Nuclear Submarines (Hansard, 9 January 1990)

§ 7. Mr. McFall
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what recent consideration he has given to safe decommissioning of nuclear submarines.

§ Mr. Alan Clark
We continue actively to consider the safest way of disposing of decommissioned nuclear submarines.
I refer the hon. Gentleman to the evidence which my Department gave to the Select Committee on Defence and which was published in its seventh report.

§ Mr. McFall
At least three options have been open to the Government, but they have taken none. Instead, they have produced the disingenuous fourth option—wait and see. Despite their prevarication, over the next 10 years at least eight nuclear submarines will be decommissioned, including Dreadnought. As the Defence Committee reported last year, additional submarines stored merely to corrode is no reflection on the Ministry's ability to deal with that long-term problem. Consequently, will the Minister give me a straight answer to a simple question?

§ Mr. Clark
In view of the concern expressed in the House and the questions asked by hon. Members before Christmas, I went to Rosyth and looked at HMS Dreadnought. I had conversations with the naval personnel concerned and I am entirely satisfied that there is no danger at present or in the long-term future in mooring that submarine or storing it in that way. During that time the radiation factor is minimal, and that will make it easier to consider the three options to which the hon. Member and the Select Committee referred.

§ Mr. Viggers
Does my hon. Friend agree that opponents of civil nuclear power tend to forget that the Royal Navy has been safely operating more than 20 pressurised water reactors for many years, which is a reflection on the safety of nuclear power as well as the superb standards of Royal Navy engineering?

§ Mr. Clark
Certainly, and it is those very standards of engineering and construction which make the present policy entirely safe.

§ Mr. Boyes
What is the Government's attitude to the London dumping convention's new ruling that the sea-dumping or burial of decommissioned nuclear submarines at sea is not permissible? Are the Government prepared to breach the London dumping convention's suggestion? Have the Government considered any land sites? Have they spoken to the Americans about the Hanford reservation in the United States? Is it not about time that the Minister made a comprehensive statement to the House on this matter?

§ Mr. Clark
Although sea disposal has not been excluded as an option, I am keenly aware of public concern here and in the international community about that solution.

§ Mr. Sayeed
Is it correct that we have been unable to find a safe way of cutting up the reactor compartment of a submarine and burying it without exposing workers to a considerable radiological hazard? Is it correct that it is much safer for people for the reactor compartment to be encased in concrete and the submarine buried in a deep-sea pit?

§ Mr Clark
The reactor would not be cut up and the work force would not be exposed to radiation because we would take care to ensure that the exposure was kept to the minimum. The longer a submarine is stored in the mode that is currently used, the faster the radiation factor degrades. It will be simpler in future to dismantle the reactor compartment in the way that my hon. Friend said.