Certainly, talking to various young people doing nuclear physics at that meeting in Cheltenham, it was obvious that there are some really outstanding scientists. One of my colleagues, who trained at Imperial College, for example, clearly had an extremely promising career but now cannot find any post-doctoral or further research position to continue her work in nuclear physics. This is a terrible blight on our young generation, as it is when we come to recruiting PhD students. With the extreme tension at the engineering office of the sciences research council and the fact that in real terms we have lost 16% of our budget, it is massively difficult to see how we can really maintain this expertise in which we led the world. Only 40 years ago, we were spending nearly £500 million on research in this area. Under different successive Governments—no one Government are to blame—we ended up spending probably a post-doctoral scientist’s research salary and a bit more besides, which is really quite shocking. It is now slightly creeping up, but the pressure is massive and not one that can be undertaken with the constraints that apply to our two research councils most involved in this area. There is also a clear need that if we are really to have the public behind us and with this very important initiative, we have to be seen to be listening to the public much better than we have been doing. Aspects of public engagement have been pretty unsophisticated, and they need to include a recognition that we as scientists have to show our responsibility and concerns about the ethics of what we do and involve social scientists in government to work out how best to do that. This is still a major problem.
Recently in a debate in the Chamber, the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, argued that we on the Select Committee are not interested in social sciences. I am afraid that he is mistaken. So much of the work that we do is involved in social sciences, and we take it very seriously. Of course, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council has also tried very hard to get involved with things like dialogue and better public engagement and has tried to support it a great deal. But it is really very important that the Government do that. If we do public engagement with the issues involved in nuclear, it is actually a generic area; the skills we would learn from this contentious area apply increasingly to a whole range of technologies as science develops and becomes increasingly important in our society. I hope that the Government can do something towards this and do what is essential to make this a much more acceptable technology, which will I hope be better funded in consequence.
7.12 pm
Lord Broers: My Lords, we are already at a point in this debate when much that must be said has been said. As the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, pointed out, the energy world has changed a great deal since the report was published, but I still believe that it is crucial to retain nuclear power as one of the low-cost carbon options in the UK energy strategy, despite the increasing awareness of the vast potential of low-cost shale gas and concern about the failures at Fukushima.
Nuclear power is the most mature of the three major low-carbon options in our strategy and is vastly
better understood in terms of performance, maintenance and cost than offshore wind, let alone carbon capture and storage. However, there is no denying that the possibility worldwide of cheaper natural gas, even if there is not very much of it directly under the UK—although, as the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, said, there may be some under the waters adjacent to us—together with, illogically in my mind, the safety concerns resulting from the Fukushima failure that the noble Lord, Lord Winston, has just addressed, have made the nuclear option less attractive, so much so that those who were to supply our new plants have either delayed their commitments, as with EDF, or, in the case of RWE and E.On, withdrawn completely. Of course, there are others who may be willing to build our plants, such as the Chinese and the Russians.
It is, no doubt, because of the change in the general energy supply outlook that the Government decided to introduce contracts for difference to provide a more favourable pricing environment for potential bidders. These CFDs are being viewed by some as a hidden subsidy for nuclear power which, as we all know, the Government have sworn that they would not allow. They argue that the CFDs are available for all low-carbon options, not just nuclear, and that it has always been assumed that it would be necessary to subsidise low-cost carbon alternatives, at least initially. This is not, therefore, in their mind, a subsidy that singles out nuclear. On balance, I agree with that argument and, in any case, I have always felt that the first implementation of any new technology needs some form of financial assistance.
On the basis that this is not the time to abandon plans for maintaining, or even growing, our nuclear base, the recommendations of the Select Committee’s report that will restore and update our knowledge base are powerful and should be implemented. I was highly encouraged by the positive response from the Government to many of our recommendations. I join others in complimenting our chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, for the strong way in which he led the inquiry and the focus he maintained on the importance of re-establishing a competitive, well co-ordinated R and D base for the nuclear industry.
First and foremost, as no doubt many have said and will say, we need a comprehensive R and D strategy, as laid out in our first recommendation, that looks as far ahead as 2050. The output of this strategy will be a road map, which although it is not stated, will have to be reviewed every few years to ensure that it is keeping up with unpredictable developments. Along with many others, I am pleased that our recommendation to set up an advisory board to oversee and co-ordinate this R and D programme was accepted. As we have heard, the board has already met, but we are yet to learn who is going to pay for all this and for how long the payment will be maintained. Our chairman has said, perhaps in another place, that we may have to return to this to ensure that the programme continues.
