Lords Sitting of 8 December 1982

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Portsmouth.

South Africa: IMF Loan
Lord Kennet: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether it is their view that a loan by the IMF of 1 billion dollars to South Africa is desirable, and what conditions in relation to its nuclear programme and to its policy towards Namibia the IMF is imposing on South Africa.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Security (Lord Trefgarne): My Lords, the United Kingdom supported the South African application on its merits. There is no provision within the IMF's articles for declaring a member ineligible to use the fund's resources unless it fails to fulfil any of its obligations under the articles. South Africa is not in this position.
Performance criteria related to macro-economic variables (for example, credit to the Government, total credit to the banking system) are usual. The fund is effectively prevented under its guidelines from setting specific conditions of a political sort.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, if the last part of the noble Lord's Answer is correct, how is it that the fund refused to make a loan to Tanzania unless that country changed its internal economic structure? Secondly, has the Treasury guaranteed the British part of this loan, as they did recently with a corresponding loan to Mexico?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, the answer to the noble Lord's second supplementary is, no. As to the first supplementary question which the noble Lord put to me, the situation is rather different. It is certainly part of the fund's normal procedure to secure a change in domestic economic policy. Although I do not have before me the information about Tanzania, doubtless that was the circumstance there.
Lord Leatherland: My Lords, may I congratulate the Minister upon the promptitude with which he discharges his duties?
Lord St. John of Bletso: My Lords, is it not the case that unless the International Monetary Fund and other supranational organisations are seen to observe their own policy guidelines and obligations without practising undue discrimination towards one country, it will be impossible to persuade South Africa of the
172
good faith of the world community in pressing her to accept international obligations in regard to nuclear proliferation and Namibia?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, with respect to the noble Lord, his question goes rather wide of the Question on the Order Paper which relates to the IMF facilities which have been made available to South Africa. Perhaps that could be a Question for another day.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, given the Government's stated position on apartheid, is not the Government's support for this loan absolutely indefensible? Is not their support indefensible in view of South Africa's attitude towards Namibia? Do not the Government think that conditions should have been attached to this loan: that South Africa should be more forthcoming on the question of Namibia and also upon the improvement of human and civil rights in South Africa? Does not the noble Lord feel extremely guilty that he should be answering the Question in this way?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, the Government have consistently taken the view—as, I believe, did our predecessors—that it is wrong for considerations of this kind to be brought into the affairs of the specialised agencies of the United Nations, of which this is one. We believe that the right way for the IMF to proceed is without interference of a political kind. That is why we support this proposal.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, if the IMF acted on the principles suggested by the noble Lord opposite, would it not be unable to give financial help to other than a handful of countries? In that case, would not the whole valuable system for which it stands be brought to a standstill?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I quite agree with my noble friend. I have no doubt that there are those represented on the board of the IMF who disagree with some of the policies that noble Lords opposite followed when they secured IMF support.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, is not the South African Government an outstanding example of an odious and oppressive Government? Does not this loan sustain one of the worst Governments in the world, notwithstanding what the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, said?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I absolutely agree that some of the policies followed by the Government of South Africa are deplorable, but the fact remains that some of the policies supported by other Governments which have secured IMF support are also deplorable.
Lord Nugent of Guildford: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that if he followed the advice given to him by the Leader of the Opposition, the IMF would be unable to make loans to any Iron Curtain country or to any South American country which has scant regard for the liberty of the subject, and that its general purpose in assisting the economies of weak countries

173
would be completely defeated? Will my noble friend please stick firmly to the line he has taken?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, it is in the interests of all the nations of the world, particularly ourselves, that the economic arrangements between nations remain sound. If the IMF were to be selective on a political basis in the way that it disburses its resources, that objective would not be achieved.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, is it not a fact that the IMF is selective on a political and ideological basis? In addition to the instance given by my noble friend Lord Kennet, the IMF is now negotiating with Zambia. In the case of both Zambia and Tanzania, is it not the case that the IMF is insisting upon a reduction in Government expenditure, against the socialist principles of both of those countries?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I do not believe that anybody in his right mind would support the proposal that IMF funds should be made available to Governments who are not determined to get their own economy in order and that they should be disbursed for political or sociological purposes.
Lord Glenamara: My Lords, does the Minister's reply mean that if a Government is pursuing a mildly democratic socialist policy and is trying to create a socialist economy of a very mild kind, as in the case of Tanzania, conditions are imposed; but that if it is pursuing a policy of apartheid, almost a fascist policy, no conditions are imposed?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, the conditions imposed have nothing to do with the ideological persuasion of the Government concerned but rather with the prospects of the money being repaid in due course.
Lord Brockway: My Lords, in view of what the noble Lord the Minister has said regarding the difficulty of differentiating between different countries in giving aid, would it not be possible for the Government to accept the principle that they will give neither loans nor military aid to any Government criticised by the United Nations' Human Rights Commission for denying human rights?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I believe that would be a slippery slope, if I may say so. The United Kingdom Government have been criticised occasionally for alleged lapses in this area; one or two recent occurrences come to mind. I do not believe that is the right way for the IMF to proceed, and neither is that the Government's policy.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, since the noble Lord the Minister has taken it upon himself, which he need not have done, to defend the IMF in this matter, will he take a look at Tanzanian history and see whether the Government really think that Tanzania is a worse bet financially than Mexico or Argentina?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, it is not for me to decide precisely which are the best or worst bets from the IMF's point of view, but I certainly support the
174
proposal that the IMF should, where it sees fit, impose conditions upon the receiving Government which make it certain, or at least more likely, that the funds it disburses, will be repaid.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, is my noble friend the Minister aware of any power which resides in Her Majesty's Government to control the conditions imposed by an international agency such as the IMF?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, the United Kingdom Government have a representative on the board of the IMF and we make our views known through that medium.

Peace Studies and Higher Education
2.45 p.m.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they approve of the various institutions of peace studies and related disciplines in our higher educational bodies as training grounds for teachers to instruct senior school children in methods of international problem solving.
The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Young): My Lords, the powers of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science relate to specific courses of teacher training and not to whole institutions as such or to parts of them.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, is the noble Baroness, Lady Young, aware that the necessity for this Question is solely due to her refusal to allow me a second supplementary when I asked a similar Question very recently——
Several Noble Lords: Order!
Lord Hatch of Lusby: —and when she invited me to put down another Question? May I ask the noble Baroness whether or not she has read her Answer to my previous Question and noticed, in replying both to me and to other noble Lords who asked supplementary questions, her constant use of the word "indoctrination" in connection with these studies? Will the noble Baroness reconsider this word, and does she agree that genuine peace studies have nothing to do with indoctrination but everything to do with giving students an opportunity of learning how international problems are and can be solved?
Baroness Young: My Lords, I did in fact read the exchange between the noble Lord, Lord Hatch of Lusby, and myself at Question Time a short while ago. I do not in any way retract anything that I said about indoctrination in schools because I, and I believe all noble Lords, believe that sensitive subjects must be presented in a balanced way for children in schools. On the question of peace studies, I have taken the

175
opportunity to look at the published prospectus of the peace studies course at the University of Bradford and, having looked at it, I am bound to say that its aims have reinforced my concern that any school course dealing with sensitive areas such as peace studies which puts forward a deliberately unbalanced version of events would be completely unacceptable.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, does this not give us a great opportunity, because if the noble Lord, Lord Hatch of Lusby, knows teachers who can instruct senior school children in methods of international problem solving, this is a marvellous discovery; and can he perhaps apply it to the leaders of the world who have great difficulty in so doing?
Lord Beloff: My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister agree that, while there are well-known and established international disciplines known as international law and international relations in our major universities, there is no genuine discipline (nor could there be) in something called "peace studies"? Would she not further agree that therefore, prima facie, this cannot be dictated by a wish that children should learn more about the very real problems to which the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, has just referred?
Baroness Young: Yes, my Lords, I agree with my noble friend.
Baroness David: My Lords, would the noble Baroness the Minister not approve of a well-balanced political education being provided in our schools—not indoctrination in any way, but a balanced study of political education?
Baroness Young: My Lords, as the noble Baroness, Lady David, knows well, political studies take place in many schools. Many issues, such as the issues of war and peace, form part of history or geography teaching, possibly, or even of English. Provided that they are taught in a balanced way, this is quite a proper part of the school curriculum. What we were discussing earlier was a different issue.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, before we confuse ourselves by over-simplifying the problems of the world by suggesting that part of the school curriculum can overcome them, will my noble friend Lady Young tell me how many international bodies—educational or otherwise—have ever solved an international problem?
Baroness Young: My Lords, I believe that is a question of which I would require quite long notice.
Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran: My Lords, in view of the reference by the noble Baroness the Minister to the desirability that sensitive studies should be taught in a balanced way, can she indicate whether any guidance is given as to the form of the syllabi which should be adopted in the senior schools referred to in the Question?
Baroness Young: My Lords, as the noble Lord is
176
aware, education is a devolved service in this country, and the content of the syllabus rests very largely with the local educational authorities and with the teachers themselves. We have to rely on the professional integrity of teachers. If parents are concerned about what is going on, they have a right to go not only to the head teacher but to the local educational authority about that matter. I would have thought, and I believe it to be true, that the overwhelming majority of teachers would act professionally in teaching these subjects.
Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran: My Lords, I am much obliged to the noble Baroness.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, since the noble Baroness agrees with the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, that there can be no such thing as peace studies—at least in our major universities—because it does not make sense, has she anything to say about the existence of a chair of war studies at King's College, London?
Baroness Young: My Lords, I think that is the subject of another Question.
Lord Hale: My Lords, may I just refer to the great mass of English literature, and particularly its poetry, which is largely devoted to peace, and say that the study of the greatest of English poets does produce peace of mind, which is of advantage in these circumstances?
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, will the noble Baroness observe, and tell her noble friends behind her, that in many countries in the world, particularly in Scandinavia and in the United States of America, many new methods have been and are being developed to teach children the methods of problem studying and problem solution? Does she agree that it is somewhat hypocritical to attach the word "indoctrination" to peace studies, either in schools or in universities, when her own Foreign and Commonwealth Office are sending out to schools unsolicited pamphlets and leaflets of a pro-nuclear character, two of which I would quote to her, The Balanced View and Peace and Disarmament? Is it not hypocritical to suggest that the Government do not like indoctrination in schools? Both these pamphlets are sent out unsolicited.
Baroness Young: My Lords, there are many occasions under the school curriculum when pupils have to solve problems and study them. I have no doubt that in the course of some history and English lessons they look at the issues of war and peace. May I say that the noble Lord is quite wrong about what has happened with regard to material sent from the Foreign Office. What happened was that the National Union of Teachers suggested to Foreign Office Ministers that there was a need in schools for balanced factual material about disarmament. After giving notice to the local education authorities, the Foreign Office distributed such material, linking it to the recent United Nations Special Session on Disarmament.
Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, does not the noble Baroness agree that it is unfortunately true that many teachers go straight from university into teaching, and

177
that there is a very strong link between the teacher and the people taught? Therefore, not having had an opportunity of getting a reasonable and balanced point of view in the outside world, the danger of putting across points of view that are extreme but not balanced far outweighs anything the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, mentioned about a mere pamphlet from the Ministry.
Lord Derwent: My Lords, before my noble Leader answers that, if she is going to, have we not had enough of this Question?
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, as my veracity has been questioned—
Several Noble Lords: Order, order!
Baroness Young: My Lords, we have had nineteen minutes on two Questions. I think it would be the wish of the House that we should move on to the next Question.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, as my veracity—
Baroness Young: My Lords, it might be helpful if I say this to the noble Lord, Lord Hatch. He prefaced his first supplementary question by saying that I had refused him a question before. That was not the case; it is not in my power to refuse him a question. When I suggest that we move on, I hope he will understand that I am trying to take into account the wishes of the House.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, I feel sure that my noble friend would agree that we have spent sufficient time on this Question.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, as my veracity—
Baroness Young: My Lords, I am sorry to have to speak to the noble Lord again. I am most grateful for the support of the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition, and I am sure that both he and noble Lords feel that we should move to the next Question now.

The Licensing Laws
2.57 p.m.
Lord Monson: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government when they intend to implement the Erroll Committee's recommendations (Cmnd. 5154) for the reform of the liquor licensing laws in England and Wales, which was presented to Parliament in December 1972.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Elton): My Lords, Her Majesty's Government have at present no plans for further legislation in this area.
Lord Monson: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that reply, disappointing though it is, in view of the enormous amount of time and trouble put in by so many distinguished people over 10 years ago. Would he not agree that it is ridiculous in 1982, for example, that a foreign tourist having a late lunch should not be allowed to buy a glass of wine or beer to go with his lunch, although he can subsequently go into a supermarket and buy as much as he likes and drink it in the street? Is it not ridiculous that children should still have to stand outside pubs in the rain although those same children can spend the entire day in a licensed club, if their parents so choose? Is the time not ripe for this Conservative Government to set the people free from these petty and outmoded restrictions?
Lord Elton: My Lords, the Government are aware that there is considerable pressure for the liberalisation of the licensing law. Proposals for change must, however, be weighed against public concern about drunkenness and alcohol misuse generally, about which your Lordships will hear more later this afternoon. The Health Department published a document, Drinking Sensibly, in 1981 to promote informed public discussion. It is hoped that the response to this will enable sensible decisions to be taken as to how the law should be reformed.
Lord Monson: My Lords, is the noble Lord not aware that since the licensing laws in Scotland were liberalised in 1976 licensees report that business has gone up but drunkenness has gone down?
Lord Elton: My Lords, I would always have great respect for the views of licensees in Scotland. While these indications are encouraging, we consider that more time is needed to assess whether there is any change in the level of alcohol abuse in Scotland, which does remain a serious problem.
Lord McCluskey: My Lords, has the noble Lord not considered more carefully that answer? Should he not do so? If he looks at what has happened in Scotland since the relaxation of the liquor licensing laws some five or six years ago, I think he will find that neither the police, nor the trade nor the opponents of liberalisation would say that matters had got worse; they in fact substantially improved. Is not that a matter to be taken into account in considering the matter in the light of the Erroll recommendations?
Lord Eiton: My Lords, I said that this was a matter which we are considering and that we needed more time to consider it.
Lord Paget of Northampton: My Lords, why do we go on talking about liberalising licensing laws? Why not just abolish them?
Lord Elton: My Lords, I can think of a number of reasons, which might anticipate the debate which is to take place this afternoon.
Lord Mishcon: My Lords, is the Minister aware, as I am sure he is, that there was a very full debate on the Erroll Report in this House in March 1973, and in another place in October 1973? On both occasions,

179
the Government said—it was a Conservative Government—that they were considering the proposals of the Erroll Committee. Will the opportunity be taken in the debate, to which the Minister has referred, later this afternoon, for the Government at least to give their intermediary views between the reports of 1973 and 1982 on this very difficult matter?
Lord Elton: My Lords, I cannot answer for what other noble Lords may say in the debate which is to come. However, if the noble Lord himself reads the document to which I referred, Drinking Sensibly, he will discover a great deal about what he terms the Government's intermediary view.

Household Rewiring
3 p.m.
The Earl of Selkirk: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what advice they can give to a householder when his house requires rewiring which would enable the householder to be sure that the work is carried out correctly.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, when a householder wishes to have his house rewired it is important for him to ensure that the work is carried out to the requirements of the Institution of Electrical Engineers' wiring regulations. He would therefore be well advised to approach a contractor who is enrolled with the National Inspection Council for Electrical Installation Contracting: or, if his chosen contractor is not a member of that body, to specify that IEE standards are applied. Area electricity boards have copies of the roll of NICEIC contractors available for inquirers.
The Earl of Selkirk: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that Answer. Is he aware that it is widely said that 10 million or possibly 12 million houses require rewiring? The additional equipment using electricity now commonly used must constitute a fire hazard. Is the noble Lord satisfied that enough people are being trained to deal with this problem in the course of the next 10 years?
Lord Skelmersdale: Yes, my Lords, there is no doubt in my mind that a considerable number of houses do need rewiring, some of them not having been rewired since the 1920s, and as such would have wiring of vulcanised india rubber which goes brittle with age and can, when disturbed, become extremely dangerous. So I certainly agree with my noble friend.
Baroness Birk: My Lords, will the Minister agree that a great many people are unaware of the existence of these councils, and that they are also unaware that they can approach them if anything goes wrong? Both councils provide a guarantee scheme and will repair such work at no cost to the householder. That being so,
180
does the Minister agree that much more publicity should be given to this, so that householders who are about to have their houses rewired will at least know that they should approach one of these associations to make sure that the contractor is on their list? Does the Minister further agree that this is especially important, since not only can bad rewiring be costly, but it can be highly dangerous?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, I accept the last point made by the noble Baroness. However, she has not quite put the complete picture. There are many reliable firms in the contracting field who belong to neither of the organisations I mentioned. Should one of those be preferred the consumer would be wise to specify, as I said in my original Answer, that the work is done according to the regulations. Area electricity boards have lists of contractors from whom work is accepted as being likely to be satisfactory, whether or not they are enrolled members of the council. I cannot think of any instance where a house is likely to be rewired, or has been rewired, where the involvement of the local electricty board would not, of necessity, be both wise and applicable.
Lord Somers: My Lords, can the Minister give even a rough estimate of how many fires during the past year have been caused by faulty wiring?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, I believe this is in the order of 100, but I would have to look into that matter. The point is, that it is not necessarily faulty wiring that is the cause of fires. It can also be the faulty connection of appliances to the existing wiring.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether, if one has one's house rewired, what is the average expected life of that rewiring?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, I am afraid I shall have to write to my noble friend. I do not have the least idea.
Lord John-Mackie: My Lords, is it not equally important that the householder should know whether his house requires rewiring? In my opinion there are far too many who are scared into rewiring where only repairs are required. In my home in Scotland we are still using wiring which was put in in 1913.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, I made the point earlier that the old vulcanised india rubber wiring is absolutely safe provided it is not disturbed. I recommend the noble Lord not to disturb his wiring. Having remade that point, the noble Lord is, course, quite correct, and the sensible thing to do is to consult the area electricity board.
Lord Airedale: My Lords, electricity boards themselves undertake this work. Will the Minister impress upon them that if they include advertisements for their own rewiring services with their bills, four times a year, to every householder—post free to themselves—they will be competing unfairly with electricians in the private sector who would have to spend a fortune on direct mail advertising on the same scale?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, I have some experience of direct mail advertising and, while it is a very good method of bringing services to the attention of the public, in this case a consumer of a nationalised industry, it is not necessarily very effective.

Business
Lord Denham: My Lords, at a convenient moment after 3.30 this afternoon, my noble friend the Leader of the House will, with the leave of the House, repeat a Statement that is to be made in another place on the Shackleton Report.
Commonwealth Development Corporation Bill
Brought from the Commons; read a first time, and to be printed.

