ATOMIC ENERGY ESTABLISHMENT, CAPENHURST (Hansard, 19 November 1962)

§ Mr. Gerald Nabarro (Kidderminster)
This Adjournment speech is concerned with atomic energy matters in their civil and military aspects. I draw attention particularly to the threat of the closure of a large part of the immensely expensive plant of the Atomic Energy Authority at Capenhurst in Cheshire.
One of the difficulties under which private Members of this House labour is that we are evidently not allowed to scrutinise by parliamentary debates the immense sums of public money which have been vested in the Atomic Energy Authority. In the nine years of the Authority's existence—that is, in the period between 1954–55, which was the first year it operated, and 1962–63—a sum of no less than£684 million, after taking into account net receipts in respect of the Authority's sales of fuel, isotopes and similar products, has been vested. In the current year the expenditure is almost£68 million. My source for these figures is the Report of the Atomic Energy Authority year by year, and notably the Eighth Annual Report for the period which ended 31st March, 1962.
I was interested to know, upon hearing of the proposed closure of a major part of the enriched uranium plant at Capenhurst, how much money had been spent on that enterprise, and I asked my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary on 5th November whether he would state the capital sum entailed. He replied: For security reasons I cannot disclose the cost of the Capenhurst plant."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 5th November, 1962; Vol. 666, c. 33.] These figures could not be given. I think that is very unsatisfactory. There is no security entailed at all in telling the British nation how much money has been vested in a certain plant, which has a dual purpose, to provide enriched uranium fuel for reactors employed at nuclear power stations and for research, which is the civil application, and to provide fissile material which goes into 966 bombs and nuclear weapons. The Russians could not learn anything from it.
Neither could they learn anything from a statement about the number of people employed at Capenhurst. These are domestic matters, and to shroud inquiries in Parliament upon the application of these huge sums of money for nuclear energy purposes, in a plea that it is "for security reasons" that particulars cannot be divulged, is an out-of-date policy which should soon be revised and reformed.
We know of the civil application of much of the enriched uranium fuel from the fact that it is published in the third appendix of the Atomic Energy Authority's Report for last year under the title: The Authority's reactors as at 31st March, 1962. This is a Stationery Office publication, and the Russians or anybody else on the other side of the Iron Curtain who want to know What we are doing in the form of civil power reactors have only to turn up this table and see how many reactors are actually operating, and, which is more, the type of moderator, the coolant employed, the fuel employed and a lot more particulars besides.
Therefore, I tell my hon. Friend that in future I do not think he ought to reply to me that lie cannot give me capital expenditure particulars on security grounds. While I do not expect the Parliamentary Secretary to be able to change policy, it is a matter for his noble Friend the Minister for Science to consider.
I now come to the important matter of Capenhurst. It is an almost unique plant. There is no parallel of it anywhere in the United Kingdom. There is only one parallel to be found anywhere in the world, and that is in the U.S.A. There are only two of these plants in the Western countries—one in America and one in Britain—making enriched uranium fuel and similar products for both military and civil purposes.
The Chairman of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, Sir Roger Makins, at a meeting in the Authority's board room with the trade union side of the Joint Industrial Council and the staff 967 side of the Whitley Council on 10th October, said: Demand for enriched uranium has virtually come to an end. That is a very important statement. It conjures up in my mind at once what will be the implications of the demand ceasing.
Might I ask my hon. Friend whether this means that the plant at Aldermaston, responsible for the manufacture, testing and research work on nuclear weapons, is to be run down in parallel fashion to the running down of the enriched uranium plant at Capenhurst? Secondly, does Sir Roger Makins' statement to the effect that demand for this uranium fuel had ceased mean that we have enough fissile material in stock for all future requirements, both for nuclear weapons and for nuclear power stations? Because, if it does mean that, we must have very large stocks, and I am interested to know what and where those stocks are, whether such stocks deteriorate, what is the value of such stocks, and what is the cost of them in comparison with our only competitor in the Western world, namely the United States.
After all, the British taxpayer has invested£700 million to£800 million in the last eight years in atomic energy plants for contributing to the creation of huge stocks of enriched uranium and similar fuel products. Therefore I think that we should be told what is the future of Aldermaston, what is the condition of stocks and what application it is considered by the Ministry of Science these stocks will have.
Furthermore, are we to cease the manufacture of H-bombs, A-bombs, nuclear warheads and the remainder at Aldermaston because we have enough fissile material? Is it proposed that as a result of the closure of Capenhurst there is to be any change in weapons policy? If my hon. Friend cannot answer that tonight, I think that he should be prepared to make a statement in the early future.
