Examination of Witnesses (Questions 260
- 269)
MONDAY 3 NOVEMBER 2008
MR MIKE
O'BRIEN, MR
MICHAEL SUGDEN
AND DR
NICOLA BAGGLEY
Q260 Dr Iddon: The Government's hope
is for Britain to become again the leading nation in nuclear engineering.
Bearing in mind that we are going to be importing French and American
designed reactors with the possibility that they will bring in
their own engineers who know that plant better than ours, do you
think that Government hope will be realised?
Mr O'Brien: Yes, I do. Although
it is certainly true that the French will bring in knowledge that
they have and no doubt the Americans will in due course and others,
we know that they will want to have the ability to use the people
and the knowledge that we have as well. We also hope that there
will be other players in the market who will be producing nuclear
power and therefore I think there will be plenty of demand. There
will not be a shortage of demand for the skills in nuclear. Will
we be importing some of the knowledge from France and America?
Yes, we will import their knowledge and we will use that knowledge
to generate power in this country for people here. That is all
to the good. I do think that companies like EDF and others will
want to have people who are able to run their power stations who
have been trained here as well. They are not just going to want
to import all the knowledge from abroad.
Q261 Dr Iddon: The Government last
week nailed itself to the 80% reduction in CO2 mast under extreme
lobbying of course from Friends of the Earth and others.
Mr O'Brien: The new department
took a decision and convinced them to support us.
Q262 Dr Iddon: That is the Government
answer.
Mr O'Brien: I congratulate those
who also lobbied for it.
Q263 Dr Iddon: That is by 2050 of
course. Bearing in mind that we are going to be closing a substantial
number of our existing reactors down during the next two decades,
do you think that nuclear power is going to play a significant
role in getting that 80% target met?
Mr O'Brien: Yes. It must. We have
15% electricity generated from nuclear, a drop from 19% four years
ago. We are going to see a number of nuclear power stations coming
off production over the next few years. We have to replace those.
We have a big renewables programme. That is not capable of itself
of replacing the capacity from nuclear. We need to ensure, for
environmental reasons, for security of supply reasons as well
as affordability reasons, that we have a range of provision of
power. That means we have to have it from renewables. We have
to have it from oil, gas and other sources. We also have to ensure
that we have nuclear generation of electricity too. That is going
to be a key component of ensuring that we get to the very tough
targets that we have set ourselves for 80% reduction of emissions
by 2050. We were conscious when we agreed that that we were challenging
the country. We were also aware that we were giving a clear message
to those who say "No nuclear" that they would have to
explain how on earth we were going to be able to hit these challenging
environmental targets without nuclear. We will not. It is as simple
as that. We have to develop nuclear as a serious technology if
we are going to hit these targets.
Q264 Dr Iddon: Is eight new reactors
an initial target?
Mr O'Brien: That is initially
where we are. We do not have a statistical "we want this
percentage generation" but we have dropped over the last
few years from about 19% to about 15%. We certainly would want
to replace that sort of area with nuclear generation of electricity.
Q265 Dr Iddon: Let me turn now to
another pressure which Japan is meeting. Japan is going for overcapacity
in nuclear energy, not only to provide electricity for its citizens
but also to generate the hydrogen economy. As you know, there
are various processes—electrolysis of water being just one,
reforming of methane as steam being another, and there are
other processes—whereby we can generate hydrogen using nuclear
power as well. Has the Government considered that option of overcapacity
to enjoin the hydrogen economy?
Mr O'Brien: It is not our view
at this time that we want to go to overcapacity. We are interested
in the development of the hydrogen economy. Indeed, when I was
previously in this post, I had some involvement in trying to promote
the development of the hydrogen economy in the UK. We need to
see how this technology will develop in the future. I hesitate
to say it is experimental but it is also quite well-developed
and we know a lot about it. At this stage, we will be looking
to see how that develops and it is not our aim to create overcapacity
by reason of nuclear generation.