The Commercial Fast Reactor
3.9 p.m.
The Earl of Halsbury The Earl of Halsbury rose to call attention to the need for pressing on with the development of the commercial fast reactor; and to move for Papers.
The noble Earl said: My Lords, in opening our debate this afternoon on the Motion which stands in my name, I should like to start by thanking all the very distinguished speakers who have put down their names. I have never before, during the course of what is now very nearly 40 years in your Lordships' House, had the privilege of acting as compère to such a galaxy of talent. May I add that no Chamber in any legislature in the world, save this, could field such a team in any comparable context?
I am particularly glad to see my old friend the noble Lord, Lord Hinton of Bankside, with us again. He built the world's first nuclear power station, and over 30 years ago it was his vision which launched the fast reactor into the domain of the feasible—1950 was the date. He speaks with quite unrivalled authority on these matters. The noble Lord, Lord Kearton, has been a member of both the Atomic Energy Authority and the Central Electricity Generating Board, while my noble friend Lord Sherfield, though a career diplomat, has been involved in matters nuclear since 1944. He was chairman of the Atomic Energy Authority and until recently of our own Sub-Committee F on power and other affairs in relation to the European Community. In this he was succeeded by my noble friend Lord Kings Norton, who is also to speak. The noble Lord, Lord Flowers, has gone to considerable personal trouble to be here this afternoon, and I am most grateful to him. He was chairman of the inquiry into the interaction of nuclear power and the environment. Anything that he has to say on the all-important question of safety I am sure will be listened to with great attention.
I am also obliged to the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, for travelling down from Caithness. He has achieved a remarkable familiarity with nuclear
182
engineering and I always listen to whatever he says with the greatest interest. There is one name that I should have liked to be able to welcome here this afternoon, but circumstances are against it. I am referring to the noble Earl, Lord Ilchester, who is President-elect of the Institution of Nuclear Engineers, and I am sure that your Lordships would have welcomed his contribution.
Some noble Lords have expressed to me the hope that, after listening to this debate, they may go home with some type of understanding of what it is all about in words of one syllable. Within the limits of what is possible in the time available, I shall try to grant their wish by dividing what I have to say into two parts. I shall begin by trying to explain to noble Lords in simple terms, without blinding them with science, something of what this is all about.
We are going to talk about the boiler of a steam engine. I hope that that is simple, familiar language. The engine will be of the kind we call a turbine and its function will be to drive an electric generator, which will supply power to the national grid. The steam, the turbine, the generator and the grid will all be conventional products, and your Lordships can forget about them in the course of our debate.
We are all familiar with boilers. I had a toy boiler when I was a child and I expect that some of your Lordships did too. Your Lordships know that they have to be supplied with fuel and an air-draught and that without the fuel you could not light the fire and without the air-draught you could not keep it going. In the course of the combustion, the fuel is consumed, ash is left behind and heat is generated and transferred to the water in the boiler drum or boiler tubes, which turns into steam and does the rest of the process.
All those features have their equivalents in a nuclear boiler. You only have to rename them and identify them with material whose substance is unfamiliar but whose function is analogous to what you already know and understand. What keeps the fire going by burning up the fuel—the counterpart of the air-draught in a boiler—is a cloud of neutrons. Never mind what neutrons are. Your Lordships might not be all that happy about having to answer an examination question as to what air is, but that does not stop you breathing it all your lives and using it to light fires.
Your Lordships are accustomed to think of fuel being supplied in bunkers. Imagine then that nature has provided us with three bunkers labelled No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3. The first two contain Fuel 1 and Fuel 2 and are provided by nature. The third bunker is empty and we have to fill it up ourselves. No. 1 contains the primary fuel which is burnt to ash with the evolution of heat. In the course of this it transforms part of the substance of Bunker No. 2 into a new primary fuel which is a substitute for the fuel in Bunker No. 1. So Bunker No. 3 gradually fills up with a Bunker No. 1 substitute.
What happens when we have burnt up all the fuel in Bunker No. 1? If we have accumulated as much in Bunker No. 3 as we started with in Bunker No. 1, we can happily go on transforming Bunker No. 2's contents into more fuel until there is nothing but ash left. The fire then goes out, as any fire does when its fuel is exhausted. But if, when Bunker No. 1 is empty,

183
there is not enough in Bunker No. 3 to top it up with, the process cannot go on indefinitely. It is not self-sustaining and it will gradually come to a standstill with what is left in Bunker No. 2 no longer available for any useful purpose. It is important to quantify this. Nature supplies us with, let us say, seven tons in Bunker No. 1 and 1,000 tons in Bunker No. 2, with nothing at all in Bunker No. 3 and we have to fill that up. If under these circumstances we run the process down, we shall be left with a very great deal of useless material in Bunker No. 2 because of the very large quantity with which we started.
Whether that is comprehensible or not, whether it helps your Lordships to think of what we are going to talk about in the rest of the debate, I do not know. However, I hope that it is comprehensible. Let me now give Bunkers Nos. 1, 2 and 3 their proper names. Bunker No. 1 is called Uranium-235; Bunker No. 2 is called Uranium-238. Bunker No. 3 is called Plutonium-239.
The boiler about which we are talking this afternoon is the first in the world to achieve just what I have described: turning the whole of the natural uranium with which nature provides us into power and not just 1 per cent. or so, which is what we achieve in a conventional thermo-nuclear power station. For this new boiler we need a new name, and many appropriate names are available from which to choose. We could call it a low waste reactor, because it produces less radioactive waste per unit of power generated than any other. We could call it a high conversion reactor since it converts a high proportion of uranium into plutonium. We could call it an incinerator reactor because it can be used to burn up some very inconvenient long-lived by-products of thermal reactors which would otherwise have to be stored under security conditions for an embarrassingly long time. We could call it a breeder reactor if it were used to produce more plutonium than the uranium it burnt up, as indeed it can be used. Historically it has been dubbed a fast reactor because the spectrum of fast and slow neutrons is biased on the fast side—although I ought to explain that all neutrons start their careers as fast neutrons and are gradually degraded to thermal ones—compared to that of a thermal reactor. Indeed its settled name now is "the fast reactor". We can forget the might-have-beens remembering only that "fast" does not mean something that is liable to run away out of control; it is not "fast" in that sense.
Its importance is based on the immediate accessibility of its fuel in large quantities. There are thousands of tons of depleted uranium in this country from which the Uranium-235 has been extracted either for the weapons programme to make bombs, or to enrich thermal reactor fuel. There are hundreds of tons of spent fuel elements stored in power stations while their radioactivity dies away, all capable of being reprocessed and separated into uranium, plutonium and waste—the first two being reusable.
It has been estimated that there are 400 years of energy requirements for this country locked up in stock now, today: material that was mined, paid for in years long past, extracted, purified and used, but not used up. These stocks, written down to nothing in the books, now await recycling and reusing. So far as
184
power for the grid is concerned—I am not talking about petroleum products for motor-cars or anything like that—not a new mine need be sunk, not a man need go underground and not a well need be drilled. It is all there now at written down values waiting to be used in a fast reactor: the result of 30 years of effort by the cream of our engineering professions under the superb inspiration of the noble Lord, Lord Hinton of Bankside.
I am not talking of pie in the sky. The plant is working now, generating power for Scotland from Dounreay in Caithness. Although today it may be shut down for some engineers to carry out some experiments or to replace something, broadly speaking, it is working. What we have to do is to scale it up by a factor of six up to commercial-sized power station, which, in effect, means putting six units—burner units, if you like to call them that—into the same tank.
Year after year I have accompanied parties of Cross-Bench Peers up to Dounreay to look at the prototype quietly generating power as they stood on it, walked over it, walked about it, and, metaphorically speaking, almost had their breakfast on it, while making friends with the extremely interesting and impressive staff who have built and run it. So much for what it is.
But what are we to do about it? Last week the Government officially confirmed all that I have told you in a Statement, of which I shall read only a short part or I shall be stealing the brief of the noble Earl, Lord Mansfield. They said:
"The fast reactor is of major strategic significance for the United Kingdom's and the world's future energy supplies. It is 50 times as efficient a user of uranium as thermal reactors, such as the advanced gas-cooled reactor and pressurised water reactor, and can create out of the spent fuel and depleted uranium which has so far arisen from our thermal programme fuel equivalent to our economically recoverable coal reserves."
Those are usually taken as being 400 years' supply though the figure in the case of coal may be wrong, in the case of uranium it would be right. The Statement goes on to say that the Minister has:
"asked the chairman of the Atomic Energy Authority. Sir Peter Hirsch, in consultation with the generating boards"—
and so on—
"to draw up a future development programme which makes the best use of our resources and experience."
The Minister then adds:
"In common with most other leading fast reactor nations, we now believe that the series ordering phase"—
that is, when you start ordering duplicates in large numbers—
"will begin in the earlier part of the next century, and thus"—
and these are the significant words, and somewhat sinister words they are—
"on a longer timescale than we have previously envisaged."
What sort of forward planning is this, and what sort of thinking has gone into this Statement? It refers to:
"the earlier part of the next century".
That is only 17 years away. If I am alive I shall be only 92, which is younger than the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell is now. Why treat the early part of the next century as if it were a date like the Greek kalends that we do not have to bother about? If you started to build a fast reactor today, it would take 10 years to commission, and before the process of serial ordering of copies

185
could start you would need at least 10 years' experience on it to make sure that some small trouble did not emerge at 10 years or thereabouts. Then, when you started your serial ordering, it would still be another five or 10 years before you got the product. So we are projecting our minds forward to the year 2013 or thereabouts, when I shall be 105 and the noble Lord, Lord Shinwell, 128.
What is this talk of "a longer timescale than we have previously envisaged"? Perhaps the noble Earl the Minister can tell us. I have never heard of any specified timescale. I have pressed for it over and over again; whichever party was sitting on the Government Bench I have pressed them for it. But I have never received an answer as to what it is. I find this sort of complacency somewhat alarming. Series ordering in the early part of the next century means ordering now for the demonstration model, the first one. Have the Government never read Aesop's Fables? Have they never read the parable of the hare and the tortoise? The hare thought he had the whole day in which to beat the tortoise, but in the event he could not afford to go to sleep after lunch or to loll about in the afternoon. The tortoise, on a slow and steady basis, got there first.
That Dounreay should be kept going is axiomatic. But what is this request made to Sir Peter Hirsch and others for a forward development programme? Has not Dounreay had an ongoing development programme ever since I first visited it in 1956? What sort of a development, other than the development of a fast reactor, have the Government in mind? Is this really a euphemism for the fact that the work at Dounreay, without mentioning it, is incomplete; that the prototype still has unsolved problems? If it has, then my noble friend Lord Hinton of Bankside will doubtless tell us what they are. I have always told my friends in the context of this projected debate that the wording of my Motion is intended to include continuing work with the prototype. What I emphasise in the wording of my Motion is the word "pressing". I fail to detect any sort of urgency, as opposed to complacency, in the Government's Statement. The ineffective search for a partner could occupy a lazy bureaucracy for years, to the great delight of the Treasury, which would not be seeing any money spent. By all means get a partner, if you can find a good one, with something to contribute, who will put up his money as a matter of course and not just talk around the clock about doing so.
Once we were the acknowledged leaders in this field and in many respects, about which no doubt your Lordships will hear, we still are. How, other than by slippage—and what sort of slippage?—has it become necessary to talk of having a partner? The concept of a partnership is meaningless unless you settle on the site where the partnership operation will take place. The obvious place is Dounreay. It is where the know-how and the personnel who understand it, built it and operate it are. If it is to be built elsewhere, then I deliver the Government into the tender mercies of the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, who will doubtless have something to say on the point.
Next, I want to dispose of a red herring that must not be dragged across our path. The red herring is the immediate economics of the fast reactor equally with its prospective economics 20 years from now. The
186
immediate economics of the fast reactor are totally irrelevant because we do not have one and we could not get one however much we wanted it. So what its economics would be today is of no relevance whatever. We are concerned with the economics in 20 years' time. We are talking of five or six general elections ahead; we are talking of several Ayatollah Khomeinis ahead, several OPEC price rises ahead. Anything in the way of a projection—it is fashionable to call it a scenario—as to what will happen in 25 years, time is just fudging the issue. Forecasting so far ahead is just a waste of time.
Another red herring is movements in the world price of uranium. We are told that it may be dropping. However, it does not matter what the world price of uranium is; we have enough uranium stocks to last 400 years, all written down at nil value in the books. We do not have to go into the market and buy it. We may need serial ordering of fast reactors next century as an option among others. We may need it desperately; we may not need it at all. To get a move on now is not a response to fuel and power need. It is an insurance policy against a crisis in the future. You do not—I repeat "not"—grudge your insurance policy year after year merely because this year your house did not happen to burn down.
Lastly, I should like to say a few words on morale: the one thing that, alas! no Government are interested in until the balloon goes up, and they cling in desperation to those who have preserved it in spite of them. We need the cream of the cream of our engineering talent on this project. The morale of those at Dounreay must be kept high by the conviction that they are working for a nation that knows its own mind because it has a mind to know, and not just a gaggle of quiz masters on TV. A mere illusion to that effect will soon be unmasked and then your first-class staff will drift away to other employment. The men who built it are ageing now. The next generation must be recruited now and must be of the best.
It is not uranium or plutonium that makes power stations; it is men. It is not uranium or plutonium that is uncontrollable so much as the sequentiality, the unpredictable sequentiality, of Governments, their irresolution, their procrastination, their lack of continuous driving will and pressure, no matter which ex-Government I am talking to or would be talking to hypothetically. These are the factors against which I have been, and ever shall be, an unashamed, unrelenting, gadfly, and, in that spirit, my Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
3.31 p.m.
The Minister of State, Scottish Office (The Earl of Mansfield): My Lords, the fast reactor is of major and strategic importance for the United Kingdom's and indeed the world's future energy supplies. Therefore, on behalf of the Government, I welcome this opportunity for debate which the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, has given the House. I congratulate him on the exceptionally lucid manner with which he explained matters which, at first blush, are extremely complex, technical, and too much for the lay citizen. Coming within just a few days of the fast reactor policy announcement made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Energy, his Motion is especially timely and appropriate.

187
On looking down the list of speakers, and in particular being aware of their experience and indeed their expertise, no one can be but aware of the feast which is to come. My noble friend Lord Skelmersdale, who is to reply to the debate, and indeed I myself, will listen with a great deal of interest and attention to what is said. May I, on a personal note, ask the House's indulgence if I do not stay until the dying moments of the debate because of a previous engagement. I hope that that will be understood.
The noble Earl's Motion calls attention to the need to press on with the development of the commercial fast reactor. As he, above all, will have seen from my right honourable friend's announcement, this is precisely the Government's strategy. As my right honourable friend emphasised in his announcement, the fast reactor is some fifty times as efficient a user of uranium as thermal reactors, such as the advanced gas-cooled reactor and pressurised water reactor. It can create out of the spent fuel and depleted uranium which has so far arisen from our thermal programme fuel equivalent to our economically recoverable coal reserves. It is therefore a vital technology for the future.
The United Kingdom is among the world's leaders in the development of this technology. Through the successful programme of research and development undertaken by the Atomic Energy Authority we have demonstrated the feasibility and potential of this technology. It is perhaps fitting that I should say something about the history of this programme. That it started at all is a tribute to the vision of the scientific and engineering communities, and to the Churchill Government which in the 1950s authorised the first steps leading towards establishment of a major research and development programme.
Serious consideration of the engineering of the fast reactor system began in the United Kingdom in the early 1950s. As a practical check on the physics of the system a small zero-power plutonium-fuelled reactor, Zephyr, was built at Harwell and operated between 1954 and 1958. The results were encouraging and work started on the Dounreay fast reactor—known as the DFR. This 15 megawatt reactor was built to demonstrate the engineering feasibility of the system. As its name indicates it was, as we all now know, sited at the Atomic Energy Authority's establishment in Caithness. DFR first operated in 1959. It was the first fast reactor in the world to produce electricity for commercial use. It achieved its full design power in July 1963, at which time it was the most powerful fast reactor in the world.
The successful construction and operating of DFR provided experience of the engineering problems of fast reactor technology: during a life of over 17 years it served as an essential irradiation facility affording experience with fuel and materials as well as producing electricity. In addition to providing a wide range of information on reactor physics, coolant behaviour and performance of the reactor components and of the metallic enriched uranium fuel, steady runs at various power levels showed the stability and ease of control of the system.
The principal use of the reactor during the later
188
years until March 1977 was as a test bed for uranium/plutonium oxide fuels for the prototype and commercial reactors to follow DFR. During the final runs the opportunity was taken of performing some safety-related experiments on fuel under conditions much more severe than those of normal operation. These confirmed the excellent safety characteristics of the system. In parallel with the operation of DFR, plans were made for design of the next step: a reactor much larger than DFR, the 250 megawatt prototype fast reactor, known as PFR.
Construction of PFR began in 1967 on a site at Dounreay adjacent to DFR. The reactor began operation in 1974, nominal power being achieved in February 1977. Between 1974 and March 1982 the plant operated for more than 72 per cent. of the time. Unlike DFR the PFR is fuelled by mixed uranium/plutonium oxide fuel very similar in size and design to that likely to be used in commercial fast reactors. In addition to feeding electricity to the national grid the reactor is used to prove components and to provide data essential for the design of full-size stations to follow in the years to come. In order to achieve this task the reactor is backed up by a range of development and support services based both at Dounreay and throughout the Atomic Energy Authority.
The need to develop and demonstrate the complete fast reactor fuel cycle in parallel with reactor development has always been recognised in the United Kingdom programme. Fuel reprocessing and fabrication plants were built at Dounreay to serve DFR, and a fuel fabrication plant followed to make fuel for PFR. The latter was sited at Sellafield to make use of expertise built up there; it is designed to provide experience relevant to later large-scale production plants.
The DFR reprocessing plant at Dounreay was modified to take PFR fuel and reprocessed its first PFR fuel in 1980. Subsequent reprocessing operations have confirmed the efficiency and suitability of the plant. Over the past year plutonium recovered from spent nuclear fuel from the PFR has been refined, made into fresh fuel, and returned to operation in the reactor. Britain is the first country to achieve this closure of the fuel cycle in plant dedicated to the purpose, and this represents a major British achievement.
We are not alone in developing this technology. Prototype test reactor power stations are now also operating in France and the USSR. There are smaller test reactors in operation in the USA, France, Germany. Japan and the USSR: and two more are currently being built in Italy and India.
Although France started to develop fast reactors later than the USA, the USSR and ourselves, her heavy reliance upon imported fuel has led to a consistent and determined programme which has currently placed her ahead in the commercialisation of fast reactors in the West. The USA probably has the largest and most comprehensive research programme of any country. Japan, like France, relies almost entirely upon imported fuel and therefore also has a potential need for commercial fast reactors.
In undertaking our development programme it is important to keep closely in touch with developments

189
and trends elsewhere in the world. As was proved so decisively in the oil crisis of the early 1970s, we are an integral part of the world energy economy; and our reserves of fossil fuels, though substantial, are finite. We must, therefore, provide for the period when supplies decline and costs escalate. It is prudent to establish as wide a range of options as possible in order to protect our security of supply. Nuclear power energy released in thermal reactors such as Magnox reactors, and AGRs and PWRs constitutes an economical source of power for electricity generation which will take some of the pressure off world demand for fossil fuels and will thus help to keep prices down.
However, thermal reactors use only about 1 per cent. of the uranium fuel fed to them, so the length of time for which this method of electricity generation will remain secure and economic in the United Kingdom and elsewhere depends on the continued availability of uranium at costs that keep thermal nuclear power competitive. We cannot expect that uranium supplies will last for ever. The enormous increase in a prospectively economic resource base, and the security of electrical power which the fast reactor offers, mean that we and the other developed countries have every incentive to plan for the stage when it becomes the preferred and most economic choice for electricity generation.
When exactly will that happen? No one can be exactly certain. At the moment, fast reactor capital costs are still much higher than those of thermal reactors. The fuel cycle is also relatively expensive because of the cost of reprocessing the spent fuel. The fast reactor is therefore not yet an economic proposition. Moreover, in developed countries, the growth in demand for electricity has eased. Thus, while the strategic argument for developing fast reactor technology remains compellingly strong, present evidence, including exercises undertaken by international bodies such as the OECD and the International Atomic Energy Agency supports the view that series ordering of commercial fast reactors will not now be needed until the earlier part of the next century.
It was against this background that the Government, in consultation with the Atomic Energy Authority and a wide spectrum of the nuclear industry, undertook their recent review of fast reactor policy. This was a thorough and far-reaching exercise, one which the Government recognise may have caused temporary uncertainty to all those involved with the current development programme, especially at Dounreay. It was however absolutely necessary to examine all the options to ensure we were on the correct course, and in view of the sizeable sums that are being spent on the programme and the prospect that further major expenditure will be needed before series ordering can begin.
The outcome of the review, as announced by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State on 29th November will, I believe, be greeted with general satisfaction, since it represents a whole-hearted commitment by the Government to the continuing development of this technology. I can do no better than quote from my right honourable friend's announcement:
"The Government have therefore decided to continue with a substantial development programme for the fast reactor based on
190
Dounreay and I have asked the chairman of the Atomic Energy Authority, Sir Peter Hirsch, in consultation with the generating boards, British Nuclear Fuels Limited and the National Nuclear Corporation to draw up a future development programme which makes the best use of our resources and experience. In common with most other leading fast reactor nations, we now believe that the series ordering phase will begin in the earlier part of the next century and thus on a longer timescale than we have previously envisaged. We shall therefore have more time in which to develop further the technology, and before undertaking the construction of a first full scale reactor in the United Kingdom, and the development programme will be geared to this timescale."
On the question of international collaboration, to which my right honourable friend also referred in his announcement, there can be little doubt that, provided the terms are right, such collaboration can offer the opportunity for optimising development of the technology and providing scope for pooling costs. All the leading Western fast reactor nations have expressed their interest in the scope for collaboration, and the existing European "SERENA" partnership (in which the French and Germans are the major parties) is evidence that such arrangements can and do work.
It is well known that the Atomic Energy Authority, together with the other organisations involved in the United Kingdom programme, have been having exploratory discussions with potential international partners. Noble Lords will, I hope, understand that it would be inappropriate for me to comment today on the progress made, or which country or countries seem the more attractive partner. I can confirm, however, that it is the Government's wish that such discussions should continue and that the Atomic Energy Authority has been asked to take account of the potential for collaborating with other countries in the further advice which it is to give to the Government about the programme. I can also confirm that we shall ensure that any collaborative arrangement which emerges from these discussions properly recognises our major achievements and our continuing programme.
I have endeavoured to cover a lot of ground in a short time. However, I hope it will be apparent that the Government attach considerable importance to the development of the fast reactor, both now and in the future. We believe that safe and economic fast reactors will be an essential requirement in the earlier part of the next century. The country will be well prepared to face the future.