Finally, does it mean that if we cease making this highly enriched uranium we have enough H-bombs in stock for all foreseeable requirements in future? If we are to stop making fissile material and put the plant on a care and main- 968 tenance basis or drastically curtail it, are we to leave the residual in a condition capable of rapid expansion should either the military or the civil need require? I think that my hon. Friend should answer each of those questions in some detail tonight.
I want to say a word about the question of staff displacement and redundancy at Capenhurst, which is surely much more than a parochial issue. Of course it is well known that the nuclear establishments in Britain, whether Calder Hall or Dounreay, or Risley, or Aldermaston, or Greenfields Preston or any of the remainder, have built up over the last few years quite unique teams of scientists, technologists, and industrial associated staff. Five hundred men were declared redundant at Capenhurst last June. Efforts were made by the Ministry of Labour to place them elsewhere. Now we are threatened there with a redundancy of massive proportions. Fifteen hundred men are to be displaced so that a total of 2,000 men out of the entire staff employed at Capenhurst are to be displaced.
One wonders why there was no previous consultation with appropriate and representative bodies on the staff side before the announcement was made by the Atomic Energy Authority at the beginning of October. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour wrote me a letter on Friday, knowing that I had this Adjournment debate tonight, and I quote: It might be worth noting that the letter of the 25th October which, I understand, has been sent to all Members of Parliament is not from the full Whitley Council but from one local branch of one of the organisations (the Institution of Professional Civil Servants) represented on the Capenhurst Whitley Council, and is misleading in a number of respects. I think that my right hon. Friend is wrong, and I propose to say why. I have before me a statement distributed to hon. Members. It is headed: Statement by the Capenhurst Whitley Staff Committee to Sir Roger Makins.—16th October, 1962. I am not talking about the covering letter, which was certainly written by one union, but the statement is by the Whitley Staff Committee, and that is a very important and representative body. While I do not intend to quote the statement in full and so weary the House, 969 it contains some fairly tough language, language which having been distributed—and presumably the words were carefully chosen—ought to be answered by the Parliamentary Secretary tonight. It says: The staff at Capenhurst are utterly disgusted and shocked, not only by the threatened redundancy, but also by the lack of care and good management displayed by those responsible for overall policy. The sudden realisation of the position has had a completely demoralising effect on all staff. As a result we find it difficult to place confidence in the Authority Board of Management. The statement continues in similar terms for a good while, and then concludes with these rather damaging words: Compared with the Central Electricity Generating Board and the National Coal Board, the Authority"— that is, the Atomic Energy Authority— public relations are deplorable. We would have like to have seen expressions of confidence in the future of the Authority and better public relations propagating knowledge and confidence in nuclear energy. I hope that my hon. Friend will reply at once to the allegations that the public relations of the Atomic Energy Authority are deplorable. That should be answered tonight and answered by the Parliamentary Secretary in the context of the fact that 1,500 highly-skilled and trained scientists, technologists and industrial staff or to be displaced during the next twelve months from this immensely important plant, and the fact that most of these men are buying their own houses or living in Authority houses, and in view of the state of employment on Merseyside, which is well known, and where it will not be easy for such highly skilled men to be absorbed.
I want now to refer to the civil application of the products of the enriched uranium plant at Capenhurst and to speak against the background of Britain's application to join Euratom. Assurances given to the staff of the Atomic Energy Authority formerly have been that in the event of defence work falling within the Authority, it would find alternative civil work to employ staff and resources released from military applications. Would the Parliamentary Secretary say what are the prospects of placing these nuclear scientists, physicists, chemists and industrial staff in civil work where their special knowledge of nucleonics may best be employed?
970 I remind my hon. Friend that the Central Electricity Generating Board is at present fairly well staffed in this respect. There are nuclear power stations at Calder and Dounreay, at Hunterston, at Berkeley and at Bradwell and Sizewell, but all those nuclear power stations could not absorb more than a tiny percentage of this large displacement of 1,500 men from Capenhurst. I should like to know whether the Parliamentary Secretary has any information to give to the House tonight as to the possible absorption of these valuable men in other nuclear or associated work in the United Kingdom?
I want now to say a word about the immense strategic importance of Capenhurst. As I have said, the United States is the only other country outside Russia which has a plant for producing enriched uranium. France is planning to set up its own plant. It has been stated and I have always assumed that the Americans can produce enriched uranium at a lower cost than we in Britain can produce it. The main reason for this is that the immense American resources of electricity generation, based on water power, natural gas and other means not available to us in Britain, generally means that electricity is cheaper in the United States than it is here.
