Oral evidence: the future of nuclear power in Wales, HC 699
Monday 9 May 2016
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 9 May 2016.
Written evidence from witnesses:
– Nuclear Decommissioning Authority
Members present: David T.C. Davies; Byron Davies; Dr James Davies; Glyn Davies; Gerald Jones; Liz Saville Roberts; Mr Mark Williams.
Questions 193 – 240
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: David Batters, Chief Financial Officer, Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, Kenny Douglas, Managing Director, Magnox Ltd, Martin Moore, Closure Director for Trawsfynydd, Magnox Ltd, and Stuart Law, Closure Director for Wylfa, Magnox Ltd, gave evidence.
Chair: Good afternoon, gentlemen. Thank you very much for coming along this afternoon. We are a very friendly Committee. We will ask some questions, but feel free to add anything, if you have some relevant information. If I start to see us running out of time, I may have to cut things a bit shorter. I will ask Glyn Davies to start because he has another meeting in about three minutes.
Q193 Glyn Davies: I am very grateful, Chairman, because this subject is of great interest to me, and this is the only chance I have of being involved in this meeting. I just wanted to ask you an opening question so you can tell us roughly where we are. Where are we on the decommissioning of Trawsfynydd? I remember us talking about decommissioning Trawsfynydd probably about 25 years ago when I was in a different job. Clearly, we may be talking about it in 100 years’ time, too. Where are we in the process of decommissioning Trawsfynydd power station?
Martin Moore: In terms of progress towards care and maintenance, we now see a date of 2021 or 2022 for completion of hazard reduction on the site. The date for fuel element debris removal, and the removal of the sludges and wastes and hazardous materials that are required to be removed from the site, is now 2022. The care and maintenance date is in the order of 2028-29—that is for the height reduction and the weather protection on the safe stores. That is where we are in terms of time.
On things yet to do on the site, I mentioned the high hazard reduction. That is the first phase of work, and that will take us through to 2022. That is predominantly fuel element debris, sludges and resins that will be moved into the interim storage facility that was built on the site. That takes us to a point where we then only have to configure the plant for the care and maintenance phase, which then gives us the long-term care and maintenance phase for the period through to final site clearance.
Q194 Glyn Davies: And that period lasts 100 years?
Martin Moore: Yes.
Q195 Glyn Davies: Is that where you expected to be? If I had asked the question I just asked 10 years ago, are we roughly where you thought you might be in the programme by now, or are we seeing some slippage on this?
Martin Moore: The programme up until the changeover of contractors—we have picked up the site, looked at the physical progress on the site and recognised that there are some additional hazardous materials there that need to be dealt with. Some of the programmes are taking longer, so the dates I have just given reflect that position on the ground.
Q196 Glyn Davies: How dependent is this on annual funding? Funding levels can vary. NDA funding varies. You can’t be certain what the budget might be over the next few years. How crucial is the funding and how secure is it?
Kenny Douglas: To jump back to the dates for a second and the end date of around 2028. If you go back 10 years, the date would have been 2026 for the site to have the height reduction complete. In terms of the dates that Martin has just referred to, those are dependent on continued funding from NDA. David will maybe jump in on that in a second.
In relation to how we use the funding, we have got available funding from Magnox. Magnox has 12 sites. We need to ensure that we direct our funding towards dealing with the high hazard waste, first and foremost. Martin was talking about fuel element debris, sludges and so on, those are the greatest hazard on any of the sites that we have remaining. We have to direct funding to that first and foremost.
Q197 Mr Mark Williams: My friend has returned to the Committee with great enthusiasm and pinched my question but I will forgive you, Mr Davies. My question was about that funding. The Committee had a very successful visit to Trawsfynydd. The language of the script presented to us at that meeting was, I suspect, that funding was under threat with that extent of fluctuation. How do you respond to that assertion?