Falkland Islands: The Shackleton Report
3.46 p.m.
Baroness Young: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall repeat a Statement being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. The Statement is as follows:
"As the House knows, Lord Shackleton, at the Government's request, produced and published in September an updated version of his 1976 report on the economy of the Falkland islands. We are enormously grateful to Lord Shackleton and his team for their work.
"In considering the report's recommendations, we have been guided by the need to assure the economic future of the islands through a

191
development programme, while at the same time preserving the islanders' way of life as far as possible. The report has been discussed with the Civil Commissioner, with the Island Councillors, amongst the islanders generally and with other interested parties. Their views have been carefully taken into account.
"The Government agree with the broad conclusions of Lord Shackleton's report and are ready to support action by the Falkland Islands Government in the following major areas covered by his recommendations: A Falkland Islands Development Agency (FIDA) should be established. This would be provided with funds to buy land on the open market, and to divide it into smaller holdings. It would also have powers to make loans and grants towards the cost of a number of small-scale development projects; the islands' agricultural research centre, the Grasslands Trials Unit, should be expanded; there should be a feasibility study on an improved harbour complex, including a new deep-water jetty; the Stanley-Darwin road should be completed and the existing network of tracks should be improved; a pilot scheme for salmon-ranching and a survey of shellfish resources should be established, hotel and guest-house facilities upgraded and cottage industry skills developed.
"Although they were not specifically covered in Lord Shackleton's report, we believe that urgent action should also be taken to improve the water supply and sewage system in Port Stanley, to study the requirements for future electricity generation and distribution, and the telephone system in the islands.
"The following proposals made by Lord Shackleton, in our view, require further study: exploratory offshore fishing and the establishment of a 200-mile fisheries limit; the implications of such a limit, not least its policing, and the degree of commercial interest in fishing, need to be carefully assessed; and the expansion of tourism—this will depend to a large extent on the establishment of commercial air links.
"We are not convinced by Lord Shackleton's proposal for the wholesale transfer and sub-division of absentee-owned farms. We believe this is inappropriate and consider a gradual approach to land redistribution under the auspices of the Falkland Islands Development Agency more in keeping with the capacity of the islands' existing agricultural population and more consistent with realistic immigration prospects. We are also not convinced of the need for a major expansion of the road network and are looking at more cost-effective ways of improving transport within the islands, in particular by improving the existing network of roads and tracks.
"Lord Shackleton proposed expenditure of some £30 to £35 million. My tentative estimate is that the programme I have outlined would cost about £31 million over six years. The Government also propose to make available a further £5 million for civilian rehabilitation, in addition to the £10 million announced in July.
192
"The islands' economy will inevitably be affected by the presence of a sizeable military garrison there, and by the outcome of the Government's present studies into the feasibility and cost of establishing a better airfield on the islands.
"I should also remind the House that the economic future of the islands does not depend on the Government alone. There will be continuing scope for private sector investment and involvement which I hope will be encouraged by the commitment we are making to the islands' future. We expect that Government and private investment together will lead to the creation of new jobs.
"Mr. Speaker, we have restored the freedom of the Falkland islanders and shall continue to do what is necessary to guarantee their future security. As Lord Shackleton has reminded us in both of his studies, the economic development of the islands will untimately depend upon the degree of local commitment to the future of the islands. For our part, we shall do all we can to enable the islanders to look forward to a sound economic future and a worthwhile life. Our positive response to Lord Shackleton's report demonstrates our commitment to this."
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
3.51 p.m.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Baroness for repeating the Statement, and we associate ourselves with the tribute that she has paid to my noble friend Lord Shackleton and his colleagues for their report. My noble friend has placed his great knowledge and experience of this part of the world at the service of Parliament and the country, and we are all deeply indebted to him.
We welcome the acceptance by the Government of a number of the recommendations in the report, especially that relating to the setting up of the Falkland Islands Development Agency. The report states that,
"as a planning objective, a Falklands community of 1,800 or less, defended by a garrison of 3,000 or more, surviving economically principally because of income from stamps, is unacceptable".
The report went on to recommend, inter alia, long-term development. Would not the noble Baroness agree that the future of the islands depends upon their basic wealth in agriculture, and in particular upon wool? Therefore, is it not important to look very carefully at tourism? I thought that the report might have been slightly too dismissive of the encouragement of tourism, though to a very large extent it depends on the improvement of communications.
We also warmly welcome the plans to improve the services—electricity, water supplies, and so on—which are so essential to the islands. Many of the services were of course damaged or completely destroyed in the recent conflict.
The report recommends the purchase of all farms owned by absentee landlords, followed by sale to the development agency, and subsequently by sale to the Falkland islanders, or suitable outsiders. Would not the noble Baroness agree that that is both sensible and necessary if the islanders are to feel that they have a stake in the future of the islands? As has just been

193
stated, the Government have gone some way towards implementing that, but how do the Government intend to deal with the crucial recommendation in the report relating to the transfer of ownership of farms belonging to absentee landlords, so as to stem the flow of profits from the island, which for the islanders themselves is one of the most discouraging factors? Again, what action do the Government propose to take to deal with the dominant position of the Falklands Islands Company? The company has recently twice been asset stripped, and it is a relatively minor subsidiary of a chemical conglomerate. I feel that this is a matter at which the Government ought to look very carefully.
I should like to say in parenthesis that I understand that the Highlands and Islands Development Board was particularly helpful to my noble friend and his colleagues in the preparation of the report, and I think that the House will be grateful to the board for that assistance.
Can the noble Baroness say a little more about the airfield, which is so very vital to the islands? What is the position regarding rebuilding the airfield, bearing in mind that it is now used for military purposes? Can she say what is the latest estimated cost of bringing the airfield up to a proper standard? Finally, would not the noble Baroness also agree that a satisfactory settlement in the Falklands is absolutely essential in relation to the maintenance of peace in the whole area of the Antarctic, as indeed the report makes quite clear?
Viscount Thurso: My Lords, we on these Benches wish to be associated with the thanks expressed to the noble Baroness for repeating the Statement, and in particular we wish to express our thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, for the magnificent work that he has done in producing a series of reports, culminating in the report that we are now discussing, about how the Falkland Islands could, and should, be developed. It is only sad that this kind of development was not undertaken long ago, in which case it might well have been that the conflict that has caused so much sorrow in this country and in the South Atlantic would not have taken place.
Clearly, it is important to ensure the economic future of the islands through a development programme, and the pattern to be followed of a Falklands Islands Development Agency somewhat similar to the Highlands and Islands Development Board, is obviously a good and reliable one. I fear that, in accepting both the agency and the development, the Falkland islanders will have to recognise that their way of life is bound to change, and I am sure that Her Majesty's Government will be explaining to them that, if they wish to keep their freedom, they may well have to change parts of their way of life.
We accept the main conclusions regarding the development agency, the research centre expansion, and the feasibility study of the harbour complex. We tend to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, that the development of roads and communications is of a higher importance than the Government appear to think, and I ask the noble Baroness whether the Government would not reconsider this aspect, and perhaps consider even the setting up of sea links as
194
being the quickest way of establishing communications between remote parts of separate islands.
I am sorry to see that the development of fisheries boils down to a mere pilot scheme for salmon ranching. I think that this is unsatisfactory, when so often we have heard that in terms of undeveloped fisheries the Falkland Islands are situated in one of the richest seas on the face of the entire globe. I feel that more should be done in this regard, and I should like to know whether the Government would reconsider the decision that they appear to have taken, and thus undertake more action to try to encourage commercial fisheries in the Falklands.
Finally, I should like to say that there really is no time for a gradual approach to land distribution. I would remind the noble Baroness that the Highlands and Islands Development Board itself has compulsory purchase powers, and it would be as well if such powers were given to the Falkland Islands Development Agency. I say that because in the Highlands of Scotland the Highlands and Islands Development Board might well compulsorily purchase land owned and occupied by somebody, whereas in regard to the Falkland Islands all that has been proposed in this connection is that land owned by absentee landlords might suitably be resettled. I believe that around Scotland there is plenty of evidence of the value of land resettlement that has been carried out from generation to generation. So I would urge upon her Majesty's Government that, as the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos, has said, they should look very closely at the position of the Falkland Islands Company in all of this, and should at least seek its co-operation in land resettlement—and if that is not forthcoming, they should force its cooperation in land resettlement.
Baroness Young: My Lords, I should like to thank both the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, and the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, for their response to this Statement. I should also like to add my own thanks to those expressed to the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, for his report, which the Government have found most valuable.
The noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, asked a number of questions, and I shall do my best to answer them. He asked particularly about the airfield. I think I should say that, as I indicated in the Statement, the Government recognise the importance of the matter, but the outcome must depend on decisions still to be taken by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Defence. Not only the military needs of the garrison but also the requirements of the islanders themselves and the longer-term economic development of the islands will be taken fully into account when these decisions are made. The noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, also asked me about tourism, but I think he himself acknowledged that this will depend very much on improved services.
Both noble Lords referred to agriculture and long-term development. On agriculture, perhaps I may say that apart from land purchase, about £7 million might go into agriculture over the period. Rather more than half would finance a much expanded research

195
programme; the balance would go into direct agricultural support through a system of grants and subsidies.
On the question of the sub-division of the large farms, the Government believe that the case for a subdivision of existing large farms is not yet proven. There is, for example, no firm evidence that sub-division would either promote development or create employment. Island opinion, which has been consulted on this point—and may I add that it was recently consulted by my honourable friend in another place, Mr. Cranley Onslow, when he visited the islands as recently as last October—is also unpersuaded of the advantages of wholesale sub-division. We have therefore opted for a gradual approach to land redistribution. As the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, records in his report, a start has been made with the purchase and sub-division of the farms at Green Patch and Roy Cove.
The noble Viscount. Lord Thurso, also asked me about roads on the island, and the amount of money to be spent on them. The Shackleton Report envisaged work on an improved road network linking either the main settlements or all the larger settlements. There is, we think, little prospect of enough traffic to justify the investment, and indeed the maintenance costs of the roads would be a very heavy burden on the Falkland Islands Government. Therefore, in our view the priorities are to restore Port Stanley's road system, which is a part of the rehabilitation work now in hand, and then to complete the road already under construction between Port Stanley and Darwin. There will also be scope for improving some of the worst stretches of the network of tracks, and we believe that about £7½ million might be needed for this.
On the question of fishing, discussions are in progress with the European Investment Bank about funding the next stage of work on the prospects for salmon ranching. Consultants will probably have to be appointed to survey the shellfish possibilities, but we believe that about £1·3 million will be earmarked from the Government's contribution for these two proposals. I am sure we all welcomed the concluding remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, when he said that he believed that a satisfactory outcome to the issue of the Falkland Islands' economy was essential for their future prosperity and success, and I would very much endorse what he said on this point.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, we should like to join in the thanks which have come from all parts of the Opposition to the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, for the report which has been summed-up by the Government today. I have three questions only. First of all, could the Leader of the House be a little more specific about relations between the new Falkland Islands Development Agency and the Falkland Islands Company? After all, as the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, has told us, the Falkland Islands Company is a minor part of a large conglomerate which has twice been asset-stripped and is not even quoted on the market. It is, therefore, I take it, quite easy for the Falkland Islands Company not to respond to overtures to purchase land on the open market—and "on the open market" is the phrase used in the Government's Statement. It is in fact easy for such a minor part of a
196
conglomerate to disappear in the undergrowth.
Will the Falkand Islands Development Agency have compulsory purchase powers? If not, what role do the Government see for the Falkland Islands Company in the future? Subject to that, we welcome the creation of the Falkland Islands Development Agency. It seems that a public sector solution is in place on this occasion.
My other two questions concern, once more, the airport. I think we all know that the shape of the future of the Falkland Islands is going to depend on whether or not that airport is extended. What advantage do the Government see in delaying a decision yet further? What would be against their saying either "Yes" or "No" at this stage? Lastly, on what one might call the Antarctic dimension, the Statement makes no mention whatever of the Falkland Islands dependencies. What is intended for them? Is there any advantage in delaying a decision on whether or not one will be seeking a solution in some way in accordance with or by reference to the Antarctic Treaty, using the dependencies in a kind of mediating position, both legally and geographically, between Antarctica and the Falkland Islands themselves? Is there any hope that the Government may yet see the light about the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the potentially very fruitful applications of that convention to the waters of the South Atlantic?
Baroness Young: My Lords, on the first of the three questions that the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, has asked me, so far as the Falkland Islands Company is concerned we believe that it can play a valuable role in the agriculture and trade of the islands and in their economic diversification and development. I believe it has been acknowledged that the Falkland Islands Company has indeed a somewhat better investment record in the recent past than other companies in the islands. In 1980 they sold the farm at Green Patch to the Government for the purpose of sub-division into six smaller units, and have agreed to give up their basic banking services to the Standard Chartered Bank.
On the question of the Falkland Islands Development Agency itself, we think that the agency's initial running costs will be about £50,000 a year, and it should have a budget for small projects of several hundred thousand pounds a year. It would be the agency carrying out major projects which would be funded individually under the British aid programme.
To turn to the airport, I think it would be difficult for me to go any further than I did in my original answer to the question, because in fact the reason why there has been no decision about the outcome is that we are still awaiting a decision from my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Defence. There are, as I understand it, various alternatives still being considered, and at this stage I really cannot go further than what I have already said. But, as I have indicated, we of course recognise the importance of the matter. Regarding the dependencies, I do not think that it would be right for me at this stage to go into the future of that matter, because at the moment we are particularly concerned with the report on the Falkland Islands themselves.
Lord Stewart of Fulham: My Lords, the noble

197
Baroness has said that the Government do not accept the idea of the wholesale redistribution of land. She used that expression. I think I am right in saying that that is not what the report recommended; but it did recommend further steps in redistribution beyond what is apparently in the Government's mind at the present time. I hope therefore that the Government will look at that point again. Then, are we to have an opportunity to debate the report itself and cognate matters connected with the Falklands? I speak to the noble Baroness now in her capacity as Leader of the House.
Baroness Young: My Lords, the answer to the second question that the noble Lord, Lord Stewart, put to me is that of course this would be a matter for the usual channels. However, I am sure that they will have noted the point that has been made, and I shall certainly pass it on.
On the noble Lord's first point, about the redistribution of the existing large farms, what I hope I indicated to the House is that what we have done is to opt for a gradual approach to redistribution; and, as this becomes possible, so we shall be able to redistribute the farms. It appears from the very extensive round of consultations which have taken place (and particularly those to which I have already referred which took place only in October) that this is not something which we are clear that the islanders themselves would particularly welcome. For that reason and for the reason that we think that the case has not yet been proven, we would rather proceed in this gradual way.
Lord Hunt: My Lords, arising out of the reference in the Statement to the establishment of a military garrison, linked with a speech made by Mr. John Nott at Port Stanley while he was on a visit to the Falkland Islands, in which he made a reference to the potentialities of the islands as a training area—from which I take him to mean that this would be a training area in which live ammunition of all kinds would be used—could the House be assured that such a development would not in any way be prejudicial to the preservation of the way of life of the islanders and that, by the same token, it would not be prejudicial to the development of tourism?
Baroness Young: My Lords, I should like to reiterate that anything I have said in trying to answer questions this afternoon and in the Statement has been designed to indicate that it is the Government's wish to preserve the way of life of the islanders as far as possible and that we believe that the mainstay of this will continue to be sheep ranching, but that the programme will also allow new sectors to be developed, including the possibility at some future time of tourism. Any remarks that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State may have made about the islands and defence should not in any way be taken as running contrary to the commitment that we have to do our best to make the islands economically viable in their traditional way and in other ways that may be developed.
Viscount Montgomery of Alamein: My Lords, in view of the importance of communications which is so
198
cogently stressed in the admirable report produced by the noble Lord, Lord Shackleton, can my noble friend say whether conversations with Argentina will play a part in this and whether any progress at all has been made in trying to re-establish relations with Argentina?—without which it is difficult to envisage future long-term peace in that part of the world.
Baroness Young: My Lords, at present we are not conducting negotiations with Argentina for reasons of which the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, will be aware; but of course we hope that our relations with other countries of South America will continue to improve and that they will come to understand our position over the Falkland Islands.
Lord Monson: My Lords, can the noble Baroness indicate whether there is any prospect of establishing a commercial air link between the Falklands and Punta Arenas in Chile, bearing in mind that Chile has continually taken Britain's side in this dispute?
Baroness Young: My Lords, I think it would be right for me to write to the noble Lord on that point; but, as I understand it, it would be quite difficult at the moment when the airport is in the condition that it is.

The Commercial Fast Reactor
4.14 p.m.
Debate resumed.
Lord Tanlaw: My Lords, we now return to the most interesting debate which the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, has put before the House this afternoon. We on these Benches are very grateful that he has done so and that he has attracted, as he himself has said, an extraordinary list of most distinguished and articulate speakers. For my part, I am sad to see two names not on that list: names of speakers who in the past have contributed so much to these debates, Lord Wynne-Jones and Lord Ritchie-Calder. It is a disappointment that they are no longer here, but their words have always remained with me from the past debates that we have had on this subject. I think that it is also worth saying that the more technical a subject—and especially a subject like nuclear power—the more one has to seek advice from technical people; and the higher one goes the more difficult it is to comprehend the advice that one has been given. The noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, is an exception, in that his brilliance is also that of a communicator, as he has proved this afternoon. Other speakers on this list also have this same gift of communicating to the world at large what is a very technical subject about which many people have worried or enthused. I think that this debate today will help a lot in clearing the air as to what is a fast reactor and what may be its potential in the years to come.
The reasons for the Government's decision perhaps to put the fast reactor on the back burner have been given as the low price and the relative abundance of uranium supplies on the world market. These factors have undermined much of the economic and strategic advantage of the fast reactor over conventional uranium fuel reactors in the past three years.

