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Lord Flowers: My Lords, needless to say, as a member of the committee of the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh—it was, as always, a great pleasure to serve under him, for somehow, whatever the subject, he always makes it seem fun—I unreservedly support all its conclusions and recommendations, not least those referring to the unconvincing methods, to put it at its least, of the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management, CoRWM.
Other noble Lords have already dealt with many of the relevant points on which I might otherwise have wished to comment. There is just one observation that I would nevertheless like to make, and that is from rather a personal point of view. I was privileged to be the chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution in 1976 until we published our 6th Report: Nuclear Power and the Environment. It dealt very broadly with the subject, but one matter that caused us great
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concern was the lack of work being done at that time by the Government and by the nuclear industry on the treatment and disposal of nuclear waste, not least because a very large programme of nuclear stations was then being seriously contemplated. One of the commission's key recommendations is recalled in paragraph 5.5 of the report before us today. It was very carefully drafted and is quite short. It states:
"There should be no commitment to a large programme of nuclear fission power until it has been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that a method exists to ensure the safe containment of long-lived highly radioactive waste for the indefinite future".
It proved to be a somewhat controversial recommendation, but to this day I believe we were right to make it, because there was no other way to force, not so much the Government, but the nuclear industry, to take seriously the matter of nuclear waste disposal.
However, that was nearly 30 years ago, and, stimulated partly by the Royal Commission's report, many things have happened here and abroad since. We must take those things into consideration when we decide how to deal with nuclear waste. First, the very large nuclear programme being considered in those days has now shrunk, at least for the time being, to no more than the replacement of our old nuclear stations as they fall out of use.
Secondly, the nuclear reactors nowadays being contemplated produce much less waste than the reactors to be replaced and are much more economically competitive. Thirdly, the reprocessed waste is nowadays being vitrified in containers that protect it from the environment for decades to come, thus making it much safer to handle and to dispose of.
Fourthly, a method to ensure safe disposal for the indefinite future—namely, underground storage—has been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt in other countries, especially Finland. The same can be done here, now that we know the method exists. Incidentally, it can never be possible to prove experimentally the safety of any method of disposal of substances that remain dangerously radioactive for tens of thousands of years, short of waiting for that period to see what happens. As in many other spheres of activity one must rely upon such experimental tests of the environment—here, presumably underground rock—as are possible and appropriate, supplemented by extensive mathematical modelling to search for a robust solution. That is what the Royal Commission meant by demonstrating safety "beyond reasonable doubt".
Fifthly, and finally, there has emerged since 1976 a danger much more serious than those arising from the remaining uncertainties concerning disposal methods. One must now set those dangers against the well established consequences of global warming. This arises to a considerable extent simply because for too long much of the world has turned away from nuclear power in favour of the large-scale burning of oil and gas as well as coal, and of grossly inflated estimates of the availability of so-called renewable energy. In those circumstances, resolving the remaining issues of nuclear waste disposal and deciding on the precise
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procedures that will be adopted in this country must no longer be presented, as the Minister, Mr Morley, did to us, as a "pre-requisite" for deciding in principle the future of nuclear power in this country.
The Government have promised to "keep the nuclear option open". What we need now, however, is not a nuclear option but a nuclear reality. We have had quite enough nuclear prevarication already, and so has the world's climate. The Government should not allow themselves any longer to be entrapped by a well intentioned recommendation of the Royal Commission, made in 1976, that is no longer appropriate in the very different circumstances of the 21st century.
Lord Tombs: My Lords, as a co-opted member of the committee that produced the report, I support it fully and applaud its plain language. I wish to describe events of the past seven years to set the report in the context of the procrastination and indifference that have prevailed over that period.
In November 1997, following the rejection of the Nirex planning application for a rock characterisation facility at Sellafield, the Select Committee on Science and Technology decided to inquire into nuclear waste management. The committee formed for that purpose was originally chaired by Lord Phillips of Ellesmere until April 1998, when failing health forced him to give up and I had the honour of succeeding him.
