Welsh Affairs Committee 

Oral evidence: Nuclear energy in Wales, HC 240

Wednesday 19 October 2022

Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 19 October 2022.

Watch the meeting 

Members present: Stephen Crabb (Chair); Virginia Crosbie; Wayne David; Ruth Jones; Ben Lake and Beth Winter.

Questions 23 - 41

Witnesses

II: Dr Douglas Parr, Policy Director and Chief Scientist, Greenpeace UK; Linda Rogers, People Against Wylfa B (PAWB) and Neil Crumpton, People Against Wylfa B (PAWB).

Written evidence from witnesses:

- Greenpeace UK

- Linda Rogers, Member of People Against Wylfa B (PAWB)

- Neil Crumpton, Member of People Against Wylfa B (PAWB)

Examination of witnesses

Witnesses: Dr Douglas Parr, Linda Rogers and Neil Crumpton.

Chair: Good morning. Let me begin by welcoming Dr Douglas Parr, policy director and chief scientist from Greenpeace UK. Welcome to the Welsh Affairs Committee this morning, good to see you. Welcome to Linda Roger from People Against Wylfa B (PAWB) and, also from PAWB, is Neil Crumpton who is joining us virtually from lovely Bethesda in north Wales. Good morning, Mr Crumpton. To being this second panel, I am going to ask my colleague, Ben Lake, to open up the questions.

Q23            Ben Lake: Diolch Chair. Bore da. Croeso i chi i’r sesiwn y bore ‘ma. Following the first panel, you will have heard the discussion early on about the need to decarbonise and to reach net zero, and the question was put as to how that might be possible if we were not to use nuclear energy. What would your response be to that question?

Dr Parr: Thank you. The UK needs to go hell for leather for a 100% renewables system. There are now a variety of models out there demonstrating that this is perfectly feasible and indeed a number of them show that it is possible to do this, and it would be done at lower cost if it was done without nuclear. I include the Imperial College Energy Futures Lab, Energy Systems, Catapult, the LCP one done for SSE and another one has come out quite recently from the University College London which looks not just at the electricity system but at the transport and heat systems and integrates them. Again, they find that it is lower cost if it is done by renewables rather than the nuclear route. We can expect others to come out; I am aware that there is another one which will hopefully come out this year—but might not—from Lappeenranta University.

What that says to me is that when you look at those system models, nuclear is very much a choice; it is not a necessity. The models use different combinations of which renewables they choose to use, particularly different contributions from solar, some from bioenergy, and they use a variety of ways to balance the overall system because obviously, as everybody knows, wind and solar are variable, they are not there 100% of the time. In using those system tools, including long-term storage, it is possible to get to systems which are fully reliable and which are cheaper and deliver what we want in terms of decarbonisation. It seems to me that, given the other issues associated with nuclear which we might want to come onto later, a good choice would be to aim for that kind of system rather than one that involves considerable quantities of nuclear.

Q24            Ben Lake: Thank you, Dr Parr. Linda Rogers, would you like to add anything to that?

Linda Rogers:  You were not here, Doug, when they were asking if there were any examples of places where 100% renewable was going ahead or planned for. They do exist. Wales is particularly capable of being such a place with the investment they already have in renewables. We have Denmark, Norway, Iceland; we have a lot of places that either have or are planning for 100% renewables to be in place, so it is perfectly possible. It is a political decision, and it struck me that calling not doing nuclear an ideological decision was an interesting way of looking at it. I will not say anything more on that matter right now because Neil will have other things to say on that, I am sure.

Ben Lake: Thank you. Mr Crumpton, if I could pose the same question to you and perhaps also ask about baseload energy generation and how we might look at that in a world without nuclear power generation.

Neil Crumpton: Earth's renewable resources, particularly wind and solar, are so cost-effective now and are likely to become cheaper that a 5% contribution, and that would be the Nuclear Association's view of it, would only supply about 5% of 2050 energy. It is very much an option but one with major downsides and is probably more expensive. Even if it was the same price as renewables in an overall system, I would suggest that the renewables option should be pursued because it does not have the same downsides as nuclear energy. Unfortunately, in my view, since about 2005 when Tony Blair particularly was promoting nuclear on the view that it was a necessary baseload need, the view at that time was that carbon capture and storage was an unproven technology—ie, using gas to produce low-carbon dispatchable electricity so when renewables were not supplying the back-up generation from carbon capture and storage on natural gas, it could take place. That was the only choice which was really being put forward.

I believe I was mentioning hydrogen-fired back-up then using green hydrogen, ie when the wind blows and the sun shines you generate some hydrogen, you store that hydrogen for when the wind does not blow and that is how you produce a reliable electricity system. Earth has enough resources to produce all the green hydrogen needed to back up all the times when renewables are not supplying. There is no vital, crucial, or absolute need for nuclear at all, not in terms of overall energy need or indeed baseload power.