David Batters: Perhaps I could answer from the NDA perspective. Obviously, we have just completed a spending review period, which we believe was successful, in that we were able to explain the strategic need and the importance of funding nuclear. We have secured the funding over the spending review period. With the actual contract that we have got with Cavendish Fluor to operate the Magnox sites, we took a business case to Treasury. In that, we had something that is called planned assured funding. Certainly for the first seven years of the contract—which is also called phase 1—we have a planned assured funding level that we agreed with the Treasury. Subject to spending reviews in the future and challenges on the wider economy, we are reasonably confident.
Q198 Mr Mark Williams: You are confident that the stability is there over that timeframe?
David Batters: Yes. We are reasonably confident that we have sufficient funding to do what we strategically need. We then pass it over to Magnox, which will portfolio manage within their sites and, as Kenny says, it is a matter of dealing with the higher hazards first.
Mr Mark Williams: Between us, we have exhausted funding, Chair.
Q199 Chair: I have a slightly wider question and I am not sure if you can answer it. I am personally quite pro nuclear power—I have no issue with that—but I wonder if people were aware when that station was built what the costs of decommissioning were going to be, and whether that was all factored in properly.
If I may say as a layman, we have had 25 or 26 years of electricity being generated, prior to that we must have had 10 or 15 years while we planned and built this thing, and now it looks as if we are going to have decades of taking it apart again. For 26 years of electricity production we have spent decades building the thing and taking it apart again. To a layman, that does not seem like a very good business venture.
David Batters: You can probably break it into three sections. There are the old sites, the Magnox sites and, indeed, Sellafield, where no provision was made. Certainly when they were being commissioned and generated, there was not a fund created for them until the NDA came along under the Energy Act. You then got the B stations, currently owned by EDFE, and they have a nuclear liability fund, which is put aside for decommissioning those sites. You then have the potential new build, which will have to fund the decommissioning in the price themselves. It has moved. Unfortunately, there was no fund put to one side to decommission these.
Q200 Chair: So that electricity has probably cost us as consumers a lot more money than we thought it was costing us at the time, if you add in the costs of decommissioning the plant.
David Batters: Certainly, in the NDA we were very keen, at sites like Wylfa, to keep generating because the income that that generated until December 2015 was then applied to decommissioning, so we were able to offset the costs to the taxpayer with the income we generated from Wylfa.
Q201 Byron Davies: My question is about the workforce. The decommissioning authority says that it is acting to help workers at the Trawsfynydd site with the end of the current phase of decommissioning, helping to provide training and employment programmes. When Trawsfynydd enters care and maintenance, what will be the real impact on the workforce?
Kenny Douglas: To give you a scale of the numbers employed at Trawsfynydd now, we have about 250 people working at the site, of which 150 are Magnox staff. For all the sites, there has long been recognition of the decommissioning process, so a lot of people had visibility for a long time as to the duration of their work. The age profile of the workforce at Trawsfynydd is about 30% aged over 55. As we work through the next phase, quite a number of those may choose to retire.
For the rest of the workforce we need to look at programmes in the area. We have been going through a redundancy exercise of late, through which we have transferred people from Wylfa to Trawsfynydd. We have replaced agency or contractor staff, many of whom travel into the area, so we are keeping jobs in the area. We have been doing that with some of the socioeconomic programmes that we are looking at as well, which are looking at developing jobs, but our prime focus has been to keep Magnox jobs for Magnox people, and where appropriate, for them to undertake training. Health physics monitoring is a key skill that we require that is normally undertaken by some people in the supply chain. We have been training staff across the UK in those areas.
Those are some of the things that we will be doing. One of the other things is to look at, over the longer term, the tie-in with the likes of the Horizon programme as that builds up in the area. There are quite a number of factors that we will tie into over that period.
Q202 Byron Davies: Given that 70% of those people are under 55, and you will not be able to retain everybody, some of them will have to find re-employment. What are you doing about that?
Kenny Douglas: It is those other factors. We will be running down to a workforce of around 100 in the early 2020s. We need to be working with the local communities to see what jobs we can generate. We need to be looking at the Horizon programme. We also look back into the parent organisations—Babcock International and the Cavendish Fluor Partnership—to look at opportunities that we can provide for those people.
