Examination of Witnesses (Questions 340
- 359)
WEDNESDAY 20 JANUARY 2010 (afternoon)
MR KEITH
PARKER, MR
SIMON JAMES,
MR RICHARD
WAITE AND
MR BRUCE
MCKIRDY
Q340 Dr Turner:
Without long-term contracts?
Mr James: Well, long-term contracts
are a commercial issue for the companies. Some companies will
enter into long-term contracts if they can get that as a commercial
advantage, as a commercial arrangement. You do find in the existing
market there are some very long-term contracts, and equally there
are other shorter-term contracts. It is a purely commercial arrangement.
It is in the interests of some users to enter into long-term contracts.
A classic one would be Network Rail. Network Rail needs its business
powered up the whole time to keep the trains running.
Q341 Dr Turner:
To cite EDF, how do you feel about the impact of carbon pricing?
Mr Parker: It is a pretty consistent
theme of all our representations to Government during the various
consultations that have gone on over the last few years that a
mechanism to price carbon in the market and to recognise and reward
the low carbon attributes of nuclear and other low carbon technologies
is an important factor and will have an impact on investment decisions.
It is something which will strengthen, if you like, the business
case for investing in low carbon technology so, yes, that is something
we would welcome.
Q342 Chairman:
Copenhagen was going to produce that and it has not?
Mr Parker: No.
Q343 Chairman:
What is your view on a floor on the price of carbon?
Mr James: The Government has made
it clear that if effective international mechanisms cannot be
made to work to produce the carbon price it would seek to take
domestic measures to take that forward.
Q344 Chairman:
I am not sure how clear it was, Simon. It was two sentences in
the White Paper.
Mr James: As an industry, we think
that the Government is serious about that and there are different
mechanisms that can be looked at for that. I mean, an obvious
one is carbon taxation, which has been discussed, which would
be another mechanism. Essentially there are two mechanisms for
providing your price for carbon. One is the market-based mechanism
and the other one is a direct tax intervention method. There are
advantages to both ways of doing that and it is certainly the
case with all low carbon technologies that the price of carbon
is the market's signal that Government would choose to put out
there to encourage low carbon, and the scale and ambition the
Government has in producing low carbon technology and decarbonising
the electricity sector indicates that the Government will inevitably
have to look at this because it will need to produce that carbon
price because the Government needs a low carbon electricity sector
and that is the way they will deliver it.
Chairman: Let us change the focus. Richard
and Bruce, you have been very quiet wise men. We are going to
talk about nuclear waste management and disposal, and perhaps
you would take the lead on this. We will go to Mike first.
Q345 Mr Weir:
Obviously disposal is one of the principal concerns about a new
generation of nuclear power stations. What evidence is there to
suggest that effective means will exist to manage and dispose
of the waste arising from new stations?
Mr Waite: As we noted in our evidence,
the NDA supports the Government's view that effective arrangements
can be put in place based on the work that has been done in part
to deal with the legacy, so the creation of the NDA itself is
a key step forwards in that. But there are three aspects I think
we need to consider in understanding whether existing arrangements
and future arrangements can cope with new build. First of all,
finding a suitable site is a fundamental part of the process.
Secondly, understanding the technical achievability of disposal
of new build material. Thirdly, are there going to be adequate
interim storage arrangements in place until such time as disposal
arrangements come along. On all three of those fronts we think
the answer is a positive, "Yes, arrangements can be put in
place," so, for example, on finding the site the Government
in 2008 launched the Managing Radioactive Waste Safely White Paper,
which set out a very clear staged process based on voluntarism
and partnership to engage communities in expressing an interest
first of all to step into a siting process. Good progress has
been made, we feel, on that front with three communities having
expressed said interest and indeed are now working together in
partnership in Cumbria to effectively take that forward by engaging
the local communities, the local people, and getting their views
on taking the next step, as it were, in that staged process. So
we feel that process, which has been seen to work well in other
countries—just about every other country that has been successful
in taking disposal forward has indeed based it on the volunteerist
approach, so we are quite confident that that can be extended
from the site viewpoint. In terms of technical achievability,
under the generic design assessment process we have actually carried
out some assessments over the new build fuel, the candidate fuel
from potentially an EPR type of reactor or an AP1000, and we found
both of those fuels to pose no new difficulties in terms of technical
acceptability, no new issues arose that would form our views against
them being able to be disposed of, so we are quite confident from
a technical viewpoint that the new build fuels can be handled.
