We need nuclear, but in today's world don't expect the new players to be British

The prime minister, supported in a more nuanced way by the nergy review, tells us that the UK needs new nuclear power plants. It would thus seem that we are on the brink of a nuclear renaissance promising us affordable, clean and reliable electricity supploes. We recognise that nuclear power only addresses the generation of electricity and not, for instance, the growing demands of transport and domestic heating.

Reducing our carbon emissions and reducing our dependence on volatile energy rich countries are issues that need addressing and electricity has an important role to play. Of today's electricity in the UK one fifth comes from nuclear power. This already falling figure will continue to decrease as aging plants are decommissioned. The decisions associated with replacement are needed now.

The Past is a Foreign Country

The last time the UK set out to build a nuclear power plant things were very different. Prior to the privatisation and liberalisation of the electricity supply industry, which began with the Electricity Act of 1989, it was the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) that prescribed how electricity was to be generated and transmitted. It was the CEGB that decided on reactor type in the case of nuclear stations and it was the CEGB that owned and operated all of the power stations in England and Wales — fossil or nuclear.

The Sizewell B pressurised water reactor (PWR) was the jewel in the crown of CEGB's strategy for the future back in the 1980s. It was to be the first of a series of world-class PWRs that would provide Britain with a clean, flexible and secure supply of electricity into the 21st century.

The CEGB financed the project through its access to cheap government-backed capital. It held the necessary site and technology approvals, including hard-won planning permissions. On safety, the buck stopped with the CEGB.

Its remit also extended to project management, although, on-site, the presence of Bechtel as 'sub-contractors' was not insubstantial. The Americans, whether from Bechtel of from the reactor design company Westinghouse, had no confusion who was in charge of the Sizewell project — the CEGB.

When the costs escalated and the timescales slipped, it mattered little if you blamed 'the system' or the CEGB — they were one and the same thing. Today we life in a very different country. The civil war between the engineers and the economists is fading as the old soldiers leave the field, but one thing is clear to all — the economists have won. Our electricity industry is competitive, privately-owned and subject to the discipline and curse of 'net present value'. Today 'risk' and 'efficiency' no longer immediately imply safety and thermodynamics.

Reconstruction

As we contemplate new nuclear-build we might wonder who are the players that have replaced CEGB? Unlike then, when the technology was evolving and every nuclear power station was an improvement on the one that went before and so no two were the same, today we have a set of market-ready reactor technologies from which to choose: the Advanced Passive series from Toshiba-Westinghouse, the European Pressurised-water Reactor from Areva, the Advanced CANDU Reactor from AECL Canada and the Advanced Boiling Water Reactor from General Electric, USA. Since the sale of Westinghouse by BNFL to Toshiba, one thing is certain; the power plant designs for new nuclear build will not be British.

Post CEGB, the UK is awash with foreign-owned multinational energy companies with UK assts in generation, distribution and consumer supply such as E.ON (Powergen), RWE (npower) and EdF. All these companies currently operate substantial amounts of nuclear power capacity overseas.

In principle this experience should be helpful as these companies confront the prospect of constructing new nuclear power plants in the UK.

However, when it comes to nuclear safety licensing there is a fog over the English Channel and the continent is isolated. It is not entirely clear how easy it will be for these foreign companies to follow our British ways, particularly our safety culture based upon 'ALARP' — As Low As Reasonably Practicable.

The UK has what we might regard as a commonsense approach to safety rather than a mechanistic check-list approach. In its reent Expert Report the UK Health and Safety Executive notes (para 95):

'Some nuclear proponents have expressed interest in the concept of international 'off-the-shelf' designs that could potentially be built identically in different countries and should, according to these proponents, be judged against common international standards. They see this as a means driving international competition and reducing costs. We view this as impracticable at present.'