I spoke in the Queen’s Speech debate about the need to increase the resources that we devote to R and D in the broader context of the economy, very much along the lines of the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell. At present, largely because of the dramatic fall in our
manufacturing output, we lag far behind our competitors in R and D spend as a fraction of GDP. The dangers of allowing this to happen are no better illustrated than by our current predicament with nuclear power. We can no longer build nuclear plants ourselves and therefore lack the ability to determine our own future.
Fortunately, in the case of nuclear R and D, the Government agree with our concern and with our wish to restore our nuclear R and D capability so that we can support the new-generation plants and better deal with the already existing and giant problem of disposing of our legacy waste. We need not do this in isolation from the rest of the world. We should, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, suggested to me yesterday, collaborate with others, especially the French, who have world-leading capability. In giving evidence to us, Mr Bernard Bigot, chairman of France’s Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, which, incidentally, has 4,500 people working on nuclear energy R and D with a budget of €1.2 billion—the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, referred to the comparison between our 2% effort and theirs—said:
“So I think you should build expertise in your country and share expertise with others in order to strengthen your capacity”.
He made it clear that the French would he happy to collaborate with us.
I finish by asking the Minister to assure us that the Government’s commitment to restore our R and D base in nuclear power is firm and that the full potential of nuclear technology for this country will be realised.
7.19 pm
Baroness Hilton of Eggardon: My Lords, I would like to take up the point about public engagement made by my noble friend Lord Winston and the importance of getting people in this country to understand the vital necessity of having more nuclear power capacity.
Twenty years ago, in common with many people in this country, I was opposed to the extension of our capacity for nuclear power. This was largely because of the problems of the disposal of nuclear waste and its persistence in the environment, which have still not been solved. This was reinforced early in my time in the Lords when I was sent as a representative of the Environment Committee to a weekend conference in Iceland on marine wildlife. The main concern of the Icelanders was the radioactive isotopes in their fish, which were traceable to leakages from Sellafield. As a balancing act they hoped that we would agree to their resumed hunting of minke whales. Over the past 20 years, however, I have come to realise that the only effective solution to our short-term energy needs and the overriding importance of mitigating climate change is nuclear power. I therefore support all the recommendations in our report.
One of the great drawbacks of democracy is that it inhibits long-term strategic planning because of the short-term needs of politicians to be re-elected. Nuclear power is essentially an unpopular policy for many of our electorate. It also may require greater investment and mean weaning people off their love for motor cars and dependency on oil. Long-term strategies may also imply government investment and the raising of taxes.
Although the Government’s formal response to our report is encouraging, when he gave evidence to us the Minister was extraordinarily complacent, relying entirely on fossil fuel technologies such as carbon capture and storage, which is still at an experimental stage, and fracking, which always sounds to me rather indecent—and which also may be more problematic in this country because of the clay content of our soils and because our oil shales are much deeper than those in the United States. Even if successful, both these technologies will ultimately run out of their basic raw materials. Therefore, I hope that the forthcoming strategy that the Government are to produce will be more realistic about the need for nuclear power.
At the moment the Government seem to have no sense of the urgency of our need for research capacity, which has been underfunded for the past 20 years. We have an ageing population of nuclear scientists and astonishingly have withdrawn from the international forum for generation IV development. Government action is urgently needed now to provide a strategic plan and sufficient investment to ensure the security of this country’s energy supply and the long-term aim of mitigating climate change. So far there is little indication of the necessary urgency.
7.22 pm
Baroness Worthington: My Lords, I congratulate and thank the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and fellow committee members for an excellent report, which seems to have shocked the Government out of their complacency. A number of noble Lords have mentioned that word in relation to the evidence that was given. It seems that the report has engendered a different response and indicated that there is a problem that needs to be addressed. I congratulate the committee on achieving that change.
I will quickly try to summarise a few of the issues raised by noble Lords. The theme that seems to be emerging is that there has been a lack of a long-term strategy. That has been mentioned by a number of noble Lords. There are two clear recommendations on the way to address this. It would be great to hear the Minister comment on those. One is the creation of a hub, where we can our co-ordinate our R and D efforts. The noble Lords, Lord Hunt of Chesterton and Lord Jenkin of Roding, mentioned that particularly. Also, in parallel with the creation of this more coherent strategy, noble Lords are seeking clarity about the status of the advisory body that has been created. Will it be given an executive power, as the noble Lords, Lord Oxburgh and Lord Krebs, have asked?
