Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140
- 159)
WEDNESDAY 13 JANUARY 2010 (morning)
MS JAYNE
ASHLEY AND
MR JAMES
GREENLEAF
Q140 John Robertson:
The Government have said that there is going to be a statement
on this, and it was supposed to be before the winter and now they
are saying it will be soon. When they make this statement, what
would you like them to say in that statement?
Mr Greenleaf: As a starting point,
to set out some kind of at least fixed timetable for the various
stages, a point by which they would like to have engaged communities,
identified the sites, a point by which they would like to have
set up testing facilities and a point by which they have at least
identified that the site would be technically suitable to develop
a long-term repository there.
Q141 John Robertson:
Do they really need to have testing facilities where these things
have been tested in various countries, and really what we should
be doing is rather taking something that has been proven to work
and doing the same thing here? We do not have to reprove the technical
aspects of storage, do we?
Mr Greenleaf: It is the testing
of the local geology that would be different across different
countries rather than perhaps the concept of sealing nuclear waste.
Q142 John Robertson:
But that would be done anyway and there are sites which are volunteering
already to have repositories within them. It is not like they
are new sites; they are sites which are already being used.
Mr Greenleaf: But testing would
still need to be done to check that they are fully suitable for
them.
Q143 John Robertson:
But they would do that anyway. You would expect that.
Ms Ashley: But, as far as I am
aware, all we have got are expressions of interest from a number
of communities and those communities are represented by their
local authorities. I am not aware of any particular engagement
with the people who actually live in those areas, so we are still
in a very vague position as to where these sites may be, and what
we are saying from a precautionary principle approach is that
it is inaccurate for the Government to say that this issue is
dealt with, so, until we see some further evidence that it is
being dealt with and there is a process for dealing with it—
Q144 John Robertson:
So you do not accept that the Government has dealt with the issue
and, even though they said that CoRWM has already put its recommendations
up and that there are sites which, we know, will be coming forward
for the repositories and that the Government will make a statement
on them, you do not think, because they have not started the geological
testing, that these sites exist or that they should exist?
Ms Ashley: No, what we have is
a volunteerism approach.
Q145 John Robertson:
And is that not good?
Ms Ashley: No, I am not blaming
the approach, but that is the approach that the Government has.
That is Plan A and there is no Plan B and that is what the Government
says, so, unless a community comes forward to volunteer—
Q146 John Robertson:
So you do not want volunteers?
Ms Ashley: No, we are not saying
that.
Q147 John Robertson:
You want the Government to impose it somewhere?
Ms Ashley: No, we are not saying
that at all. What we are saying is that, as yet, we do not have
one community that has volunteered to take this where the Government
has said, "That locality is sensible and safe to put it there"
and which has been tested, so we are just not far enough down
the road, we do not believe, at the moment.
Q148 John Robertson:
It sounds a bit like the chicken or the egg first. What comes
first, the community or the site?
Ms Ashley: Well, we do not have
either at the moment.
Q149 John Robertson:
But we know there are areas that want to be involved in it and
we do know that certain people have come forward to do it. Your
argument, I think, is the point that it is geologically safe to
do the repository in that place and have the communities been
approached. Now, I have a different understanding about the communities
in these areas, that they have been approached.
Ms Ashley: But the Government's
approach is that people volunteer and then they do the geological
testing. Now, we just have not got to that stage yet.
Q150 John Robertson:
Well, how do you do it in reverse?
Ms Ashley: No, I am not saying
that there is a problem with the approach. I am just saying that
the Government has not gone far enough down the line of its agreed
approach yet to be able to say it can deal with it.
Q151 John Robertson:
So the approach is right, but it is just not far enough down the
road?
Mr Greenleaf: I think the important
point to make for the NPS itself is that we are talking about
new nuclear plants and new nuclear waste, separating this from
existing legacy waste. Whilst there is an argument that it will
add a relatively limited amount of additional waste where, over
a fleet of 10 gigawatts, it may be adding ten per cent to the
existing legacy waste, if we have not gone far enough down the
line of actually constructing a process to deal with the legacy
waste, should we be adding to the problem already by commissioning
new reactors?
Q152 John Robertson:
That is a spurious argument. Waste is waste and we have to deal
with it, and there will always be additional waste, no matter
what, whether we build another nuclear power station or not, so
it is not really much of an argument, is it?
Ms Ashley: Well, anything that
you deliver using sustainable development principles, which is
what we advocate as the SDC, would involve the precautionary principle
and it would not meet sustainable development principles if you
approved an infrastructure development that cannot deal with its
waste.
Q153 John Robertson:
But they will.
Ms Ashley: We have not seen evidence—
Q154 John Robertson:
But they have to. We have not got a choice as we have waste which
we to deal with and, therefore, we have to deal with it, no matter
what happens. Were we to close every nuclear power station tomorrow,
we would still have to deal with the waste and the additional
waste that will come from other areas.
Mr Greenleaf: Of course, but the
complexity and cost of dealing with that is really still quite
unknown at the moment. If we find out that even dealing with the
legacy waste is so costly that we would not want to do that for
a new fleet of nuclear reactors, that is part of the issue. The
whole point of the NPS is that the Government assumes the issues
will be dealt with, but we do not have enough evidence yet to
show that.
Q155 Charles Hendry:
Can I be clear about what you are actually advocating. Are you
saying that no new nuclear plant should be approved unless a site
has been identified and geological tests have been carried out
on it?
Mr Greenleaf: I think it is about
deciding how far down the process you want to go to show tangible
progress and have a better understanding of how we deal with the
waste and the associated costs. That is an initial suggestion,
identifying the site and having done some geological testing which
actually says, "This site is sound", and we do not come
back and go, "Oh no, there's a problem. We'll have to go
and find somewhere else".
Q156 Charles Hendry:
But that is years of work, is it not? We are talking about burying
things hundreds of metres underground. The sheer process of tunnelling
that deep, if you look at the Swedish repository that has been
proposed, the model repository there, that took them a decade
to build. Are you, therefore, not just trying to knock the nuclear
debate a long way off into the future by saying, "Look, we
are setting a goalpost which is so high that you can't possibly
meet it"?
Mr Greenleaf: I do not think we
have done enough on where the goalposts should be to actually
specify it now. I think it would need to be somewhere beyond having
a piece of paper and a report which says, "We are going to
do this", but to actually have some progress towards doing
it. If you compare it to the situation in other countries, they
are much further ahead.
Q157 Charles Hendry:
Are you also looking at the potential for reprocessing because
that reduces by 90 per cent the volume of the high-level waste?
If that was to happen, then that dramatically changes the extent
to the size of the repository. Is that something which you would
take account of too?
Mr Greenleaf: Yes, of course you
would need to take that into account. As I say, we have not done
the work on that since the previous nuclear report.
Q158 Charles Hendry:
I think we need something more definitive from you. It is quite
vague how you have left it. You are saying that nuclear ones should
not be approved until certain things have been met, but I think
we are not clear exactly what needs to be met, so I think it would
be very helpful to have a further note as to exactly what you
are suggesting.
Ms Ashley: We can do that. I think
overall our point is that in the statement in the NPS we do not
see any evidence to support that statement and we would like to
see that from Government.
Q159 Mr Anderson:
It may be there. The evidence may be there, but you have not seen
it.
Ms Ashley: It may be, but yes,
we have not seen it.
Dr Whitehead: Well, Jayne Ashley and
James Greenleaf, thank you very much for your evidence this morning.
It will be very useful to the Committee in its deliberations,
and we look forward to receiving those extra notes which you have
kindly agreed to provide to us. Thank you very much.
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