Q25            Ben Lake: Thank you, Mr Crumpton, if I can just stay with you for a moment. One of the concerns we as a Committee have heard in the past about a transition to a fully renewable energy system is that of energy storage. I wonder whether you have any views on whether technology for energy storage is, at the present time, there to allow us to make that transition to fully renewable?

Neil Crumpton: That would significantly come down to hydrogen storage. Last year, or the year before, Centrica proposed converting the Rough North Sea gas caverns to hydrogen storage. Kwasi Kwarteng, I believe, visited the site. That idea was not progressed, although I think Centrica is now proposing to use that Rough storage and bring it back into natural gas for the time being considering the recent crisis. There are ways to store hydrogen at scale in salt caverns, be it under Cheshire or Teesside, or indeed, depleted oil wells in the North Sea, potentially Liverpool Bay, so there is that potential for large-scale hydrogen storage.

It can also be stored locally and there are new technologies being developed whether they become cost-effective or technically superior storage for hydrates and metals and things. There is enough storage potential. Also, there is the issue that we have not had the biomass strategy from the Government yet, but you could also generate hydrogen and indeed carbon negative hydrogen from biomass synthetic fuels as well from hydrogen so you can store liquid fuels from green hydrogen generated by excess wind. It is all a question of cost, but it certainly can be done technologically.

Q26            Ben Lake: Thank you, Mr Crumpton. Kwasi Kwarteng—whatever happened to that gentleman? Nevertheless, the rate at which we are going through Chancellors at the moment he may be back with us before Christmas. Dr Parr, do you have anything to add on that point?

Dr Parr: I would just add to what Neil has said that the costs of hydrogen are of course uncertain, but most analysts are predicting that the costs of green hydrogen storage for long duration storage of renewables are going to come down very quickly. They are going to go on a cost curve that it looks like solar or wind has done over the past decade. That is why we can see considerable activity across Europe, Australasia, Asia in pursuing hydrogen as an option for decarbonisation, including particularly in the steel industry, but that is another story about the opportunities for Wales. Let us not go there today.

The important thing is the UK Government hydrogen strategy and in the modelling the UK Government did, the 2050 modelling was much more pessimistic about the costs of green hydrogen than other analysts including Bloomberg and the advisors to the European Commission. Obviously, that tells you a different story about your overall system costs than if you use these other costs which are more central to where we think we are going. That is one of the reasons why there is a discrepancy between overall costs of the system between UK Government and some of the other independent models that I discussed.

Linda Rogers: I just want to very quickly comment on that on a very basic level. What I hear from the nuclear power industry, in talking about, “Oh, and we can produce hydrogen”, is, “Can we find another use that we can say nuclear power is useful for?” Where actually it can be generated much better through other ways, as Doug and Neil just outlined. So it is another example of the nuclear power industry trying to find uses for itself and it does not serve, basically.

Q27            Chair: I am going to bring in Beth Winter in a moment. This is a really interesting discussion, but in my mind I keep coming back to a point that was made by one of the witnesses in the first panel about placing hope in something that is not fully proven and demonstrated, versus a technology that has been proven for many decades now and we know gives us low- carbon energy. If we genuinely think that there is a climate emergency and the imperative has to be to decarbonise, what is the real big problem with nuclear? I just want to come back on that point.

Dr Parr, what is the stumbling block for you? If the imperative for you is to move to a low-carbon economy and we know that we have a technology that is proven, what is the intellectual difficulty?

Dr Parr: I would say threefold. Number one is that nuclear comes with attendant risks that are much harder to manage than those of other technologies. If we look at experience around the world, whether it is Fukushima or the recent worries over the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, the lesson to take is that over long periods of time, unexpected things can happen. When you are talking about very long duration, specific hazards of nuclear power and, importantly, then the waste storage which will be on site for possibly even a century afterwards, the future is unpredictable, unknowable, and we do not quite know what we are going to do with the waste in the end anyway. So there are particular hazards around nuclear.

The second point is the one made especially well by the Rocky Mountain Institute, which is that if you know that there is a limit to what people are willing to pay, any expenditure by public authorities, or diversion of capital, into something that is potentially not as cost-effective as other opportunities, is damaging the decarbonisation effort. In particular, and this is in the US example but I would be surprised if it did not translate to over here, they point out that a dollar spent on nuclear is about 20 times less efficient than a dollar spent on energy efficiency. Energy efficiency is quicker, it is cheaper, it delivers much more and there is a diversion effect.