As the noble Lord, Lord Winston, has said, there seems to be an important public engagement question around nuclear power. I have been doing my own investigations into nuclear power, to which the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, has alluded, and it has been a fascinating journey. I have visited many places and have just come back from a trip to the national nuclear laboratory at Oak Ridge in the US. This morning I was in one of the laboratories at Cambridge University that has a great heritage as regards nuclear research. However, all this seems to be slightly frozen in time. Once we were a great nation as regards innovation
and pure research into nuclear physics. We have lost that. It is not just us. Other nations, the US included, have gone on to look at other, perhaps more exciting topics, around nuclear fusion or pure particle physics.
How do we get people really excited in the idea that they have a future career in nuclear fission? That is the question. A number of noble Lords have raised this, including my noble friend Lady Hilton of Eggardon. The big imperative here is the tackling of climate change, and the need to move to a low-carbon economy. If we want young people who are interested in that agenda to think “nuclear” in response to that question, we have a challenge ahead of us. It would be interesting to hear from the Government, now that they are out of their complacent mode and into active mode and looking to address this, what plans we have for a much more diverse set of technologies that is discussed in the public discourse around nuclear fission.
My noble friend Lord Hunt of Chesterton mentioned that we have in the past coupled nuclear fission for energy with military purposes, but the spectrum of technologies for nuclear is very broad. At one end it is used for medical isotopes that save people’s lives, and at the very far end you have nuclear weapons. Nuclear power sits somewhere in the middle. I wonder if perhaps a hub cannot be created where we look at the other end of the spectrum, where we bring medical uses of nuclear and power together. That might help with the public engagement question and create new frontiers. If you want to attract people into this sector, they are not going to be excited by small modifications of existing technology that is more than 40 years old. They need a new scientific frontier in which they feel that they can make their mark and have a career that will lead to all sorts of recommendations, accolades and, ultimately, jobs. What are the new frontiers in nuclear fission? That is an important question that we have to think about. We must not simply see this as a limited set of technologies, as we perhaps have in the past. There are more than 900 different reactor designs that could be conceived of; we seem to be fixated only on a narrow range. In terms of public engagement and bringing people into the sector, those are key questions.
A number of noble Lords have made reference to the Government’s proposals for the existing electricity market reforms, the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell, among them. There is a question over this and it would be good to hear how things are proceeding. We have seen in the headlines since this report was issued a number of changes of state of some of the projects that we were expecting to go forward. Are our plans on track? If not, perhaps we could have some words on how we are going to address that.
The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, mentioned our plutonium storage in Sellafield. There are ways of tackling this that go beyond simply repeating the Mox experiments of the past. I will not go into details, but that is a clear need for us. We tend to view, perhaps, plutonium as a liability, but there are technologies out there that could turn it into a very valuable asset. We need to be looking at that, and I hope that it will form part of the strategy.
I hope that I have not glossed over too many of the questions. This is my first time attempting to sum up a debate, and I am very humbled to be here on such an
important debate with such eminent people speaking. I will finish there, if that is okay. I again welcome the report and thank the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and his colleagues for such an excellent contribution and the effect that it has had in galvanising the Government.
7.28 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Lord Marland): My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness on her star performance at the Dispatch Box. Of course, there have been star performances overall. We have a galaxy of scientific brains here. I wore my special tie with stars on it because I knew there would be. Of course, this report is a credit to the House of Lords, on which I congratulate the committee and its chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Krebs—and, of course, for his work on the climate change committee, for which we in our department are so grateful. Of course, as you can imagine, a lot of this is way above my head. I was reflecting on my own school report the other day, and pulled it out to see what it said about my science O-level. It was one simple sentence: “This boy will not be a scientist”.
Therefore, it is no surprise that the committee did not call me to give evidence, because I am not sure I could have added much other than some of my limited business experience of a few years. One point that is fundamental to understanding this nuclear issue is that for 27 years we have had no nuclear business. We have had nothing to export and no expertise to grow because there has been no future for the younger generations that have been mentioned to work into. Because there has been no activity in the nuclear world, we have also had the brain drain. I have been quite interested in what this committee would have said had it come up with this report five years ago and am slightly depressed by some things that some noble Lords have said about the Government not doing enough.
