Engineering: turning ideas into reality - Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee Contents


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160 - 165)

WEDNESDAY 16 JULY 2008

DR IAN HUDSON, MR ALEX WALSH, MS FIONA WARE AND MR BILL BRYCE

  Q160  How does the authority encourage companies to ramp up the skills base?

  Dr Hudson: We have taken a number of things. Skills are important to us, as set out in the Energy Act. It is also important in terms of offering value for money to the taxpayer because it improves the performance. The first thing we have done is to take a strong leadership role. We have set requirements on the site licence companies to develop these skill strategies. They are incentivised to do an effective job on skills, so they gain profit if they do a good job and they lose profit if they do a poor job. We have done that over the last three years to drive that. When we invest in infrastructure—and we have done, for instance, at the high end of skills, such as the PhDs and Masters area—we have tried to do that in partnership with other people. For instance, in partnership with Manchester University, we put in £10 million and they put in £10 million to create an institute in areas of interest to us. We have invested in infrastructure to create a company called Energis. We put £5 million in, but by working with both government and the supply chain we have generated around £20 million to improve the infrastructure. We have taken a mixture of stances. We have taken a very strong leadership stance; we have incentivised it, so it looks important to us; and we have partnered, which is really very important because it improves what we are doing as well.

  Q161  Mr Cawsey: You are funding research and new facilities, and the example has been given to us of the Dalton Cumbria Facility. What involvement is there between the authority and industry?

  Dr Hudson: Through the site licence companies we invest around £100 million a year. Of the order of £50 million of that goes to the Nexia, which is the precursor to the National Lab, and the balance of that goes into the supply chain, so the supply chain benefits quite significantly from that investment. In terms of things like the Nuclear Institute, we are working with the University of Manchester. The model that we apply is that we invest as a catalyst to create the capability. We focus it on world-class skills and that capability is then able to draw down the money from the industry, from the research councils, and become self-sustaining. It is quite a fine balance and an interesting model, because you invest maybe over five or seven years to create the capability but it becomes self-sustaining by operating in world-class fashion. It is a good model. It was used by BNFL to create some centres at universities. We see that as really good because it allows you to create commercial innovative work as well a long-term commitment to R&D.

  Q162  Chairman: Fiona, when you were responding to Tim Boswell you talked about long-term skills that were not funded by industry but which were of national importance. What were you specifically referring to?

  Ms Ware: This is probably going back to when I was in Nexia—I worked in Nexia before I came to work for AMEC—some of the programmes such as the molten salts programme would be a long-term research programme but there was no short-term benefit there. Those projects were not funded through the site licence companies. There are programmes that the NDA will fund now through their research programme, but I think it is making sure that those programmes are available to develop some of the skills which we will require and we will need to maintain but which are not currently required on a commercial basis at the present.

  Q163  Chairman: Perhaps you could have a little think about that and then drop us a very brief note about some of those specific skills.

  Ms Ware: Yes.

  Q164  Chairman: The same with you, Ian, in terms of the decommissioning. Perhaps I could finish this session with you, Ian. We are a little confused about the decommissioning time framework. That was brought home to us at Sizewell B yesterday. Within the next six years there are six nuclear power stations that are going to start their decommissioning programme, that are going to stop producing electricity. What is the length of the decommissioning programme? Perhaps you could put in a note to us on that. What factors are involved in dictating how long and, also, how much it will cost? There seem to be endless time scales for some of these decommissioning programmes and we would like to get a clear handle on that in terms of matching the skills needs to the decommissioning programme.

  Dr Hudson: I can write a note to that effect. Generically, what affects time scales is a balance between removing the high hazard part of the plant, which is the fuel, and then making a decision about what the care and maintenance regime might be, what time scales that might be.

  Chairman: You indicated earlier, and Fiona picked it up, that you now have clear programmes for decommissioning with proper time lines. It would be really quite useful to the Committee to have those.

  Q165  Dr Iddon: I think we should point out, Chairman, that yesterday at Sizewell somebody indicated that the graphite core reactors could be decommissioned in less than 10 years. Nine years was quoted.

  Dr Hudson: One of the roles that we fulfil on behalf of government is that the lifetime planner approach that we use for our science we apply to British Energy to get a sense of what the liabilities might be in the future. If you would allow me, I can certainly put a note together to that effect.

  Chairman: We would be very grateful for that. On that note, could we thank you very much indeed, Dr Ian Hudson, Fiona Ware, Alex Walsh and Bill Bryce.





 
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