Thirdly, on the issue of interim storage arrangements, we already
have substantive interim stores in place to deal with the legacy
waste that we already have. They are designed circa to 100 year
design lives in many cases. They are already designed to cope
with the impacts of climate change, seismic impact, and so on
and so forth, so again the technology is there and the evidence
is there that new build interim storage should be able to be put
in place and maintained until such time as disposal facilities
come along to take the material that they contain. So on all three
counts we strongly support the Government's evidence that they
believe the arrangements will be in place.
Q346 Mr Weir:
You mentioned a staged process and the White Paper set out a six
stage process leading up to the actual construction. Can you tell
us what stage we are at now in respect of this and when would
you expect a geological disposal facility actually to be available
to receive waste?
Mr Waite: We are in the first
stage really where the expression of interest from the local communities
has been made. The next phase is for them to move beyond that
expression of interest to decide to participate more fully in
the process. The timeline for that is down to them. It is really
difficult for us to say when that will be because it is really
based on how quickly they feel they can progress with the local
community support and gain that local engagement before they take
their next step. Having said that, we have made some assumptions
around how long that might take and we believe the assumption
to be reasonably prudent and the basis of our plans is that we
would have the GDF, as we call it, the geological disposal facility,
up and running ready for business, as it were, in 2040 with a
staged construction programme before that to get it into operation,
so it would open its doors, as it were, for business for waste
placement in 2040.
Q347 Mr Weir:
How long would you then expect on site interim storage to have
to be in place? DECC have said it could be as long as 160 years,
which seems a very long time.
Mr Waite: If you assume that a
reactor runs for 60 years and that the final core offload at the
end of those 60 years has to be stored to get it cool enough to
be able to dispose of it, then a pessimistic set of assumptions
would see it being stored for 100 years beyond those 60, which
is where you get the 160 from. That is based on a fuel burn up
at the top end range, if you like, to give a conservative outer
limit. The reality is that fuel burn up will probably be less
than the upper limit and the 100 years telescopes back to 75 if
you take an average view of fuel burn up. Having said that, there
are other means of limiting the time you need the stores for by
actually optimising and aligning the repository. Maybe Mr McKirdy
would like to comment on that for me.
Mr McKirdy: Yes. The 100 years
cooling time was based on calculations we carried out. As Richard
said, we used the higher end burn up of 65GW days per tonnes as
the figure, that is the peak burn up time, moving the average
down to about 50, and that results in a storage period of 75 years.
But all of that is based on a non-optimised disposal facility.
It is just taking the disposal facility that has been designed
to deal with legacy waste and just shoe-horning in new build waste.
Now, there are various things you can do, so the legacy wastes
are put in four fuel elements into a disposal canister for disposal.
You could reduce the number of fuel elements in each disposal
canister, so if you take two fuel elements per disposal canister
instead of four you effectively halve the cooling time that you
would need to meet the temperature constraint in the repository,
which is keeping the outside of that disposal canister to 100
degrees C. That is one aspect. The other thing we can do, which
we did not explore, is that you can change the spacing of the
disposal canisters within the repository, so if they are further
apart they are less influenced by the heat from adjacent disposal
canisters, therefore the amount of fuel you can put in each canister
whilst still maintaining 100 degrees C remains the same. We did
not do all of this when we did the generic design assessment,
disposability assessments, because we were purely looking to see
whether we could dispose of the waste. So the answer was, yes,
we could dispose of it and we have noted in the disposability
assessments that there is room for further optimisation.
Q348 Mr Weir:
Just to see if I am understanding you correctly, the cooling period
you are talking about, am I right in assuming that that is before
it can be moved off-site to disposal?
Mr McKirdy: The constraint is
when it is in the disposal facility to maintain a temperature
at the outside of the disposal canister when it is underground
of 100 degrees C. There are two reasons for that. One is that
the disposal canisters will be surrounded by a Bentonite swelling
clay. There is a temperature constraint on the Bentonite which
currently is conservatively assumed to be 100 degrees. Also, by
keeping the temperature below 100 degrees C, you avoid water turning
to steam, which can cause problems in the disposal facility. So
that is the thing which sets the constraint. It is not being able
to move it away from the site, it is actually being able to put
it and emplace it in the disposal facility.
Q349 Mr Weir:
Presumably—and I might be wrong—once a facility is
available, is the plan to put the legacy waste in there in the
first instance that already exists and is spread around the country,
and what sort of timescale are you talking about then before you
can put new waste in, or can it go in at the same time? Is there
a difference in how it reacts?
