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Revised Draft National Policy Statement for Nuclear Power Generation, volumes I and II (EN-6)

As the noble Lord will know, I have enjoyed the fine wines of the south of France while visiting the Mox plant down there to make sure that we do this properly. Of course, part of our discussions involved meeting the Areva board to do that. A number of noble Lords raised the subject of the geological storage facility. Of course, it is ridiculous that it is so far out—and, of course, there is a huge workload, so I have instructed a work stream to ensure that we can get a much closer period. But as the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, knows, this is a voluntary decision made by the community. It will not be the Government jumping in with their jackboots and saying, ““We will have it here””. This takes negotiation and long-term development and it takes partnership and working with the local community. We will take a very active role with the Cumbrian community to try to nudge this thing to a much closer timetable to the one that I have given you. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester asked about the maximum capacity available. If there was one reactor on each of the eight sites, using the current new reactor—it is not for me to determine which reactor is used—there will be between 10 and 14 gigawatts, which as the noble Lord, Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan, said, is considerably more than what we have at the moment. As to Scotland, I regret to say that this is outside my control. If we have a Conservative Government in Scotland, I am sure that there will be a great push for nuclear.