Energy Bill

I begin by declaring an interest as the Member of Parliament for Sellafield or, perhaps more accurately, for 17,000 individual interests. That is the number of jobs that depend on the plant in my part of the world. The Secretary of State rightly said in his opening remarks that no single generating source can solve the problems of climate change that now face us. Obviously, I shall concentrate on the Bill's nuclear element, which, in my view, is overdue, necessary and welcome. I want to pick up on the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman) about the tone that has characterised the debate so far. It appears to be becoming a constrained debate—almost an intellectual straitjacket—in that many hon. Members are concentrating on how to stop the nuclear industry rather than on how to fight climate change. Surely than cannot be right and should be avoided. The Government consultation on the nuclear option has been thorough, lengthy and detailed. Nobody can doubt that everybody who wants to have their say on the nuclear issue has had every opportunity to make their views known. It is a matter of regret that certain groups with what I can only describe as a pathological hatred of the industry have chosen to withdraw from the consultation, no doubt as part of their strategy of taking the Government to the High Court yet again, in order to seek to thwart the will of a democratically elected Government who are seeking to address the civilisation-threatening phenomenon of climate change. Such opposition is as inexplicable as it is predictable and illogical. People of my generation, for which I make no claims to be a spokesperson, cannot understand how groups that claim to care so much about our planet and our environment can seek to thwart the necessary steps that will give us our best chance of preserving our environment and our life within it. Those groups have no absolute or sole right to term themselves environmentalists; indeed, I consider myself an environmentalist. The label, which is often misappropriated by the anti-nuclear brigade, serves only to undermine a lot of the good work that environmentalists have done for decades in this country. None the less, the nuclear element of the Bill marks a spectacular renaissance of an industry that until recently—until two or so years ago—was dead. In fact, the Bill represents a resurrection more than a renaissance. Either way, it is of real and material importance to communities such as mine up and down this country. The Prime Minister put it best in his foreword to the White Paper when he wrote:"““More than ever before, nuclear power has a key role to play as part of the UK's energy mix. I am confident that nuclear power can and will make a real contribution to meeting our commitments to limit damaging climate change.””" With that in mind, I want to stress that, like my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen), I am an enthusiastic advocate of renewable energy, assuming that the developments are situated in the right places, that they actually work and that they are worth going ahead with. We all know that, objectively, not all of them are. It is for those reasons that I support the unprecedented subsidies, totalling billions of pounds, that the Government are putting into renewable technologies. I should add that it is a matter of fact that the subsidy works. It is also a matter of fact that energy utility companies would not touch renewables without the renewable fuels obligation; indeed, they have told me so, as I am sure they have told many other hon. Members. Moreover, without the renewable fuels obligation, the consumer—we have heard a lot of wise talk about fuel poverty—would not touch renewables either. With my support for renewables clearly established, I return to the issues of nuclear, as these have been the most significant points of debate and argument on the Bill so far. There are perhaps 10 principal myths about nuclear. They have been raised today and will be raised again over the coming hours, weeks and months in this place, in the media and, I expect, in the High Court—I refer to them as myths, but they might be more accurately described as lies. The arguments postulate that the UK should not retain nuclear generation because of the following issues. The anti-nuclear lobby claims that we do not know what to do with the waste, but that is not true. There are no technical or scientific obstacles to radioactive waste disposal, as we have heard; rather, the obstacles are principally political, and in some cases legal. The second claim is that nuclear is not a low-carbon technology. That is not scientifically true, by any objective measure. Much is said about nuclear power's hidden CO2 emissions, caused by uranium mining, transportation and so on. However, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has stated that nuclear power's operating lifetime emissions are not only lower than those of coal and gas, but lower than those of wind turbines. Thirdly, it is claimed that nuclear power is expensive. Again, we know that that is not true and that the economics of nuclear continue to improve, as oil and gas prices continue to rise. Currently, nuclear generation is cheaper than gas electricity generation. The fourth lie is that the decommissioning of new nuclear reactors would be expensive. However, it is neither fair nor accurate to compare the decommissioning of new nuclear facilities to the current decommissioning of nuclear facilities. As the hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Peter Luff) said, the principal legacy cost comes from our military programme. It is claimed that there is insufficient uranium in the world to satisfy global demand. This is not true. There is as much uranium in the world today as there is tin. Both the International Atomic Energy Agency and the OECD have estimated that there is 500 years' worth of supply. However, I concur with my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, North-West (John Robertson), the chair of the all-party group on nuclear energy, that reprocessing is key. We must reprocess, and I commend the Government on keeping the reprocessing option open. It is claimed that building reactors takes too long to have any effect upon climate change. That is one of the myths currently circulating that needs to be nailed right here and now. The people responsible for building and designing reactors claim that from first pour to criticality—that is, to reactors coming online—can take three years. People will say, ““We've heard these promises from the nuclear industry before,”” and they would be right to say that. However, Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd has built six reactors since 1991. The longest took AECL six and a half years, while the quickest took four years, so I am optimistic about that. It is claimed that new nuclear reactors will lead to weapons proliferation, but in fact the opposite is true in the western world. New nuclear reactors can solve our proliferation problems. By way of an example, tens of thousands of tonnes of uranium oxide are stored at the Sellafield site in my constituency, with something in the region of 100 tonnes of plutonium oxide. Anyone who has read the recent Royal Society report will have noted the recommendation that that should be turned into fuel, which can then be burnt in nuclear reactors to produce CO2-free electricity. That is an eminently sensible solution. It is claimed that wind and wave power technologies are more sustainable. They clearly are not. Briefly, before my time runs out, there are two more arguments, but when I hear these hoary old chestnuts, I know that the game is well and truly up for the anti-nuclear lobby. One is that nuclear reactors are a terrorist target. However, the fact is that the nuclear industry has existed since the end of the second world war, through a series of international crises. Nuclear facilities are among the safest facilities known to mankind.