Two responses to this HSE suggestion come to mind. First, and perhaps mischievously, we must pause to examine to what extent this position reflects a public sector institution seeking to preserve its power, scope and influence. Second, we should ask to what extent the advice offered is rational, objective, efficient and correct?

British Energy is the only private sector nuclear operator in the UK; it is by far the largest and it is the only operator of modern plants including the most modern — Size-well B. Unlike the companies named above, British Energy can no longer be regarded as a multinational.

The company was brought to its knees in 2003 by what turned out to be a relatively short-lived collapse in the UK’s wholesale electricity price. The government bale-out that followed prompted the forced sale of BritishEnergy’soverseas assets and so brought to an end any dreams of it becoming a global nuclear power company.

The bale-out soon became a most profitable investment as wholesale electricity prices started to rise aggressively. From today’s perspective, concepts such as a ‘nuclear electricity company’ or even the ‘British nuclear power fleet’ seem increasingly outdated. Nuclear power will increasingly come from multinational electricity companies with diverse technology portfolios — these companies will be neither ‘nuclear’ nor ‘British’. Fears of climate change and eroding energy security drive public policy and business strategy. Diversity is essential to achieving security of supply, not only at national level, but also for individual utilities.

At present in the UK the safety related licence for a nuclear power plant is held by the plant operator. Today’s nuclear power plants were built at a time when during planning and construction all the paperwork was held by the CEGB — a plant operator.

Looking ahead we see a range of interested parties being involved, for instance, and simplistically: the final operator (an energy company), the owner/financier (financial houses), the project managers (specialist subcontracted engineers), and the plant designers (foreign engineering firms).

It is quite possible that the energy company, and almost certainly the bankers, could not be regarded as an intelligent customer for the purchase of a nuclear power plant. Perhaps this does not matter, but it is different from the old era. We wonder whether it is acceptable for the safety paperwork to be held by people that do not understand it?

Mere Practicalities

In the liberalised marketplace, who should decide what is to be built, assuming that all the candidate technologies are indeed safe enough to receive design acceptance in the UK. The energy review report tells us in paragraph 5.96 that ‘any new nuclear power stations would be proposed, developed, constructed and operated by the private sector,’ but the report does not tell us which jobs will be done by which types of companies. The electricity multinationals tend to the view that, if they are to operate a plant, then they should have the power to choose the design.

This, however, raises the prospect that several reactor types might be constructed in the first wave of a nuclear renaissance and arguably this has energy security benefits arising from a mix of power plant designs. However, such a situation raises the prospect of severe difficulties for the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and its Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII).

In its recent Expert Report the HSE notes (paragraph 76): ‘NII does not have surplus resource with which it could currently undertake the proposed multi-stage assessment and licensing process…Any pre-licensing programme would need to build in a lead time within which additional staff would be recruited and suitably developed.’

The HSE goes on to note that if sufficient resources are allocated to the problem, the challenges are not insurmountable. However, rationing insufficient NII capacity could prove an obstacle to efficient nuclear new-build. It is when one starts to confront these realities that the bad old days when the CEGB picked a technology, licensed it and built it, albeit in gold-plated form, at least had the benefits that things got done.

The HSE Expert Report recommends a safety licensing and planning process comprising two separate, but perhaps overlapping, aspects. The first is design assessment of a particular power plant design. The second is site licensing. It is unclear whether design assessment will be initiated by the nuclear power plant design companies or by electricity utilities. What does seem clear is that it will happen as soon as the appropriate regulatory regime is in place.

A road map towards such a regulatory regime exists. The last energy white paper, published in 2003, said that there would not be new nuclear build in the UK without another white paper from government. The recent energy review is not a white paper, but one is now expected before the end of the year. That document will probably formally propose the required regulatory changes.

One idea being circulated is that the major electricity companies might come together to choose the one reactor design that they all prefer. Such an approach brings to mind the old American notion of the smoke-filled room rather than the more modern British notions of open, transparent and competitive markets determining choices in energy.

