Nuclear Regulatory System

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

As I said to my noble friend, we will do everything as speedily as possible. We will move forward on this. I say to the noble Lord: safety is of paramount importance, of course it is, and there cannot be any compromise on that, but we have to get on with this. In the mid-1990s, 25% of our electricity was generated through nuclear; it is now 15%. Even with the new power stations that have been agreed, unless we do more it will go down. That is not good enough; we have to do better than that—with the small modular reactors that my noble friend talked about and with the new power station that was recently agreed by my right honourable friend Ed Miliband MP. There cannot be any compromise on safety, but neither can there be the situation where, time after time, decisions are delayed and nothing happens. The consequence of that is that our economy suffers and jobs are lost. That is not good enough and we are going to do something about it.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, we should concentrate on and give priority to building smaller nuclear reactors, as the Minister’s noble friend has suggested, which can be built in two years, rather than building the gigawatt giants, which apparently we are dedicated to doing, which take years to build and are far more politically risky and far more likely to raise political dangers.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I agree up to a point with what the noble Lord has said. Our big power stations such as Sizewell and Hinkley Point C are part of the answer. He is quite right to say that alongside that the small modular reactors are necessary. He will know that Rolls-Royce has three which have gone through the generic design assessment. Two additional GDA requesting parties have met the threshold to enter and there are others at other stages of the process. He is quite right to point out the need for small modular reactors, which can be done more quickly and are part of the answer to our energy needs, but nuclear has to be a part of that. Small modular reactors will be a part of it, alongside the big stations such as Sizewell and Hinkley.