199
Nevertheless, the economic principles contained in the development of the fast reactors continue to be sound. I am advised that, at present prices, £27,000 will buy one tonne of uranium for a thermal reactor to produce as much electricity as 25,000 tonnes of coal, which would cost £1 million, Like other fuels, however, supplies of uranium will not last for ever, and the commercial exploitation of the fast reactor could enable about 60 times as much energy to be extracted from uranium as the present types of thermal reactor achieve. Because the fast reactor needs so little uranium, the high price of the raw material would have little effect on the cost of the electricity it produces. As I understand that, this is the theory that will mean cheap electricity generation costs compared with thermal reactor generation costs in the first half of the next century. Therefore, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority has been told to look more closely at the prospects of international collaboration for fast reactor development.
We welcome this and we welcome the fact that research and development teams can continue their work in the hope of proving—and no doubt they will—that the fast reactor will superseder the PWRs and thermal reactors and coal-fired power stations that we shall rely on between now and 20 years on. There are wider implications in this to which I will come later. If we compare the generating costs of, say, coal and the nuclear thermal power stations currently under construction, is there not a strong commercial case for proceeding with the conventional nuclear programme—without even PWRs, let alone fast reactors?
I ask this question because the figures are not yet available for the intended generating costs of a PWR and, obviously, as we heard earlier this afternoon, we do not know, and perhaps cannot even anticipate, what are to be the generating costs of a fast reactor. For instance, according to the CEGB's annual report, the generation costs of Heysham I nuclear power station are 2.59 pence per kilowatt hour, compared with 3.84 pence per kilowatt hour for Drax on completion, which is the most efficient of the new coal-fired stations that we shall have. Comparative generation costs for the PWR at Sizewell and the fast reactor at Dounreay will be most helpful in putting these different types of power generation in perspective.
I would hope that there would be the same differential in improvement in economy between the fast reactor and the current thermal reactors and the PWRs as there is between the present thermal reactors and coal that we have today. According to the Select Committee on Energy of another place, in France the delivered cost of electricity to an industrial consumer is less than 3 pence per kilowatt hour, while I understand that in the United Kingdom it can vary from approximately 2.7 pence to 4.5 pence per kilowatt hour. Therefore it would appear to me that the generation cost of the French nuclear programme is just over 1 penny per kilowatt hour—1.16 pence if the same gross margin is allowed between generation costs and the tariff charges used by the CEGB for Heysham I.
The reason I have dared to interpose these figures in this debate is that I am conscious of the fact that the
200
Invergordon smelter failed because it would appear that the Hunterston nuclear power station could not deliver electricity at an economic rate; that is, cheaply enough. The real test will be: what are to be the charges for electricity, whether it is for coal, thermal or a fast reactor? The failure of this first test of nuclear power would appear to have been—and the noble Earl will recall that the Government gave this reason in a Statement—because electricity costs were too expensive, in spite of the fact that there was a vast surplus of electricity from the board concerned. This is worrying, and I hope that the Government will look at this more carefully, because when we are talking about the fast reactor for the future we are talking about cheap electricity, which hopefully is going to replace gas in the form of space heating. The research and development studies on the fast reactor will have to match the margins I have just quoted if a commercial unit is to be constructed at the beginning of the next century.
The Government, in one form or another, will have to identify what role electricity will be playing in the energy equation by then. It is assumed that gas may be relatively expensive as the fields become depleted and more distant from the markets. But will it be expensive enough for electricity and, in particular, combined heat and power to compete in the space heating market which gas presently controls? We heard not so long ago in a debate in your Lordships' House that the gas reserves are somewhat larger than had been envisaged. It has been said also that the gas reserves may well be plentiful throughout the first half of the next century: certainly until 2030 and possibly until 2040. The question I would ask is: has this been taken into consideration when we are looking at the role of electricity, which is a wider role than that of the fast reactor but is relevant to this question? I am referring to the role of electricity in the first 25 years of the twenty-first century.
It has been said that to build a commercial fast reactor will take all the time that has already been laid down. Sir Walter Marshall, at a meeting of PARLIGAES on Monday night upstairs, indicated that it would be unlikely that the first commercial fast reactor could be commissioned until about 2020. That is a realistic timetable in order that all the safety and economic aspects of producing electricity at a rate which would be favourable compared with other fuels have been solved—that is, apart from the technical problems which will have to be overcome in addition.
I am left with two or three questions and I should be grateful if the noble Lord who is to wind up on behalf of the Government could reply to them. What is the anticipated generation cost for Sizewell "B" power station, for which the inquiry is due to begin? I understand from the CEGB that they do not have the figure at this stage. Will this figure emerge during the Sizewell inquiry?—because it is very relevant to what the future energy costs will be from the fast reactor. I find this slightly worrying because we do not know what the anticipated generation costs will be from Sizewell "B", which is very nearly upon us. Therefore, what are going to be the anticipated generation costs? What are the design team aiming for from the fast reactor when that comes on stream 30 years from now?

201
If Her Majesty's Government are not in a position to answer these questions, I am not sure how there can be enough evidence—here I am being the devil's advocate—on which to base decisions about PWRs before even we come to fast reactors. I believe there is a possibility that we may have concentrated too much on the technical problems and the cost-effectiveness problems regarding the capital construction of these programmes, and have completely forgotten what the cost of electricity will be to the consumer at the end of the day. Certainly these figures should be available for the PWR; and I think this could be an opportunity for the Government to give them to the House. Thereby everyone who is interested in these matters would benefit.
This leads me to another queston. Within the terms of the research and development team's work over the next years on the fast reactor, is there included in their reference a CHP application for the fast reactor? No mention has been made of this and, as I understand it, certainly from the Select Committee's report in another place, there will be a very major role for combined heat and power with district heating in the years to come if electricity is to replace gas as a space heater. It would be rather worrying if the research and development team has not been instructed to look at this application for fast reactors. I would come to the conclusion—maybe hastily and somewhat regretfully—that the fast reactor would not have the proper role it has been designed for at the beginning of the next century.
Finally, I should like to put this thought before the Government at this time. It is not an original thought but one that was put forward in the Marshall Report: that is, the suggestion of a Heat Board. We have every other form of board looking at our future energy requirements, but the point I am trying to get from the Government, through the noble Earl's debate today, is: what is the point of building efficient electricity generation if in fact there is to be no overall body which will manage the cost of raw energy for the country's needs? If gas is too cheap and too readily available at the time the fast reactors are to start delivering electricity, it may well be that the electricity they generate will become uneconomic, as indeed it is today for space heating. That is the reason given today why the CEGB are not very interested in combined heat and power, because they cannot compete with gas. The Gas Corporation are not very interested because it competes with gas.
I would say to the Government that if this kind of competition is to occur in the years to come, then it will be a sterile form of competition in which there will be high energy costs and everyone will be the loser—the power generation boards as well as the consumers. Would not this be the time for the Government to consider how they are going to manage the prices of gas, coal and electricity in order to make the maximum use of the very heavy capital installations that are being planned during the course of the next 20 to 30 years?
I know that is rather wider than the terms of the debate, but what is the point of having any form of reactor, including a fast reactor, to produce electricity if, at the end of the day, it cannot be sold commercially? I hope that, when the noble Lord
202
comes to reply, an answer to some of these questions can be given which would reassure me in continuing my support for the Government's position on the future of the fast reactor team at Dounreay.
4.30 p.m.
Lord Hinton of Bankside: My Lords, we are all extremely grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, for giving us the opportunity of debating this subject tonight. It seems to me that the debate is, if anything, overdue and I was certainly pleased to see—as, I am sure, were other noble Lords—the Statement that was made by the Secretary of State in another place last week. It may be helpful, although it may involve my repeating very briefly some of the points which the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, made in his speech, and other points that were made by the noble Earl, Lord Mansfield, if I run over the history of what went before and which, perhaps, led to that Statement by the Secretary of State.
When the Atomic Energy Authority was set up in the Ministry of Supply immediately after the last war, its first remit was to produce plutonium for defence purposes, but even then there were visions of nuclear power. At that time, the known reserves of plutonium were very small indeed and we were conscious of the fact that we could not have a viable industrial nuclear power programme until we learned how to use uranium more economically than it could be used in the thermal reactors, which were the only ones that we then knew, or, indeed, today know, how to build. Those thermal reactors burn, at the most, 0·7 per cent. of the uranium which is fed into them, whereas, if we could develop a fast reactor, we knew that—theoretically, at any rate—we could burn as much as 50 per cent. of the uranium.
Work on the fast reactor was, therefore, started in 1950 and the Dounreay fast reactor, to which reference has already been made, with a heat output of 60 mw, was built to provide the basic information that was required. It was commissioned in 1957. That first fast reactor was a large experimental facility and it provided the information on reactor control, on fuel element design and on the use of liquid metal coolants which was needed for the design of a prototype reactor.
The prototype reactor, which was designed to generate 250 mw of electrical power, was ready for commissioning in 1974. Construction had been quite seriously delayed and, shortly before it was due for commissioning, the Central Policy Review Office obtained a report on it, which said that, although the design of the reactor appeared to be entirely satisfactory, the design of the steam raising units gave ground for very serious anxiety. The reactor was commissioned shortly afterwards and, all too soon, those misgivings proved to be well founded. Within quite a short time, the steam raising units developed defects which made it necessary to shut down the whole plant.
The Central Policy Review Office called for another report on those failures and remedial measures were agreed upon in 1975. Those remedial modifications were aimed primarily at making the steam raising units sufficiently reliable to enable satisfactory operation of the reactor itself to be achieved. It was

203
thought that, although the basic design of those unsatisfactory steam raising units had been retained, the modifications might, possibly, lead to a design which could be used in a commercial fast reactor.
To safeguard the operation of the prototype reactor, not merely were agreed modifications to be made to the existing steam raising units, but, also, spare steam raising units were to be ordered. That work was planned and a programme for its completion within a period of two years was prepared. But after seven years, which is the time which has passed since then, the spares have not yet been delivered, nor have the agreed modifications, or alternative modifications, been made to the original steam raising units. Failures to them have continued and they are occurring at an ever-increasing rate. According to figures published in the technical press, the plant has operated for about 10 per cent. of the time that has passed since 1975. I am trying to be as brief as possible, but I ought at this point to emphasise that the failures to which I have referred cause no hazard whatever, either to the operators or to the district surrounding the plant. No nuclear activity was involved. In the interests of brevity, I am not going to explain why that is the case.
A closed fast reactor cycle has five components and, when thinking of the fast reactor, it is necessary to think of it as a complex made up of those five components, which are, first, the plant for the manufacture of fuel elements; secondly, the fast reactor itself; thirdly, the steam raising units; fourthly, the turbo-alternator and, fifthly, the chemical plant for treatment of the irradiated fuel elements.
The first, second and fifth of those five components are all of a pioneering nature, but, within the restrictions imposed on their operation by the third and fourth parts, they have worked brilliantly, and they reflect great credit on the men who, in the face of continued discouragement arising mainly from troubles with the steam raising units, have worked so devotedly.
It is a tragedy that, while achieving such notable success on those pioneering sectors of the plant, overall success has been denied to them by the failure of a section of the plant which, although it presented, and presents, formidable difficulties, has something in common with established practice in power raising plants. But the fact remains that the present steam raising units are not satisfactory. I understand that a completely different design is being considered for a proposed demonstration commercial reactor, but that no agreed design is yet available. Looking back over the period of eight years to the initial troubles with the steam raising units, I find it easy to believe that it will take at least seven more years to fabricate, install and prove steam raising units of a satisfactory design.
To embark on the construction of a large, industrial fast reactor before satisfactory steam raising units have been proved on the existing prototype plant would be about as wise as it would have been to build Concorde when the best proven aircraft engine was the one that was successfully used in the Viscount 25 years earlier. Remembering that the unassailable need for fast reactors arises when reasonably priced uranium resources are exhausted, we must see whether that
204
delay can be tolerated. Large reserves of uranium have now been discovered, but they will not last indefinitely if they are burned only in thermal reactors. Past experience shows that it takes many years to extrapolate from experimental prototypes to a successful commercial reactor design.
The history of the pressurised water reactor which is being considered for Sizewell gives an indication of the time that is required. The proposal to consider the use of a pressurised water reactor in Britain was announced in 1974. The Government decision to investigate the PWR was made in 1978. A public inquiry is due to start in January 1983 and it will probably present its report about the end of that year. A decision might then be made by the end of 1984, so that commissioning of a PWR could be expected about 1992, a period of gestation of 18 years for a reactor which has been widely, although not always successfully, used elsewhere.
The periods of gestation for other types of reactors have had a similar time-scale. From the sanctioning of Calder Hall to the commissioning of Oldbury, which was the first Magnox reactor which could profitably have been replicated, 15 years passed. From the sanctioning of the Windscale AGR to the commissioning of the first satisfactory commercial AGRs at Hunterston and Hinkley Point, 19 years passed.
Remembering all this, let us try to deduce the period of gestation for a fast reactor of commercial size. I think it would be unwise for the Government to do more than indicate their continuing interest in the building of fast reactors until reliable steam raising units have been developed. As I have suggested, that would be seven or eight years from now. By the time that is done, our knowledge of fast reactor complexes will be similar to the knowledge that we had of the PWR when, in 1978, the Government took a decision on that reactor.
At that date it would be reasonable to state a firm intention to build a demonstration commercial fast reactor. The public will wish to be assured about the safety of fast reactors, the environmental bodies will need a year in which to prepare a case, a public inquiry will be necessary and approval and consent cannot be expected in less than two to three years. A construction and commissioning period of nine years would be reasonable and it would be wise to have two years of satisfactory operating experience with this "demonstration" commercial reactor before sequence ordering of fast reactors commences. Assuming satisfactory performance from the outset, a rather optimistic estimate of the period of gestation will then have been no better than 19 years.
We must now, I believe, ask ourselves when fast reactors are really needed to relieve the pressure on the dwindling reserves of virgin uranium. Within the last six years, four separate estimates of those reserves have been made by four separate bodies of international experts. Their studies have been global and the position has got to be considered globally, because the prosperity of every country depends on global energy resources. It can, for example, profit a single country only to a limited extent if it has ample energy supplies while there is a global energy shortage.

205
Because present conditions make low global growth appear to be probable, we will look only at the uranium reserve and demand figures in the low growth scenarios which have been prepared by those four groups of experts. We will assume that there is no recycling of fuel in thermal reactors and that only thermal reactors are used. In date order, the forecasts which were published are as follows. Carroll Wilson in 1977 estimated that demand for uranium will be greater than the reasonably assured reserves before 2010 AD. The World Energy Conference estimated in 1978 that the demand will exceed assured supplies before mid-1995. The International Nuclear Fuel Evaluation Committee estimated in 1980 that requirements can be met up to 2000 AD, provided that sufficient exploration and development work is done but that only the inclusion of speculative resources would enable the 2025 AD demand to be met. We will not worry about the figures prepared by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis because they give us little help.
One thing is quite certain: that all of those forecasts are wrong. But at the time that they published their estimates three or four years ago, all of the world's best informed experts came to the conclusion that fast reactors would be needed by around 2000 AD.
Since those experts wrote their reports there have been major changes. The low scenario figures used by the experts are reasonably consistent with the global recession which is being experienced, but the Three Mile Island incident, which has led to growing opposition from environmentalists and, even more importantly, to opposition from financiers, has probably set back their estimates of demand by something like 15 or perhaps 20 years, to a date of 2015 or 2020. It is only then that plutonium will be needed as a fuel for nuclear power plants.
Even allowing for a rising price of virgin uranium it would be unrealistic to assume that a first generation of fast reactors would produce electricity more cheaply than it could be generated in thermal reactors built concurrently. Electricity from the first generation of Magnox reactors cost nearly twice as much as electricity generated in the best fossil fuel fired plants which were built and commissioned concurrently. In no way can I find justification for suggesting that the Government need to do anything more than encourage development before 1995. I emphasise once more that in my view it would be most unwise to give approval in principle for the construction of a commercial scale fast reactor before satisfactory steam raising units have been built and proved. We must therefore ask ourselves what should be done in the next 13 years.
The annual report of the Atomic Energy Authority appears to show that they are spending something like £100 million a year on fast reactor development. If today we had a completely reliable fast reactor power plant complex which could be offered for sale overseas, there might be justification for continuing expenditure at that rate. But having regard to the postponement of the date when there is an inescapable need for a fast reactor and having regard also to the unsolved problem in one single section of that reactor complex, I cannot convince myself that there is commercial wisdom in continuing work on that scale.
206
There is no doubt that fast reactors will ultimately be needed. Other nuclear countries beside ourselves are developing them; by following an unwavering political policy, the French can reasonably claim to be in the lead—they are to some extent collaborating with the Germans. Limited information suggests that the Russians are not very far behind and that Japan, whose ability to make rapid progress has been demonstrated in other fields, is very active. In the United States development has been retarded by political wavering.
I do not believe that any of those countries can offer a tried, commercial fast reactor complex; they all have something to learn. Our expenditure of nearly £100 million a year is the price of unilateral development. It would be a grave mistake for us to abandon work on the development of fast reactor complexes. Indeed, the Dounreay prototype must be operated if we are to have a satisfactory facility for testing steam raising units but I myself could not justify the cost of continuing to "go it alone" for so long a period. I suggest that we should concentrate on the design of steam raising units, perhaps of two different types, and install those to replace the unsatisfactory steam raising units in the Dounreay prototype plant. The Dounreay reactor must be operated to supply high temperature sodium to test new designs of steam raising units. But while other development may be done at Dounreay the primary purpose of Dounreay in the immediate future must be to deveop satisfactory steam raising units. Expenditure should be limited to what is necessary for that purpose.
While doing this, we should seek a partner or partners with whom we can collaborate as equals. I emphasise "as equals" because there is no reason why we should go to anyone cap in hand. With our successful fuel manufacturing plant, our very satisfactory reactor and our chemical separation plant, we have a great deal to offer such a partner. If we can add a proven steam raising unit we could offer even more, and we could expect a similar contribution from a willing partner.
If your Lordships imagine that it has given me any pleasure to make this speech, you are wrong. Some 26 years ago we led the world in thermal reactor power plant technology. We lost that lead. Some 15 years ago we led the world in fast reactor technology. We are no longer in that position. I do not suggest that we are laggards, but we no longer lead. Surely in dealing with fast reactors we should put our pride in our pockets and seek collaboration. If we do not, we may find that the fast reactor has given us nothing much else to put in our pockets.
4.55 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, I would like to congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, on the admirable way in which he introduced this debate. He has in a rare degree the facility for clearly explaining complex scientific matters to laymen, and he demonstrated this facility again today. His timing is also excellent; this debate coming just a week after a Statement by the Government on this subject. The Government said that they would continue a substantial development programme based on Dounreay. This is welcome as a general declaration of intention,

207
but already it has been interpreted in different ways—including one interpretation that it means a considerable slowing down of activity.
Today's debate gives the Government an opportunity to say more about their intentions. In this country, we shall continue to need nuclear power stations. We have supplies of indigenous oil, but before the end of this century annual production will be diminishing year by year. Gas is more uncertain, but it seems likely that unless large new reserves are discovered, gas from indigenous sources will also be diminishing in the early years of the next century. As for energy from renewable resources—for example, from wave power, tides, the wind and the sun—it is clear that the contribution which could be made from those sources in 20 years' time can only be small. So there is a gap which can be filled by energy from the nuclear source—and that is an efficient source.
As a country we have made a good start. The first group of operational reactors—the Magnox reactors—have done well. For example, Chapel Cross started in 1958 and is still operating today. It has given little trouble. Then there is Hunterston "A", and I remember attending the inauguration of that power station in 1964 because I was one of the Ministers concerned at that time. Again, that power station has done well. We have also led the world in the technology of fast reactors. As other speakers have already stated, this work has been concentrated since 1955 at Dounreay, with the experimental fast reactor there and then the prototype fast reactor.
The Government appear to be telling us now that the time when the first commercial reactor needs to be in operation is still far enough away not to require early consideration of a building project. Questions arise from this. First, is this a prudent assessment? Secondly, will all the technical resources and skills required be maintained and developed? Thirdly, will all the necessary preparations be complete when the time comes for a particular project to be initiated? I shall return to these questions shortly.
One of the great advantages of fast reactors is that they use as fuel the highly radioactive material produced as a by-product of thermal power stations. Quantities have already been collected in this country and are gradually accumulating. Fast reactors would dispense with the need to dispose of that highly radioactive material deep in the earth or deep in the ocean. That is good housekeeping on a national scale. It is also good practice in energy conservation. Furthermore, a fast breeder reactor produces more fuel during its operation than it uses.
I turn now to the costs of nuclear energy. There have been arguments about this, usually because different people attach more weight to different forms of expenditure—the capital costs, running costs, and decommissioning costs. Having myself examined fairly closely these arguments, I am convinced that taking all such costs into account, over a period of at least 20 years or more, nuclear generation has been among the cheapest methods of generating electricity and supplying energy.
France has adopted nuclear power stations in a big way. France's programme, a large one, appears
208
already to be making electricity less expensive in that country than it would otherwise be. France, of course, has a more immediate need for nuclear power stations. The French do not have the resources of indigenous oil which, for a period, we have available to us. But we shall need a further nuclear programme as our supplies of oil and gas run out.
The public, I suggest, should not in the meantime be misled or bamboozled by pressure groups opposing nuclear energy. It is easy to frighten people about the unknown or the unfamiliar, but this could be the most abysmal folly for us as a nation if that were to happen widely over nuclear reactors. What are the fears that some people harbour? First, accidents. During the life of the nuclear generating industry in this country, its safety record in life and injury has been better than any other energy industry. The second fear is of escape or emission of radioactivity from reactors. The radioactive material produced in a reactor is retained, shielded, and removed eventually, by controlled procedures. The amount of radioactivity being dispersed into the air or into the surrounding countryside during the operation of a nuclear reactor is less than from many a coal mine; that is to say, from the colliery workings above a mine.
Assurances are nonetheless, of course, necessary about measures and safeguards to prevent, or to deal instantly and correctly with, accidents which might cause radioactivity to escape. But scaremongering about nuclear reactors is completely misplaced. Similar protests could have been directed at electricity in its early days, in the times of Faraday and Kelvin, on the very real grounds of dangers of fire and electrocution of individuals. That would seriously have delayed us in industrial development and in raising our standards of living.
The fast reactor programme has been based in one area of the United Kingdom, Caithness. A headline in a Scottish newspaper a few days ago read, "Action group at Dounreay". Was this a demonstration or a protest at the site of the prototype fast reactor? No, my Lords, the report below indicated that it was a group formed in that area in favour of Britain developing a fast reactor programme. They had already collected for their cause, the report went on, several thousand signatures in Caithness. I recall a group giving evidence recently to your Lordships' Sub-Committee which deals with energy, of which I was a member. The group was opposed to nuclear power stations. It suggested in its evidence that there should be polls over large areas as to whether the individuals living there would want a fast reactor built in their areas. Well, I consider that is quite the wrong approach. They would not really know what it was and could easily be frightened. What is much more to the point is that there should be a poll in the area where there has been a fast reactor, first the experimental one and then the prototype one, for at least 20 years, namely Caithness and Sutherland. There they have lived with it, they know it and they appear to be in favour of it.
My Lords, I would like to ask the Minister who is to reply whether he would say more about the lead times required. My figure, from the moment of a decision to the commissioning of a fast reactor, is the same as that given by the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury; namely, 10 years. In a reply to a debate which I initiated in your