If, by whatever means, a single reactor choice were to be picked by all electricity utilities, how could policy-makers prevent an aggressive reactor design company seeking to licence their bit of kit, even in the absence of any plans to build? We hear estimates that the NII will need 35 extra staff for 18 months just to licence the single proposal that it is hoped that electricity companies will jointly propose.

Separate to issues of design assessment will be the possibly more socially incendiary site-specific aspects of licensing. Proposed changes to planning are intended to ensure a much reduced scope to local controls compared to previous practice. It seems near certain that planning approval and site licensing would concern itself with local impacts and not be allowed to revisit the need for new nuclear power plants or to question the best balance for UK energy policy. It seems almost inevitable that this planning round should include a public inquiry.

We are attracted by notions of community incentives and community veto. That is one might imagine a situation in which a number of technically suitable sites is reduced by the expressed preferences of a majority of long-standing local residents. Such thinking has recently been given a boost by the recommendations of the government’s Committee on Radioactive Waste Management when they have considered siting issues for nuclear waste facilities.

In policy terms the key would be to ensure that incentives (such as cheap domestic electricity or reduced council tax) are sufficient to ensure that some communities would accept new nuclear-build while not being so generous that every community would rush to host a new plant. In extremis this model might even allow for a reverse auction whereby incentives are reduced until the required number of sites is obtained. The sociological benefits of such an approach might well outweigh the more cumbersome procedures required by more technocratic paradigms based upon decide, announce, defend. Perhaps we are not so far away from government in our thinking. The government has introduced the provocative notion of ‘an appropriate market of suitable sites’ (Energy Review report, paragraph 5.126).

Some would say that while local public acceptance is indeed a pre-requisite for new nuclear-build, a formal power of veto brings with it more disadvantages than advantages. While conceding the need for ‘public acceptance’ people in the nuclear industry worry about a bungled policy implementation, and roadblocks to progress emerging from incorrect information or plain misunderstandings.

Opponents of nuclear power point out that local community decision-making is inappropriate given that fall-out from any nuclear accident can travel hundreds or even thousands of miles. However, this latter view prompts the observation that key issues of plant design and safety should be determined via a national site-independent design assessment of reactor technologies, exactly as the HSE is proposing. In such a process local planning and issues of local incentives should have nothing to do with issues of plant design approval.

We referred earlier to the internationalisation of the nuclear energy challenge. When considering the possibility of extremely unlikely, but extremely serious, accidents from nuclear facilities it is worth noting that, depending on wind conditions, a threat to the Channel Islands or even southern England might come from plants licensed under the kind of French regulatory structures that are felt by the HSE to be impracticable at present for the UK. Clearly safety licensing is not a matter for local communities, but community acceptance of the planning and implementation of a new power plant is vital.

The journey ahead will be unfamiliar and difficult, but we must at least set out to try. Without new nuclear-build we are likely to face a bleak future, but despite this reality advocates for new nuclear-build should not neglect to ensure that the whole country can travel this journey together in mutual sympathy and support.

Disunity, recrimination, polarisation and administrative bungling must all be avoided if we are to see ‘the replacement of nuclear power stations, a big push on renewables and a step change on energy efficiency’. It is by such means that we can deliver the environmentally benign and secure energy policy that the UK so desperately needs.

MALCOLM JOYCE is Lecturer in Engineering at Lancaster University and Chair of the Nuclear Academia-Industry Liaison Subcommittee of the British Nuclear Energy Society. ROGER KEMP is Professor of Engineering at Lancaster University and leader of multi-university team investigating Safety Regulation of New Nuclear Build. WILLIAM J. NUTTALL is Senior Lecturer in Technology Policy at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. His post is shared with Cambridge University Engineering Department. He is author of Nuclear Renaissance (Taylor & Francis 2005) CHRIS SQUIRE is a part-time Lecturer in nuclear safety engineering at Lancaster University.