Extract from DBEIS
questions: New Nuclear Power
(Peterborough) (Con)
12. What steps his Department is taking to increase nuclear power
generation.
(Fylde) (Con)
16. What steps he is taking to deliver new nuclear power
generation.
The Minister of State, Department for Business, Energy and
Industrial Strategy ()
This Government are doubling down on our plan to deploy more
home-grown, affordable clean energy in this country, and we are
putting new nuclear at the heart of that plan. In the past four
weeks alone, we have announced £1.7 billion allocated for a new
large-scale nuclear power station, a new nuclear Bill to boost
private capital and cut build costs, £210 million to back
Rolls-Royce’s small modular reactor plan, and £120 million for
future nuclear projects—new nuclear made and manufactured here in
Britain.
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s commitment to increasing the
generation of renewable energy in the UK and attracting
investment in our renewable energy sector, especially the nuclear
energy industry. The green industrial revolution is well under
way in Peterborough. Will he join me in congratulating Peter
Brotherhood, a manufacturer of 150 years standing, whose modular
steam turbine offering, manufactured in the heart of my city of
Peterborough, can promote further innovation in the nuclear
energy sector?
A previous question referred to Teesside as the centre of the
green industrial revolution, but Peterborough is also one of the
great centres in this country of the green industrial revolution,
and there is no better champion of that than my hon. Friend, who
is right at the centre of it. He is right that the £120 million
nuclear innovation fund will create options for future nuclear
capability, including the recent Rolls-Royce small
modular reactors, which have £210 million of funding. There are
plenty of opportunities there for his constituents to get into,
and I thank him for his championing of the green industrial
revolution.
I welcome the Government’s commitment to a new generation of
nuclear power plants, representing a big step in our move towards
net zero. Fylde, as the home of Springfields, the UK’s only civil
nuclear manufacturing plant, will be playing its part in this
transition, but following the recent announcements of the £210
million in new Government funding for Roll-Royce
SMRs, what steps is the Minister taking to ensure that the fuel
for the next generation of nuclear power will be manufactured in
the UK, and in Lancashire?
There is plenty of interest in Lancashire, Mr Speaker. My hon.
Friend knows that I am well aware of how important Springfields
is. In fact, we had meetings in the Department about it, as it is
the only civil nuclear fuel manufacturing plant, as he rightly
points out. It will play an important role as we further develop
our new nuclear capability. I am looking forward to working very
closely with my hon. Friend, who is a consistent champion of
nuclear in this country.
(Strangford) (DUP)
Northern Ireland does not have any nuclear power generation
possibilities, but can the Minister outline how Northern Ireland
can benefit from nuclear power, because we want to have the
opportunity, the same as the rest of the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Northern Ireland?
We are a Government for the whole United Kingdom. The hon. Member
will know that Northern Ireland is importantly different from
Great Britain in its electricity generation, grid and network.
Overall, the UK’s nuclear capability will offer fantastic job
opportunities—high-skill, high-tech jobs—for people from right
the way across the United Kingdom, including Northern Ireland.
Extracts from Nuclear
Energy (Financing) Bill (Second sitting of the Public Bill
committee)
(Kilmarnock and Loudoun)
(SNP): Richard, following on about costs, you said that
Hinkley Point C was estimated at £24 billion. Even if we say that
Sizewell is £20 billion, we heard that Rolls-Royce is
hoping to build five small modular reactors, which will be about
£10 billion. If we look at consumer protection, value for money
and achieving net zero—particularly heat decarbonisation—if I
gave you £30 billion, would you spend it on nuclear, or would you
do something different with such levels of capital?
Richard Hall (Chief Energy Economist, Citizens Advice): It is
hard to see a case for this being the most cost-effective way to
spend money on generation. A lot of the argument for whether we
need new nuclear or not comes down to whether it is perceived as
being useful to provide a balanced generation mix, so that it is
available when other forms of low-carbon generation are not
available. On that point, I note that the Government are more
confident on the need for new nuclear than some of their advisers
are. The Committee on Climate Change’s sixth carbon budget work
from last December shows a range of pathways to net zero by 2050,
some of which involve new nuclear. It talks about it being
“possibly” needed, not definitely needed...