I want to mention some of the things that we have done. We have been in power for two years, in which time we have identified and given clearance for eight nuclear sites to go ahead. We have persuaded companies to come back and invest in the United Kingdom. We brought planning back to the Secretary of State so that we can clear the decks for a lot of the planning issues that are there. We have agreed and brought into law provisions, which were drawn in this House, for two new nuclear reactors so that they can be used immediately. We have dealt with the appalling mess, which preceding Governments should be ashamed of, over the decommissioning waste that was left up at Sellafield. I have brought in a plan whereby waste is going to be exported from all of our shockingly badly managed waste pools during this Parliament. We have revolutionised the security of our nuclear power stations and have set a very clear mandate for those investing in nuclear in this country about their security requirements. We have totally overhauled the civil nuclear police force, in a process that has happened very quickly—it is not quite finished yet, but is happening now. We have announced electricity market reform and contracts for difference to set the framework for a clear pathway
for investment. On decommissioning, I have persuaded the Treasury, amid the appalling economic climate that we have inherited, to invest £10 billion of new money in our nuclear waste and decommissioning. We have made very significant strides. To touch on a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, we have committed and commissioned a business case for a Mox plant, which will solve the huge plutonium pile that we have inherited as a Government.
If that is not enough, think of the backdrop that we have inherited—Fukushima, Switzerland and Germany withdrawing from nuclear as a result, and the appalling balance sheets that E.On and RWE have as a result of Germany withdrawing. I do not need to dwell on it for too long, but we have inherited unprecedented economic conditions that have made investment into anything new by any industries, let alone by Government, extremely vulnerable and volatile. However, it is not all bad. The UK has come out of it as a world leader—not a world leader in the technology but in the way that it reacted to those horrific events at Fukushima. As the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, mentioned, we are indebted to the work of Mike Weightman, who has, in a great credit to our country, been asked to come up with a report for the future of nuclear. We noble Lords have, as a group, responded with great diligence and calmness to all the activity going on, and this report adds to the momentum that we are trying to create.
Because we have now got our inherited nuclear industry into better shape, we have started exporting our skills abroad. It was only last week that I hosted the entire Abu Dhabi nuclear organisation and their security people here. We are now signing a memorandum of understanding and supplying security expertise and waste management expertise to them. We have a draft memorandum of understanding with Saudi Arabia to do the same. Of course, as regards the continued fall-out from Japan, we are right at the forefront of advising on it. It is a question of getting that export focus and the confidence back into our industry. Despite our not being in the vanguard of new nuclear, we still have terrific expertise in this country of which we should be proud.
We readily dismiss the assertion that we are not investing enough in R and D. We have spent £500 million on R and D through the NDA in the past four years. That is not an inconsiderable amount of money. We have invested £20 million on R and D on fission alone in the past four years. Therefore, it is not all bad news. There is a lot of good news. I hope that the committee will give us some credit for that.
I now wish to deal quickly, as I know that the noble Lord, Lord Winston—
Lord Hunt of Chesterton: Is the Minister saying that the figures on this page of the report are misleading?
Lord Marland: I am not sure to which page the noble Lord refers.
Lord Hunt of Chesterton: I am referring to paragraph 19, which gives comparators of government-funded research.
Lord Marland: I am merely giving the figures concerning investment by the NDA in nuclear R and D. I am very happy to supply the noble Lord with a breakdown of the figures on an annual basis, and as regards fission. I am happy to supply the noble Lord with those figures and place them in the Library.
I will not dwell for too long on some of the specific points that were raised in the debate as the Government have responded to the report. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, has asked for a credible plan. He knows that the credible plan will be developed before the end of the year. He is absolutely right to hold us to task and to say that we should not be complacent and ensure that we have the right advisory board in place that has executive powers to create the momentum that we are determined to develop. The noble Lord mentioned the Generation IV International Forum. Professor MacKay has been asked to come up with his consideration and advice on that. Again, it is not a case of pushing it into the long grass. We will receive his considered reply and I am glad that he found favour with the committee. The NNL reports to me. I will discuss it in a bit more detail in a minute but it is developing a business case for the new facilities. I suspect that that will be positive. As we know, the ONR is considering what the position will be as regards the Nuclear Safety Advisory Committee and establishment. Therefore, I hope that within the next few months we will have a straight edge on that. We have committed to doing that. That was one of the positive things in the report. As I said, the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, is right to hold us to account and make sure that what we have said takes place.
I have mentioned Mox, to which my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding referred. We remain very open-minded as regards PRISM. It is not yet a proven technology. It may be so in time but the industry has on many occasions gone down following the introduction of new technologies which have had disastrous consequences, as, indeed, did the previous Mox plant. However, as I am responsible for Mox I take on board what the noble Lord says.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Chesterton, talked about a plan. However, there is a 2050 plan, which is a long enough vision as far as I am concerned. The noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, spoke about the NNL. The NNL reports to me. We have just reappointed the chairman. I have been working very closely with him and I am disappointed that the impact has not been seen.
