My Lords, I will briefly speak to this amendment. I declare an interest as a patron—unremunerated—of the Weinberg Foundation. I also helped to establish the all-party parliamentary group to which my noble friend Lord Hanworth referred. I will not wax lyrical about the benefits of thorium and closed-cycle breeder reactors because I think we are all getting a little tired now as we are very near the end, but I understand the sentiment behind this amendment. I am particularly interested in the latter part of it, which requires the Government to report on,
“any necessary changes to the legal remit of the NDA”.
The reason why I am interested in that is that we have an opportunity here, in considering what we do with our plutonium stocks, to mark a new era in nuclear fission. That shift from seeing the plutonium as a liability that is just costing us money—which it is at the moment, to be honest—to seeing it as an asset that can be exploited to generate low-carbon electricity is, I think, just upon us. Soon it will be there, but we are not quite there yet.
My fear is that there is, quite understandably, a high degree of conservatism—with a small C—in the industry. There is a tendency to stick with what you know and not to do anything risky or to look beyond your immediate priority. The NDA does an amazing job of managing the process of decommissioning our existing nuclear sites, and I just hope that, when it considers what to do next with the plutonium stocks, it will consider in the round and will not be encumbered by a preponderance of doing only what it knows best and sticking to what it has seen previously. If it does that, I fear that once again we will be building a very expensive MOX fabrication plant, for which there will be probably no known customers by the time it is built. Certainly, the PWRs that are being built by AREVA and EDF will not wish to take it. It is much better for them to use newly fabricated fuel while it is available. That will be the “do nothing”, “stick to the plan”, “keep going as we are” strategy.
I am delighted that, in addition to those, new ways of approaching this problem have now been put forward by different industry representatives. My noble friend Lord Hanworth mentioned the PRISM reactor, GE Hitachi’s breeder reactor and the CANDU reactor from Canada. There has been quite a lot in the media about the PRISM reactor, but much less about the CANDU reactor, which is potentially an excellent solution. CANDU reactors are very flexible, are a tried and tested technology developed over many years by the Canadians, and have a very big investment arm behind them. It is a very viable project. There you get the advantage of building not just a fuel disposition solution but a reactor to provide clean energy. Given the precarious—or perhaps protracted—negotiations with EDF over Hinkley, it is very clear that we need to have a plan B. If we just switch our frame of reference to consider the plutonium stocks as an asset and then exploit them to maximise the production of electricity and minimise the production of waste, it will point us to a novel solution that would open up great benefits to the UK. I hope that the department, in the advice that it gives to the NDA, will consider this in the round and consider whether we need, perhaps, to rethink the remit of the NDA.
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In 2004, the picture for nuclear was very different. Things have changed and it might just be a good thing to think again about what the NDA is doing, how it relates to the broader thrust that the Bill introduces, and consider whether a slight tweak might mean that we get a really good outcome that opens up a great deal of potential for low-cost, safe and very low-waste nuclear energy, which I think is what we are all aiming for and the nuclear industry accepts we now have to deliver. We have had decades of public support for nuclear energy; it has had a period of contraction and might be seeing some return to growth. However, it will grow only if it can develop reactors that are inherently safe and therefore more cost-efficient, and for which the costs will not escalate and the building timetables will not overrun. They have to come in as cheap as the alternatives. That is a real challenge.
I am pleased that the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, has tabled the amendment. I am not sure that its wording is exactly correct, and I am sure that the Government will come back with some interesting comments on whether they will accept it. However, it would be great to hear some encouraging words about the future purpose of the NDA.