Mr McKirdy: As I say, there needs
to be an optimisation exercise and one of the things that would
influence that is the thermal characteristics of the geological
facility itself, so different host rocks for a geological facility
will have a different thermal conductivity, which will take more
heat away from the fuel elements and keep the temperatures lower.
We do not have the site yet, so we are using a generic range of
conductivities based on the kind of range of geologies we could
expect to see in the UK. Now, at a certain stage we would then
have to work an optimal design, so looking at the spacing, looking
at how much fuel goes into each canister, looking at the existing
stores that have been built to store this waste and making the
best use of their design life. I think the important point is
that it would not necessarily have to be stored for 100 years
following reactor operation.
Q350 Mr Weir:
Is it your view that the site would have to be agreed on or under
construction, or whatever, before new nuclear stations are built
or do you think it can be done in parallel?
Mr Waite: We do not think there
is any linkage, if you like, between finding the site and building
it and pressing on with the remainder of the programme, if that
is what you are getting to, because of the existing arrangements
for interim storage being perfectly adequate. Interim stores lasting
100 years are already designed and built, so there is now scope
already. Sizewell B's new store is going to be 100 year design
life for PWR fuel, which is similar to obviously what new build
operators will be using. So the fact that there are existing interim
storage arrangements are there effectively as a buffer between
the availability of the geological disposal facility and the operations
going on at the moment, from our perspective and indeed the new
build operation we think we can decouple the two entirely.
Q351 Mr Weir:
The NPS at the moment says that the IPC does not need to consider
the issue of nuclear waste. Would you agree with that?
Mr Waite: Yes, we think there
is sufficient evidence around to suggest that the work we are
doing to support the legacy, the progress that has been made in
the volunteering process, the technical work that we have done,
as my colleague has been explaining, the fact that there are optimisation
solutions downstream of today that will limit the amount of storage
duration, and so on, we do not believe there is any real need
for the IPC to look at that all again, given the amount of scrutiny
it has already had. There has been a huge amount of consultation
and scrutiny already around the whole waste issue. The solutions
we have are adequate for the future solutions as well.
Q352 Mr Weir:
But is there an issue about, for example, the transportation of
waste over distances? If, for example, you agreed that the geological
disposal would be in Cumbria, obviously Sellafield may be in the
running for one of the new stations, it would be a relatively
short space to transport waste. Is that an issue which is relevant
for siting new stations?
Mr Waite: I think the important
thing to remember today is that the fleet of operating stations,
both the Magnox stations which we run and the British Energy AGRs,
and indeed Sizewell but more so the AGRs, already have fuel transport
arrangements, waste transport arrangements, if you like, happening
already from sites across to Sellafield, and that is happening
perfectly safely, perfectly adequately under the scrutiny of the
Department for Transport, the regulations and so on, and has been
for many years so there is no real big challenge there. It is
not as if there is a huge flood gate of transportation opens up
because of the timescales of these things opening. It is quite
a slow process, so the infrastructure is already there. It is
a case of extending and using that existing infrastructure.
Q353 John Robertson:
I have to declare an interest as Chair of the All Party Nuclear
Energy Group. I think everybody here accepts that our biggest
problem is not just whatever the future waste will be legacy waste.
You said that the present storage, interim storage, was for 100
years. Is that 100 years from today, tomorrow, or does it date
back already 10, 20 years?
Mr Waite: There is a range. Some
that are already in their 100 year design life being used and
we carried out a study back in 2009 on those particular stores
where we recognised we are going to have to extend them and we
have figured out ways of actually taking out and refurbishing
the elements that wear out. The civil structures generally last
for as long as you need them to last, so designing civil buildings
for 100 year, 200 years, is not a problem. It is more the electro-mechanical
stuff inside, the control and instrumentation equipment inside
where you would need to plan to replace those and we are doing
that on some of our existing stores to life extend those stores.
New stores that are being planned, that we have just commissioned
on some of our stations are 100 years from now. New stores that
are in the pipeline that we plan to build in three or four, and
in some cases 10-15 years from now will be 100 years plus stores
with lifetime extendibility built into their designs. So you know
that you need to not have a cliff edge on the lifetime, therefore
you build extendibility into the basic design by having certain
elements that you know are going to wear out replaceable and maintainable.