It follows from that, without going into too much technical detail, that the enriched uranium of the kind produced at Capenhurst is generally cheaper to produce in the United States than it is here. But as Britain has applied to join Euratom, as the Western European nations are all planning to establish reactors of their own, which country, the United States of America or Britain, is to supply this enriched uranium to those reactors in Western Europe? Will there be a tariff erected by Euratom against American enriched fuel coming in? Will Britain have a tariff advantage inside the Common Market? What are the import duty considerations inherent in the despatch and export of enriched uranium fuel, an immensely valuable export from this country, and is the British taxpayer ever going to see back any return on his£700 million after receipts from investment, in a civil sense, in view of the big build-up of enriched uranium in stock and otherwise in Great Britain?
I think that that question ought to be answered, if not tonight, at an early date, 971 because I would be rather jealous, and also a trifle irritated, if I thought that Britain, which has led the world in the development of nuclear power applications for civil purposes and the generation of electricity, were going to be outwitted by the United States of America at the last lap in supplying new nuclear power stations in Western Europe with fissile materials simply because a mistaken policy, if it is a mistaken policy, had been followed at this moment, in shutting down Capenhurst almost completely, or reducing it to only a trickle of output, to a very small output, and thereby prejudicing our opportunities in the future of supplying important new plants within Euratom with fissile materials of the kind which will be required.
I conclude by saying that I hope the House will take not only my criticisms in this matter. I think that the House would be unwise to accept only my strictures in this matter. I quote Sir George Thomson, F.R.S., the chairman of the first British Committee on Atomic Energy in 1940–41, and consultant to the Atomic Energy Authority, from a letter he wrote in the New Scientist of 8th November, 1962. He said: Many will have heard with great regret of the further reduction of work at the Capenburst establishment for the separation of uranium-235, described in Leonard Beaton's article, The slow-down in nuclear explosive production (18 October) and especially those who have had the privilege of seeing something of the work of the establishment. The scale of a factory must obviously depend on the demand for its products, and Capenhurst has only the one, but it has features which require special consideration. We and the US have a monopoly of this process which is essential to the production of enriched uranium, whether this is to be used for reactors or bombs. There has been virtually no interchange of ideas between the US and ourselves in this department of nuclear engineering, contrary to what happens in all, or almost all, of the others. If we were to drop out, the US would have a complete monopoly. It is well known that the willingness of the US to supply cheaply enriched fuel has been an important force in selling US reactors abroad. It seems unlikely that the designers of future reactors will be content with the proportion of uranium-235 to uranium-238 with which nature happens to have provided us. Enriched fuels are likely to be even more extensively used in the future than at present. All this is to point out what a valuable asset the nation has at Capenhurst—for which 972 it has paid a good deal—and in particular in the remarkable enterprise, ability and enthusiasm of the very able staff there, all in fact which is meant by the expression 'know-how'. One cannot run an establishment of this kind below a certain level without deterioration in morale and in efficiency, which is likely to lead to a demand for still further reduction. It is to be greatly hoped that this level will not be passed by the present reduction. If there is danger of this it would be well worth our while to accept a certain financial loss to prevent it. We may perhaps follow the United States lead and provide cheap 235 for British reactors. That is the case. I do not expect it to be completely answered tonight. But at the same time—[Laughter.] It is no use my hon. Friend laughing. I have set the case down, but, first, he has not the time to answer it in detail—I have seen to that—and, secondly, I would not expect a Parliamentary Secretary to answer it. This is a matter of such massive importance to the British Nation that it ought to be considered at Cabinet level and become the subject of a Cabinet Minister's statement on every aspect of what I have said. I for one will not take kindly to the closure of a plant which has cost, I do not believe tens of millions of pounds, but over eight or nine years, possibly£100 million, and the run down of which may well undermine our competitive power for supplying Western Europe with enriched uranium fuel as their nuclear power programmes develop for civil use.

§ The Parliamentary Secretary for Science (Mr. Denzil Freeth)
My hon. Friend the Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro) has given me eight minutes in which to reply to the large number of questions he has raised, and that, of course, it is completely impossible for me to do. I can only try to answer one or two of the more important matters he has raised, and, in passing, I should like to say that I think it a pity that he did not seek to catch the eye of the Chair when we debated the programme of the Atomic Energy Authority and other scientific matters in July on an Opposition Supply Day.
The Capenhurst plant has not been closed. Its output is being reduced to the minimum level necessary to keep it in production. The plant produces uranium which contains more than the natural proportion of the fissile isotope 973 U235. This enriched uranium has been needed mainly for military purposes, and the process is extremely difficult technically. It requires a very large plant, and it uses enormous quantities of electricity. Much of the detail of the process secret. I shall certainly consult my hon. Friend about the security points raised by my hon. Friend, but I cannot hold out any hope that there will be a change of policy.