The NNL is a profitable organisation, and it should not be dismissed but its biggest client is a government entity—the NDA. The NNL does a fantastic job; its management team is in the right place, whereas three or four years ago it probably was not. It has done a terrific job in the pay negotiations, which have given certainty to their staff for the future, and I have no doubt that there will be an increase in their activity as, wearing my other hat as the Prime Minister’s trade ambassador, we seek to promote their activity and skill abroad. My noble friend Lord Crickhowell talks about shale gas. In the past few weeks, at my instigation we have set up the office of shale gas assessment to make sure that we can establish public confidence in
shale gas. We all know how difficult it is to do things on land in the UK, and it is very important that we establish public confidence.
The noble Lord rightly refers to the abundance of gas in the world—there is effectively 240 years of gas. As I have told noble Lords before, I have been in Algeria recently where they have discovered as much shale gas as there is in America, which will one hopes have long-term effects on our pricing. We have had a record number of licence applications for exploration off our coasts, so one hopes that we can develop that side of things.
The noble Lord, Lord Winston, talks about Wylfa, which is a problem, as we know and as has been well documented in the press, and we are in active negotiations with several parties. I cannot go into detail but they are positive negotiations and clearly we are determined to find a solution for Wylfa, because it is key and the second phase of our rollout. The noble Lord referred with great knowledge to education. If we can get a viable future for nuclear in this country, the jobs will flood back, and we must be there to take them. The universities—and I greatly appreciate the noble Lord’s influence on this—should be there to provide courses for them.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Broers, for his support and the work that he has done on the committee, and the discussions and input that he had before. The noble Baroness, Lady Hilton, mentioned fission, which is important and not something that we should be complacent about. It is something that we should explore, but we should explore every avenue and create the hub to which the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, referred, as did the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell. That is why the manufacturing and engineering capacity through the Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre could and does act as the hub, but we must put greater importance on it to achieve the vision that we all have. I am looking at my watch because I am mindful, along with the noble Lord, Lord Winston, that we may be 1-0 down by the time we finish.
There is no doubt that we have to play catch-up, and we all understand that. This report helps us to identify the number of issues that we have and, of course, as a Government, we welcome it. It is incumbent on us all in this Room and in successive Governments to work together. The road map being put together by the Dalton Nuclear Institute and NLL, with input from the committee, has to set out our R and D capability and requirements. The Government have then to put their full weight behind it, not tiptoe behind it. It is key to future growth for this country, as has been mentioned by a number of noble Lords, and it is something very simple for us to attain. We will have the structure in place by the end of the year, and we must vest in it the authority that the committee looks for. Research and development is absolutely fundamental to the future, and as a Government we know it.
As I said earlier, we have a great deal to build on and we must not beat ourselves up. We have enormous skills and capabilities in this country in so many walks of life. We are the envy of the world for a lot of things we do. As has been demonstrated by the ONR with
Mike Weightman, we have the expertise; we have Professor Beddington, who has tremendous status in the world, and we have a very good platform from which to develop.
As I said, we have a committed Science and Technology Committee and a Government committed to new nuclear, and I am very pleased to report that we have a company by the name of EDF which only today appointed Bouygues and Laing O’Rourke in a joint venture as a preferred bidder for Hinkley Point C main civil works contract. If that is not a good start, I do not know what is.
7.45 pm
Lord Krebs: My Lords, I have very much enjoyed this debate, and would like to thank all those who have taken part in it. It demonstrates the depth of expertise in this House, which makes such a difference to the quality of debate on important issues such as the future of nuclear energy.
I also thank the Minister very much for his encouraging response. We all accept that the move ahead with a new generation of nuclear power stations and the electricity market reforms are very significant steps forward in the role of nuclear in future energy supply. That in itself underlines the urgency of ensuring that we have an adequate R and D base and skills to procure, regulate and run the new generation of nuclear power stations.
I will not go on in any detail, because the Minister has left me minus one minute to allow the noble Lord, Lord Winston, to get in front of a television. Therefore, I shall delay noble Lords for only a few seconds longer.
I sound just one note of warning about shale gas. Of course, noble Lords are right to reflect that there is a large amount of shale gas in the world—in fact, without carbon capture and storage, enough to fry us all many times over. So shale gas has to go with CCS, which is an unproven technology, whereas nuclear is a tried and tested technology. We must therefore not relinquish our commitment to nuclear because of the hope of shale gas with CCS, unless we are prepared to fry.
I reiterate what has been said by other noble Lords during this debate. We are encouraged by the Government’s response, and thank them for that, but wish to keep our eye on things. I am very encouraged that the Minister has emphasised the executive powers and continuation of the R and D board, and we will want to keep a close eye on that to make sure that the important recommendations that we have made are carried through. I thank all those that have taken part.
Committee adjourned at 7.48 pm.