Infrastructure Planning (Radioactive Waste Geological Disposal Facilities) Order 2015

Debate between Baroness Worthington and Lord Judd

Wednesday 25th February 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Empey (UUP)]

I appreciate the noble Baroness’s point about getting a debate going on radiation, but we should put this in context. I, like many others, am not from Cumbria, but historically those of us in my part of the United Kingdom saw, over several decades, the flushing of material into the Irish Sea that today would be a criminal offence. We were assured in those days that the levels were perfectly okay and that neither fish nor other wildlife would be affected. However, by today’s standards, such activity would be regarded as outrageous. This is all a continuum. I support what the noble Baroness says, but we have to see where we came from. What I am saying is that, within living memory, vast amounts of toxic material were flushed into the sea, so let us at least take comfort from the fact that that has stopped.

[Lord Judd]

Would the noble Lord agree, on reconsidering what he has said, that this is a matter not of decades but of centuries?

[Baroness Worthington]

It is actually a matter of millennia, if you want to put nuclear into its proper context. I do not dispute that the pendulum of regulatory approaches to nuclear swings. I have visited Oak Ridge, the home of nuclear fission research, where nuclear gases used to be vented into the woods because people did not perceive it to be a risk—indeed, there is something to be said for the view that that was not a very risky activity. We have swung back towards very tight regulation for good reason, but that is not to say that that has to be set in stone and that our approach today is right—there is a constantly shifting understanding. I said that background radiation is natural to make the basic point that we as human beings have evolved in a radioactive environment. People are not always aware of that.

This is about getting back to the basics and having another look at the physics of nuclear, so that we can perhaps defuse some of the fears. There is probably no riskier way of storing nuclear waste—if there is indeed a large risk—than the way we use today. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, for pointing out that we seem to be speaking as if there is no waste and that we are suddenly creating waste to put into a depository. The waste exists and it sits around the country, although it is correct to say that a large proportion sits in Sellafield. We need to find a solution, but that is not to say that this is the greatest risk that man has ever faced. The risk is manageable and engineered and we should see it in that context.

I will not detain the Committee any longer. I am grateful for the debate. I reiterate my request from our last debate that we should begin to have a national public conversation about nuclear and the risks involved. As other noble Lords have said, the issue has to be seen in the context of the much broader environmental risks that we face. There is an inherent logic behind the regulations. This is a nationally significant project and, although we do not wish local involvement to be excluded, we need to get the balance right, so we support the regulations.

Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Worthington and Lord Judd

Monday 10th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I have been glad to put my name to this amendment, which is very wise and prudent. It has been suggested in recent years that the interpretation of welfare capitalism has changed. The original concept was that capitalism had a social responsibility that it should discharge for the well-being of society as a whole. It seems that quite a lot of people have come to believe that perhaps welfare capitalism is about ensuring that while wealth generation and profit is privatised, risk is nationalised and is the responsibility of the taxpayer. The point in the amendment that is particularly important in this context is what happens in the case of insolvency, when all the best predictions can be blown away in the wind in the chaos that follows.

If a scheme is put forward and is being properly costed, the cost of dealing with potential damage, closure or the consequences of that is an essential element in the calculations. We are concentrating today on this new and exciting aspect of shale development but we are beginning to see infrastructure across the country in connection with power generation and its distribution that is no longer required. We need to be very careful that we are ensuring that any adverse results of that are not left just for the taxpayer to settle, but that they are the responsibility of the people who, while they are operating, are receiving the profits that come from that.

[Baroness Worthington]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for tabling his amendment and for continuing the discussion that we started in Committee. I am sympathetic to the intention behind these amendments and am particularly interested in the aspect of liability arising from orphaned sites. We are talking about a potential new industry that will see a large number of distributed sites developed. We may well see smaller companies that perhaps do not have the assets or deep pockets of more traditional extractive companies, and there would be considerable potential for orphaned sites. I am very interested to hear from the Minister how we would address any liability arising from such orphaned sites.

I think my noble friend Lord Whitty said that he is seeking for the Government to demonstrate foresight. It strikes me that the Government are demonstrating foresight in some respects of fracking, in imagining the future benefits and future economic wealth that will come. Over the weekend, we even heard comments about the imagined spending of all this great tax revenue. We shall debate that aspect shortly. That foresight is possible, but perhaps we should apply it in the slightly more realistic context of learning from previous experiences of extractive industries in trying to plan for what happens if everything does not go according to plan. I would have thought that companies would be able to take out insurance against some of these liabilities. Again, I would be interested to hear from the Minister about what type of insurance she might expect companies to undertake and what liabilities would be insured. We are entering uncharted territory in the types of company, the types of project and their distribution across the country. It is right that we should proceed with caution.

There is a lot of merit in the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Whitty. He started by saying that he was trying to help out the Government. A number of us have tried to help out the Government during tonight’s debate. However, I suspect that the Government are not listening and do not want to be helped out, but there we are. I look forward to the comments from the Minister in response to this amendment.