Examination of Witnesses (Questions 166
- 179)
WEDNESDAY 16 JULY 2008
ADRIAN BULL,
DR MIKE
WEIGHTMAN, DAVID
BARBER AND
ROBERT DAVIES
Chairman: Let me welcome our second panel
of expert witnesses this morning: Adrian Bull, the UK Stakeholder
Relations Manager for Westinghouse; Dr Mike Weightman, HM Chief
Inspector for Nuclear Installations Inspectorate; David Barber,
the Head of Technical Training for British Energy, and Robert
Davies, the Marketing Director of Areva. Thank you all very much
indeed for coming this morning.
Q166 Dr Turner: Part of the torturous
timeline for what kilowatt hour is generated in the UK is the
Generic Design Assessment of the new nuclear fleet. We have received
very little evidence relating to that. Is this because it is a
perfect process or are the companies going through the process
not wanting to rock the boat?
Dr Weightman: I would never claim
any of our processes are perfect. We always seek to improve on
them. This is a new process for us that was developed about three
years ago. We put it to government after talking to stakeholders
and finding out what the issues were. We also took some advantage
of an International Atomic Energy Agency peer review of our approach
to nuclear regulation in the UK, especially in relation to new
build. We were fortunate to have the chief regulator from Finland,
for instance, provide us with some advice on that. We then put
that documentation forward to the Energy Minister and I can provide
Committee members with copies of that documentation. We put forward
more detailed descriptions of it for possible vendors and again
I can provide the Committee with copies of that as well. I could
even give a note summarising it all, if that helps.
Q167 Dr Turner: Why are we doing
this specifically as a UK exercise? After all, reactor design
and deployment is a fairly international business. Given our strange
history of previous nuclear development whereby we managed to
produce something exclusively British and, frankly, worse than
anybody else's, are we going to be repeating this? Why are we
doing it differently to everybody else?
Dr Weightman: I would not say
British reactors are worse than anybody else's.
Q168 Dr Turner: They have not lasted
as long for starters!
Dr Weightman: My duty is to protect
the people and society of the UK and that means making sure that
the laws and the safety standards in the UK that are relevant
are applied so they can be protected and feel protected as well.
That does not mean to say we try and reinvent the wheel. We looked
at our safety standards in the UK, which are called our Safety
Assessment Principles, and we compared them with the latest international
safety standards, both the International Atomic Energy Agency
and the Western European Nuclear Regulatory Association reference
levels as well, and we revised them and published them as a basis
for us to regulate the industry in all sectors. We have tried
to make sure we are up-to-date with the latest safety standards
internationally, but there are particular aspects to the UK law
and goal setting regime that we have to apply. That is not to
say we are not very closely linked with our colleagues who regulate
it in other nuclear industries internationally. We have agreements
with the NRC, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the States.
We have been talking to them about seconding people in, getting
access to all their information and similarly with the French.
In particular, I was talking to André Lacoste the other
week about how we could liaise better and how we could get access
to their information and we are getting free access.
Q169 Mr Boswell: Given that both
in terms of build and to some extent also in operation this is
not a national industry, it is an international one, can you give
us the assurance that by and large, allowing for differences in,
for example, legal structures, the intentions of the major regulators
in most of the major countries where there are nuclear installations
amount to the same thing, even if the expression of those in terms
of GDA or whatever is slightly different?
Dr Weightman: Yes, that is our
intention. The goal is the same.
Q170 Mr Boswell: I am not asking
you to single out any defaults from that, but broadly that is
happening?
Dr Weightman: Yes. Some of the
variations will come from what operators want. If you look at
the EPR design, some of the requirements that the operators in
Finland wanted have made some changes to the cases and bases for
the design of the EPR. There are some things coming from operators.
Q171 Mr Boswell: Could there also
be some technical constraints, for example, on geological conditions,
the likelihood of earthquakes and so forth?
Dr Weightman: The earthquake issue
is unlikely to be a large issue in the UK, but there will be variations
around there. I am thinking of the AP1000, for instance. When
they had to look at that for the US market rather than an overseas
market there were some variations they had to do and they put
revisions in around that. There is a group called the Multinational
Design Evaluation Programme that is put together by all the chief
regulators of those countries that do have new nuclear in front
of them. What we are seeking to do there is actually work very
closely together, not to make use of each other's assessments
and some of the assessments are not complete, but also get to
a position where I do not have to send my inspectors half-way
round the world, for instance, to check out procurement issues
on reactor vessels that may be produced in Japan, I can have confidence
that the Japanese regulator is looking at that. We are also looking
at some of the codes that are used in different countries for
pressure vessels and other systems and comparing the use of one
in one country with its equivalent in another country. There is
quite a bit of work being done around that internationally.
