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Energy: Radioactive Waste Management

My Lords, I am grateful for the responses from noble colleagues. The noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, said that the problem has been around for 30 years, and so have the solutions. I am not sure whether that is literally correct, but he is generally correct that many people have considered the problem. Regardless of whether there is an issue between CoRWM and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, the Government must agree the plans. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority was set up under the Energy Act, so there are constraints. Indeed, we are considering the Government’s arrangements, as the Statement said. We need a public discussion on the matter. I do not want to go over the past, because things can be misunderstood, but we also need a clear and transparent audit trail, exactly as the CoRWM process has shown. CoRWM has produced a first-class report with a first-class audit trail, and there can be no criticism of that. In some ways, that is where the answer lies in relation to the new facility siting process being divorced from the Nirex process. We must discuss how voluntarism and partnership can be linked to the scientific assessment of sites. The Nirex site list is, however, disregarded. That is what was meant by the new process being divorced from the Nirex process. One cannot wipe out what happened, but we now have a different arrangement. There is no question of going over the Nirex sites. I cannot answer the financial question about possible start-up costs, but point to evidence from other countries—I listed six, seven, or eight of them; I forget the exact number. We do not want to look as though we will fail. The Statement was made only today. I would not be surprised if the odd local authority had not made inquiries, because that is the way in which things will be done. We must set up a process in 2007, as we have said, so that we can assess the voluntary approach. We want an assessment and a solution based on partnership and a willingness to participate. As I have said, international experience indicates that this approach is the one that is most likely to succeed. So I do not envisage failure at the moment. It is true that the costs are large. We are talking about huge sums of money, as nobleLords know better than I do. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, funded by the Government, deals with historic waste. Any new operators must share the costs of their work. The Written Statement yesterday is, in a way, quite separate from today’s Statement, and I am not briefed to answer questions about it. Moreover, as always, in this narrow and specialist area as in other areas where science is involved, there will be debates about the independence of the people involved. One has to be realistic. Expertise probably will come from a specific area of scientific and academic research, and one of the practicalities of the industry is that you draw on that advice. I cast no aspersions on what the noble Baroness said, but while there must be checks and balances in the governance arrangements to weigh up the risks involved in taking independent advice, just because a person has worked in the industry does not mean that their advice on the best way forwardin another context—advice based on their experience—is not valuable or not independent. We are talking about an issue where no one around now will ever be accountable for their advice. This is decades of work. On the question about cost implications if plutonium is declared a waste material, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority will consider this as part of its strategy and planning, which will require government approval. It goes without saying that the Government are accountable to Parliament. Parliament would be involved in terms of scrutinising government actions. The planning I have referred to will include carrying out further important work to determine the costs. To be honest, I cannot go down the road of costs. All kinds of figures are bandied about and these costs will run over decades. Whatever ballpark figure one puts out, whether it is hundreds of millions or indeed billions, the costs will stretch over an indeterminate number of decades that neither I nor anyone else can begin to predict at present. Further work has got to be done. Finally, in response to the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, we are determined to proceed on this and to secure as wide a consensus and partnership as possible. Previous approaches have failed, and that is no criticism of either government. But the fact is that it is now time for action and we have to make some progress. The voluntary partnership approach seems to work elsewhere in the world and there is no real reason why it should not work here.