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Nuclear Industry

I have always argued that, in the chemical industry, the polluter should pay, and it is certainly sensible to stay within the United Kingdom. I want an integrated energy-producing and waste-reprocessing unit. Otherwise, we will end up with problems and conflicts. I am happy to repeat that argument again and again between now and the Scottish elections. I have been looking at the new technologies. I have been to Canada and France to see what they do there, and I am extremely impressed by the passive safety technologies in the CANDU process. They are designed to prevent repeats of Chernobyl by incorporating features that cut out processing and other dangerous elements very quickly. The latest technology enables any problem to be completely locked off within 72 hours—automatically and without human intervention. Those who like to create hysteria—I call them siren voices—talk about waste and spent fuel rods, and pretend that there is a ticking bomb. They give the impression that when fuel rods are removed and set aside those rods could blow up at any minute. I was astonished, as would be any hon. Member who visited a nuclear power station, that one can actually swim in the tanks where the fuel rods are kept. Obviously that is not recommended, but it is possible to swim in the water above the fuel rods that have been removed for reprocessing without contamination being likely. No radiation is given off from the surface of the water at all, because 5 m of water completely cancels it out. The Canadian plan is that, after 10 years, the fuel will be taken into concrete bunkers that are open to the air, where it can be kept without any radiation registering on a Geiger counter. The Canadians talk of keeping fuel there for 100 years without nuclear pollution, so it is wrong to give the impression that a great reaction is going on. Reprocessing has moved on immensely. I am not sure about the company structure, but I believe that Areva owns EDF and Framatome and that it is a holding company that in turn is owned by the French Government. We went to look at its operations in the manufacture of MOX fuel—mixed oxide fuel, which is mentioned in the report. When people are asked how much of a spent fuel rod can be reprocessed, their guess is 10 or 5 per cent. They do not realise that the actual figure is 96 per cent. and that not only the uranium but the plutonium can be dealt with. The material is reprocessed into mixed oxide fuel pellets that are put back into rods and returned to the customer. At an Areva site in France, four bundles of spent fuel rods have been reprocessed from weapons-grade uranium. Britain’s 100 tonnes of plutonium was described as a treasure. It might be stored in or near the constituency of my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Copeland (Mr. Reed), but in any event it is valuable because it helps in the creation of mixed oxide fuels, and the report says, I believe, that two nuclear power stations could be run throughout their life using the quantity of plutonium stored in the UK. The industry is sustainable and safe, and people should seriously consider the idea of ““plutonium for peace?, because when plutonium is not a scare story it is very valuable. Those who wish to use wind, wave and tidal power—particularly in Scotland—have the problem of getting power from the generating point to the user. The report raises the issue of the choice between national grid systems and dispersed systems whereby power is used near to the generation site. There is a great debate on that topic, and I think that the nuclear contribution should be the one to use the grid system. The Liberal Democrats are leading a big campaign in Scotland against a reinforced grid system that would extend across Scotland, even though it would use the renewable energy generated in the highlands and islands and get it to the end users, who are mainly in England, not Scotland. The Government should talk not only about where they put the stations but about whether they have a commitment to putting the grids in place to allow the energy generated to get to the end user—not necessarily using a national grid system, but perhaps a dispersed grid system. The question of skills was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland. I have spent a long time considering the run-down of the skills that we require in the oil and gas industry. Despite the best efforts of the companies and associations—and the Government, through PILOT—there is a major skills problem in the UK. There is no doubt that we have to consider that as an EU question. For example, at the moment a refit, shut-down, maintenance job is going on in my constituency at INEOS, the company that bought the chemical olefins derivatives section of BP. Some 270 skilled workers were required, but we could not get more than 200 from the UK, even after asking all the associations and trade unions to supply them. Companies have had to bring in people from Poland, Portugal and elsewhere, paying them high rates of pay and additional expenses so that they can live in hotels. If we are to renew the build programme in the UK, we shall have to do that on a skill base at EU level. That underlines why it was so important for the EU to take those policies recently. The second issue is the capacity of the licensing body. We heard a bid from the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East, who argued for an additional consideration for the pebble-bed process that has been developed in South Africa, on top of the Areva, Westinghouse and CANDU processes. My understanding is that talk throughout the industry is that the Government are sending out signals that they cannot cope with more than two pre-licensing examples; they only licensed two of the three that were named, even though there was a bid for a fourth, because there is not the capacity. That is a sign of how far things have run down or of how many people, as my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland said, have left—because of age, not because of any lack of interest in the industry. There is a reigniting of interest in the industry at Birmingham, where there are nuclear industry courses, and among the trade associations. However, it will take a long time to get the capacity. If the licensing body does not have the capacity, all the aspirations in the report will come to naught. We will have to reduce the market and say that we can have only two players as we cannot cope with three—or, as I have been told, we will have to wait two further years if we want three. That leads me to disagree with my hon. Friend.