Q
108Mr.
Binley: So you have the people and the robust programmes
in place. What should our Minister do now to make sure he is monitoring
and reporting to the people that all is well and the decommissioning
programme is going as it should, because reassurance about the whole
process will be vital? What should the Minister be doing to ensure that
you are doing what you say you will do?
Dr. Mike
Weightman: I would not be doing the decommissioning;
I would be
regulating.
Mr.
Binley: I did not mean you personally; I meant anybody who
wished to answer the
question. Dr.
Mike Weightman: It depends. If I was, with some
trepidation, to advise the Minister on this
matter—
Mr.
Binley: Please do. He will be
delighted. Dr.
Mike Weightman: I would ask, first, whether you were
going for a prescriptive or a goal-setting regime,
because it matters greatly how you go about
monitoring and it also matters greatly what sort of people do that
monitoring. You can do it in various ways. If you go for detailed
prescriptive regulation, with a lot of guidance saying what they must
do at each stage, clearly you need a lot of people to monitor adherence
to that. Perhaps you do not need the same calibre of people if you take
a higher-level approach to looking at the management arrangements and
various programme aspects they put in place. That is the way that we
operate the nuclear regulatory system now. It is a goal-setting regime.
We use highly experienced and high-calibre people—mid-career
normally; very well qualified engineers or scientists—who
understand how projects run and can ask the really penetrating
questions about
that. It depends on
how the Minister wants to approach it, but there might be synergies
with the way in which we consider decommissioning programmes, because
there are legal requirements to follow decommissioning programmes,
too.
The
Chairman: Dr. Stephen Ladyman wants to come in briefly on
that precise point.
Q
109Dr.
Ladyman: The opponents of the nuclear power industry will
say that the Government are the funder of last resort
when safety matters are concerned, which is true of all
industries—the Government are always the funder of last resort.
The question that the industry must answer, and we must answer for the
Bill, is, when a costed programme is put together, what assurance can
we give the public that it will meet the absolute costs of
decommissioning, so that it is unlikely that the Government would ever
have to step in and become a funder of last
resort?
The
Chairman: Who would like to answer that? Dr.
Roxburgh?
Dr. Ian
Roxburgh: I am not going to answer it; I shall
refer to something that I said earlier. That issue is
readily addressed in the White Paper, where the Government recognise
that they must provide that assurance, hence the advisory group, which
would consider the minutiae of that warranty—for want of a
better expression—that you rightly require. I am comfortable
that there is enough skill in the marketplace for that committee to be
well advised and to come up with practical, deliverable
solutions.
Dr. Mike
Weightman: One principle that you might need to
secure is openness and transparency in the monitoring function, so that
there is a wider view on it, too. That would provide some of the
assurance that you
seek.
Q
110Dr.
Whitehead: The purpose of the White Paper, among other
things, was to set out the facilitative action that the Government
propose to take to reduce regulatory uncertainty, particularly
on nuclear decommissioning and potential nuclear new build. To
Mr. Parker and Mr. Spence in particular, do you
not think that although regulatory uncertainty may have been thereby
reduced, the amount of regulation, justification, site searching and
generic design assessment, not to mention the planning and building
processes, means that it will take so long to build new nuclear power
stations that the energy gap will have been filled by other forms of
energy, and that therefore nuclear might have missed the bus? Would you
prefer less regulation and more speed in the process, or do you think
that the balance is about right?
Paul
Spence: In summary, the balance is about right,
provided we work through the regulations efficiently
and effectively. If I look back to the experience of Sizewell and
project it forward to where we might be today if we tried to go through
a programme for it without the changes that are laid out in the White
Paper, I would be very worried about the timetable. The proposals give
me the clarity, which I look for as an investor, about what we need to
do, the order in which we need to do it and the hurdles that we need to
go over, and it allows me to see a way in which I am asked once about
national need, rather than being re-asked in several
places—similarly, on the questions about siting. So, from our
perspective, it looks a sensible and appropriate approach that can fill
the gap appropriately, rather than miss the
boat.
Q
111Dr.
Whitehead: To Dr. Roxburgh and Dr. Weightman, do you
consider that the prospective regulations on clean-up and new build,
particularly those in the Bill, such as the generic design assessments
and the number of people employed to undertake them, will evidently
lead to substantial delays? Do you consider the full weight of the
regulator process to be imperative, or is there a balance to be struck
between time scale and the weight of regulation as the process moves
forward?
