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Energy: Draft National Policy Statement for Nuclear Power Generation (EN-6)

I think that the noble Lord has it entirely wrong. There was of course argument, and I took part in it with some of the shadow Ministers at the other end, but David Cameron made it perfectly clear in a speech to the CBI early on that the Opposition would support new nuclear build. This Government sold Westinghouse, the only British-owned company that could actually build a new nuclear power station. It was a company with an international reputation, but they sold it to the Japanese. Even the members appointed by Michael Meacher to the committee set up to advise the Government on nuclear waste—I noticed what the Minister said about that—were mostly so anti-nuclear that they were not even prepared to consider the question of handling the waste from new nuclear build. It was not until the membership was substantially changed, as a result of recommendations of the Select Committee on Science and Technology in this House, that the Government began to make progress. We are now faced with the problem of having to catch up on those wasted years. We need to build a new nuclear supply chain. I declare an immediate interest as a president of the Energy Industries Council, which is striving to do exactly that. We need to train a new generation of skilled manpower. I declare another interest as the honorary president of the National Skills Academy for Nuclear. We need to start the long process of assessing the latest reactor designs for safety and integrity, and we have to invent new procedures and processes to allow investors to identify and get the consents for the sites to be able to start work. It is a truly dismal story, and I hope that Ministers now recognise how much they will be blamed if indeed the lights go out. However, we are where we are, and we have to do our best with what is before us. I therefore turn to EN-6. As was foreseen at the time of the Planning Bill, and as the Minister said, this is the only national policy statement to deal with the spatial element of the industry. The Government have determined where the new plants are to be built and also where they are not to be built. As I think I said during the passage of the Planning Bill, that seems very sensible. However, I have a number of points to make. First, much is made, and it has been repeated again today, of the need to get 25 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity up and running by 2025. In my view that is a highly ambitious target, and it is most unlikely to be realised. I have been provided with a chart which has a number of figures based on information drawn from the National Grid Transmission Entry Capacity Register. It is a very important document because it shows where sites will be linked to the grid. It has four columns. It gives a first-connection date for the sites. Some of those are as early as 2016—interestingly, it includes Dungeness—but others go much later, into the 2020s. Then there is what it calls a "first capacity", which is in megawatts, and that comes to a possible total of 13.5 gigawatts. The maximum capacity by 2025 is shown in the next column, and would go up to 25.5 gigawatts. Then there is the best guess of the actual build by 2025, and there the figure is 10.2 gigawatts. There is a massive difference, of course, between the first, second and last figures, and one might ask why that is. Why are we not going to reach the 25-gigawatt figure? There are, in fact, three reasons. Even where building can start before 2025—and so far only one company, EDF Energy, has given notice to the IPC about one site, Hinkley Point, and that is under the Planning Act procedure—the rate of build is likely to be phased considerably. Early on, there was some thought that a company such as EDF or Horizon Nuclear Power, the partnership between E.ON and RWE, would be able to build several stations at the same time. They have now made it clear that that will be very difficult. For example, EDF may start at Hinkley Point. Its next station will be at Sizewell, but that is not likely to start for several years after work has commenced at Hinkley Point. Therefore, the completion will be later. It is the same with Oldbury and Wylfa. At one point, there was some suggestion that they might be built together, but in fact that is not so. I have seen minutes from the companies saying that, although they might start the second one before the first one is completed, they are going to be substantially staggered. At one of the sites, Sellafield, it is perfectly clear that only half the capacity will be built by 2025. That is the first reason. The second reason is that some sites might not be developed at all. It would not surprise me if the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, has something to say about that in a few minutes. The examples are Braystones and Kirksanton in Cumbria. I have two pieces of evidence for saying that. First, it is being recommended to Cumbria County Council that it should not support these two sites. I have here a paper prepared for the council’s cabinet only in February. The NIWG committee—the Nuclear Issues Working Group—also recommended that, ""Cabinet be minded not to support Kirksanton and Braystones because it was not convinced at either site that the benefits of development would outweigh the costs"." Bearing in mind that these are greenfield sites involving villages which have not had nuclear facilities before, that is not altogether surprising. Therefore, those two are unlikely to be built. Furthermore, it has now emerged that RWE, which had originally had applications agreed for these two sites, has now withdrawn them. Therefore, that grid connection is not by any means certain. Nucleonics Week states: ""RWE npower said in a statement that it could renew the grid connection applications at a future date. But it said that since it was not possible to commit to specific plans for the sites at this time, it had chosen ‘not to maintain the current grid connection agreements’"." So the company involved and the local authority are saying that those two sites are not in their immediate programme. That is the second reason. The third reason is that two sites have yet to have any developer committed to build on them at all; namely, Heysham and Hartlepool. The maps that one has seen show, as yet, no interest in either of those. I draw two conclusions from this. The original 10 sites of which the Minister spoke a few moments ago are likely now to be down to six by 2025, and some of those six will not be completed by then. So the outcomes are