Q203 Byron Davies: I guess that is my question really. Who are you working with and what are you doing with them?
David Batters: Speaking from an NDA perspective, the primary focus is keeping the site safe and secure. We also recognise that we have an obligation to be a caring employer, looking forward. I think we have got a pretty good track record of that. Over the past 10 years, we have invested £7 million in socioeconomics in the area, and we have identified Anglesey and Meirionnydd as key priority areas for us. That £7 million has been leveraged up to £39 million investment in the area. We are doing things there like “Shaping the Future” to retrain individuals. Martin or Stuart will be able to give a little more detail on that. We work closely with the various councils, such as Gwynedd County Council, to try to understand what the potential uses of the site are, how we can reskill and educate people, and also how we can bring in new economic ideas.
Stuart Law: “Shaping the Future” was a programme run in parallel across Wylfa and Trawsfynydd. We knew that Wylfa was going to come to the end of its generation. We made that clear to the workforce. There were no surprises, and people could plan for the future. We gave everybody the opportunity to do any qualifications that they wanted. It did not have to be what the business needed. It was what they wanted to do that could help them for their future. Some of it was recognising training courses that they have done in the past, but for which they had no formal qualifications. Fourteen hundred people enrolled and over 500 nationally recognised qualifications were gained as part of that process. That covered Wylfa and Trawsfynydd staff and contractors; it was something that was really well supported.
Q204 Liz Saville Roberts: I would like to ask about the impact of the cap on exit payments, from the point of view of Magnox—and, to Mr Batters, from that of the NDA—in terms of managing your staff, particularly in Wylfa where you are seeing a considerable change in the sort of skill sets that you need, but also in Trawsfynydd. Could I start with those of you from Magnox?
Kenny Douglas: Is this in relation to potential legislation?
Q205 Liz Saville Roberts: Yes, on redundancy payments.
Kenny Douglas: In terms of our contract with the NDA, we have to enact whatever comes through as legislation, so if that lays down that we have to enact it, then we will have to do it. For the current redundancy exercise that we have been going through, we have secured the position that for all redundancies under this programme, up to the end of September, all people would go with their existing terms. That was put in place. For the period beyond that, if the legislation is enacted, we will have to enact that within Magnox.
Q206 Liz Saville Roberts: What impact do you think it will have on planning for the skills profiles?
Kenny Douglas: There are issues both ways with it, really. For our workforce, one of the key things towards the end of the programme is how to keep them incentivised to deliver right to the end. At present, there are some handsome terms around, so that is useful for that aspect of it. In different parts of our estate, we have sites that are right next door to good, strong employment areas. We need to make sure that we are making the best use of taxpayers’ funds, because some of the terms are significantly more than £95,000; when we are undertaking redundancies, we need to make sure that we are making the best use of the moneys available to us. But as I say, as we come towards the end of sites, it does present a sort of incentive mechanism—people realise that at the end of their job or their work on the site, they have this pot to fall back on.
Q207 Liz Saville Roberts: And those terms were, of course, the terms on which they were employed originally, and they have stayed in places when they could have possibly gone somewhere else to work. Mr Batters, are the savings that will be made through the caps on exit payments in the Enterprise Bill a saving to the NDA?
David Batters: It is money that won’t be spent on redundancy payments and will be spent on decommissioning instead.
Q208 Liz Saville Roberts: It will be transferred to decommissioning? It doesn’t count as a saving within your budget from the Government?
David Batters: No. As part of the spending review, we had a £15 billion overall budget, including Sellafield and the other sites. We have to make £1 billion efficiency savings on that and the number that we are now allocating out to Magnox, Sellafield, Dounreay and so on takes account of the spending review. If there are subsequent savings over and above that, they will be reallocated to decommissioning.
Q209 Liz Saville Roberts: It does not contribute to that sum you have just mentioned as the saving on spending?
David Batters: We have not included that in there.