This diversion effect is the third point, and it very much applies to the way in which Government is operating. It was a while ago, but I doubt that the numbers are any different now; the numbers of civil servants, and we can therefore assume ministerial time, working on nuclear, was more than was working on the rollouts of renewable energy and the rollout of clean heat combined.

Now, actually, if you want to decarbonise and decarbonise over the next decade or so and do so rapidly, there are five things you need to do. You need loads of renewables, you need a proper grid with storage, you need electrical infrastructure for electric vehicles, you need a grid that works with all these, and you need a roll-out of heat pumps and efficiency. If you are not doing those five, your decarbonisation effort is going to founder and yet we see within BEIS that a lot of people and a lot of time is being spent on rolling out a nuclear, which is essentially a bit-part technology. Even if you get to this fabled 24GW, we are still only talking a relatively small part of the overall generation and not many experts think we are getting there. It is a bit-part technology yet it is occupying huge amounts of time within Government and, as we have seen from Covid and various other things, this really matters.

Chair: Thank you for that, Dr Parr.

Q28            Virginia Crosbie: I just wanted to mention your comment about nuclear waste. We had a submission from Aberystwyth town council which said, “Nuclear waste is a huge cause of concern and the Westminster Government should instead consider placing nuclear plants in Hampshire”, which I am sure would delight the Secretary of State for Education. We also had a very lengthy submission from Anglesey County Council, pages and pages of it, and they do not actually mention nuclear waste. Why the difference?

Dr Parr: It is very difficult for me to comment directly on the submissions of particular councils, but I think, if you are interested in promoting a particular project like Wylfa, then it might be good to overlook some of the downsides. I cannot know, but the downsides are significant. If we look at Sizewell C, the proposal to go there, I think it is expected that spent fuel is going to be on site until about 2150. It is something of that order, so it is a long time to worry about something where you have to ensure safety and security on site over considerable periods of time. And, frankly, nobody cares very much if something goes wrong with a wind farm.

Q29            Beth Winter: Thank you, this is extremely interesting. I am going to ask a similar question to what I asked the first panel. You may have been here for that so you can maybe comment on some of their views. There is this growing argument that nuclear energy is not cost effective and is extremely expensive with particular implications for the public purse. Dr Parr, can you elaborate on that in any way, please?

Dr Parr: I can quote some per megawatt hour numbers, these are 2012 figures. Per megawatt hour, Hinkley Point was £92.50. Floating offshore wind, a developing technology, supposedly, the last auction will be delivered before Hinkley and it will be delivered at £87. Conventional fixed offshore wind will be delivered at around about £40. Again, 2012 numbers.

What that means is, the sort of question posed to variable renewables like offshore wind—the wind does not blow all the time. But you can buy an awful lot of storage and system balancing for the difference between those two. Whilst it is argued that the problem with nuclear is that it is the interest payments that are making it expensive, I am tempted to observe that, in the light of the last few weeks, there are going to be some interest payments on offshore wind as well. That is going to go up. That is going to be increasing in cost if the money is borrowed in the UK. Why would you select this optional technology to transfer huge amounts of risk onto the public balance sheet and for taxpayers and bill payers to be paying when there are more cost effective options? Certainly very much so on a per megawatt hour basis and, as I alluded to earlier, when you roll in the system costs as well.

Q30            Beth Winter: What is your view on the private sector’s appetite to invest in this energy?

Dr Parr: In nuclear, it seems quite low. We have seen that funds like LGIM, formerly Legal & General, and Aviva have said they are not very comfortable with investing in that. Certainly in the Sizewell C- type developments, but obviously they are not the totality of investments. Then if you are looking for security, I am not sure flying around the world to look for Saudi investment funds is really the place we ought to be for a project like nuclear. Whereas offshore wind and solar, prior to our recent events at least, have had very little trouble finding finance. In fact, there has been more finance, chasing good projects, than there have been good projects available.

Q31            Beth Winter: Did Linda or Neil want to come in on the cost very quickly?

Linda Rogers: Yes, please. The £70 Virginia quoted with the use of RAB is only because of the risk that will be taken by the consumer for cost overruns and so on. We have seen with Hinkley, in the five years within the build of that, there has been an increase between, I think it is 38% and 48% of cost increase, which, under RAB, would come to the consumer. At this time, when finances are so bad for the individual, it is really not a very good look that the consumer is being asked to take the risk of cost overruns. That includes people on universal credit and so on, being asked to pay for this extra, and we do not know how much it is. The assessments are not actually in place. We have not got the figures down for what it would be for the consumer in the end.

We heard from the previous panel, “It is a tried and tested technology”, and so on. If all this is the case, why do we need RAB at all? Why is it that the nuclear industry itself does not take the risk? Hitachi, at a cost of £3 billion, came away from building Wylfa Newydd before, despite having been offered £5 billion of what was estimated to be a £15 billion cost. They will not take the risk so that is why RAB is being introduced. It is the consumer that is being asked to take the risk on this, and it is not acceptable. Sorry, I lost my train of thought. I will have to come back in a second.

