Asked by: Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what recent discussions he has had with the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and Sellafield Ltd on safety performance at Sellafield.
Answered by Jesse Norman
On 31 August 2016, my noble Friend the Minister of State for Energy and Intellectual Property, together with my rt. hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, met with members of the senior teams from the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and Sellafield Limited to discuss the challenges of decommissioning the Sellafield site safely and securely. On 1 September 2016, they visited the Sellafield site to see first-hand the work that the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) is doing to manage the civil nuclear legacy safely, securely and responsibly, and saw a number of the resilience and emergency preparedness enhancements which have been made to the legacy ponds and silos.
Asked by: Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of safety standards set by the Office of Nuclear Regulation.
Answered by Jesse Norman
They are answerable to an independent regulator – the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), which sets the standards by which the UK nuclear industry must operate.
We have a strong regulatory system across all nuclear operators in the UK. The ONR operates in line with international standards and the requirements set by the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA).
The ONR operates transparently and provides its assessment of standards at nuclear sites in its Annual Report and Accounts, which is laid in Parliament every year. In the latest report, the Chief Nuclear Inspector concluded that nuclear sites have satisfactorily achieved high standards of safety and security, thereby protecting the workforce and the public from harm.
The ONR’s Annual Report and Account sets out in some detail the ONR’s regulatory strategy at Sellafield, which is designed to enable Sellafield Limited to deliver its remediation programmes to reduce hazard and risk on the site, with a particular focus on accelerating safe and secure retrievals from the legacy ponds and silos. The ONR reports that this strategy is helping to secure “evidence-based confidence that the licensee is complying with its statutory obligations and that workers and the public are protected from the hazards of the site”.
Asked by: Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, if he will make an assessment of compliance of operations at Sellafield with regulatory safety standards.
Answered by Jesse Norman
They are answerable to an independent regulator – the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), which sets the standards by which the UK nuclear industry must operate.
We have a strong regulatory system across all nuclear operators in the UK. The ONR operates in line with international standards and the requirements set by the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA).
The ONR operates transparently and provides its assessment of standards at nuclear sites in its Annual Report and Accounts, which is laid in Parliament every year. In the latest report, the Chief Nuclear Inspector concluded that nuclear sites have satisfactorily achieved high standards of safety and security, thereby protecting the workforce and the public from harm.
The ONR’s Annual Report and Account sets out in some detail the ONR’s regulatory strategy at Sellafield, which is designed to enable Sellafield Limited to deliver its remediation programmes to reduce hazard and risk on the site, with a particular focus on accelerating safe and secure retrievals from the legacy ponds and silos. The ONR reports that this strategy is helping to secure “evidence-based confidence that the licensee is complying with its statutory obligations and that workers and the public are protected from the hazards of the site”.
Asked by: Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, when he plans to set out a timetable for the review of the Groceries Code Adjudicator.
Answered by Anna Soubry
The Groceries Code Adjudicator Act 2013 requires the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to review the performance of the GCA every three years. The first review will cover the period up to 31 March 2016 and we will shortly be launching a public consultation as part of this.
The full details of the review, including the terms of reference and timings, are still under consideration. We will announce all of this shortly.
Asked by: Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, how much funding the Government has allocated to the continued assessment of options for plutonium management in the financial years (a) 2016-17, (b) 2017-18 and (c) 2018-19.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
In Spending Review 2015, the Government committed £11bn net funding to NDA over five years (in addition to its forecast commercial income). Government is satisfied with the provision made in the NDA’s budget to continue to make meaningful progress on the plutonium disposition programme.
Asked by: Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, whether her Department plans to begin a procurement process for a technology to reuse plutonium stored at Sellafield before 2020.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Safely and securely managing plutonium remains a government priority. My Department is working across government, with the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) and industry to develop a solution.
NDA submitted advice to support DECC in its considerations on the policy options for separated plutonium held in the UK, in December 2015. The report gives a view on the balance of attractiveness and risk of each reuse option (reuse as MOX and assessment of the credible alternatives PRISM and Candu); as well as immobilisation and continued storage. This, together with other sources of information and evidence, is informing DECC’s consideration of the options for the way forward.
Only when Government is confident that an option could be implemented safely and securely, in way that is affordable, deliverable, and offers value for money, will it be in a position to proceed.