Q210 Chair: Mr Batters, could you tell us what discussions you have been having with the local authorities about the possible use of Trawsfynydd as a site for developing SMRs?
David Batters: The placement of SMRs is a matter for Government, but as the ultimate owner of the sites, we are keen to work with the local communities. While discussing with local communities, we have heard there is some interest in potentially having an SMR at Trawsfynydd. In our role as part of the Snowdonia enterprise zone, a short report has been commissioned and we understand that it is a potential site for SMRs. Our role, probably, is to support the local communities in that. At the moment, however, there is no concept design of what an SMR will be or when it will be in place—but we are very keen to work with the communities, should a design come forward, on how it will be fed into the plans, the impact on the Trawsfynydd site and whether land needs to be made available. We will obviously work with the communities to see what could be done there.
Q211 Chair: Can you give any indication as to whether you would be for or against this idea on principle?
David Batters: A lot of the costs of decommissioning are ultimately related to the end use of the site. Once we know what the end use of the site is—whether it will be returned to a national park or used for future industry—that will impact on our costing and plans.
Q212 Chair: In other words, if it were used as a site for development of SMRs, there would effectively be a reduction in the cost to the taxpayer of decommissioning the site, because you would not have to take away quite so much stuff and return it to exactly as how it was previously. Is that a fair comment?
David Batters: I do not know what the plans for SMRs are. Logically, there would be a saving if we turned it to that state, but obviously there would be a cost of setting up the SMRs themselves. I do not know what the net effect is.
Q213 Liz Saville Roberts: Thank you very much for your answer from NDA. I would also like to ask Magnox, what role do you feel that Magnox could play in facilitating the potential of developing an SMR at Trawsfynydd?
Kenny Douglas: As David said, our contract with NDA is to decommission the existing sites. Any direction from them that says, “Actually, we need to make greater land available on the site,” is something separate. Our instructions would come from NDA rather than Magnox actually going out and promoting it. That needs to come from an NDA space.
Q214 Liz Saville Roberts: The ball is back in NDA’s court, if we are looking at the potential of developing this site. We understand that the site is one of the few sites—or the only site—in public ownership where there are no other developments planned. What do you feel the NDA could do, given that you have a socioeconomic remit to facilitate this as well? The potential for the future use of a site that has already been a nuclear site is limited in some respects.
David Batters: There is obviously potential there. There is access to the cooling water and to the skilled workforce. Logistics would have to be worked out. But we have yet to receive a formal request to do any sort of planning on that front. As and when that request comes in to do a conceptual design of the cost-benefits and the pros and cons, we would obviously support that. As you say, we are keen to help the local community move on to the next thing. It is a nuclear site, so it is a licensed site. It is worth pointing out that it is licensed for Magnox activities to decommission. If SMRs were built there, there would have to be some regulatory changes as well.
Q215 Liz Saville Roberts: There is an issue there, isn’t there? Under the 2009 identification of sites, Trawsfynydd is not one of the sites is identified for development.
David Batters: Certainly not for nuclear new build.
Q216 Liz Saville Roberts: What would need to be undertaken to rectify that situation?
David Batters: I do not know. I am afraid that is beyond me.
Q217 Gerald Jones: I have a question about the decommissioning at Wylfa. Why will the decommissioning there take place much quicker than at Trawsfynydd?
Stuart Law: All the Magnox sites were fundamentally different in their design. The one important aspect of any new build is that you have to consider the decommissioning as part of your submission for what you are going to build in the first place. Now, in many respects, we were fortunate at Wylfa. We do not have any ponds. We actually have something called primary dry store cells, which are basically metal tubes that you stack fuel in. They do not have the same levels of contamination and the resins that you would use to keep pond water clean, so we do not have to deal with those.
Also, we never had fuel element debris at Wylfa. That is where you split logs off the element and they go into vaults. Basically, it is simpler, which is why it will take so much less time. Going back to you original question, we generated 223 TWh of electricity. If you work it out nominally at £40, you can come up with a figure there. Then you can assign it against the costs of the decommissioning and the defueling.
