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Lord Jenkin of Roding: My Lords, I felt very privileged to have been co-opted on to the committee. When I suggested that perhaps I might be able to offer a contribution, it was recollected that I had sat on the inquiry which reported in March 1999 on the issue of nuclear waste. That is nearly six years ago, and I totally endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, said about the delay.
I endorse in full what I see as the very trenchant criticisms of the Government's policy in this area, both voiced in the report and again today by the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh. I add one other point: I do not see this debate as in any way relieving the Government of an
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obligation to provide a written response in the normal way. I hope that the Minister will give us an assurance that the committee will receive a response within the due time.
I do not want to repeat the criticisms, but I have two specific points that I want to make arising directly out of our report. The first concerns the issue of what is becoming known as public engagement. The evidence given to the 1999 inquiry about public acceptability was, for many of us, an eye-opener about how much new work is being undertaken by the social sciences on the issue of public attitudes and public engagement in matters of science and technology.
I add, in parenthesis, that that evidence led directly to the establishment of the inquiry, Science and Society, which I had the privilege of chairing. That report led to a steady expansion of social science among learned societies such as the Royal Society, the British Association, the Royal Institution, professional bodies and universities such as the University of Lancaster and the University of East Anglia, which now have a great corpus of knowledge and understanding about this matter.
A blank sheet of paper was instructed to be used not only on the technical solutions, but also on the area of public acceptability. One must ask why, in the light of this massive information and wisdom that now exists in this area, did they have to start with a blank sheet of paper? We found one of the results when some of us attended an open meeting of CoRWM at Ipswich. Using fairly strong language, at paragraph 4.10, the report said,
In the light of what we heard, that is a fairly kind description. It was a most extraordinary meeting.
However, since then, in the inquiry I asked the chairman of CoRWM, at question 24 on page 7 of the evidence:
"Are you hoping then to be able to answer the question—will your proposed technical solution have public acceptance?".
We were all rather astonished to hear the reply:
"In our terms of reference, public acceptance does not appear. There is a rather perhaps carefully worded phrase which says it is our job to try and inspire public confidence. Public acceptance will be in terms of a longer-term Government process".
After three years or more, it appears that the CoRWM report will be only a limited first step. I must ask the Minister two questions. First, do the Government accept that CoRWM is not in the business of securing public acceptance and that Ministers will embark on that process afterwards? Secondly, what are they doing now to prepare for that task? Unless the Minister can give very clear and reassuring answers to those questions, one is driven to assume that they see CoRWM more as a time-consuming way of delaying decisions rather than as a serious step towards making decisions.
My second point deals with what is intended to follow the report. In 1999 we saw two distinct stages: stage one, deciding on the technology for disposing of the waste, and stage two, deciding on where that was to happen, which is the issue of siting. In my innocence, I had
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assumed that perhaps CoRWM would be following that recommended pattern. Indeed, CoRWM is undertaking, albeit in its own idiosyncratic way, the first stage of recommending the technology. I thought that the issue of siting would be left until the later stage, but not a bit of it. CoRWM's terms of reference, as the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, has said—they are set out in paragraph 5.1 of our report—state that CoRWM will need to consider siting issues, and note these words,
What an astonishing way to proceed.
When Mr MacKerron was asked about this matter, he said in response to question 32:
"After we report, assuming that we have done our job well, the Government are likely to take some time, I suspect, to do some further consultation. They will then move, I would guess, towards a siting process for whatever kind of facility may then be recommended".
So at that stage, the chairman of CoRWM was clearly recognising that siting was not to be part of the CoRWM remit.
In paragraph 5.1 the report says:
However, when we asked the Minister, Mr Elliot Morley, about this, his first response averted, no doubt, to the terms of reference,
When I pointed out that that was contrary to what Mr MacKerron had said, the Minister's official, Mr de Grouchy, qualified that and went on to try to explain that there was not a conflict of evidence. When I pointed out that there was a conflict of evidence, Mr Morley was very quick to back off, saying,
Note the words "if they chose". What kind of a way is that of asking a committee, however strangely established, to handle an issue of such vital importance to the issue? Later the Minister was invited to clarify that and his response is on page 18 of the report and is as clear as mud.
Tonight, the Minister must clarify the question: what is CoRWM's remit and how far does it go? If he cannot clarify that tonight, will he promise the House to include a clarification in the written report which we must have as a reply to the Select Committee report?