209
Lordships' House three years ago, on 20th November 1979, the Minister indicated that the Government would wish to institute a very special form of public inquiry before the first commercial fast reactor was decided upon, and I understand that that also covered a demonstration fast reactor, if it were proposed. The kind of inquiry, which is something which the previous Government had also suggested, would go far beyond that conducted under the Town and Country Planning Acts. It would be much more complicated and likely to last a good deal longer than the usual run of inquiries of that kind. My own assessment is that such an inquiry might take between three and five years, between the initiation of it and the report being submitted and then decided upon by the Government of the day. So that it appears as though there might be up to 15 years' notice required before a fast reactor could be built.
This seems to be a chicken and egg situation. Those who would oppose at an inquiry the building of any kind of fast reactor would no doubt be calling for evidence to show that it was fully justified, that there was a need for it. And if the need was at least 15 years ahead, it would not be very easy to make it clear. On the other hand, by the time the need has become obvious it could well be too late to get started. I suggest that this needs a good deal of thinking out, and I would be grateful for any information which my noble friend can give me later today.
Some people in this country are worried about radiation from nuclear reactors. They are worried, for example, that there may be radiation from power station programmes which will adversely affect the environment for their grandchildren. I entirely sympathise with those feelings, but I do suggest that those grandchildren, many of them not yet born, will regard energy supplied by fast reactors during their adult lives as a standard form of supply, something essential in their way of living. They will not look back kindly upon our part in this if we have been responsible for delay and inadequate provision for the future.
5.9 p.m.
Lord Kearton: My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to support the Motion moved by my noble friend Lord Halsbury. I cannot hope to match his eloquence, but then I think very few of us can. In addition, my Lords, I pray for your indulgence for what I have to say; I am speaking as one who has had some 40 years' association with atomic matters, and in fact an active association until 18 months ago. At various times I have had the privilage of serving under my noble friend Lord Plowden and my noble friend Lord Sherfield, when they were chairmen of the Atomic Energy Authority, and I think the House needs no reminding of what a vitally important and valuable contribution Lord Plowden and Lord Sherfield made in the early development of atomic energy in this country, a development to whose success the noble Lord, Lord Hinton of Bankside, has paid tribute.
To recapitulate briefly, consideration of the fast reactor goes back 30 years. The first small experimental reactor was built at Harwell in 1954, with a second following in 1955. These were of negligible power and were used to check the basic physics. To
210
explore the engineering aspects a power generating unit was built at Dounreay and brought into operation in 1959. This built up to its designed electrical power of 15 megawatts and operated until 1977 providing, as the noble Lord, Lord Hinton, reminded us, with valuable information. Before it was shut down, a series of quite spectacular experiments proved the robustness and safety of the fuel element design and also gave indications that the burn up—that is, the efficiency utilisation of the fuel in the elements—could be greatly increased over original expectations.
Using information from this Dounreay fast reactor and from the new reactor Zebra at Winfrith, a prototype fast reactor—the PFR—was established at Dounreay. I think it is fair to say that it was put at Dounreay because I advised the then Minister responsible for technology that that was a better site for it than Winfrith. This PFR had a thermal output equivalent to 600 megawatts and a matching electrical output of 250 megawatts. It was sized to give experience of component design directly applicable to a fully commercial fast reactor. The PFR was completed in 1974 and, reached full thermal power in 1977. Operation of the PFR in the past few years has fully justified the original design concepts. In many areas, design expectations are exceeded, especially in regard to safety and ease of control. I think it is absolutely indubitable that the fast reactor is the safest of all nuclear reactors and the easiest one to control.
In the work to date, problems relating to fuel life have been solved. It is true that the conventional generating plant gave rise to delays but these have been overcome. Most importantly, the reprocessing plant associated with the reactor has been operated very satisfactorily. Plutonium efficiency has been higher i than expected and recycling of plutonium has been established. As the noble Lord, Lord Hinton, said, the chief problem that remains is in the field of mechanical engineering. Some welds in the secondary sodium circuit serving the steam generating units have leaked. I differ from the noble Lord, Lord Hinton, in feeling that the causes and cures for the leaks have been identified. In fact, one of the generators which has been modified has been operating satisfactorily for almost 12 months. New steam generator tubes, which are expected to solve the difficulty completely, are being manufactured. Of course, more than one solution is being adopted as it is just as well to have more than one solution to a difficult problem.
It follows that the next logical step is to proceed with the construction of a 1,200 megawatt electrical demonstration reactor which could be the precursor of a standard commercial design. Considerable work on the design of such a reactor by contracts with industry has already been done. The design work has been progressing, incorporating all the PFR construction and operation experience, together with relevant experience from the AGR reactors. Further work on the PFR and its fuel plants will most usefully be directed towards optimisation of the design details, providing additional data on the excellent safety characteristics and in establishing performance data on components and fuel burn up beyond those used in current economic assessments. The aim would be, of course, to reduce the capital and operational costs for a demonstration fast reactor.

211
I emphasise that fast reactor work must be focused. I think that part of the delays to which the noble Lord, Lord Hinton, referred has been due to a lack of urgency among the team in the past three or four years. They have not known what their future is to be. They have not known where they were going and whether any Government will give a commitment to a fast reactor. In such circumstances things slow down. I repeat, fast reactor work must be focused. As the noble Lord, Lord Hinton, said, the current cost of the work in the AEA is about £100 million a year and I agree that this cannot be justified without having any firm prospect of a DFR to be built in the next few years.
The strategic importance of the fast reactor is not in question. Everyone has referred to it and the Government have accepted it. It is 50 times more efficient in its use of uranium than the thermal reactors currently in use. This country already has in stock 20,000 tonnes of non-fissile depleted uranium. Used in fuel reactors, this stock has a fuel equivalent for electricity generation of some 40 billion tonnes of coal—300 years at the present rate of coal production—without the traumas of coal production.
The question is, as many noble Lords have already pointed out: When will we need to realise the potential of the fast reactor? Twenty years ago the electricity supply industry was still extrapolating future demand on the basis of fast growth and assuming a doubling of demand every 8 to 10 years. I well remember the noble Lord, Lord Hinton, pointing out the obvious fallacy of this approach at an annual conference of the industry as long ago as 1962, and being met with incredulity and indignation from some of the delegates. In the event, growth of demand slowed down in the 1960s and came to an abrupt halt in 1974. It has remained on something of a plateau ever since. Six years of progressive forecasting after 1975 have in every case proved to be too optimistic.
The supply industry now foresees only a very modest shift from the present plateau until the end of the present decade, and generating capacity already exists to meet such a demand. Moreover, we currently have new oil-fired stations in mothballs. We have three long delayed AGR stations due to come into operation in the next few months. There are two new AGR stations in the course of being built, and a major coal-fired extension at Drax is under construction. Incidentally, and encouragingly, the Drax extension and the new ARG station are being built to time and within budget. This is a dramatic improvement on the experience of the 1970s and is a great tribute to the engineers of the generating board.
A PWR station, as we all know, is under inquiry and if approved will add still further to our energy base. The batch of coal-fired stations built in the 1960s, under the stimulus of the noble Lord, Lord Hinton, have a performance and reliability record which is now, after several years of effort, very satisfactory—I repeat, very satisfactory—and are expected to have a useful life of 40 years or more. It is clear that we have adequate power generating resources in being for some time ahead, even allowing for a conceivable growth in demand—in fact, enough to meet our needs to the end of the century.
212
No one can foresee what growth in electricity demand will take place in the early years of the next century, but it seems likely to be quite gentle. The need for new power stations in the next 20 years or so will be largely one of progressive replacement of today's stations. On present cost estimates, these new stations are most likely to be PWRs and availability of natural fissile uranium is likely to be adequate on a world basis for several decades. It is undoubtedly true that on a narrow view we can go slow on further development work on the fast reactor. I repeat, that is on a narrow view.
The fast reactor has certain special advantages. It is capable of acting as an incinerator both for plutonium and for long-life radioactive actinides. But it is still only relevant in the context of an accompanying thermal reactor programme. Until recently, it was thought unlikely to be competitive on a cost basis with a PWR. However, to some extent the cost conclusion is based on the uncertainty which is naturally associated with the first commercial realisation of a new technology, and the memory of past cost overruns in the nuclear industry and other high technology ventures. The pessimism, put forward as realism, could well be overstated. I, for one, believe this to be true. I also believe that if we could have had two or three people such as the noble Lord, Lord Hinton, 35 years ago, and put them on the fast reactor programme, then all his own doubts would have been quickly resolved. Then he showed an incredible capacity for overcoming the most formidable problems, and a capacity for inspiration and leadership which led to results being obtained. With similar leadership and inspiration, we could repeat the success of 25 years ago.
The key consideration for Britain must be that we remain well advanced in a technology which is absolutely crucial to our longer term future and to the world's longer term future. We have built up teams with an expertise which is second to none. The teams need refreshment by a steady injection of new blood and new enthusiasms. They are really getting tired: they have had a great deal of discouragement and they have not known where they are going. They need new blood and new enthusiasms, otherwise they will disintegrate. I really do not think that it is feasible to carry on as the noble Lord, Lord Hinton, suggests. No good people will go along and devote the best years of their lives just to treading water; they want to get somewhere.
While we should collaborate with other nations active in this field, they are currently only a handful and I do not accept that they are very far ahead. The only one which has got further in commercial realisation of the fast reactor is France with its Super-Phénix. Super-Phénix has many, many problems still to overcome which will become evident when the French continue operation. Some of the problems which have been experienced as regards the Super-Phénix we have already solved ourselves in the PFR
There is every prospect, given sufficient commitment by Governments—and I mean Governments in the plural—over a period of 20 years, that we could be the world leader in fast reactors. The chance that fusion reactors will take the place of fission reactors in any meaningful sense and in any meaningful timescale

213
is remote. I have kept in touch with work on JET at Culham and seen it very recently. It is some of the most complex and exciting work imaginable, but has served to emphasise the truly gigantic gap in this technology between experiment and commerciality.
However, a British fast reactor could be initiated now. I think that there is some confusion about what "initiating now" implies. A decision in principle to go ahead now would still mean 20 years or more of work before series ordering could begin. It would be towards the end of this decade before firm ordering of a demonstration fast reactor could actually take place. There is more engineering work to do; there is the appropriate safety case to be made; and there are the appropriate approvals to be obtained. But it would give the team an objective and a timetable and fill them with a new determination.
Once we started ordering—and a decision to go ahead today would mean that we would not start ordering much before 1990—it would take eight years or so to build and we would need several years of operating experience before replication. To meet the Government's own timescale, to meet Lord Hinton's own timescale, a firm decision to proceed is necessary now. The cost over 20 years could well be £3 billion to £4 billion—an average of £150 million to £200 million a year. This country currently spends about £25 billion a year on energy, and the Government tax take is approaching £10 billion. In this context £150 million to £200 million a year is a very small premium for the strategic prize which is there for the grasping. It is a premium which is absolutely justifiable. In supporting the Motion of the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, I urge that we do not shilly-shally. Let us press upon the Government to be bold, to press ahead now and pray that their successors will be equally resolute.
5.24 p.m.
Lord Flowers: My Lords, anyone who has visited the prototype fast reactor at Dounreay will regard that reactor as an outstanding example of modern technology. Until February of last year I was, like the noble Lord, Lord Kearton, a part-time member of the Atomic Energy Authority, and I should like to say that the staff of Dounreay never fail to impress by their competence and dedication. They have been ably supported by many other colleagues in the nuclear industry from Harwell, Risley and elsewhere, who between them have had to solve a bewildering variety of technical problems. We can have nothing but admiration for them all.
We are, therefore, grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, for offering us this debate and we are very lucky to be able so promptly to comment on the recent Government Statement. Perhaps I can best help this afternoon if I speak from the point of view of someone who was chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution at the time of its Sixth Report, Nuclear Power and the Environment. The report was not primarily about fast reactors but it raised a number of questions that were certainly relevant to fast reactor development as considered at the time of writing—that is to say, in 1976. Things have changed since then in several respects and I should like, so to speak, to update my views in so far as they are relevant to this debate. Of course, I speak
214
only for myself—since 1976 the Royal Commission has been busy with other matters under two successive chairmen and has not yet returned to nuclear power.
Let me preface my remarks by saying that the report accepted the importance of nuclear power to this country. The argument was about the way in which the nuclear power programme was being conducted and monitored, more particularly about the desirable extent of it, but especially about the way in which it was being presented to the public. We wanted to see it presented in such a way that, in almost the final words of the report:
"The ultimate aim is clear; it is to enable decisions on major questions of nuclear development to take place by explicit political process".
Shortly after that was written we had the Windscale Inquiry into the reprocessing of nuclear fuel. This led directly to a very considerable degree of public awareness of what was involved, and to a remarkable decision taken by the House of Commons itself to go ahead with the new reprocessing plant. I have never doubted that the House took the right decision.
Next month there will begin another public inquiry into the pressurised water reactor system proposed for Sizewell. We do not know what that inquiry will reveal, but I shall expect it to contribute significantly to further public awareness of the issues of nuclear power. There are examples of the type of thing the commission had in mind when we spoke of "explicit political process".
As far as the commercial demonstration fast reactor is concerned, we have been assured by successive Governments that there will be a public inquiry before it is approved, and I hope that the Minister when he replies will confirm that that would still be his Government's intention.
I should like to comment, to update myself, on three particular points: first, the safety of fast reactors; secondly, the need for them; and thirdly, the question of radioactive waste dispoal. Regarding safety, our 1976 report described in detail what might happen in a serious fast reactor accident. We concluded that commercial fast reactors:
"could scarcely be contemplated … unless … reactivity accidents can be controlled so as to prevent gross fuel vapourisation. It is generally considered that present research programmes will lead to substantially increased knowledge of these effects within the next five years".
More than five years have now passed, and before I left the Atomic Energy Authority I took particular pains to acquaint myself with the state of play on fast reactor safety. There is no doubt that great progress has been made. It is based on a number of distinct features: the accumulated operating experience of the Dounreay prototype and comparable plants abroad; the behaviour of fuel elements forced into failure modes in test rigs and reactors; and the development of powerful computer methods for predicting the behaviour of whole reactors as well as their component parts. Those are just a few of the factors that have entered into the business.
Fast reactors are in any case exceedingly stable in normal operation, as the noble Lord, Lord Kearton, has already said, and in some respects they are safer than the more usual water or graphite thermal reactors. For example, it has been shown that in some

215
fast reactor designs switching off the main coolant pumps at full power results only a slow rise of power which would have to continue unchecked for some 20 minutes before it could endanger the plant. That is only one circumstance; many others can be envisaged and no doubt will be at the promised public inquiry.
Therefore, let me say quite simply that I now believe that in principle a fast reactor can be shown to be at least as safe as the usual kinds of thermal reactor. In the last analysis, it is only in the design, construction and operation of the actual plant that the final safety assessment can be made; but that is common to all devices made by man.
So the fast reactor is safe: but, do we need it and, if so, when? That is really what this debate is about. In its 1976 report, the Royal Commission was not against the introduction of fast reactors as such, except on the safety score, which has now been settled. What concerned us were the wider implications in the long-term of a world becoming dependent for its energy supply upon international trade in fissile materials, because these materials can also be used for the production of weapons. We believe that insufficient attention had been devoted to this by Government and by public alike. That is why we recommended that:
"There should be no commitment to a large nuclear programme including fast reactors until the issues have been fully appreciated and weighed in the light of public understanding."
These issues were central to the Windscale inquiry and I imagine that they would be raised again at Sizewell. In between there has been the massive International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Evaluation Report conducted by the International Atomic Energy and published by them in Vienna in 1980. This contains an exhaustive study of the link between civil nuclear power and the proliferation of nuclear weapons capability. The matter demands constant vigilance, but it is now in the public arena, and it is being taken into account in decision-taking by Governments.
We are also concerned that so much was being spent on research and development for the nuclear industry—especially on fast reactors—and so little in comparison on energy conservation and the development of alternative sources and uses of energy. I have to say that if we were meeting today I think we should still be concerned about that. It sometimes seems as though the Government are doing the least they decently can, especially on energy conservation.
Fast reactors are required only when the amount of uranium—if burnt in thermal reactors—is unable to sustain the electricity production demanded of it. But for reasons that have already been given so clearly and, if I may say so, so movingly by the noble Lord, Lord Hinton of Bankside, it may take as much as 20 years until we can contemplate serial ordering. It will take 20 years beyond that before the uranium requirement for the nuclear programme as a whole drops significantly. It will not happen overnight. Until then, the plutonium fuel required by the fast reactors has largely still to come from the reprocessing of spent fuel from thermal reactors. A commercial programme of fast reactors therefore has to be built up gradually and does not really make sense except in the context of a large nuclear programme, much larger than we currently envisage for this country.
216
Let me say, however—and here I agree with the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury—that I think it would be very unwise in 1982 to assume that we definitely shall not need to begin the commercial ordering of fast reactor stations early in the next century. In the past 10 years we have seen the price of oil soar for reasons beyond our control. We have seen a troubled coal industry in danger of pricing itself out of the market. We have seen political interference with supplies of enriched uranium to certain countries, and it has warned us of the dangers of a uranium equivalent of OPEC. There may appear over the next 10 years reasons for a fast reactor programme that a mere projection of economic forecasts will not disclose.
On balance, I support the Government's Statement as far as it goes. They wish to continue the development programme at Dounreay and they wish to explore the potential for collaborating with other countries. To wish to share with other countries the burdens of such a project is absolutely right, but it is a bit late still merely to be talking about it. We have been talking about it for quite a long time, but our possible partners in Europe in the meanwhile have moved somewhat ahead.
It seems to me that there are three possible courses of action. As a result of the programme that is now to be drawn up, the Government can make an early decision on the commercial scale demonstration, with or without international support; or they can decide that to develop fast reactors any further in the present economic climate is unjustifiable; or they can continue the practice of the last several years and simply take no decision at all. The last, in my view, would be very much the worst of the three. It would at the very least J be an insult to a splendid team of technologists who should not be left hanging about any longer. I hope that the nuclear industry will soon succeed in finding a meaningful project with a willing partner abroad. If they fail to do so within a reasonable time, I hope that; we shall have a chance to examine in this House what choices then remain.
Finally, and briefly, I should like to say a few words about radioactive waste disposal. In the 1976 report we said:
"There should be no commitment to a large programme of nuclear fission power until it has been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that a method exists to ensure the safe containment of long-lived, highly radioactive waste for the indefinite future."
We were talking not about short-term safe storage of these dangerous wastes, but about their eventual removal from the accessible environment by disposal into geological formations. Because we saw the fast reactor as something that would only be needed as part of a large nuclear programme, this recommendation on waste naturally became attached to the development of fast reactors.
We hoped that we could spur the Government into much needed action on various aspects of waste disposal. Both the present Government and their predecessors met us on many points, but between them we have now got into a ludicrous position where it is largely the environmentalists themselves who have prevented research into the properties of suitable geological formations deep below the surface of the earth. That research would have involved a drilling programme and would have taken 10 or 20 years