Q218 Gerald Jones: And you are expecting the full decommissioning to be completed by 2026?
Stuart Law: Around 2026, yes.
David Batters: It is worth pointing out as well that Trawsfynydd is one of our “lead and learn” sites. As a concept, across the Magnox estate, we had two “lead and learn” sites: Bradwell in Essex and Trawsfynydd. We are learning from those and that benefit is being passed on to other sites; be it in the scabbling of the pond or the way we deal with FED or asbestos and so on, that learning is passed on. So there will be some direct learning to Wylfa from Trawsfynydd, but learning from Trawsfynydd will also go across the rest of the estate.
Q219 Gerald Jones: May I ask you a question about workers currently employed at the Wylfa site and what support and help is being given to workers to transfer to the Wylfa Newydd site? Having been up there with the Committee a few months ago and looked at the proposals for the new site, I am quite interested to see how the workforce will transfer in terms of retaining skills and what sort of support and help is provided.
David Batters: Under our socioeconomic remit, we have a number of strands, one of which is employment, whereby we try to give the workers the opportunity to move directly into another employment. We also do a lot on education and skills. Coleg Menai, where we are training people for high-value jobs, be it at Wylfa Newydd or in some other related industry, is a good example of that. We also have Coleg Meirion, where we are training people through a number of training courses. That is for 14-year-olds upwards, but a number of adults have been through that process as well.
We are also looking at the economic and social infrastructure. We are working closely with Anglesey Council on the Anglesey Energy Island concept; we are putting some of the funding in behind that. We are also looking at economic diversification. We are working with Gwynedd Council and others in Snowdonia but also in Wylfa, and investing in the next generation of low-carbon energy—it might be wave power or things like that.
Q220 Liz Saville Roberts: Forgive me, but there was a question I would have liked to have asked in relation to Trawsfynydd. We went ahead, but we can just about tack it on with the “lead and learn” connection. I understand that the NDA has a draft strategy for proceeding that was published in January 2016 and talks about an alternative to the current decommissioning plan, which, if I understand it, is to go into care and maintenance in 2028. That has moved ahead somewhat as it is, has it not?
David Batters: Yes.
Q221 Liz Saville Roberts: None the less, the new strategy is considering whether the 30 years or so of quiescence is necessary. This is an alternative that has, I understand, found favour with the local authority in Gwynedd. Is there any reason for us not to be adopting this new strategy—particularly on this site, since it is a “lead and learn” site—now that we have more knowledge?
David Batters: The strategy was published formally in April. We issue our strategy every five years, per the Energy Act requirements. One of the things we are looking at is continuous decommissioning: rather than having a care and maintenance state and a quiescent period, could we carry on? There are a number of factors that need considering there, primarily safety to individuals, the workforce, the local community and, indeed, the environment. There are some benefits to leaving the reactor so the half life and the actual radioactivity decrease. Obviously, another factor is the affordability, because if we were to continue decommissioning through to final site clearance, there would be more cost in the short term. Also, when generating that sort of high-level waste, we have to have somewhere ultimately to put that waste, so the waste management infrastructure needs to be in place as well. There are a number of factors, rather than just carrying on with decommissioning, and that is something that we are looking at. Ultimately, our preference is to get on and do the job, but we do need to consider affordability and also the waste management infrastructure.
Q222 Liz Saville Roberts: Is there a response from Magnox to this?
Kenny Douglas: Only to ensure that we are not confusing two matters. At Trawsfynydd, there was originally going to be an interim care and maintenance phase, which, with the revised plan, will disappear. The work that Martin referred to earlier about fuel level debris and so on will run longer and will run into the height reduction phase. That work then runs out to 2028-29, as we talked about earlier on. In terms of the piece afterwards about bringing forward final site clearance, we have been asked by NDA to undertake a study to look at taking the reactor to its final state earlier. That sort of initial concept project is on the go at the moment. We will complete the first stage of that in December this year. There is nothing to say that we are going to do that at Trawsfynydd yet.