The committee reported in March 1999, after an exhaustive examination of the situation at home and abroad. I shall quote one short paragraph from the executive summary:
"The long time-scales involved might be thought to be a reason for postponing decisions. The contrary is the case, since existing storage arrangements have a limited life and will require replacement, and eventually the repackaging and transfer of stored waste".
The timescales involved in this problem have no precedent. We are dealing not with decades or even centuries but with many millennia. It is common experience that even moderate timescales, of a decade or less, are unsuited to purposeful consideration by itinerant Ministers and civil servants, whose horizons tend to be limited by the duration of their posts. For that reason, the committee recommended the establishment of a nuclear waste management commission, outside day-to-day government and having authority and permanence. That was to follow a Green Paper stating the problem, the possible solutions and the policy that the Government were minded to put to Parliament. Consultation on the Green Paper would be followed by a White Paper containing a full statement of government policy.
Publication of the committee's report was followed by a delay of almost eight months before the government response emerged. It did little except to propose a consultation paper, which was not published until November 2001, more than two years later. That long delay was not without regular efforts to elicit a positive date for publication of the
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proposals, which produced consistent stonewalling replies. On 16 March 2000, the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, was provoked to say:
His uncharacteristic optimism proved misguided, and the proposals were finally published in November 2001, 20 months later and more than two years after the government response to our report. The proposals were ambitiously titled Managing Radioactive Waste Safely and contained no serious examination of the problem. They were the subject of much criticism, in your Lordships' House and elsewhere, for their lack of substance.
The outcome of the consultation was the creation in November 2003 of the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management, which is the main concern of the Select Committee report that we are discussing today. I do not propose to repeat the criticisms of that committee and its formation, apart from observing that it follows the pattern of delay that has characterised the Government's approach to the subject. If that committee maintains its target date of July 2006 for publication of its recommendations to government, more than eight years will have elapsed since the publication of our original report in 1998.
At no point have the recommendations of the 1998 report been seriously addressed by government. As examples, responsibility for nuclear waste management remains fragmented and some materials remain uncategorised. It is sometimes suggested that the need for public involvement is the reason for the delays. The 1998 report contained a chapter on the issue and surveyed overseas experience. It recognised the need to tackle the issue purposefully and carefully, so that it could be seen to influence the development of government policy.
As an aside, I should acknowledge the valuable work done by UK CEED, an independent body, in organising a citizens' jury, as it was called, in the autumn of 1998, shortly after the publication of our report. A number of randomly selected volunteers with widely differing backgrounds met at weekends to examine evidence submitted by invited parties. They presented their findings and arguments in public and, by doing so, demonstrated a sense of purpose and commitment wholly lacking in government actions in recent years.
I plead yet again for a more determined approach to this important but neglected issue. I have spent much time trying to understand the reasons for government procrastination. Does it derive from the complexity of devolution or from fragmented decision making, for example? On the latter point, it would be interesting to know how many Ministers and civil servants had had nominal responsibility for the subject since 1998. I do not expect the Minister to be able to answer that now—or even, perhaps, ever—but, if it is possible to identify the number, I should be grateful if he would write to me.
I am afraid that another, less creditable, reason occurs to me. It may be that some Ministers see delay on the topic as a means of blocking serious discussion of the
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nuclear option, as they continue to describe the need for further investment in nuclear power. If so, they are seriously mistaken. The bulk of the nuclear waste that has been stored successfully for the past 50 years on a short-term basis derives from past civil and military programmes and has to be dealt with. The question of whether or not we build new nuclear stations is peripheral to that problem, which demands a long-term solution.
Other countries have made progress on the important issue of public acceptability. Their success derives from a commitment and purposefulness wholly lacking in this country. A technical solution exists and has been adopted in other countries. Public opinion has shown itself capable of addressing this important issue in ways that our Government fail to comprehend.
Finally, I plead for a government road map including a committed time-scale for positive action. The habit of inventing each new step when the previous one has failed is not a recipe for good government.
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