Dr. Mike
Weightman: Our duty is to protect people in society
in the UK. We will not shortcut the process if it means that we will
not deliver that. We have reviewed our approach and we now have the
generic design assessment. We have decided to go ahead with that and
believe that it will deliver safe reactors on a fleet basis across the
UK. We are not about rubber-stamping things or shortcutting to meet a
programme; we must ensure that things are seen and demonstrated to be
safe. We would be failing in our duty were we not to do
so. That is not to say
that we do not look to be more efficient and effective, and we look for
ways in which we can better serve the public. However, we will ensure
that the public have confidence in the safe future of any new reactor
programme. That means that we must work hard, as we are doing, and that
we intend to resource appropriately going forward.
It is not about shortcutting
things and doing things in a slapdash fashion, but it is also not about
not learning from nuclear regulators around the world and acting in
co-ordination with them. We are active with that at the moment. Indeed,
we have done some inspection with colleagues in France, Canada and the
US, to look at their design organisations. Interestingly, they did not
do things that way in any of those countries, but ensuring that
designers of reactors have appropriate quality management systems and
systems for securing long-term resources, and that they have good
control over changes in design, is obvious for us. We work with others,
but there are things that we must do to ensure that the programme is
safe for UK people and society. Q
112Martin
Horwood: Given your confident reassurances and the
Minister’s robust comments on Second Reading, I am clear that
things such as basic decommissioning, initial disposal, safety
monitoring and site clean-up are all covered within the funded
decommissioning programmes in the Bill. I wish to ask about three
specific costs, and I want you to tell me whether you are absolutely
sure that they are covered. First, is all long-term waste management
covered? Given that we are talking about nuclear waste, we are talking
about the very long term. Secondly, are the costs of any accidents or
insurance against accidents, if indeed they are insurable, covered?
Thirdly, is the cost—I suppose that this question is for Dr.
Roxburgh and Dr. Weightman—of your authorities and inspectorates
covered? Dr.
Ian Roxburgh: Sorry, could you rephrase that last
question?
Martin
Horwood: Are the costs of running your inspectorates and
authorities, which are, in a sense, a cost of the nuclear industry,
going to be covered by the funded decommissioning programmes, or by the
industry through any other mechanism in the
Bill? Dr.
Ian Roxburgh: As I understand the White Paper, it
intends that the advisory body will include the cost of waste disposal
along with the cost of decommissioning, so the complete life cycle cost
would have to be
recovered.
Q
113Martin
Horwood: Sorry, just to be clear, we are talking about the
Bill and not the White Paper. By long-term life cycle, do you mean
thousands of years in the future,
potentially? Dr.
Ian Roxburgh: In the sense that once waste is placed
in a deep geological repository, I assume that it becomes a property of
the Government, or at least that it is on some sort of lease. That
issue is yet to be addressed, but the reality is that once the waste is
in a repository, it should be in a passive, safe form. I will not say
that age is immaterial, but that is the point about the repository: age
can be accommodated there.
Q
114Martin
Horwood: So you are expecting there to be no costs
attached to that that will not be
covered? Dr.
Ian Roxburgh: You will have to ask the Government
about that.
Martin
Horwood: Okay, I will.
Dr. Ian
Roxburgh: In terms of the recovery of costs, that is
an interesting perspective. I do not know whether the advisory
committee will be asked to consider that. If it is, naturally we would
respond to any request for information that it made to
us.
Q
115Martin
Horwood: And
accidents? Dr.
Mike Weightman: There are provisions already
for insurance requirements under those conventions
and treaties. Under current nuclear installation legislation, BERR has
to ensure that sufficient insurance provision is available to meet
those treaties. There are some limitations to those insurance
requirements, which is an issue that perhaps the Minister might answer,
as you
say. Keith
Parker: On a general point about insurance, the
operators are obliged to secure insurance to cover against third-party
liability from accidents under those international
conventions.
Martin
Horwood: I am not talking about somebody tripping over a
railing. Keith
Parker: No, the limits are about to be raised under
amendments to the
convention.
