have adequate arrangements for decommissioning, which embraces much of
this. We then look to them to
develop around that. The Bill puts more structure
into that, so it is a good step forward. Generally, it makes the
assurances that we seek more transparent and
robust. Is
a costed programme robust? Well, things can change. The areas of the
Bill that provide for modification are very important. There are
sometimes unexpected events at plants, and that has to be taken into
account when you are thinking about decommissioning and the funding of
it. Clearly, there might be times when we would want to enforce
something on the site from a safety point of view, which might change
the approved decommissioning programme and the funding arrangements for
it. I am sure that BERR Ministers will ensure that safety and security
remain paramount in such circumstances and that the present robust,
independent regulatory system is not undermined or fettered in any
way. If
we were asked to enforce some of these aspects—we already
enforce some of them under the nuclear licensing conditions—what
would the impact be on the limited resources that we have at present?
It all depends on how we go about it. There would be areas where there
would be some synergies with what we do now. When we inspect a site to
ensure that it is in line with the technical safety case, that is
similar to a technical case for decommissioning. We already cover
issues such as whether records are needed on the site. In some areas,
we could have synergies of approach. Resourcing would need to be
addressed, but we need to address it anyway. Perhaps the problem would
not be as large as one might otherwise
think. If we were
asked to look at financial aspects, clearly that is
not something that we have dealt with recently, although we did engage
in 1995-96 when British Energy was privatised with decommissioning and
segregated funds and assurances about financial
standing. I
do not know whether I have answered all four questions, but I have
tried to answer various aspects of
them.
Q
106Mr.
Brian Binley (Northampton, South) (Con): May we pursue
this matter a little further? The Minister already spoke about
public perception. Frankly, this impacts on public perception big time,
and Members in particular know how volatile public perception can be,
so it matters to
us. In
management terms, a programme is only as good as the quality of the
people at its lowest level—that goes without saying. Therefore,
monitoring is vital. You spoke about the robustness of the programmes,
but what levels of monitoring and review of the decommissioning
programme should the Minister put in place? What would you expect of
him and his team over time? Can I connect that issue with the skills
problem, which we have heard much about today? Do we have the people to
operate at the coal face who are of the quality that we would need to
ensure that the public can be reassured on every
occasion? Dr.
Mike Weightman: Do you want me to discuss the
monitoring question
first?
The
Chairman: I think Mr. Parker looked as if he
wanted to take this
question. Keith
Parker: No, I was going to address the skills point.
We agree with the White Paper’s analysis that there is a
challenge in recruiting people and developing
the necessary skills for new
build, decommissioning, waste management—the whole gamut of
nuclear activities. In relation to new build in particular, we are
making good progress. A couple of years ago, my organisation undertook
a study of the
UK’s—
Q
107Mr.
Binley: I am talking particularly about the
decommissioning
programme. Keith
Parker: Yes, and Ian might want to talk about this as
well. A number of initiatives are going on to improve the skills
availability in decommissioning. Last week we saw the launch of the
national skills academy for nuclear. There are a number of initiatives,
in which the NDA is involved, to develop the skills that we need for
decommissioning our existing stations. I am sure that those skills will
also be available for the new build at the time when that is
happening. Dr.
Ian Roxburgh: As you say, the NDA, along with others,
has facilitated the nuclear skills academy, which deals with NVQs and
HNDs up to basic degree level. Below that, we have
also put in place a reinforced apprentice training programme, and below
that we have engaged, to the tune of £750,000, with the energy
foresight programme, which is a programme across 420 schools designed
to encourage children to take the necessary O and A-levels to make them
capable of taking advantage of training in the industry for
decommissioning and other aspects of engineering across the United
Kingdom. Talking about schoolchildren might seem strange, but given
that the programme has quite a long lead-in time and quite a long time
to go, it is very
relevant. At the other
extreme, we have arranged a partnership with the university of
Manchester—with £10 million from it and £10
million from us—to establish a new nuclear institute this year
to deal with postgraduate qualifications. We have also endowed two
chairs. We thought it proper to endow them, because then there can be
no question of the NDA exercising undue influence beyond the
establishment of the two chairs, one in nuclear materials science and
the other in decommissioning
engineering. We have
two other initiatives running. One is to start our own graduate scheme.
We have just put out the first adverts and we have had more than 1,000
applications for 10 places, which suggests that young people see the
industry as having a future now. Perhaps a few years ago we would have
been hard pressed to muster a decent cohort of
applicants. We are
also looking to facilitate across the industry all the existing schemes
to make sure that all graduates coming out from wherever have a basic
standard of proficiency, so that we can have mobility between schemes.
The Committee can be assured that a lot is going on and that there is a
lot of demand. The point about demand is important, because we are
determined that all the courses that we are helping to facilitate
should be demand led; they should be market
led.
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