Energy Secretary Edward Davey has underlined the Government’s commitment to deal with the UK’s nuclear legacy and to ensure that the nuclear new build programme learns every lesson from past mistakes.
He said policies to ensure new nuclear operators cover their waste and decommissioning costs will mean that future generations do not pay the price for nuclear electricity used decades before they were even born.
This came as the Government published a report by Professor Gordon MacKerron of SPRU (Science and Technology Policy Research), University of Sussex, into the history of managing nuclear wastes and decommissioning.
The report said:
- Delays by governments and public bodies in tackling nuclear liabilities led to a progressive escalation of costs and deterioration in facilities, which has only begun to be addressed in recent years. The problem was compounded by the military and research origins of the nuclear industry.
- Government has learned important lessons from this history: in the creation and funding of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority to deal with the legacy, the Nuclear Liabilities Fund for the reactors run by British Energy and in the legal framework that has been put in place for liabilities resulting from any new nuclear build.
- The military origins of the post-war UK nuclear industry led to the early civilian nuclear programme of gas-cooled reactors, which are inherently more complex and expensive to decommission than light water reactors. The choice of second generation advanced gas-cooled reactors, made on the basis of conflicted advice, compounded the effects, and the commitment to reprocessing spent fuel added further to costs.
- Little or no thought was given to decommissioning facilities at end of life. The organisations which owned them had other objectives, either the pursuit of research into new nuclear technologies or the pursuit of profitability. Although the prospect of electricity privatisation in the late 1980s focused attention on the costs of the legacy, the opportunity was not taken to address it properly.
- The 2002 White Paper which led to the creation of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) marked a turning point. Government is now committed to long term planning to deal with the nuclear legacy and has put in place structures to do so that are clearly superior to those that came before.
- Spending on nuclear decommissioning, which is ring-fenced within DECC’s budget has increased significantly and spending on the highest priorities is protected.
Commenting on the report, Mr Davey said: “Professor MacKerron’s report is a valuable contribution to an important debate. It paints a warts and all picture of the UK’s nuclear history, and explains why we have such a difficult legacy of old facilities and waste to manage.”
The NHIC has always held the opinion that utilising nuclear power could go a long way to proving economical power for our homes and reduce carbon emissions. But it needs to be handled properly and the MacKerron report makes a significant contribution to its better progress.
More information: www.decc.gov.uk