Oral question asked in the House of Lords, by Lord Hannay of Chiswick (Crossbench). It was answered on Tuesday, 11 October 2005.

Weapons of Mass Destruction

Question: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply and take the opportunity to congratulate Dr Mohammed El Baradei and the International Atomic Energy on the well merited award of the Nobel Peace Prize. The Minister’s remarks were somewhat general, but does he agree that it is now necessary to give a higher political profile and much greater urgency to work on an international scheme that would guarantee nuclear fuel supplies to civil nuclear users in good standing with the IAEA and thus provide the crucial underpinning to the very necessary moratorium on the construction of new uranium enrichment and reprocessing plants?

Answer: My Lords, I associate the Government and, I am sure, the House with the congratulations to Mohammed El Baradei and the IAEA. It is a well merited Nobel Peace Prize. I hope it will emphasise the international community’s commitment to non-proliferation. I accept what the noble Lord said. There are some interesting proposals in the area of establishing real or virtual banks for nuclear fuels with some element of international involvement. But it is not a straightforward proposition: governments and experts have been trying to find a solution to the problem for decades. Each reactor has its own fuel and no one of them could work as a fuel bank. There would be a number of fuel banks. But I do not want to make progress on these difficulties sound impossible. They are complex but I believe that if we work on them we will find a solution in order to resolve the problem that the noble Lord has illustrated.

Secondary information

Type: Oral question
Reference: 674 c158-9
Session: 2005-06
Oral question type: 1st Supplementary
Chamber / Committee: House of Lords chamber
Subjects: International Atomic Energy Agency Nuclear weapons Nuclear fuels Proliferation Chemical weapons Biological weapons
Link: View this Oral question on www.publications.parliament.uk