Q172 Dr Turner: Just how much variation
is there internationally in standards? The implication is that
we are having bespoke systems, if you like, which are likely to
add to the cost. Are there any serious questions about international
safety standards that mean that we have to do it differently?
Dr Weightman: No. The issue is
not that the design may be different, it is a question of how
you justify that design. In America they have a very prescriptive
nuclear regulatory regime which will mean that the regulator produces
detailed prescriptive regulations. We have a very goal setting
regime which fits in with our law in the UK. So we ask the question
"Why is it safe?" and we expect the vendor to come back
to us and say, "It's safe because of these reasons,"
and give us the rationale for that and then say where the law
requires them to reduce risks so far as is reasonably practicable.
So we ask the question, "Can you reduce the risks further?"
and they will demonstrate to us that they have done the design
optimisation, but this is about putting the onus on the operators
and on the designers, not on the regulator, to demonstrate safety
through a prescriptive regime. It is a different regime. It may
be that the design will still meet both requirements.
Q173 Dr Turner: Is there any problem
as far as the Nuclear Inspectorate is concerned in getting access
to sufficient technical expertise to carry out this process? Can
you recruit enough engineers to run this process?
Dr Weightman: I think it is fairly
well known that we have struggled with our recruitment campaign
and our numbers. We have put out a pretty aggressive recruitment
campaign. HSE, my parent body, is looking at that now to try and
make sure we can go harder into the market and that is also being
supported by government in terms of reviews that they are doing.
You may be aware of the Tim Stone Review.
Q174 Dr Turner: How many engineers
have you got and how many do you need?
Dr Weightman: I have got 153.25
full-time equivalent inspectors at the moment and in addition
to that I have got eight that are being brought up to understand
the nuclear industry and nuclear regulation from the rest of HSE
where they were specialists. From our first recruitment earlier
this year we expect to get another nine in and from just a recent
recruitment we expect to get probably around seven in. That will
only bring me up into the 170s. For existing predictive business
excluding new build I need 192. That is looking at the MoD programme
and the decommissioning programme as you go into the future because
we regulate MoD facilities as well. Our planning for three designs
coming forward eventually -because we have got step-wise in our
Generic Design Assessment process—would mean an extra 40
inspectors around that. That is not the whole picture because
we have a demographic problem as well. I really look forward to
the pills that the Chairman talked about at the start! We have
over 10% at the moment that are over 60 and that will grow in
another year or so to about 20% and two years after it will grow
to 30-40%.
Chairman: You are depressing us now!
Q175 Dr Turner: What effect is this
going to have on the timescale for deploying new reactors? Is
it going to slow the process down because you simply have not
got enough people power to throw at the problem?
Dr Weightman: What we did in the
GDA process was we stepped it to resource build up to reduce regulator
uncertainty as we went forwards and we also manage the project
risk associated with it as well. That means that we did complete
step two within the proposed timescale with a lot of work and
we put 50 reports out into the public domain about that, so about
four designs. We have started step three. Those reports were basically
saying, in terms of security and nuclear safety, because I also
regulate nuclear security, these designs should be licensable
in the UK if they meet their claims. We took their claims on face
value. Now we are starting to explore the rationale for those
claims and the details behind those claims. So we are starting
this step three now. We have said that we are going to have a
slow start on that because we do not have the resources in place
for that, but some other mitigating factors may be that if we
get aggressively into the market now we could then attract some
more who are step four of the process to see whether we can recapture
the lost time that will come from the step three slow start.
Q176 Dr Turner: So there are delays?
Dr Weightman: At the present time.
We might manage to actually increase resourcing over our planned
resourcing so that we can recapture some of the delays and perhaps
we will get more benefits from our interactions with our overseas
regulatory colleagues than perhaps we planned for, and there may
be other aspects we can do around that.
Q177 Dr Turner: What about the costs
of the process? Presumably your costs are borne by the public
purse?
Dr Weightman: No, not at all.
Q178 Dr Turner: Could you tell us
about the cost structure?
Dr Weightman: There are two aspects
to that. Under the Nuclear Installation Act our normal cost for
our work on licensed facilities is all recovered from industry
plus all the overheads. Around 95 to 97% of our costs are recovered
from industry through the Treasury, et cetera. In terms of new
build and Generic Design Assessment they are not licensees so
we cannot recover them under the Nuclear Installation Act, but
what we did do is we got the Fees Regulations changed to make
sure that we can recover our costs on a similar basis from the
vendors and that is what is happening now. Our costs are not recovered
from the public purse.
Q179 Dr Turner: We still do not know
exactly what the size of those costs are and what percentage of
the final cost of a new nuclear station they are going to be.
Dr Weightman: I could write to
you with some of the figures.
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