Q223 Liz Saville Roberts: So you are undertaking research now?
Kenny Douglas: A concept study.
Q224 Liz Saville Roberts: It is a concept study now that will look at, instead of going into 30 years at 2028, a continuation from then on in to see what this means.
Kenny Douglas: Yes. That will be looking across our estate. If we went forward with that at the end and we said that we would go forward with a site, it would not necessarily be Trawsfynydd. It may be one of the other sites, but we are in the very early stages of looking at that. As David said, we have to look at the safety of the workforce. We are going to generate a lot of waste from that process. Where do we put that waste if we bring it forward that early in time?
Q225 Liz Saville Roberts: None the less, we are looking at a situation where we have 400 jobs associated with this now and that will go down to 100 jobs at the beginning of the next decade. Can you give me some idea of how many more jobs that would be likely to keep in Trawsfynydd? Are we talking about 25%?
Kenny Douglas: Honestly, I would be guessing.
Q226 Mr Mark Williams: Following on from Gerald Jones’s first question, there is another question in this section on decommissioning that is probably addressed to Mr Law. When we came to see you up in Wylfa, you responded very positively to the request for a layman’s answer from the Chairman in explaining the process of decommissioning to us. You have explained why decommissioning at Wylfa can be completed much quicker than at Trawsfynydd. Thinking ahead, how will the more modern design of Wylfa Newydd make decommissioning easier?
Stuart Law: The design of Wylfa Newydd is all with Horizon, and they need to present their plans to the regulators. I can only suggest things that are my own opinion, which I would not wish to do.
Q227 Mr Mark Williams: But without going into detail, we can look to a progression in decommissioning, speed and efficiency?
Stuart Law: The actual requirements for the site licence require the new-build company to put together their decommissioning plans on day one, before they have built it.
Q228 Mr Mark Williams: At what point does that document emerge?
Stuart Law: Effectively, it is day one. Before they have started to build, they have to say how they would seek to do the decommissioning, because that has to be factored, I believe, within the prices going forward. You need to know your prices, don’t you, if you are going to go through that whole programme?
Chair: We hope so.
Q229 Dr James Davies: Can you explain to us how the UK currently deals with low-level and high-level nuclear waste?
Stuart Law: Forgive me, because I do not know what you do not know.
Chair: Assume we don’t know most things.
Stuart Law: Forgive me if people already know this, but you have many different types of radiation. There are three basic types: alpha, beta and gamma. For alpha, I would have to be very close to the source, so I would be perfectly okay, if I had a source here and I am sitting there, unless I ingested it. Beta radiation can pass through several centimetres of air, so if I was here and it was there, I would be okay. Gamma radiation or x-rays are penetrating. You will see that as a doctor. You can see what we use those for.
The actual fission products that we produce and the activation products that are produced as part of the process have a mixture of alpha, beta and gamma in them, depending on the radionuclides. Simplistically, low-level waste is that with less than 4 gigabecquerels per tonne of alpha and less than 12 gigabecquerels per tonne of beta or gamma. That is the type of thing that is lightly contaminated. I could be relatively close to it with no harm at all to me. There is a subset of that called very low-level waste, which you can send to different repositories and which by definition is a lot less than those limits. Then there is intermediate-level waste, where it is greater than the limits I specified, but it does not require any cooling of the product—whereas for high-level waste you have to have cooling of the product in the reprocessing, when you have dissolved all the fuel and extracted all the fission products. The intermediate-level waste is combinations of things like the fuel element debris and the resins that have been used. Martin is probably the best one to talk a little about what sort of doses you could potentially get from those.
Kenny Douglas: High-level waste would be the fuel from the reactor, which is processed at Sellafield. Intermediate-level waste, as Stuart said, is resins and fuel element debris and is stored on containers on the site—it will be stored in the containers that at the present time are on the site until the 2040s. Low-level waste would be a mixture of contamination coming from the PPE—personal protective equipment—personal clothing and things like that. It is packaged and stored at the low-level waste repository. Then there is very low-level waste, which is short of being recycled; there are specific licensed facilities across the country where that is sent. There are various categories for where it is dealt with.