217
before a choice of disposal site could have been made and the building of a facility begun. That would have been in time to cope with the waste from the expansion of the nuclear programme which many envisage early in the next century.
Now, however, the research programme has been halted in spite of the strongest advice to the contrary from the Government's own Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee. Apparently the Government are content to rely upon the research programmes of other countries. Unfortunately, it is the properties of actual British rock formations that we need to investigate and, for this, foreign research does not help. I beg the Government to consider whether some way could not be found to allow the Natural Environment Research Council to continue its programme of research into the properties of suitable geological formations. It will have to be done before we can responsibly contemplate a greatly expanded nuclear power programme, whether or not it includes fast reactors.
5.40 p.m.
Lord Bowden: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Kings Norton, who was to have spoken next, has most unexpectedly had to leave the Chamber and has asked me to speak in his stead. First, I should like to thank the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, for initiating this debate which has led to the profoundly important speeches which have already been made in this House. I was tremendously impressed by the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hinton of Bankside, if he will allow me to say so, under whose lash the best reactors in this country were built. Nothing to compare with the achievements of the noble Lord, Lord Hinton, can be found anywhere in this country. We owe him a great deal, and it is wonderful to see him restored to health and contributing once more to a debate on this theme.
I have been profoundly impressed by much that I have heard, but there are one or two points I should like to make. The first is on this vexatious question of the safety of nuclear power. It is notoriously true to say that it has been very safe so far. Nevertheless, in America when the nuclear power programme was started the Congress of the United States felt it incumbent upon itself to pass the so-called Price/Anderson Act which, as I understand it, deprives the ordinary citizens of the United States of their normal common law rights to sue for damage in case of a nuclear accident. Instead of being able to sue the people who own, or build, the station which has caused the accident, they are obliged to seek recompense from a fund of 550 million dollars, established jointly by the Government and by the industry. Out of that the whole of the damages must be paid however great they may be, however culpable the owner, or builder, of the plant may have been, and however grievous the damages which may have been suffered by individuals.
This Act was passed before the nuclear power programme in America could start. It was renewed a couple of years ago because they still feel that without it they dare not proceed to build nuclear power stations. This astonished me when I discovered it. I was even more astonished when I read the Energy Bill
218
now before the House of Commons which seems—and this is the point I should like the Minister to explain—to insist that we have a similar limit, which was being raised by the new Bill from £2 million under the old Act to £5 million now for the total damages which may be awarded after any nuclear accident, however grievous it may have been and however much it may have been the fault of some individual or contractor.
If this is so, arguments about the safety of nuclear power ring rather hollow. The Americans passed most complicated legislation, and when I came to read through the Bill before the House of Commons I was baffled by the fact that much of it is derivative and cannot be understood without looking at all the previous legislation on the subject, and this I have not had the time to do. Perhaps the Minister could help us, because I believe it is important. If in fact we are so alarmed at the possible consequences of nuclear accident, the public ought to know it because it would have considerable influence on the course of the inquiry to be held shortly in Sizewell.
My next point is that all pronouncements on the Government's policy, and all pronouncements made by the CEGB about its programme, seem to have been made without any understanding on the part of those who made them of the fact that some types of reactor always work well and others always work badly. When I say work well or work badly I mean that those which work well are available when they should be, when power is required they deliver the power, and they do so without any trouble. On the other hand, some of the other types are not habitually available and do not work when they are expected to.
The nucleonics magazines publish tables every year of what they call the availability of the reactors of the world. In the last table I have, dated last March, there were 131 reactors altogether which range all the way from the very good to those in Three Mile Island which have not worked at all. The first six on the list were Canadian. The best the Americans could produce was 10th. It turns out that our own reactors are very near the bottom of the list, with the one exception of the Hunterston reactor which is a much smaller one that the big ones in the table, which are all of 500 megawatts and above. One single good Canadian reactor will, in the course of a year, generate twice as much power as one of the gas-cooled reactors we have in this country, even if they are supposedly of the same size. This of course has a dramatic effect on the cost of the power they produce.
The next question we have to ask is: how reliable are these new fast breeder reactors that we are considering? The noble Lord, Lord Hinton, has told us that over the last year or so the best that we have been able to do is about 10 per cent. of total time. Any reactor working at that rate is a very doubtful asset value to anybody. I would plead with the Government that they should consider in their future policy the basic question: how well do the reactors they are proposing to build work, or how well have they worked in the past, and how well can they be expected to work in the future?
The best of all the reactors in the world worked—I think that the noble Lord, Lord Hinton, if he were

219
here, would be surprised by this figure—for 97 per cent. of total time. This is much better than any coal-fired station in the world. It suggests that the best of the Canadian nuclear furnaces, if I can so describe them, are far more reliable than any coal fire that has ever yet been built in the history of the world. This is an unbelievable achievement, and it reflects tremendously well on the great care that the Canadians have taken over the perfection of the detail on which the success of their reactors depends.
At this point I have to diverge slightly because I come on to the question of the requirement for the fast breeder in terms of the exhaustion of the uranium supplies of the world. There is one alternative policy which I think we should consider seriously, and it is this: we do not have to stick with uranium. We can in fact use thorium. There are vast supplies of thorium in the world. It can be used in a reactor in much the same sort of way as uranium, although I shall have to describe slight differences in a moment. If it were so used, the total available power which can be produced using thorium and uranium would increase manyfold, probably hundreds of times in fact, and this is a possibility which has not yet seriously been considered.
We say that there is vast potential for power in the tonnes of uranium we have in this country. This is quite true. But then, if it really came to the point, we could take the granite on which half of Scotland is built and grind it up and produce uranium supplies. The energy in a tonne of granite in the form of uranium is often bigger than the energy in a tonne of coal. There is more uranium to be had than we think there is if we are prepared to take not very good ores; but there is an enormous and almost unlimited amount of power to be had by the use of thorium which can be burned in appropriately designed reactors.
Now I must come to the duality of my theme, which is that these Canadian reactors—the so-called CANDU, of which I have spoken to your Lordships before—can be adapted relatively easily to the use of a mixture of thorium and uranium. This has been established in principle and would be done were it not for the fact that for the moment their reactors are so good that they see no reason for diverting from their present policy, which is to use ordinary unenriched uranium. But if uranium became very expensive, they know how to take their present design of reactor and adapt it to use a mixture of thorium and uranium, which would then provide the world with all the power it would need for many hundreds of years.
I have been so impressed by this that I have talked, among other people—I hope I shall be forgiven for saying this—to the BBC, who sent a delegation to Canada (they arrived back the day before yesterday) and they are to produce a programme in the "Horizon" series, of which your Lordships may be aware, on these reactors and their potential. I urge your Lordships to make a point of looking at that programme—I think it is to go out in January—because they have a great many pictures and have had some interesting conversations with the Canadian engineers who have been responsible for the development of these extraordinarily successful
220
reactors, along with the possible development of the same reactors, using a mixture of thorium and uranium, should uranium become in short supply.
It is not possible to discuss the matter in detail, but I wish to stress that there is an alternative to the fast breeder, and I feel that I must briefly mention the history of the fast breeder. It was first suggested by Enrico Fermi soon after he had made the first pile in the squash courts at Chicago. He remarked in 1946 that the first country to develop a really successful fast breeder would establish an enormously important economic advantage. The very first power ever generated by nuclear fuel was from a small fast breeder reactor in about 1949, which, as far as I remember, produced enough power to light four 25-watt lamps; trivial, but it was the very first time that nuclear power was ever used to generate electricity.
People have been struggling with the problem of the fast breeder ever since, but progress has been disappointingly slow because the techniques have proved to be extremely difficult to master, most particularly because of the associated problem of processing the fuel, which has been expensive and often impractical. The details may be confidential, but I would ask the Minister to give what figures he has of the actual cost of reprocessing the fuel that comes out of Dounreay before it can be put back in. Is that cost normally added in to the total cost of the power which it generates and, if so, how does the bill then come out?
It is known that the capital cost will be excessive, but will the cost of providing the fuel also become excessive? Sir Walter Marshall's last paper on the use of the fast breeder suggested that it was not to be used for breeding at all but merely for burning up surplus plutonium in order to get rid of it. The fear is that we may have a plutonium dominated economy—that plutonium may be available by the tonne—though there will have to be about twice as much undergoing processing as will be in the breeder at any given moment. The total amount of plutonium needed to supply one fast breeder is probably more than our whole nuclear plant programme is now capable of producing.
For that reason, I feel it most important that we work out the total economics of the situation, including the cost of the plutonium, the cost of keeping the plutonium reprocessed and the very large capital cost of the fast breeder, which, of course, cannot now be assessed. I would only say that that is a very difficult calculation. It has been under consideration for years, and nobody has done it.
We could use an entirely new source of fuel to produce much more power than could ever be produced by the fast breeder. We could adapt a reactor which now exists, one which we could copy, and which has proved more reliable than any other reactor in the history of the world. I beg the Government to contemplate the idea, and they might be prepared to collaborate with the Canadians in developing and producing this alternative system.
5.56 p.m.
Lord Sherfield: My Lords, first I wish to join other noble Lords who preceded me in thanking the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, for his initiative in moving this

221
Motion. Since the Government announced their policy about fast reactors in another place last week there must inevitably be some feeling that the debate is taking place in a stable from which the horse has bolted. But the terms of the Statement are such that a good deal of clarification would be welcomed, and it is possible to infer that the horse has not finally and irretrievably disappeared over the horizon. If I cover some points which have already been raised, I shall at least try to be brief.
As many noble Lords have pointed out, this country was first in the field with a fast reactor. I well remember my first visit to Dounreay, in 1960, to visit the experimental DFR. With my inexpert eye, I wondered whether such a complicated box of tricks would ever be got to work satisfactorily. There were indeed many teething troubles, but it did work and provided a most valuable test facility. Indeed, the decision to build the DFR in 1955 was an act of courage, both technological and political, and, as the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, said, the noble Lord, Lord Hinton, has a large share of the credit. Since then, the fast reactor and attendant fuel cycle programmes have been outstanding examples of successful technical development, and a corpus of experience in every aspect of fast reactor technology, second to none, has been built at Dounreay. Since then, too, decision-making in the civil nuclear power programme has, more often than not, been indecisive.
The prototype fast reactor, designed and built in the light of experience with the DFR, and with the object of testing at full scale some of the key components of the fast reactor, has provided most useful operating experience. It is true that there has been trouble with the steam generators. The noble Lord, Lord Hinton, dealt with that point in his usual masterly fashion. But why is it, I ask as a layman, that the main troubles with nuclear power stations seem to occur in the steam raising rather than in the nuclear side of the plant?
The noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, stressed that this work is situated in Caithness, an area where nuclear energy and the presence of nuclear facilities have been, and evidently still are, positively welcomed and highly regarded. This, in my opinion, shows a practical good sense rare in other areas of the country. In Dounreay, therefore, a national asset of unique value has been created, and it is of the greatest importance that this asset should be put to use and not dissipated. The Government's statement leaves the question of which of these alternatives will be selected, to use an American idiom, "hanging".
Energy and resource forecasts are notoriously unreliable, and the nuclear industry has suffered from this unreliability more than most. Twenty years ago there was serious talk of commercial fast reactors being in operation in the 'eighties. Well, the economics of energy demand, and the course which the development of civil nuclear power has taken, have undoubtedly put off by a couple of decades the optimistic—though perhaps in the surrounding circumstances, not wildly optimistic—predictions of the early 'sixties.
In our recent history there are some awful warnings of costly technical projects undertaken primarily for political or prestige reasons, which have been
222
subsequently found to be disappointing, to say the least. So there is a prima facie case for the decision to postpone the construction of a demonstration commercial fast reactor.
Nor is this country alone in coming to that kind of conclusion. I returned yesterday from the United States, where the decision to proceed with the Clinch River plant in Tennessee is balanced on a political knife edge. The changed economic climate for nuclear power, and the escalating cost caused the appropriation for the reactor to be approved in the Congress last September by only a single vote. Now the issue is coming up once more in the Congress. There are, of course, other factors beside cost at work in this case: environmental pressures, technical reservations about the design, and so on. Incidentally, if the project is halted by lack of funds, the Americans may be more willing to entertain proposals for collaboration on fast reactor trechnology in the near future. But essentially, it is the energy demand outlook as much as environmental pressure that is holding up, or is likely to hold up, nuclear projects all over the United States, and in other countries.
Yet I have a nagging feeling that, even if the reasons are respectable, we may once more be following the wrong path in civil power development. I have thought myself for a long time that instead of spending so much time, energy, and human resources in trying to introduce a pressurised water reactor into our system, it might have been a shrewder move to press on with the fast reactor programme and make sure of maintaining and improving our position as the main repository of that technology. It is far too late to suggest going back on that decision; it is water over the dam. But the concern remains about the degree to which the fast reactor programme will suffer.
Much is made—and it has been made again in this debate—with good reason, of the view that commercial fast reactors will not be required in series until the next century. But there will not be any ordering of a CFR, singly or in series, until a demonstration reactor has been built and tested; the noble Lord, Lord Hinton of Bankside, said for two years, though it might well be three or four. The lead time for this kind of project is lengthening year by year. This point has been made two or three times in this debate, and I make absolutely no apology for making it again.
Public inquiries, choice of site, the jumping up and down of anti-nuclear lobbies, stretch out time into what must appear like eternity to those who are working on a project. So maybe there is not so much leeway before a decision to proceed with the CFR should be taken. Much work has already been done on a reference design of a CFR, and the impact on the nuclear industry is an important factor. There is some doubt in my mind about how long an effective and worthwhile development programme can be carried forward without actually ordering a new plant in this, or in some collaborating, country. A year or two may not matter much, but how much longer can a substantive decision be postponed? The problem has been thrown back to the Atomic Energy Authority. I hope that the recommendations that it comes up with will be made known and be the subject of debate before any final decisions are taken.

223
The question of collaboration with other countries in this technology has already been raised in this debate. It is an important one and involves decisions of considerable political difficulty. I for one will understand if in his reply the Minister may not be able to say much more about this matter.
6.6 p.m.
Lord Hankey: My Lords, we have heard a remarkable variety of expertise in this debate. I find it difficult to believe that any legislative Chamber in the world can equal it. It is just under a quarter of a century since I first visited Dounreay, and the world's first fast breeder reactor was finished and went critical not so long afterwards. As we have heard, it successfully fed electricity into the grid, and was most valuable for scientific experiments. Later I visited Dounreay to see the 250 megawatt prototype reactor, and I have been there again since. Dounreay is an installation of extraordinary interest, when one takes into account the reprocessing facilities and engineering and research facilities that are connected with it.
When the price of oil went up dramatically in the 1970s and inflation hit the coal industry, the North of Scotland continued to enjoy cheap electricity for some time, because the nuclear plants at Dounreay were such efficient producers. That underlines one of my main points. The fast breeder reactor consumes the by-products of our Magnox and advanced gas-cooled reactors; namely, Uranium 238 and plutonium.
We have heard much about the dangers of moving into the plutonium era. We are in it already; do not make any mistake about it. But the plutonium produced in the fast breeder reactor is not weapon grade plutonium 239, but is mostly plutonium 240, and is not open to the same dangers. It is certainly a colossal bonus that our brilliant scientists and engineers—and I especially want to mention my noble friend Lord Hinton of Bankside in this connection—have invented a way of burning up our large stock of these by-products, which are now seen to have an immense potential for power production. I am so very glad that Mr. Lawson's statement of 29th November made much of this aspect of the matter.
So here we have a huge potential bonus for United Kingdom industry, whose productivity and ability to compete depend so largely on cheap power. I do not think that we are justified in being sure about the movements of oil prices or even coal prices in the future. I think it a very good thing that we now have invented this alternative source of power, and I consider that it would be very unwise to fail to develop it. But we must carry the work forward now and finish the job.
First, we must solve the remaining engineering difficulties in the steam generating side at Dounreay. This country has some of the best expertise in the world on generating steam. When one starts to probe the difficulties one finds that they appear to come mostly from leaks in welds. I cannot believe that if we make some effort to devise a new steam generating plant that is less difficult to weld, and with which more trouble is taken, we shall on our engineering side be unable to solve the difficulties. This is not the time
224
when we should lose confidence and fail to complete what we have already built up with such an immense amount of genius, time and, for that matter, money.
I have heard mention of the figures of £23 million and two years for doing this job. I do not think that is very much when you look at the enormous sums of money the Government are spending; and in the light of the long lead times which have been mentioned, two years will be very well spent doing this. I urge the Government to make sure that orders are given for this to be done forthwith, and to get on with it.
I cannot possibly hide my really burning resentment that successive Governments have let this wonderful, successful project at Dounreay drag on for so long. We have heard some evidence in this debate that the people there have not received the necessary support, encouragement, motivation and target-timing which would have kept this project moving, and I think that is very unfortunate. Every businessman knows that if you delay for years finishing a projected building or factory, the cost mounts alarmingly. Indeed, it mounts at compound rates of interest, and at the rates of interest we have experienced recently that is quite something.
At Dounreay, I think that our failure to press on has greatly discouraged the brilliant staff we have there; and according to my information some of them have already drifted away to our competitors. From all I hear, I do not believe we can hold the remaining staffs together to carry this great work forward if the real intention behind the Government's Statement in another place on 29th November is to put off without any precise date construction of a real commercial prototype fast reactor. Incidentally, I think we need one of at least 1300 or 1500 megawatts; I will say why presently.
I do not think we ought to lose time while we negotiate with our competitors. Our competitors are being quite active. They have every interest to keep us dithering about while they get on with the job. I do not like the last part of Mr. Lawson's statement. I have been a civil servant too long. It is that sort of statement which usually smells of dithering about. I really do not believe we shall get other countries to pay for Dounreay, and I therefore think there is no alternative but for us to get on with it.
This brings me to my next point, which is that, unless we do get on with it, British industry is going to lose what remaining edge it has on its competitors in this field. The French are very busy. Their first fast breeder reactor, Rhapsodie, at Caderache in southern France, started in 1967. It has been stopped down. Their second, called Phénix—158 megawatts, at Marcoule in the Rhone Valley—has had trouble in the heat exchangers (where did we hear that before?) but is due to resume full power at the end of this year. It has been pretty successful. The French are already well advanced with their third stage, which is a commercial prototype, the Super-Phénix. That is going to be 1200 megawatts at Creys Malville in the Rhone Valley. It is expected to start full operation in 1986,but the first section may very well go critical in 1984.
The French are very interested in nuclear power, and I happen to know that it was the hope of making a "killing" in this field which was one of the supporting