bound to run a long way behind the Government’s estimates of built capacity by 2025. My other point was made by the Minister, and we must bear it in mind. There is always the possibility that the IPC might reject one or more of the sites which it will be considering. This leads me to a conclusion that has been reached by a number of other people, which has also been put to DECC and was certainly voiced to the DECC Select Committee at the other end—some of us sat through some hours of evidence-giving. My conclusion is that the Government have been very premature in rejecting Dungeness. I will return to that in a moment. In the mean time, I have a number of questions which I hope the Minister will be able to answer. If it becomes clear that the 10 so-called approved sites turn out to be insufficient to support the proposed expansion of nuclear capacity, what will be the procedure? Here one has to turn to the consultation paper to which I referred in our debate on 23 February. Not only was Dungeness rejected; so too were three other sites which the noble Lord has mentioned today—Druridge Bay on the coast of Northumberland, Kingsnorth in east Kent and Owston Ferry in the Yorkshire and Humberside region. As the noble Lord reminded us today, the central reason for the rejection of those last three sites was that they would not be credible by 2025. However, we are to have a road map to take us to 2050. What is the procedure for this? One also needs to bear in mind the very important—I thought it was excellent—report prepared by the Minister’s predecessor, Malcolm Wicks, Minister for Energy, who was appointed by the Prime Minister as a special representative on energy security. Last August he produced a report which had a lot of sensible things to say, one of which concerned the future of nuclear energy. Paragraph 6.12 states that, ""our demand for electricity in 2050 could be 50 per cent higher than it is today … it is therefore important that it relies on large scale, low carbon and proven technologies to meet a proportion ""of this increased demand. As nuclear meets these criteria it is well placed to play a key role in our future energy mix. I believe that the level of ambition should be much higher in the longer term than currently projected. To enhance energy security and reduce our reliance on imports, a range between, say, 35-40 per cent of electricity from nuclear could be a sensible aspiration, beyond 2030"." He is not going up to 2050, only to 2030. He has been supported by a number of very influential bodies, including the CBI, which is calling for an increased nuclear build. Inevitably, however, this is bound to increase the need for more sites. What is to be the procedure? How is that to be run? Would it not be sensible to have something in this NPS, EN-6, to indicate how that will be done? In the mean time, as I understand it, if someone puts in an application for a nuclear station on a site which is not listed, that does not go to the IPC but is handled by the department. Perhaps the Minister would be kind enough to confirm that. One then comes back to the question of Dungeness. In the circumstances, it is rather surprising that that was the preliminary decision. The industry has been almost unanimously dismayed that the site has been rejected. The Select Committee heard that from its witnesses, and the Minister told the committee on 23 February that he did not have a closed mind. I and the Committee were pleased to hear that. Perhaps I may end my speech—I do not wish to go on for too long—by saying why I think that Dungeness should be included. First, one comes back to the concept of need. Much emphasis is laid upon this in all the national policy statements. Dungeness could have connection to the grid by 2016. It could therefore be one of the earliest to come on-stream. It could have a full capacity of 1,650 megawatts, and it could be producing electricity certainly by 2019. Given Ministers’ recognition of the need, ""to maximise the contribution of nuclear as soon as possible"," as part of the action to be taken against climate change, it is premature to rule out Dungeness at this early stage. Secondly, Dungeness has almost the total support of the local community. Shepway District Council is making it very clear—including, no doubt, to the department—that it supports a new nuclear station at Dungeness. Thirdly, there is a growing awareness that there is a shortage of generation in the south-east. This was one of the arguments put forward at the original Sizewell inquiry—that there needed to be more generation in that part of the country. This demand/supply gap in the south-east will worsen if Dungeness is ruled out. It has an existing grid connection, and it is interesting that an analysis showed that the prices paid by bidding companies for other sites were very sensitive to the availability of a grid connection. The European Union Competition Directorate required EDF to sell off either Heysham or Dungeness. Clearly it regarded Dungeness as viable for the first wave of new nuclear developments. I come to the point that the Minister briefly made. The rejection by DECC is based primarily on the EU habitats directive. However, nuclear development would take up only 91 hectares of a much bigger site of special scientific interest. The Minister did not mention, either today or in the documents, that that 91 hectares represents only 1 per cent of that site. It is a tiny proportion. The new development would help to protect the SSSI against coastal erosion. Indeed, it could become a security buffer that protects the valuable shingle habitat which is likely to be destroyed much earlier if the nuclear station is not built. In any event, as the Minister has reminded us, the habitat can be overridden on grounds of IROPI—imperative reasons of overriding public interest. It seems to have been assumed that that would inevitably have to be related in some way to the habitat impact, but nowhere is it said. If we are looking to fight climate change and reduce carbon by building nuclear power stations as quickly as possible, is that not an imperative reason of overriding interest? For all these reasons, it should be open to a developer to apply to the IPC, which should then examine all the arguments for and against, perhaps more carefully than has been done by the department, which is spelled out in the NPSs. As I indicated on 23 February, I intend to table a resolution to this effect when this part of the NPS scrutiny process is completed. I apologise for the length of my speech and look forward to hearing the rest of the debate. I certainly look forward to hearing the Minister’s reply.