Small Modular Reactors Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
David Drew
Main Page: David Drew (Labour (Co-op) - Stroud)Department Debates - View all David Drew's debates with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Small Modular Reactors
David Drew Excerpts(5 years, 2 months ago)
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Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I shall be very brief, partly because I have to be very brief, but also because it would be useful to hear what the Front Benchers have to say in response to the debate.
I have been in correspondence with one of my constituents, Ron George, and I have copied that to my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead), who is on the Front Bench. Mr George is a great supporter of molten salts reactors; he has looked at the three different reactor models that are possible. When the Minister replies to the debate, will he consider some of the issues that Mr George has raised with me? They largely relate to a letter that Mr George received from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in August 2017, which was about the process of deciding what is an appropriate reactor design to take forward.
In March 2017, the Government launched the small modular reactor competition to see what was out there in the marketplace. There were more than 30 entrants and last year the Government gave eligible participants the opportunity to make presentations and so on. My question is: where has that process got to? It was supposedly going to result in a
“Techno-Economic Assessment of SMRs”.
Have the Government now published the protocol for that, and if they have, are they now at a stage where they can at least begin to distil the number of interesting designs, to see which ones they are potentially prepared to support and which ones they are not? I hope the Minister will be able to bring us up to date with what is happening in that process. Is it now yielding some definite outcomes, and is there a preferred SMR design that the Government are looking at?