Energy Bill

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time. This issue attracted a good deal of attention in Committee, and properly so. The new clause makes explicit in the Bill the policy that the Government have made clear in the nuclear White Paper, in the consultation on the guidance for funded decommissioning programmes, on the Bill's Second Reading and in Committee. The Secretary of State will set a fixed unit price for new nuclear operators, including a significant risk premium for the disposal of waste. The new clause makes transparent our intentions regarding the pricing of long-term waste management. Let me give a brief recap of our intentions for the benefit of Members who were not present in Committee. We are creating a framework to ensure that operators of new nuclear power stations are responsible for, and make prudent provision to meet, the full costs of decommissioning and their full share of waste management costs. The effect of the framework will be to ensure that operators of new nuclear power stations return the sites, after those stations have been decommissioned, to a state that will be agreed with regulators and the planning authority—it is likely to be similar to a greenfield state. That will be financed by making provision, throughout the generating life of the power station, for back-end costs. Under the framework, any potential operator will have to submit a funded decommissioning programme to the Secretary of State for approval. Such programmes will have to include the technical steps that will be required to manage and dispose of radioactive waste and spent fuel and to decommission the power station and clean up the site. They will also have to include a prudent estimate of the costs involved in those steps and proposals on how the operator will accumulate funds to meet those costs. Our intention is that before development consents for new nuclear power stations are granted, the Government will need to be satisfied that effective arrangements exist, or will exist, to manage and dispose of the waste that they will produce.