David Batters: It is probably worth noting that in the highly regulated industry, there are packages specifically designed, with strenuous testing, to be safe for the workers and the public. As for the volumes involved, low-level waste is about 94% of the volume of the waste. That gives you some context: the amount that goes forward as high-level waste is relatively low in volume terms.
Q230 Dr Davies: Where is the low-level waste repository?
David Batters: It is in a place called Drigg in Cumbria, just south of Sellafield.
Q231 Dr Davies: The same location where the geological disposal site may be—in the same vicinity?
David Batters: There is no known site for the GDS at the moment.
Q232 Dr Davies: Do you think the public have a good understanding of the different types of nuclear waste and the threats posed by the different types?
David Batters: I think it is a challenge to explain what the different types of nuclear waste involve. Certainly for the low-level waste, which consists of things like soil, rubble or paper handkerchiefs to wash your hands, it is about explaining the fact that you can stand next to it perfectly safely—as opposed to the more radioactive material, which is safe to stand next to when it is packaged.
Q233 Dr Davies: Clearly, there is a risk in anything in life, but what would you outline as the risks in the storage and transportation of nuclear waste at Wylfa and Trawsfynydd?
Stuart Law: To start with, 99.9% of our radioactive waste is disposed of once we get rid of the fuel off site, so it is all about making sure it is safe and secure. We take the security of that as very important: we package it into 50-tonne flasks, it gets shipped off site and ultimately goes by rail to Sellafield. Once that has been loaded, you can stand right alongside it with no appreciable dose.
Q234 Dr Davies: It was explained on our trip to Wylfa that if a plane crashed into that train it would remain intact.
Stuart Law: There is a piece of video that shows a rail engine going into the side of a flask, and the flask being intact at the end of that. We build that type of scenario into our safety cases. It is safety-compliant for the public and the people, and also from the security perspective, which we are always conscious of.
David Batters: From a safety perspective, at sites like Trawsfynydd it is probably conventional safety that is the bigger hazard. Things like asbestos or even slips, trips and falls are probably the bigger hazard.
Q235 Dr Davies: Sticking to waste, how much waste would you say will be produced by Wylfa Newydd, for instance—a much smaller quantity than former stations?
Stuart Law: I could not even estimate that for Wylfa Newydd. It is a different type of design, which goes back to one of the other questions. That is something you would have to take up with Horizon.
David Batters: I might be able to help a little bit on the GDF—the geological disposal facility—and the amount of waste that is predicted to go in there from existing facilities. It is anticipated that the new build programme would add 15% to that.
Q236 Chair: Fifteen per cent more or less?
David Batters: The existing amount would come up to 575,000 metres cubed. You would add 15% to that, so the new total would be 656,000.
Q237 Dr Davies: If the GDF does proceed at some point, how will that change what currently happens? Does it mean, for instance, that what is stored or intended to be stored on site at Trawsfynydd will be transported there?
David Batters: Yes. The strategy is that at the moment, there are interim storage facilities that are absolutely fine for 1,500 years, and they will then move into the geological disposal facility.
Q238 Dr Davies: What is your view as to the likelihood of that facility ever being developed?
David Batters: The national geological screening—we have completed the exercise to see what that comprises, and indeed, we have started some of the screening nationally to see which areas are potentially appropriate. DECC is also looking at the definition of the community, which is quite important. Is it the local, the borough or the county? That is the programme we are working to.
Q239 Dr Davies: Finally, I assume the alternative is just leaving the intermediate level waste in situ at the former stations.
David Batters: Yes. The facilities are there and will last 1,500 years.
Q240 Dr Davies: And beyond that, work would presumably have to be carried out to ensure it was still safe and protected.
David Batters: Yes.
Chair: That answers all my questions as well. If no one has anything else, may I thank you all very much indeed for coming down today and sharing that with us?
Oral evidence: the future of nuclear power in Wales, HC 699 2