The Chair
We will now hear from , managing director of EMEA
nuclear at SNC-Lavalin, and , director for strategy and
business development at Rolls-Royce both of
whom are giving evidence in person. We will also hear from Dawn
James, vice-president of nuclear at Jacobs Engineering Group, and
Cameron Gilmour, vice-president of nuclear at Doosan Babcock, who
are both giving evidence via video link.
We have until 3.30 pm for this session. Could the witnesses
please introduce themselves for the record?
: I am , managing director of the
Europe-middle east business at Atkins SNC-Lavalin.
: I am , director of strategy and
business development for Rolls-Royce SMR....
: We welcome any model that helps
the deployment of new nuclear. From a Rolls-Royce SMR
perspective, if we were to deliver our power plant under a RAB,
we estimate that it would be capable of getting in the order of
£35 a megawatt-hour, whereas a CfD mechanism would be in the
order of £60 a megawatt-hour. That is the different that we would
forecast.
(South Cambridgeshire)
(Con): I am interested in similar questions to the others.
Chris, do you think the RAB model will be sufficient to encourage
enough private capital to build a new generation of nuclear power
stations, separate from the Rolls-Royce plant?
: Yes. I would take it back a
step, actually, because we cannot let this conversation become
either/or; it has to be both. I say that because, if you look at
the future net zero world, the general view is that we should
electrify as much as possible and then decarbonise the
electricity supply industry. The electrification will probably
double our demand on the grid and will probably lead to a
tripling of our capacity on the grid, because a large amount of
it is intermittent renewables...
(Vale of Glamorgan)
(Con): This is a question just for Mr Woods—sorry—because of
the small modular reactor interest. The benefits of RAB for the
industry and for traditional build are quite obvious, but there
are still risks. There is a risk in construction, and therefore
costing that risk and building it into the RAB financing is a
challenge. We were given evidence this morning by those who
believe that a fleet will mean that things de-risk as we go
along. There is, at least, a concept, and there is a proven
record of design that works, but that is not necessarily the case
with SMR. I am playing devil’s advocate. I can see that RAB would
be extremely attractive to SMR going forward, but we are still at
the concept stage, rather than having proof that it works in the
way that we all hope it will.
: Let me break that down in terms
of the proven part. Our design and our plant use proven
technology. At the base of the reactor island, there is a
pressurised water reactor. It is the same as what Rolls-Royce has
designed, built and operated for the past 60 years in the
submarine programme. We do not have the same set of requirements
as the submarine programme, but it is the same core technology.
Is it proven? Yes, it is absolutely proven. We know it works and
that we can build it. We are building them today.
The rest of the turbine island plant is designed to use products
that are already available in the market today. We are not
designing a power plant that requires us to invent a specialist
product here or a specialist product there and that has never
been made before. It is designed to use products that exist in
the market. Even though it is a steam turbine, it is a commodity
product we can buy. All the constituent parts at our plant are
proven technology. Our civil module approach has been proven by
our partner, Laing O’Rourke, which is making modules of this
nature today at Worksop. We will expand that facility to
replicate and grow that module manufacturing capacity. The
constituent parts are all proven. There is no technology
innovation at the plant that is questionable as to whether it
will reach the right technology-readiness level.
Then we come to our ability to manufacture and join the modules
together. Again, this is not a technology challenge. It becomes
more of a logistical challenge and there is plenty of evidence in
other industries—in fact, inside
Rolls-Royce—where we manage those logistics from
the supply chain to the module facilities to the delivery to site
and to the installation and commissioning of them...
Dr Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab): Mr Woods, you
mentioned your timescale for the delivery of the first of their
kind of SMRs, which I presume will be the 470 MW Rolls-Royce SMR.
That, as a matter of interest, is well above the International
Atomic Energy Agency definition of an SMR. Why did you chose that
particular size to develop?
: We actually challenged the IAEA
on its definition. The response we got was that, at the time it
defined an SMR, that was halfway between what it classed as a
medium reactor and a small reactor. There was no set rationale
for why it classified, and it was many years ago, that 300 MW.
The simple reason that ours is 470 MW is that we set a
requirement on the design to be road transportable. Each module
has to be transportable to site by road. That gives us maximum
site flexibility. It also removes the need for expensive
additional infrastructure, such as new port facilities or new
roads, to get the parts in...
