§ 48. Mr. Osborneasked the Paymaster-General, as representing the Lord President of the Council, if he will give details of the latest type of atomic power station designed to be ten times more powerful than Calder Hall; how many of these stations are in the current programme of the Atomic Energy Authority; and how many such stations will require to be built before electricity adequate for all needs can be generated without recourse to coal.
§ The Paymaster-General (Mr. Reginald Maudling)The nuclear power stations now being built for the Electricity Authorities are expected to have about four times the electricity output of the first Calder Hall station. A further increase in output as a result of straight-forward engineering development can already be foreseen, and if a number of technical problems can be solved, a station generating about ten times the electrical output of Calder Hall may be feasible, but no such station has yet been designed. The second and third parts of the Question, therefore, do not arise.
§ Mr. OsborneDoes not my right hon. Friend realise that there is some difference in what he says now and what he told me in an Answer just before Sir John Cockcroft spoke to the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee upstairs—[HON. MEMBERS: "Order."]—as reported in the News Chronicle. That is perfectly in order. Is not my right hon. Friend aware that Sir John Cockcroft is reported in the public Press as having said that within ten years we should have sufficient of the new power to make us free from the need for coal supplies, whereas my right hon. Friend said only two days earlier that we should require a total of 60 million tons extra? I want to know which statement is true.
§ Mr. MaudlingI think that some reports in the newspapers of what Sir John Cockcroft was supposed to have 1148 said were definitely inaccurate, and what I have said this afternoon represents the facts.