Lord Taverne: My Lords, I am glad that the report we are debating has not pulled its punches—nor did the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, in introducing it. It is the most scathing report from a committee of this House that I have read. As it clearly demonstrates, Defra has been pusillanimous. Determined to put off a difficult decision about the future of nuclear energy, it has decided to hide behind the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management and deliberately gave it terms of reference and a composition which ensures further delay.
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This will not be the first occasion that Defra does everything possible to avoid political controversy. At one time I praised the department for having at last come to a bold decision and showing some courage when it authorised the commercial production of GM maize. But I was wrong, because Defra duly imposed terms and conditions that made production commercially unviable and skilfully avoided upsetting green pressure groups which it seemed determined to appease.
I leave it to others to discuss the details of the report itself. I want to follow up a speech that I made in June last year and add a footnote on radiation and safety, which is an issue basic to public fears about nuclear waste and the whole problem of nimbyism.
In a debate on 30 June I suggested that the generally adopted "Linear No-Threshold" approach to the safety of nuclear radiation which argues that even the smallest dose of radiation is dangerous, went against the evidence, because the evidence suggests that at low doses radiation is not harmful; indeed, through the hormesis effect, at doses which are still above the recommended maximum safety level, it seems to be beneficial. After I made that speech and a subsequent article I wrote on the subject, I received a flood of information that showed that the case was even stronger than I thought.
Let me refer to three studies. The first is very strong evidence indeed from a study of British radiologists covering 100 years, which has been described as perhaps the most important study of the health effects of radiation on humans ever published. Those who were exposed to very large doses before 1920, when safeguards were first introduced, suffered from a 75 per cent higher rate of cancer than other male English physicians. However, the overall death rate of radiologists from all causes was lower than average. Even before 1920—that is, even at a time when there was exposure to dangerously high doses—the benefits more than balanced the risks.
However, because of the safety measures taken after 1920, the overall health of radiologists improved. They continued to be exposed to higher than average doses of radiation, but their incidences of cancer dropped significantly below those for all English men and their life expectancy was significantly longer. In fact, it was some three years more than the average life expectancy of all English physicians. These effects were clearly set out in a paper by Mr J R Cameron, and indeed others, which was published, in 2002, in the British Journal of Radiology and elsewhere. Cameron's important conclusion was that present safety levels set for radiation workers reduce their health benefits rather than protect them.
The second is a recent Russian study that has been duly peer reviewed and published, in 2004, in the Journal of Radiation Research, a reputable Japanese publication. The study examines the incidence of cancer among emergency workers, employees of the nuclear industry, who participated in recovery operations at Chernobyl. The study covered the period 1996–2001, 10 to 15 years after the accident. These workers were exposed to
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substantially more radiation than the average, well above the recommended maximum safe dose. Yet the incidence of cancer among them was no higher than that found in the average Russian population of the same age.
The study, I should state, was of a relatively small sample, but it is consistent with all the other epidemiological evidence about workers in nuclear plants and nuclear shipyards and those who live in areas of high natural radiation, all of which showed that there was a lower incidence of cancer there than among control groups. If the Russian workers had suffered a higher than average rate of cancer it would have shown up in the study.
The third study is important because it not only reviews the various relevant epidemiological studies, but explains why low doses of radiation should have a beneficial effect. It provides a mechanism. It is a paper by Pollycove and others, published by the Académie des sciences, Paris, in 1999. Part of the paper states:
"[Whereas] high doses of radiation suppress our damage-control biosystem with consequent increased metabolic mutations, and cancer mortality . . . low dose radiation stimulates increased biosystem activity that produces fewer persistent metabolic alterations and mutations with lower cancer mortality and increased longevity".
As one past president and founder of the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, Lauriston Taylor, put it, to apply the Linear No-Threshold hypothesis for calculating a safe dose is,
What worries me is the attitude of our own National Radiological Protection Board and of the International Commission. They stick rigidly to the consensus, as they wrongly call it, that we must accept the Linear No-Threshold doctrine. As proper scientists they should be open-minded, look at the evidence and be willing to change their minds in the face of the evidence, not bury their minds in the sands of traditional orthodoxy. Our present obsession with the risks of nuclear radiation is to a large extent exaggerated and misconceived and is almost certainly counterproductive. That is something we should bear in mind when planning future policy on the disposal of nuclear waste.
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