Q354 John Robertson:
I think probably most people would be more concerned about what
we have at the moment and what the lifetime is of the present
waste we have and other places that are already storing it. What
is the oldest one and the newest one?
Mr Waite: One store that is being
used at the moment, for example, for capturing or storing the
vitrified product from high active liquid vitrification started
operation in the 1980s. It has a 50 year design life. We are busy
filling that up through the reprocessing process at THORP and
we have recognised, for example, on that one that we need to life
extend it and there is work going on now to change it from 50
years to probably 100 years.
Q355 John Robertson:
For how many years down the road of 50 years are we?
Mr Waite: Well, 80, so we are
about 20 years in on that one. Around the world there is experience,
of course, not just in the UK, of the storage of nuclear materials
back from the 1950s. We have materials ourselves from that timescale
where stores have been in place. New stores get built when old
ones wear out and need replacing and we have a number of those
in Sellafield. At the moment we are building new stores because
we are monitoring the arrangements for the existing stores to
make sure that when we know we need new ones we build them fast
enough. So it is a case of monitoring the materials, building
new stores, designing in life extension and making sure that this
material is kept safe and secure until such time as disposal comes
along.
Q356 John Robertson:
The three sort of volunteer sites, I cannot imagine you have not
done anything in regard to them so there must be some kind of
studies that have already been done? Are they similar geological
ground where we are going to put them in, or are they all different?
Where are we in that respect?
Mr Waite: The three communities
that have expressed interest are Copeland District Council, Alledale
and now Cumbria County Council, so it is effectively a large part
of Cumbria is in the process. Bruce, maybe you would like to say
something about the geology in those areas.
Mr McKirdy: Yes. Very generally,
there is some basement under sedimentary cover, which is sort
of a hard fractured rock with a sandstone overlaying on it. There
are also some carboniferous rocks which would probably be ruled
out because they may contain mineral deposits which could be sought
after, and then there would also be basement rock to surface in
the Copeland and Alledale area, so you have got sort of hard,
fractured rock that will go all the way to the surface and either
the basement to surface or basement under sedimentary cover are
potentially suitable for a repository, but we would not want to
pre-empt that. The next stage in the process is that the British
Geological Survey will look at any of the candidate areas who
have expressed an interest and screen out some or all of those
areas based on criteria which were published in the white paper.
Following that, if a decision to participate is made by those
areas there will be a need to go from the very big areas, the
Copeland and Alledale areas, out to about 2,000 sq km between
them. We are looking for a repository site of 5 sq km, so there
would be a need to look at what had got through the BGS screening
process, what volunteer sites or areas were still involved, and
then identifying with those communities specific sites within
those areas for investigation.
Q357 Chairman:
What is the planning process for a deep facility? Who gives the
planning consent?
Mr Waite: I believe the final
planning authority in the Cumbria area is Cumbria County Council,
although the local district council obviously have their own process
as well and one of the arrangements that have been set up at the
moment, because we are talking about a two tier council structure
in Cumbria, is exactly what is our process going to look like
and the Cumbria County Council people, Alledale and Copeland,
have just formed a partnership, an MRWS partnership at the back
end of last year to work through those sorts of issues, which
we think is a really strong development.
Q358 Chairman:
So for a big new nuclear plan it is the IPC, but for the back
end it is the traditional planning process?
Mr Waite: I believe that is the
current arrangement.
Q359 Chairman:
Okay. Do you think that makes sense? I can see some of my colleagues
looking a bit astonished at that.
Mr Waite: I think given the voluntarism
approach and given that it is all about getting local communities
comfortable about hosting one of these facilities, I think the
reliance is more on the local arrangements through normal planning
arrangements rather than a national approach using the IPC, so
it would be more consistent, I guess, to use the local arrangements
if you are relying on the local communities to give you the support
that you are looking for. I believe that is the philosophy behind
that.
Mr McKirdy: I suppose I could
add to that and say at the time at which the Government consultation
leading to the Waste White Paper in 2008 was carried out the whole
IPC arrangements were not fully in place and so the consultation
had not covered those, and also given that it is going to be a
long time before a planning application for a repository is likely
to be put in place, there is time for that decision to be made.
The White Paper did not rule out the new planning arrangements
applying to a repository, but because of the fact that they were
not in place at that time we could not say that they would apply.
Chairman: If you could just drop us a
note to clarify that point that would be helpful. We are going
to suspend this sitting for ten minutes.
The Committee suspended from 3.40 pm until
3.55 pm for a division in the House.
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