Q266 Mr Marsden: Minister, you have
talked already about what we are going to have to import in terms
of skills and expertise as only part of the process that we are
now going down, but there is also surely a requirement on us to
have an input into new developments. I am referring specifically
to the Generation IV International Forum and to the nuclear systems
from which we have, I understand, as a country directly withdrawn
ourselves as from 2006. Professor Billowes from the Dalton Institute
said to us that our engagement with Europe and America is weak
in basic R&D. How are you going to reverse the actuality of
that weakness in R&D? Are you going to be prepared to provide
the £5 million which would enable us to re-engage with the
Generation IV programme or, if not, what else have you got on
the agenda?
Mr O'Brien: We have a large agenda
in terms of investment into development of knowledge but in terms
of the Generation IV it was the case that we had to look at what
our priorities would be. There are always going to be competing
priorities. We took a view that there were other areas that we
wanted to prioritise. As you know, this technology and experimental
work is unlikely to produce significant, commercial development
until after about 2030. The aim is to ensure that we focus on
other areas of research. We are involved in Taurus and we are
encouraging university research. Ten years ago there was very
little development of nuclear research or courses in British universities.
Now we are seeing an increasing involvement in research and building
up courses. I think you heard from the academics who were before
you that a few years ago they would have had very few PhD students
but now they have a significant number, so there are at Imperial,
at Warwick, at York, at Lancaster now universities that are doing
quite a lot of research. In terms of high level, long-term research
we did not feel that our involvement in that particular project
was where we wanted to focus our resources. There are always going
to be priority choices.
Q267 Mr Marsden: You talked earlier,
quite rightly, about how you have to engage more people at graduate
level. You are not worried that this sends out a signal to them
that there will not be any meaningful international collaboration
in this particular area and that will then restrict their own
research interests subsequently?
Mr O'Brien: The Nuclear Education
Consortium has just put together a project involving £2.6
million from EPSRC and others to generate more academic research
and MAs, PhDs. I think most people know now that there is a very
clear agenda, shared broadly by the two main parties, with deference
to the Chairman on this.
Q268 Chairman: I am totally neutral
on these matters.
Mr O'Brien: They have made a very
clear, long-term commitment to nuclear. It is very clear to anyone
considering whether or not they want to develop a career in research
in this area that there is going to be a long-term need for those
skills and for that knowledge. I do not believe that our decision
in relation to GIF in particular or the Gen IV project is something
which is going to cause any serious academics to have any doubt
that we are fully committed to nuclear research. It is very clear
from what else we have done. John Denham last week pledged £98
million for skills including nuclear. There is plenty of funding
behind the development of these skills and this area of education
and, for this particular project, whatever signal it might have
sent, the signals have been overwhelmed by the other signals that
we have sent about development.
Q269 Chairman: Minister, we are very
grateful to you for your presence this afternoon. Although the
Committee has different views in terms of the nuclear issue, that
is not our issue as far as this inquiry is concerned. It is really
how we produce the engineering capacity to be able to deliver
what the Government has as its programme. It is our job to scrutinise
that. It would be very useful if we could have a note from you
about specifically those issues to deal with skills because Cogent
have clearly set massive targets for the expansion of skills over
the next 10 years. We do not have a clear picture from you as
to what the Government's involvement in that is going to be and
that is at every level from the nuclear scientist right through
to the level two and three skills that Gordon Marsden was talking
about. In order to present that in our report, it would be useful
to have the Government's plans to help deliver those skills so
it is not simply a matter of saying, "Pay people more within
the private sector."
Mr O'Brien: I think I was making
it clear that there was a bit more than that in terms of the Government's
commitment, both financially and otherwise, to the development
of this agenda. I would hope to publish very shortly the Sector
Skills Council report into the need for skills in the energy sector
as a whole. When I say "shortly", I mean within a week
or so. That will give you not only a view about what the Government
is doing and what the wider industry is doing in terms of nuclear
but across the whole of the energy sector. If I may say so, this
report that you will be doing will be timely and will be able,
I hope, to take account of the response from the Sector Skills
Council to the Government's Energy White Paper, but I would not
want you to go away thinking that my only view about keeping people
in this country was that we pay them enough. I think that is a
crucial factor but there is also the fact that we provide the
interest and the long-term career prospects which they see as
being crucial to their future. That is what is going to keep them
here too.
Chairman: I think we would agree on that.
Minister, Mr Sugden and Dr Baggley, thank you very much indeed.
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