225
reasons why they joined the Common Market at its inception. They are rather closely associated with the Germans, whose fast breeder reactor, the SRN-300, near Karlsruhe, with Belgian and Dutch participation, has taken much longer and cost more to construct than was expected. The Japanese have had an experimental fast breeder reactor operating succesfully at Ibaraki, north of Tokyo, since 1978. They are well experienced already with nuclear power; and, indeed, they bought a power reactor from us about 20 years ago which I believe has been very successful and is still operating. The Japanese have also recently approved a plan to build a protoype FBR of 285 megawatts at Tsuruga, in western Japan, and I understand they have been in touch with us about that.
My noble friend Lord Sherfield, who knows so much about this, having been head of the AEA and also Ambassador in Washington, has mentioned the United States project at Clinch River for a 375 megawatt fast breeder reactor. For some reason this was held up by President Carter, but it is now to go ahead in spite of the small majority in Congress. The Americans will put enormous energy and money into this if they are not stopped by Congress, and I do not think they are going to be left behind for long. President Reagan, according to my information, has "made its expeditious completion a major policy objective".
The Russians, who do not do things by halves, have a fast breeder reactor operating at Beloyarsk, in the Urals, at a power of 600 megawatts—more than any of us, your Lordships will notice—and they already have a project for one of 1600 megawatts. I am told the Russians are having difficulties but I do not know the nature of them.
So, to conclude this part of my remarks, I say to the Government: are you going to let all these other people overtake us? We were first in the field a quarter of a century ago; and we still have some of the best technicians and engineers in this field. Will Mrs. Thatcher's Government let them down, like some of the previous Governments have, by not pressing forward? For goodness' sake—and I say this as an experienced diplomat—do not lose time on account of international co-operation at this stage, in hopes of getting someone else to pay. Use the smallest proportion of our huge income from oil to press Dounreay forward.
The Government Statement of 29th November looks forward to a series development of commercial fast breeder reactors in the earlier part of the next century. I want to say that this is exactly why I think we should get on with the next stage at Dounreay now. This has been mentioned already by a number of speakers. The lead times for these very advanced installations are really very long, 10 to 15 years, allowing for constructional and other technological problems that are sure to need solving as we go ahead. It is not just a matter of multiplying dimensions by 5 or 10. If we are to have any hope of being in the lead at the end of the century, I am sure we must go ahead now with a commercial prototype of at least 1250 or 1300 megawatts, as soon as we have cleared up the remaining steam generation difficulty in our existing installations—and I refuse to believe that our engineering industry cannot make better steam
226
generating plants to overcome this difficulty. Then, if there is to be any international co-operation, which I should certainly like to see, we shall be moving forward into the lead, where I think we ought to be.
Finally, I want to say a word about export potential. I quite see that doubts have been expressed about the probable need for electricity in the last part of his century. I have often found that economists tend to look at the present situation and to extrapolate from that. I do not think that, starting from the incredibly low stage to which all our economies have been reduced, this is a very good moment to go extrapolating anything. I find it impossible to believe that Governments will be able to tolerate continued unemployment and waste of resources on this scale, and I am sure that with international co-operation they will be able to find a way of moving the economy of the world forward. Indeed, I really think they have to do that; and if they do it, then it is quite certain that there will be a larger need for electricity. So I personally, very humbly as an economist, do not accept the extrapolations which have been mentioned, and I think we should be cautious about them.
This bring me to my last point. The best and, perhaps, only hope for this country's prosperity, I believe, is now to build up the new industries where we have the edge on some other nations. No one believes more than I do in international co-operation in economic matters. I was the last official chairman of OEEC and British delegate at OECD altogether for over five years. But it is no good letting other nations overtake us in industrial technology. Industry needs a steady lead and encouragement from Government; and successive Governments have to-ed and fro-ed and dithered about over our nuclear power programme. They have been worried by the ecologists and the environmentalists, who seem to me to prefer spoiling the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels, a thing which none of the reactors is going to do. Governments have been afraid of offending the miners although Mr. Scargill does not mind whom he offends, so far as I can see. They have been backtracking on investment money and playing yo-yo with interest rates.
It is time that Governments put industry first. Industry needs steady conditions, steady encouragement, certainty that they will get help when they need it and to have a firm look into the future. Without the income from prosperous industry, we will never really cure inflation; we shall get only a low rate of inflation due to depression. It is important to keep the monetary equations under control, as the Government do, but there will be no real cure of inflation without development of the supply side of our economy.
Now here we have a new industry with very high, advanced technology, even now not far from having a lead over other countries. Fast breeder reactors will completely transform the economics of nuclear power production in this country. We do not need to order any more uranium for them. It does not matter, in my opinion, what the price of uranium does; although it will matter to other parts of the industry. A commercial prototype at Dounreay will, if developed now—and, I repeat, now—help us very much in the late 1990s, as oil production in the North Sea begins to decline and to become more expensive. I am sure that

227
it is right on all grounds to press the Government to go ahead as soon as possible with the next stage for the fast breeder reactor programme.
6.23 p.m.
Viscount Thurso: My Lords, like every other noble Lord who has spoken today, I should like to start by thanking the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, for bringing this extremely important subject before us at such an important moment in the history of atomic energy in this country and allowing us this opportunity of discussing it in your Lordships' House. It is giving all of us in your Lordships' House a chance of hearing what has amounted to a symposium on the fast reactor system by some of the finest and best-informed scientific brains in the country and, I would venture to say, in the whole world. We must be grateful for that as well as for the opportunity which is given to mere laymen like myself to have our two-pen'orth in the same important discussion.
I should like if I may to note one or two points which have already been brought up in the debate and comment upon them, and in particular from the noble Earl, Lord Mansfield's speech. He noted that capital costs of fast reactors were higher than those of thermal reactors. He used the phrase "much higher". I draw the attention of the Government to a very recent report by Westinghouse, the makers of the pressurised water reactor, who have come to the conclusion that fast reactors are only likely to cost from between 6 per cent. and 8 per cent. more than pressure water reactors. I think that this is an important report because it shows that its competitors at least regard the fast reactor system as being a very viable system and one which is not nearly so prone to high capital cost as people originally thought it was.
I am delighted that this debate brought into our midst the noble Lord, Lord Hinton of Bankside. I regard him as my mentor and tutor in everything that has to do with atomic energy ever since I attended his famous lecture in the Town Hall at Thurso. I should like to give him the credit for the fact that, as has been noted by two noble Lords, the noble Lords, Lord Campbell and Lord Sherfield, Caithness does like Dounreay and the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority—because he it was who set the stamp upon how Dounreay established itself in our midst. He it was who by being open with the people, by telling them exactly what to expect and then by giving them exactly what he predicted, won our confidence not only in the industry but in the people who worked in it. I should like to give him that credit and my thanks and the thanks of the people of Caithness for what he did.
I thought important this call by the noble Lord, Lord Kearton, speaking as someone with wide experience in industry as well as an intimate knowledge of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, to focus and give a sense of urgency to the fast reactor project. I think that this is extremely important. He said that we must refesh our development teams and give the CDFR the go ahead now. I feel after hearing other speakers reassuring us on the safety and agreeing with the Government on the advantages of the fast
228
reactor system that we really are arriving at a consensus which asks for this type of action.
On 15th July this year I asked Her Majesty's Government whether they had reached any conclusion as a result of a review that they had been conducting into fast reactors. The noble Earl, Lord Mansfield, replied that his right honourable friend would make a Statement after the Summer Recess. This, indeed, I assume is the Statement which was made by the Secretary of State for Energy in answer to a Question in another place. The Statement, I am afraid, appeared to me as though it had been drafted for him by the script team of "Yes, Minister". I am therefore again very grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, for giving me an opportunity to try to probe below the surface of the carefully chosen phrases of the Minister's Statement. First, I should like to draw your Lordships' attention to the beginning of the Statement where it says:
"The Government has completed its review of the fast reactor"—
Good! This must surely mean now that the Government require no further probes, no further facts, no further questions to be asked, in order to be able to make up their mind, evolve a policy and act. They may, of course, require some urging from us, but that is another point.
The Statement then goes on to reiterate the salient features of the fast reactor system which make it such an important and desirable energy producing system. These are facts which many noble Lords who have taken part in the debate today had frequently brought to the Government's attention and some of them have felt it necessary even to draw the Government's attention to them again today to underline them. I am delighted that Her Majesty's Government now accept these facts and even espouse them. I am pleased, too, that at last Her Majesty's Government have noticed that we in this country are in the world forefront of development and technology through the work being done at Dounreay. There in the PFR we have demonstrated the feasibility of potential of the fast reactor system and shown how to handle its associated fuel cycle. Then—hooray!—the Government have noticed that as a result we are in an excellent position to carry the programme forward and to prepare for the introduction of the commercial fast breeder reactors. Alas! there then follows a piece of pure "Yes, Minister". Failing completely to comprehend what they have said in their opening eulogy, they make the Minister say:
"when these are needed to augment our thermal reactor programme."
It is not a question of using the fast reactor system to augment the thermal reactor system that we should be considering. It is a question of using it to complement and then supersede thermal reactors. It is a question of using fast reactors to supersede obsolete, ancient and polluting fossil fuel plants, and providing the new electricity generating plants which will be needed to put the people back to work when finally the world climbs out of recession.
I have explained all this many times to your Lordships and possibly at the greatest length on 28th February 1980, during the debate on fast reactors which was initiated by the noble Lord, Lord

229
Northfield. Nothing in the Minister's Statement shows me to have been wrong. Indeed, it seems that after a lapse of nearly three years the Minister is now able to swallow what I said. At this point in the Statement the "Yes, Minister" scriptwriters seem to have taken over completely. They go on to suggest a piece of pure Parkinson's Law. They make the unfortunate Government decide to instruct Sir Peter Hirsh, British Nuclear Fuels Limited and the National Nuclear Corporation to put their not inconsiderable heads together on how to make the work expand to fill the time available for its completion. They do this on a totally false premise contained in a following paragraph of the Statement. They assume that there is lots of time because the series ordering phase will not begin until the earlier part of the next century and that therefore there is more time, as they put it, for development work.
I wish to question this whole premise, especially in the light of the last paragraph of the Statement. That last paragraph tells us that the Government are having exploratory discussions with other countries to establish whether a satisfactory basis for international co-operation can be worked out. Indeed, the Government enjoined the UKAEA to take into account the possibility of international co-operation in formulating their advice and their plans. What they do not seem to realise is that such discussions will be totally meaningless unless we can show that this country has made a real commitment to developing a fast reactor system and is not merely paying lip service to it. We cannot rely in this matter—as, tragically, we have relied too often in other fields—on our past glories and successes. In the matter of power generation from fast reactors, it is what we are doing today and what we have before our design teams for tomorrow that counts.
It is a sinister fact that nowhere in the Statement can the Government bring themselves to make any specific mention of CDFR. There is only talk of the series ordering phase. Yet CDFR has to be built and run for 10 successful years before a series ordering phase can be confidently undertaken. Or am I wrong? Have the Government decided that PFR is so successful that they can jump straight from PFR to series ordering without any full-scale tests at all? I doubt it. I think that the Government are hoping that we may not have noticed in our relief that some sort of future has been guaranteed to Dounreay, even though it only appears to be the administration of Parkinson's Law. Other countries will notice, though, and if we come to the discussion table without a commitment to CDFR we shall cut little ice, obtain little co-operation and slip further and further behind the French and indeed the other European countries with which they are co-operating already.
The time-scale to be ready for series ordering has been set out variously by other speakers. I am afraid I am going to give your Lordships my own version of it. First, there is the "marriage" phase: here we enter into active and meaningful discussions with a country or countries with which we seek to collaborate. To be meaningful this phase has to be marked by at least a commitment to design and then to build CDFR. That
230
phase would occupy a minimum of one year, but more probably two years, before the next phase could begin.
The second phase, I call the "development" phase, the first half of which would be spent on the design of CDFR and on the necessary public inquiries. This half would take a minimum of five years and more likely seven years. Then would follow the second half of the design phase—the actual building of CDFR. That would take a minimum of eight years but, as experience has sadly shown us, it is more likely to take 10 years to complete. Then would follow the final phase, before series ordering could begin. That I would call the "testing" phase, which requires at least five years, even if all goes well, but more realistically ten years.
My Lords, if you add up all these phases you will find an absolute minimum time-scale of 19 years, but a more realistic time-scale of 29 years, before series ordering can be contemplated even if we start with a full commitment tomorrow. If you add 19 or 29 to 1983, you get 2002 or 2012. The first date is in the early part of the 21 st century and the second date is in the middle of the first quarter of the 21st century. Surely this is the "earlier part" referred to in the Statement.
Finally, I want to say a quick word about design teams, about our technological know-how and how these are affected by Government decisions, or the lack of them. Not all technological know-how either is, or can be, written down and recorded. Much of it is contained in the minds of people and is brought out and used in design discussions where there is continuity of design progress and of operation. This is where the French have been so lucky or so clever—however you care to look at it—because as a result of a clear Government commitment, they have moved smooothly through the phases of design, development and operation, first of Rapsodie, then of Phenix and then into Super-Phénix. That is why they have now caught and perhaps have passed us.
However, in spite of the doubts which the Government have allowed to accumulate around the fast reactor, there still exist at Dounreay scientists, technicians and others who worked on the design of the original DFR, who then had a hand in its operation and went on to work on the design of PFR and are still working on the operation of PFR. These people are nearing the end of their careers and are available now to pass on their invaluable experience to a design team working on CDFR. It is not the big problems which will be covered by their know-how: these will have been well documented and recorded. It is the mass of little problems which arise during design and construction that their know-how could help to avoid. Their know-how could thus help to avoid the unnecessary delays and setbacks, which are what cost money.
If we do not use these people soon, it will be too late. Much of our technological lead will just vanish and we shall slip a whole rung down the ladder in comparison with our rivals. Without these people and the continuity of development using their knowledge, we shall become less and less attractive as partners in a fast reactor development, and the value of our work and research will simply melt away like snow under the rays of the rising sun. Therefore, I ask Her Majesty's Government to give us a real Statement, not

231
a clever script. I ask the Minister, and through him the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, to give us a commitment to CDFR, and the continuity of development without which our so-called lead in fast reactor technology is merely a mirage. In short, I ask him to put his money where his mouth is, and to have the courage to believe in his own eulogy of the fast reactor system.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, before the noble Viscount sits down, may I ask whether he meant my noble friend Lord Trefgarne or my noble friend Lord Mansfield?
Viscount Thurso: My Lords, I assumed that the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, would actually speak. But I beg the noble Lord's pardon and I thank him very much for putting me right. I did not mean the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne.
6.41 p.m.
Lord Ross of Marnock: My Lords, the House and, indeed, the country, are indebted to the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, for initiating this debate, not only for recognising the timely need for it, but for his ability for, at once, enlightening and entertaining, so that even simple minds like mine can take in some of the abstruse technical matters which have been concerning us today.
I could not help thinking as the debate has gone on, and as one authoritative scientist or ex-civil servant succeeded another, that I was listening to people who used to advise us as to what we should do. I began to wonder about the advice we had, because there has been a different emphasis. But there have been two clear points of agreement: first, about the vital importance of fast reactor technology and the need to go on with it; and, secondly, about the value of what has been done at Dounreay.
It is amazing how that place gathers so much loyalty to itself. When it was first selected in, I think, the mid-1950s as the site for the FDR, there was no great competition for it—"Take it away, as far as possible from London. Get it out of the way." But there it was welcomed, there it put down roots and there it has built up what is probably one of the most unique communities in the whole country. Locals there referred to the people at Dounreay as the "atomics", but it is incredible how that sturdy native population has knitted in with the incoming scientists. One lot is as proud as the other, and all are loyal to that part of the country. They have every reason for pride, for by 1962 they were supplying electricity into the grid.
Then came the question of the fast breeder prototype, and that is where I came into the story. First, the decision was taken that we should go ahead with it, and then there was a question about the site. After all that had been done at Dounreay, with a perfect safety record, there were one or two other places which thought that they should have the site. I was interested to hear the noble Lord, Lord Kearton, say that he advised somebody or other that it should be Dounreay. I remember the battles that we had in the Cabinet before we decided that it should not be Winfrith, but should be Dounreay. But there is no doubt that the right choice was made. With the same enthusiasm and skill, they went on with it.
232
I was interested when the noble Lord, Lord Flowers, said that there were difficulties. Of course there were difficulties and, strangely enough, the pioneering aspects of the fast breeder prototype were the ones that were more easily solved. When he instanced the SRUs I was very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Kearton, took him up and pointed out that that difficulty, too, had been overcome. These things happened at Dounreay. They faced and isolated the problems, they tackled the problems and they solved the problems.
I read in the Government's Statement, or script, that was produced for Mr. Nigel Lawson in another place that,
"The United Kingdom is among the world's leaders in the development of this technology."—[Official Report, Commons, 29.11.82; Col 2.]
There was a time when we were the world's leaders, when scientists from all over the world trooped up to Dounreay to see what was going on. How have we slipped? And are we going to slip further? That is what I am concerned about. I am concerned about what, to my mind, is an unjustifiable delay in relation to Britain's needs and the world's needs, in respect of this technology.
The Government state that.
"In common with most other leading fast reactor nations"—
that is a new one to me, but there you are—
"we now believe that the series ordering phase will begin in the earlier part of the next century, and thus on a longer timescale than we have previously envisaged."
What other nations have made this same decision; and are they slowing down their research and development and their start in relation to a commercial fast reactor? I do not think this is true. This is why I tend to agree with the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, in respect of this script, as he called it. I begin to wonder whether this is just a holding statement for something that may be even more pessimistic later on—perhaps after an election, but I hope not.
I hope the Government believe what they are saying, that:
"The fast reactor is of major strategic significance for the United Kingdom's and the world's future energy supplies."
I think that every scientist who has spoken here today has underlined that fact. There may be a question about the lead time, but I shall come to that later. However, there is no doubt that this must go on. As regards the strategic reserve of energy in the world, we do not know what will happen in 10 or 20 years' time, but we are lucky in that we have a reserve. But a strategic reserve is no good unless you can draw upon it, and until we are in a position to draw upon it those words mean nothing.
So I should like the Government to tell us, first who were the nations that agreed with them that we should do this kind of thing; and, secondly, how long they expect it will be before we actually have this reserve which they say is of vital importance. The noble Lords, Lord Campbell of Croy, Lord Hankey, and others have given us their estimates of the lead times in respect of this, but they do not fit in with the kind of statements that we have here.
The other point that worries me is the Government's statement that they are going to hand this over. There is going to be a substantial development, yet

233
they cannot tell us what the substantial development will be, because the matter has been handed over to the Atomic Energy Authority, British Nuclear Fuels, the generating boards and the National Nuclear Corporation,
"…to draw up a future programme which makes the best use of our resources and experience."
We know about the experience and the resources of qualified manpower, which are unequalled anywhere in the world. But what does the word "resources" mean here? Will they be determined by the Treasury? We know that the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority is spending about £100 million a year in fast reactor research and development.
I was very worried indeed by the statement which tells the Atomic Energy Authority that, in this discussion of a future development programme, they must take in the question of collaboration. Does it mean that development to the extent that is taking place now will be dependent upon that collaboration or upon what the Treasury is now prepared to give them by way of financial resources? If there is to be only a ticking over for a decade at Dounreay—I doubt whether it would last so long upon that kind of basis—the people of quality there will be bled away to other countries. That must not happen.
I turn now to collaboration. I was very glad that the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, mentioned the question he asked, because I had a letter from the noble Earl, Lord Mansfield, about a supplementary question which I asked concerning collaboration. There has already been successful collaboration in respect of certain individual problems. Now, however, we are told that exploratory work with a view to seeking collaboration must go on, at a time when we are also told that those in the field are less interested in pushing on because of the time-scale. If this is true, are we likely to get collaboration on that basis? And have we not already missed the boat in respect of collaboration with certain nations? There is already collaboration between France and Germany and between the Netherlands and Germany. And there is collaboration elsewhere. Where are we to look for collaboration? I shall not get an answer. If, however, the scale of development and the speed of deciding on the commercial fast reactor is dependent upon that collaboration—and it may well be in respect of cost—we may have missed the boat.
The very considerable argument of the noble Lord, Lord Hankey, was that if necessary we must go it alone. We cannot wait for too long if we are to obtain this strategic reserve. Therefore I want to know how near we are to obtaining it. How long shall we have to wait for this future programme which is being determined by the Atomic Energy Authority? Today I read in the press that they could come along with proposals in about three months. The Government will then have to approve the proposals. Can we be told how long it will be before we have an answer? I think that the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, suggested that we should debate the matter to find out whether the proposals are adequate in relation to what we believe is needed. I hope that the Government will give answers to some of the points which have been raised in the debate.
234
The decision to keep Dounreay going is welcome. It would have been a tragedy had it been otherwise. But this must not be just a holding statement. We want advanced research and development, but research and development is one of the most vulnerable items when a Government want to save money. We know that to be so from past experience. I want to know exactly the extent and the quality of the programme which is to be continued at Dounreay. We have something invaluable at Dounreay. It must have been a Scotsman who wrote the first two paragraphs about Dounreay. They are so lyrical. It is said that as a result of the successful programme of research and development undertaken by the Atomic Energy Authority at Dounreay we have demonstrated the feasibility and potential of this technology. Having done so, we must not wait for 20 years before we make the first real step forward. Our engineering and scientific future in this field, in terms of world needs, depends upon a much earlier advance than the Government have given us notice of in this statement.
6.55 p.m.
Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, very late in the debate it is always difficult to make any new points. However, my appproach will be slightly different, although it will reinforce a very great deal of what has been said. The history of atomic energy in Britain is a sad one. We were the first in the field, using atomic energy to produce electricity. Harwell was well ahead with examining and trying out on a small scale different types of reactor. But we have gained little commercially fom our pioneering efforts. We are now trying to adopt the pressurised water reactor which has been developed elsewhere. Surely we should have foreseen that this type of reactor would be required in submarines. We were also the leaders in fast reactors and produced a 250 megawatt prototype at Dounreay, unfortunately delayed, because of mechanical problems, by a year to 18 months before it became critical.
Many people believe that if we do not now go on to construct a 1,200 megawatt demonstration reactor—I underline "demonstration" because it is different from a commercial reactor—within the next four or five years, we shall have lost the opportunity. Though I agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Hinton of Bankside, said about the problems they are now experiencing with the secondary heat exchangers, I do not think that this need delay the period any further, because there will be an inquiry and it is perfectly possible to get on with the design during that period. Moreover, with the French doing what they are doing and producing a full-scale reactor which we hope will go critical within the next 18 months, we should be able to learn something from them.
Even if we do this in time, all useful experience from a demonstration reactor will have to be gained until well into the next century. Experience with advanced gas cooled reactors shows how unwise it is to try to shorten the time-scale too much. A commercial reactor should not be ordered until the necessary experience has been gained. This means that such a reactor would not come on stream until the second decade or so of the next century. There has been general agreement, within a few years, about that

