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Energy: Radioactive Waste Management

My Lords, we on these Benches welcome the Statement as a small but very important step on the road to dealing with the immense legacy of nuclear waste from the second half of the 20th century. As has been said, the solution has been around for a long time. It has been accepted that the waste should be buried. I know that CoRWM was set up to reconsider all the options, but it has returned to the same conclusion. The issue has always been: where? If there is a weak point in the Statement it is: what happens if no community is willing to take the waste? Although fine words are said about democracy and that a community will be allowed to say no, what if a local council in Wales, for the sake of argument, says yes—obviously, the Government will have to offer considerable benefit to go with the acceptance of waste—but the Welsh Assembly says no? The issue is fraught with questions. I hope that it can be worked through, because it is essential just to deal with the legacy of waste. I am glad that the terminology is ““managing”” now, because it certainly still cannot be viewed as disposal. The waste is not being disposed of; it is simply being managed underground. One of the most interesting recommendationsand government responses comes under recommendation 7, which states: "““If a decision is taken to manage any uranium, spent nuclear fuel and plutonium as wastes””." That is one of the biggest items in the whole report. First, there is a fair amount of such material and, secondly, there is an enormous budget implication well beyond what the Government have already costed. Will the Minister repeat the estimated cost of disposing of nuclear waste as envisaged by CoRWM? If recommendation 7 is taken on board to include all those materials, the spent plutonium will have to be moved in budgetary terms from an asset column, as it is now classified by the Government, to a cost column, with considerable implications for budgeting. I hope that safety issues will be paramount rather than accountant-speak—being worried about the shifting of figures, which will have to happen. The industry has been subject to constant change. Only yesterday, the formation of the new nuclear research body and the break-up of British Nuclear Fuels Ltd were announced. Reorganisation undoubtedly brings difficulties. The Government have accepted that there is an ever decreasing of expertise in this area. Although the Statement talks of independence, it will be very hard to get people who are truly independent, in the sense that they are likely to have worked for a long time in the industry. The democratic process will have to bring the checks and balances of that independence into being. I certainly hope we will have the time to examine that in this House. The creation of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, which we debated in your Lordships’ House during consideration of the Energy Act 2004, was a very positive move, and I hope that, in tandem with the other changes announced today, it will add impetus to dealing with the legacy of waste. None of this Statement can be taken as encouraging us to think that a future nuclear-build programme, in the unlikely event that we get there in our lifetimes, will be any more possible or likely until all these enormous questions about waste are dealt with. Finally, I hope that the House will now welcome CoRWM’s work more than it did in a memorable debate in which I was probably the only person in your Lordships’ House, apart from the Minister, to defend its work, because the committee involved had produced such a damning report on it. I hope that we can be a little more welcoming today.