Beth Winter: In terms of RAB then, specifically—

Chair: I think, Linda, you have covered the point about RAB.

Q32            Beth Winter: Sorry, did Neil want to come in with anything on RAB in terms of risks to the industry and taxpayers? Because that was another area that we were covering. I know Linda has touched on it.

Linda Rogers: Sorry, Neil. There is the Westinghouse point as well. There is the plant in South Carolina which used a similar model that is being proposed, that is being passed for Sizewell, and that is another question. So two very important questions around RAB.

First, there is the example in South Carolina where bill payers are still paying 80% on top of their present bills, despite the fact that it is never going to be built. This is an example of where the consumer is asked, first of all, to induce other people to put their money up in hope. The previous panel talked about hope. RAB is about hope that investment will come in. We do not even know if it will. And then if you look at what has actually happened with Sizewell and RAB—the two criteria that the Government has set up for saying that RAB can be designated—neither of those are met. We do not know what value for money is. We do not have assessments for what is value for money for the consumer at all. Those numbers do not exist. I did ask Virginia before, as my representative, “Can you say what the process is by which we establish value for money?” And I was told at that point the information was not accessible.

Q33            Beth Winter: Linda, can I just bring Neil in quickly on the cost implications because he has not had an opportunity to speak.

Neil, very quickly please, because I know Virginia has a supplementary and we are constrained by time. Thank you.

Neil Crumpton: Well, as regards transferring the risk and construction delay cost to the public, it is claimed nuclear is tried and tested, but the EPR in China, one of them had been offline for over a year after only two years operation. There are technical issues with each new model, even though the genre is claimed to be tried and tested. This would also apply to modulars or high temperature gas reactors. We are not sure on specific models and transferring the risk is not exactly showing that you have confidence in your own technology. The wind companies and solar companies are not asking for any similar transference risk, but also their schemes are delivered more quickly, so five years compared with 10 plus, and without the kind of construction delays that nuclear is suffering.

Q34            Wayne David: I just wanted to press you a little on the issue of nuclear waste. Is it your position that you do accept the Government have given cast-iron commitments to use the best possible international standards to ensure safety? Are you concerned about the cost of it all?

Dr Parr: I am sure they have committed to use best international standards. There is a question about delivery, but the concern we have is that nuclear waste, the high-level nuclear waste and spent fuel, is extremely difficult to manage on a long-term basis. Germany tried to bury its waste in what was supposedly going to last for thousands and thousands of years in a salt cavern, only to find they had to dig it out a decade or so later because the geology was not behaving as they expected.

We know that the places that have been suggested for the UK in Cumbria have been rejected and they have been rejected on technical grounds. The planning inquiry in the nineties rejected it on technical grounds. I do not see anything that says things have moved on since then. We are asking to store something which you do not particularly want above ground, but then you do not know how it is going to behave and how safe it is going to be below ground, given what we know and what experience is. And yet, despite this unsolved puzzle, we are going on creating more of it. That is really the issue.

Linda Rogers: A report was just published that said, with the high burn nuclear waste, three geological disposal sites would be needed now because of the impact of the heat and we should not be building new power stations, in principle, if we do not know what we are doing with the waste. The Government has always said, “We are satisfied there will be an answer”, and the lack of democracy around everything that has happened around Cumbria and so on is astonishing really when it comes to the desperate efforts for Government to try and establish where there will be waste. It is a very important question for Wales. I have not heard anybody who supports nuclear power saying they would support a nuclear waste disposal facility in Wales. The responsibility for that seems to be, “As long as it is somewhere else.”

I just want to pick up on something else, actually very important, on low-carbon and uranium. Where those uranium mines are, ask those communities about the cost. We talk about cost here, but the cost to those communities is massive and, because it is abroad, it is not part of our justification. I want to put that in now because the point will be lost otherwise. The appalling impact on indigenous communities of uranium mining is shocking and they need a voice.

Q35            Wayne David: Do you have any further concerns? Some people have suggested, for example, given the unstable nature of the world in which we live, potential terrorist actions or activities. Do you think there has to be a security element built into those costs?

Neil Crumpton: Could I answer that one please? I would say that security is a very big aspect of the initial stages of waste storage. It is typically above ground within the nuclear complex, and active cooling for up to 30 years of spent fuel can be weaponized, which is exactly what we are seeing in Ukraine now. Should those spent fuel ponds run dry, as they nearly did at Fukushima, then major accidents would become massively larger in scale. Tokyo could have easily been evacuated in the Fukushima incident. So there is that aspect as well.