Q
116Martin
Horwood: According to the risk assessment by the
Government’s own assessors, the key concern was that there was
still a risk that sufficient funds would not in practice be available
and that, in particular in a company undergoing a restructuring
programme, the assets could be diverted and be made unavailable to fund
a liability. It goes on to talk about issues such as liquidation and in
effect making the funds unavailable. Is that still a risk? The TUC and
the EEF this morning felt that, in the last resort, it still
was. Paul
Spence: As I understand the Bill, there are terms in
there to cover a situation in which there was insolvency and to ensure
that the funds that have been set aside for decommissioning and
management of waste are protected from the other creditors. I would,
therefore, see them as being
secure.
Q
117Martin
Horwood: But what if the funds are not actually
there? Paul
Spence: The requirement is to put them there during
or at the start of the operation of the station to ensure that they
are.
Q
118Martin
Horwood: So none of it would be dependent on cash flow, as
you understand
it? Paul
Spence: The component that would be put there during
subsequent operation would be to cover the increasing amount of waste
generated and potentially grow to cover the decommissioning liabilities
as required, so replacing insurance with cash over
time.
Q
119John
Robertson: I wonder whether I could develop the waste
management point a bit further, because it is probably one of the most
contentious parts of nuclear energy. Do we think as a group that the
waste from new build should be separated from the old waste? Do you
think that reprocessing should form an important part of disposing of
or reusing waste? Furthermore, when disposing of waste, should we use
deep geological burial or put it in the ground so that it can be
retrieved and used for energy in the future, which some people believe
will become possible as technology becomes more efficient?
I have one
other small question about the skills problem. What Dr. Roxburgh said
was really interesting. I think that it is great what you are doing
with universities
and schools. However, will it meet the needs that we
foresee in the near future? What happens to the apprenticeships for
local schools, because it is important that they are brought into the
equation? What happens with the manual labour also used? Will that be
looked at as well in order to bring in the local communities? Paul
Spence: May I take the last part of those questions
first? Dr. Roxburgh talked about what is being done
to ensure sufficient skills for decommissioning and waste management. I
could have echoed that by talking about what we are doing as a company
and as an operator of existing stations to ensure that we have the
graduate skills and craft skills available to operate the current fleet
of stations and be ready to operate new build. We have recruited
something of the order of 1,000 additional people into British Energy
in the past three years. Within that there are at least 150 apprentices
whom we are bringing in from around our stations, because we know that
we need those skills for existing operation and to allow us to be ready
when we need them for new
build. As a company,
we are looking forward and asking what skills we believe will be needed
and how many of those skills will be needed as construction programmes
start to happen, we hope, over the coming decade. We are looking to
build that pipeline to ensure that the local colleges are gearing up
and that GCSE courses in engineering at local schools are starting to
happen. Like the NDA, we are also building links to
universities. From where I am, we are laying the right foundations.
There is still more to be done, but there is time to do it as
well. Dr.
Ian Roxburgh: Can I add a small point to that on
skills? I mentioned that we wanted everything that we were involved in
to be demand-led. If there were more demand, I would like to think that
those institutions that I just described would be flexible enough to
accommodate that new
demand. On
the other questions, you first asked whether it should be separate from
the legacy wastes. By definition, given what is set out in the White
Paper, it would be for a period, because the planning presumption is
that it would be stored on site for a significant period. There would
be no question of mixing it back with the legacy waste, either
theoretically or in
fact. You talked about
retrieving waste. One decision that would need to be made about a
geological repository is what element of retrieval would be
appropriate. That might well be one issue that a community considering
volunteering would want to reflect
upon. You then asked
about reprocessing, and I think that that ties back into the point that
I have just made—that you do not need to decide on reprocessing
in advance. If the fuel is stored and kept in good order, at any stage,
provided that it is retrievable, you can come back and see it as a
national resource at some time in the future. From the NDA’s
point of view—I suspect that the question is mine because we are
the only part of the UK that carries out
reprocessing—our clear understanding has always been that any
new initiatives for reprocessing would be a matter for the Government,
and the Government in turn have made it clear that they would want to
consult widely on any such
proposal. Keith
Parker: On the separating of new build from the
legacy, I think that the industry very much agrees with the
Government’s view that if a deep geological
repository is built, it should accommodate new build
waste as well as legacy waste. I think that that makes sense. We agree
with the NDA’s view that reprocessing would be subject to
another round of consultation, but we advocate keeping the option open,
which I think is what is stated in the White Paper. It should not be
foreclosed as an option for the
future.
| 
