Nuclear Energy

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 5:48 pm on 13 May 1986.

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Photo of Malcolm Bruce Malcolm Bruce Shadow Spokesperson (Energy and Climate Change) 5:48, 13 May 1986

I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I should be interested to know how the Government Chief Whip manages to reconcile his position on nuclear waste with that of the Government. At least the position that we are adopting is consistent. [Interruption.] That is most certainly the case. Nobody in my party proposes the building of new nuclear power stations, but we all agree that provision must be made for the disposal of nuclear waste. The position that we adopt is consistent but the Government's position is dishonest. For a member of the Cabinet to adopt such a position is fundamentally unacceptable.

The public have no confidence in the Government's reaction to the drift of radiation from Chernobyl to the United Kingdom. The chaos and confusion in the Government have caused real concern.

That brings me to another point: whether Britain would be able to cope with a major radiation leak from a British nuclear installation, especially in view of the United Kingdom's population density. When he replies to the debate, will the Secretary of State for Energy tell the House whether measures are in hand to provide uncontaminated water to the population of the United Kingdom in the event of a major radiation leak? 'The House may be interested to know that at the weekend I 'was in Orkney. I was advised that there were no iodine tablets in the islands, although it is just across the Pentland firth from Dounreay. If there were an accident at Dounreay, one wonders how the islanders would be expected to react.

The Government, and others, give assurances about Britain's high safety standards and record. I do not doubt either the sincerity or the competence of our nuclear power scientists and engineers, but at the end of the day McPherson's law applies. That is, McPherson's piece always lands jeelly-side doon. That means that if something is likely to go wrong, it will. Two weeks ago the Chernobyl disaster demonstrated that the scale and character of a nuclear disaster is quite different from any other kind of disaster. If the objectives of the nuclear industry were fulfilled, we could be talking about risks of that kind from more than 80 nuclear installations in the United Kingdom.

As for the general debate on nuclear power, the proponents of nuclear power point out that it is economic and clean. Both of those factors are open to dispute. The full cost of nuclear power has not been met by the electricity industry. Much of it has been defence funded and the costs of decomissioning and waste disposal, although they have been taken into account, are likely to be much more substantial. Many of the stations that have been built have been running below capacity and have not therefore been run at full temperature.

The argument that the French have abundant cheap nuclear power is only French Government policy, not an economic fact. The capital is not being repaid: electricity in France is not viable in any proper economic sense. I understand that there is a capital debt of £20 billion, on which it is managing to pay only the interest.

We must question the cleanliness of nuclear power because of the problems of reprocessing and waste disposal. It is all very well for assurances to be given about Sellafield, Trawsfynydd, Hinkley Point and Dungeness B, and to say, as the Secretary of State did, that incidents had been a minor, not a major, threat to safety. The question in the minds of the public is that if there have been minor incidents—and there have been more than enough of them during the past 30 years—there is a risk of a major incident eventually.

It is said that nuclear power is essential because alternatives will soon run out and that they are environmentally less acceptable and politically vulnerable. On the political front, the expensive and damaging miners' strikes that have been a feature of recent Governments, especially Tory Governments, are essentially the consequence of the confrontation politics of the Labour and Tory parties when in government or in opposition. The alliance is determined to bring that to an end—[Interruption.] Yes, it is. In any case, the argument rather falls down because if we retain the fuel flexibility and then the power workers strike, we are in deep trouble.

The Liberal party believes that investment in energy efficiency, improvements to the environmental acceptability and the efficiency of coal and oil, coupled with the development of alternatives, could meet all our energy needs and would allow for the gradual changeover to a non-nuclear energy mix. That is attainable in the United Kingdom.

Renewable energy resources have not had the investment from which nuclear power has benefited. Indeed, Britain has just cut its wave research programme, just as the Norwegians are expanding theirs. We strongly believe that the greatest alternative energy resource—the "fifth fuel"—has the advantage of being cheap and environmentally sound. It is called conservation. A crash programme of energy efficiency over a decade could substantially reduce the need to build any new type of power station. At the same time, we could divert the funds for nuclear power into research to deal with the nuclear waste problem—which we accept must be dealt with—and into alternative renewable energy resources, such as geothermal, wind, biomass and tidal.

Because of our other resources, because of the alternatives that we can develop and because of the substantial scope for energy efficiency, this country is not under pressure and has the time to develop a viable, non-nuclear energy policy that would provide the flexibility that we need at an acceptable cost, with minimum environmental risk and maximum public acceptability. That is the course that should be followed. Any responsible British Government would pursue that course.