Because this plant was built primarily for military purposes its future, to some extent, has always been uncertain, due to the possibility that disarmament agreements would make the production of enriched uranium unnecessary for military purposes. However, it is true to say that those who have worked at Capenhurst have always hoped that civil uses for enriched uranium would, by the time the military cut-off became necessary, reach sufficient proportions to maintain demand for the product. Unfortunately, that has not happened. It is likely that in the future reactors burning enriched uranium will be used on a commercial scale. My hon. Friend will be aware from reading the report of the Atomic Energy Authority of the research being done into reactors using this type of fuel. The fact remains, however, that none of these reactors are coming into use as providing the furnaces, so to speak, for atomic energy power stations producing electricity, for a number of years. Therefore there can be no large-scale civil demand for enriched uranium for some years to come. But I can assure my hon. Friend that that level at which the plant is now being maintained excludes any possibility that demand on the civil side will not be able to be met. The level of output at the present time is the subject of research and development in order to enable improvements in technology still to be made——

§ Mr. John M. Temple (City of Chester)
Will my hon. Friend give way?

§ Mr. Freeth
No, I have no time to do so.
The reduction in the output of the Capenhurst plant is necessary because the requirements for this material for defence purposes will soon be nearly satisfied. This is a point my hon. Friend raised. I can however assure him that the large military requirements for fissile 974 material, which include both uranium 235 from Capenhurst and plutonium from the Calder Hall and Chapelcross reactors, have been regularly reviewed over the years and balanced against prospective supplies. These supplies include not only new production from the United Kingdom plants and material recovered from obsolete weapons, but also certain quantities of U235 which are part of an exchange agreement made several years ago with the United States Government.
My hon. Friend seemed to consider that the Authority was responsible for the defence requirements of this country. The fact is that the Authority has taken part in the reviews which have been held regularly, but it has no responsibility for the level and timing of defence requirements. The Authority, for which my noble Friend is responsible to Parliament, is itself responsible for meeting the requirements of the Defence Department. Any questions my hon. Friend has about the number of nuclear weapons we have should be put down to the Minister of Defence. I must emphasise that the process of balancing requirements and supplies is by no means a simple one. Both sides of this account are continuously affected by changes, some of them technical in character, which cannot be forecast far in advance. In recent years the calculation has also had to take account of the recovery and re-use of material from obsolete weapons. This is not a field in which the requirements of a given policy can be forecast with precision over more than a short period of time.
My hon. Friend also referred, as did the Authority's announcement of 10th October, to the future of the Authority's Aldermaston establishment, the majority of whose employees live in my constituency, so I have a particular interest there. The level of activity at Aldermaston is not likely to change significantly over the next 18 months or so. Thereafter some reduction in the activity cannot be ruled out but close attention has been given to the possibility of introducing new work into A.W.R.E., and into new factors in the defence field. I cannot go further on that tonight.
At Capenhurst the necessary reduction of output is being brought about by a phased process spread over a period of eighteen months. My submission is that there is nothing at all unreasonable or 975 worthy of criticism in this situation, provided always that the reduction is carried out with proper consideration for the wellbeing of the staff concerned, and with the fullest possible consultation with the official representatives of the trade unions and the staff organisations. I believe that the humanity and care with which the Authority has approached the difficult problems of possible redundancy at Capenhurst can best be shown by the way in which the 479 persons who in June were declared to be over and above the needs of the plant have fared in the intervening five months.
The 479 included eighty non-industrial workers. Four of these, over the age of 65 years, have been retired and forty-two, who include professional grades, have left either to take up employment elsewhere or for personal reasons. Of the industrial workers, only one, a bricklayer was discharged as redundant. We still have a balance of twenty-six, all of whom are craftsmen, who have still to find employment. I very much hope that it will be possible to deal satisfactorily with the 1,500 or so surplus staff mentioned in the October announcement. 976 This figure is likely to comprise 270 nonindustrial staff including about 110 professional and technical people. Of the remaining 1,230 330 are craftsmen and 900 are industrial employees of other categories.
My hon. Friend asked a Question of my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour on 5th November about the prospects these people have of re-employment. My right hon. Friend is to do his best with the aid of his officers in the area to help the men who need it to get alternative employment. I hope that the new Vauxhall plant in Ellesmere Port will be able to provide substantial opportunities for re-employment. We have an agreed severance payment and redundancy scheme for the industrial staff and a redundancy scheme for the non-industrial staff——