235
statement but it underlines once again that if we are going to go on in this way we should go on very soon.
It might be useful very simply to state what are the differences between a thermal and a fast reactor. I am not sure whether any speaker has done this. Certainly I have not heard anybody do so while I have been in the Chamber. I shall try to do this very briefly. Natural uranium has very little of the easily fissionable uranium isotope 235. To make the chances of fission greater, the speed of the neutrons from the 235 have to be slowed down by a moderator which may be graphite, water or heavy water. With a fast reactor, a greater amount of readily fissionable material is used—about 25 per cent. of plutonium. There is then no need for a moderator. Both types of reactor convert uranium into plutonium, but with a fast reactor it is possible to produce as much plutonium as is used up, or more. In the latter case it is called a breeder reactor.
As has been said, a fast reactor is at least 50 to 60 times more efficient in its overall use of uranium. Spent uranium from thermal reactors can give energy at least equivalent to an estimated 300 years of Britain's coal reserves if it is used with plutonium in a fast reactor. Again, I am afraid that I am repeating a point which has been made before. Such a reactor is therefore an insurance against probable energy shortages in the future, and both France and Russia have full scale reactors nearing completion.
The CEGB, who are governed by their remit of producing cheap electricity, are in favour of a full-scale demonstration reactor being ordered very soon but do not anticipate that the potentially more expensive fast reactor will become commercially worth while until well into the next century—as only then will the price of natural uranium rise sufficiently to make the higher cost of a fast reactor justifiable. All this is rather hypothetical because the cost of borrowed capital and that of uranium cannot be foreseen with any accuracy. Nor can the political availability of uranium be forecast—certainly supplies are not unlimited, as has been said.
It is true that uranium can be obtained from sea water but at probably some 10 times the cost of mining it. Furthermore, Britain is not a good site for this type of operation. In whatever way one looks at it, there is a strong case for pushing ahead with fast reactors.
What are the arguments against the fast reactor—because I have not heard them expressed this evening? First, safety. In fact, the fast reactor is potentially safer than the existing thermal type because as the temperature rises the nuclear reactivity decreases and the sodium coolant can do without pump assistance to look after the situation; not something that was possible with the pressurised reactor. However, we must face the fact that fast reactors have about 25 per cent. of plutonium mixed with uranium as their fuel. This will mean that when they are used commercially, terrorists will have a greater chance of getting hold of plutonium. At the moment, this is a negligible risk because the plutonium is locked up in highly radioactive spent fuel elements. It would be almost impossible for terrorists to make an efficient nuclear bomb, but they might just
236
make a "fizzle" bomb or, much more likely, distribute the very toxic plutonium in a vital place by using high explosives.
This possibility would be very unpleasant, and expensive to decontaminate. But this threat pales into insignificance, in my view, compared with the threat from developing nations who have, or will have, real nuclear capability. For example, what would have happened if Amin or Gaddafi had this potential? There is or will be an energy shortage in the future and it would be sensible that the West, with its more stable Governments, should exploit nuclear energy, leaving declining oil reserves to the developing countries. The use of oil requires much less technical capability and is much more suited to their needs.

Business
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, I wonder if I may interrupt the debate for a moment to say that my noble friend Lord Kimberley has decided, in view of the likely late hour at which it would take place, to postpone his Unstarred Question on alcoholism, from this evening until some other day. I understand that all those due to speak have agreed to this change, but I thought that the House should know of it at the earliest possible opportunity.

The Commercial Fast Reactor
7.5 p.m.
Debate resumed.
The Duke of Portland: My Lords, in the first place, I should mention to your Lordships that while I have the honour to be president of the British Nuclear Forum, the views which I shall express to your Lordships are not necessarily those of the forum. Perhaps I should also mention that for the past 22 years I have represented, and still represent, Rio Tinto Zinc on the board of the German nuclear fuel manufacturing company, NUKEM.
The noble Lord, Lord Hankey, has drawn your Lordships' attention to the position abroad as regards fast reactors. I should like to supplement what he said in respect of Germany. The Germans have for several years had plans for the construction of a prototype fast breeder reactor in which the Netherlands and Belgian Governments are junior partners. A fortnight or so ago, the German Parliament finally approved the construction of this prototype fast reactor; but, so far, the necessary funds have not been forthcoming. I have noticed it happens quite often with our foreign friends that a nuclear programme is approved but that the funds are not to be found. In the present case, the German utilities have agreed to contribute DM 1 billion but I understand that the whole project is estimated to cost DM 6 billion.
The French, as has been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hankey, are widely regarded abroad as being ahead of any other country in the fast breeder field. I believe this is due to the fact that they have a prototype fast breeder, "Super Phénix", which has been on-stream since 1973 or 1974, and they have under construction at Creys Malville, as the noble

237
Lord, Lord Hankey, mentioned, a 1,200 megawatt fast breeder reactor which is only six months behind schedule and is due to come on-stream late in 1983.
The French Government have decided that while the construction of "Super Phénix" should be completed and that it should come on-stream, plans for further fast reactors will be shelved for financial reasons. The development of nuclear power is a fantastically expensive business and one which, if swift advance is to be made, is beyond the capacity of any individual country except perhaps the United States. While discussions have taken place for international co-operation, these have been somewhat desultory and I would submit that the Atomic Energy Authority should be urged to press on in this direction.
It is now four years since Monsieur Giraud, then chairman of the French Atomic Energy Commission, spoke to me about the possibility of Anglo-French collaboration in the development of the fast breeder reactor. He said that he was keen to see this collaboration but that his feeling had not been reciprocated. I reported this conversation but I subsequently gathered that, unfortunately to my mind, the then Secretary of State for Energy did not favour this course. The French went on with the construction of "Super Phénix", with the Italians as their junior partners.
It is not only in the development of the fast reactor that I would urge that greater efforts be made for international co-operation. France, Germany and the United Kindom are the three countries which are most advanced in the development of nuclear power for peaceful purposes, and I would urge that greater effort should be made to secure closer co-operation on a tripartite basis. At the present time the partners in URENCO—the company for the development and operation of the centrifuge process for enrichment—are Germany, Holland and the United Kingdom. France continues with the diffusion process at Eurodif. In re-processing, co-operation is close between British Nuclear Fuels and the French Cogema company and I expect that when the German reprocessing company DWK becomes operative, this co-operation may be extended to Germany.
In the fast breeder the co-operation is at present mainly between France and Italy at Super Phénix. Transport of fissile material in Europe is largely in the hands of the Trans-nuclear Group of companies, in which Nuclear Transport Limited of Risley is a partner. If it were possible to form, say, a Franco-British-German company, or some other tripartite body for the development of the nuclear fuel cycle, I am convinced that this would in the long run be of great advantage not only for the development of nuclear power but also for saving the taxpayers' money.
7.11 p.m.
Lord Rugby: My Lords, it has been a tribute to the wide-ranging versatility of your Lordships' House that such a high degree of expert knowledge can be brought to bear in a debate concerning this enormous subject, the nuclear dimension. The noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, has contributed so much in the pure research which has brought this country to its present
238
level of nuclear know-how, and when at the end of this debate he makes his summary he will, I know, be conscious of the wholehearted support behind him. I would also hope that when the views of the Government are made known the faintheartedness which has been expressed so frequently in this debate will cease to be as discernible an ingredient as we have been led to believe.
May I express a personal appreciation to Lord Halsbury for the briefing with which he has supplied us all; it was delightfully simple, a kind of child's guide to the galaxy, especially the snakes and ladders of nuclear fission which put the whole thing into perspective, with its vertical and horizontal columns of isotopes and isobars. I visited Dounreay about two years ago as a layman and ever since in my own mind I having been evaluating my impressions, trying to fix this memorable visit, with all its implications relative to mankind, to civilisation; and trying to fix its place in the industrial revolution, above all its role for the future, when there is so much uncertainty and turmoil in the world around us.
The facts concerning all that Dounreay set out to do at the outset of its prescribed task and the degree of its achievement require no elaboration from myself. The prototype fast breeder reactor is now a fact of life. There it sits, in a remote corner of the realm, feeding its quota of electricity into the national grid. The air around it has a crystal quality, clear of any kind of pollution. The farmsteads around its perimeters benefit from the power source and yet are totally unaffected by any changes, other than normal ones, in the atmosphere. Likewise, the coastal waters and rivers.
Unlike all the impressions I once harboured as an ordinary member of the public regarding nuclear power generators, I came away with the overall conviction that the Dounreay prototype fast reactor has delivered the goods in a clinical package. Nothing has been left to chance. All conceivable contingencies have been given, and still are being given, a full-scale workout, either in the laboratory or as a scaled-down reality under working conditions.
It seeks now the inspiration and the political will to find its place in the economy and in the future of society. Seeking some guidance from the context of history, I recall having related to me the comment of one of my forebears when the main line railway station came to the Midlands. It was a somewhat lugubrious, "That marks the end of the feudal age". He had seen it all coming from the days of Stephenson's Rocket. But for the younger generation it was an open door to the world outside and was quickly made available. What a frighteningly short space of time it is from that Rocket to its Trident variation.
Were the founding fathers of the industrial revolution to look upon the state at which this country, and indeed the world, have now arrived as a result of their vision, their aspirations and their drive in putting them into effect, they would, I think, have pretty mixed feelings on revisiting this green and pleasant land, such as it is. Every step along the path of industrialisation seems to have carried with it a not inconsiderable penalty clause written into the small print, and which is now writ large across the face of the earth. A visit to the Coalbrookdale Museum, with its smelting

239
furnaces cut into the hillside, shows that that was accompanied by a wholly unacceptable depredation of the surrounding woodlands to feed the furnaces, and no doubt human bondage played a large part.
The benefits of coal as the major source of fuel have been fraught with human misery on a vast scale, and already repercussions of atmospheric levels of sulphur dioxide are not only increasingly apparent but are becoming unacceptable. We burn, I am told, 1,000 years of primeval growth of forest every 24 hours and stocks might last us for about 300 years. What sort of a future to the environment does that portend? No one today views the subject of atmospheric pollution without alarm and apprehension.
Nature, my Lords, as farmers and gardeners are daily reminded, has the ability, when these penalty clauses are ignored, for massive retaliation. The writing is on the wall and the warnings steadily become more obvious. We can continue like Coleridge's Ancient Mariner who,
"having once turned round walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows, a fearful fiend
Doth close behind him tread".
Or indeed, we can look behind and look the fiend in the eye, and then consider what our immediate and imperative courses of action should be.
The fast breeder reactor, it is stated, cannot be functional in any meaningful way in less than 25 years, and we all know what that means. If there is now a concerted move away from these cumulative sins of the past and towards a new deal for the benefit at least of our grandchildren, then 25 years seems to me to be 25 years too late. We might as well forget it. Given the safeguards now made manifest by the evidence of the fast breeder reactor, with its nuclear dustbin capability gobbling up the waste toxic products of all the other nuclear plants and the weaponry, turning them into creative usable sources of power—as it were, swords into ploughshares in its modern counterpart—then in my book it has what is somewhat irreverently called in commercial circles "the Jesus factor". It has come at the right time. Dounreay presents us with a key to a door. The vista on the other side is one of reconstruction, reconstitution and conservation. It should be given the go-ahead with all speed.
7.18 p.m.
Lord Energlyn: My Lords, I should like to associate myself with my noble friend's kind words of thanks to the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, for bringing this very important and crucial subject into your Lordships' House. I should also like, as it were, to re-emphasise the comments of the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, initiated by Lord Sherfield, regarding the reaction of people in and around Dounreay.
The noble Lord, Lord Hinton, was wise enough and had sufficient foresight to see that the only way to create support for this new technology was to enlighten the people and to remove from their thoughts all areas of fear. This he did in the most dramatic way. And so today we find in Caithness housewives talk as learnedly about nuclear fission as the average English housewife talks about various varieties of detergents. I do not think that is an overstatement. It was important to create this atmosphere. I should like to underline
240
that, in praise of the noble Lord, Lord Hinton, who, of course, is also renowned throughout the world as the pioneer of nuclear energy.
Now we have before us a deep concern, not so much for the nuts and bolts at Dounreay but for the people in the team. One does not assemble a team like that overnight. One breeds them like a reactor. So it is vitally important to look very carefully at the impact of Government policy upon the minds of people working in this erudite and attractive field of research. I think that, with respect, it has not been sufficiently underlined in this debate that Dounreay is a research and development laboratory. One is able to discuss in that laboratory all manner of subjects such as the desalination of water and the effect of radiation on bacteria. There are men there with wide ranging minds and if they are lost Britain will indeed have lost something irreplaceable. Having said that, we must allow the team to have a free range of their thinking. They must not be haunted by politics, otherwise their minds will be diverted from what they are trying to achieve.
One of the obstacles, as has been graphically pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Hinton, is this question of the steam-raising units of the reactor. We should not lose sight of the fact that all these reactors are basically furnaces trying to generate steam, and what we are asking is: Which is the safest and which is the cheapest? If it is a question of raising steam, as the noble Lord, Lord Hinton, so wisely pointed out, we should pay more attention now to what we are doing with the steam. We should allow these dedicated men at Dounreay the freedom of thought to look again at the use of steam to generate electricity. It is steam that generates electricity, not the nuclear fuel.
This brings me to a technology which is not very well known. It is a technology called magneto hydrodynamics. Your Lordships should not shudder at the phrase, it is a simple picture. Electrical energy can be extracted from a hot blast of gas by applying a magnetic field. It is as simple as that. All that is necessary is to insert electrodes into the gas and a current flows out of the electrodes as direct current. Your Lordships may think that this is too imaginative to be believed and say "Yes, I remember seeing that at school. Surely it is a laboratory experiment." It is nothing of the kind. Magneto hydrodynamics is now one of the potent units that we can add to a steam raiser. Therefore, instead of boiling water, we put hot gas through pipes and through magnets and pull out the electricity without any moving parts. In other words, the molecules take the place of the copper wire in the electrical generator.
If your Lordships think that I am again being a boffin, may I point out that 200 kilometres to the south east of Moscow there is actually being built now a 500 megawatt power station using magneto hydrodynamics. We could put a hydrodynamic unit in Dounreay with the greatest of ease, but we must give the men freedom to do it.
What would be the spin-off? The spin-off is quite remarkable because with this demonstration we can apply that technology to the consumption of coal. The Russians are using coal in their 500 megawatt station. If we prove in Dounreay that this can be done, consider the impact this would have on the steam

241
raising facilities of this country. I mention that simply to emphasise the fact, or rather the important point, that we should do everything in our power to preserve the remarkable team that we have in Dounreay and the facilities there for nuclear research.
7.27 p.m.
Lord Strabolgi: My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, for moving this Motion and doing so with such expertise and in simple language which can be understood by laymen. He has certainly initiated a most notable debate. As every noble Lord has said, it is an important subject. As my noble friend Lord Ross of Marnock said about the fast reactor, "This must go on". And this view has certainly been shared by every noble Lord who has spoken. There is an admirable consensus of opinion in every part of the House.
Although the United Kingdom is fortunately well endowed with indigenous supplies of coal, oil and gas, nevertheless looking to the future we shall certainly need nuclear power, as has been stated in the debate. We need to develop nuclear power and to give this a growing share of our electricity needs, in order to release the fossil fuels for turning into oil and natural gas when our North Sea supplies begin to run out. There are some who argue that coal could supply all our energy needs—that is, coal for burning in power stations, for liquefying into oil and as a substitution for natural gas—but I am sure it would be unwise to rely on a single fuel, particularly as there are limits to the rate at which coal extraction can be improved with present technological knowledge.
I believe that in a thermal reactor one tonne of uranium can produce as much electricity as 25,000 tonnes of coal. But supplies of uranium will come to an end one day. It is a finite fuel. We must, therefore, use those supplies wisely. As has been said, a fast reactor can extract from uranium about 60 times as much energy as the present types of thermal reactor. The cost of electricity would therefore not be so dependent on the price of the raw material. This is particularly important when the world population is expected to double over the next 50 years. In the United Kingdom we have a stock of about 20,000 tonnes of unburnt uranium. If we use this in fast reactors it would equal the potential energy output of our entire coal reserves—the part that is known to be recoverable.
This is a non-party matter and, as the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, said, we must make a commitment now and stick to it on a non-political basis. I therefore welcome the news that the Government are to continue with a substantial development programme for the Dounreay fast reactor. However, it is disappointing, as has been said throughout the debatè, that this is to be on a longer timescale than was originally planned—that is, well into the second decade of the next century. We seem to have allowed the French to take the lead. Of course, the French do not have great reserves of coal and cannot afford the luxury of procrastination. The Japanese are also pressing ahead, as they are in so many other fields.
The noble Earl, Lord Mansfield, referred to collaboration with other countries, but he did not go into
242
detail. I do not know why he was so unforthcoming with information.
I should like to ask the Government if it is a fact that senior officials visited Japan in October to discuss collaboration on a long-term basis. I thought that the noble Earl, Lod Mansfield, could have given us some details about this as I have read about it in the press. May I ask what agreements we have with our European partners? I should like to endorse everything that the noble Duke, the Duke of Portland, said with his great knowledge of Europe. I think that we need more information.
What is the position, in particular, over the negotiations with France, when the knowledge and experience derived from the French Super-Phénix and the work done at Dounreay and in Cumbria could be pooled to our mutual benefit? Are we going to have the same international collaboration, as is happening at Culham over research into fusion, which, of course, was set up by the Labour Government? What is to be the position of the many scientists working at Dounreay, if development is to proceed at a slower pace? Will there be any redundancies? Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, will tell us. And, as the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, said, will this delay lead to a brain-drain, with top scientists leaving for other countries?
I understand that the French Super-Phénix project is scheduled to produce electricity by mid-1984. Our own programme means, apparently, that any viable commercial system will not be producing electricity for another 30 years—well into the next century. So once again we are last in the race and the bottom of the class.
The Government have chosen the middle course between two options—at least this is better than shutting down Dounreay altogether. Let us hope that the development programme will be allowed to continue even at this slower rate: and here I commend the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Flowers, to the Government. I hope that they will read, mark, learn and inwardly digest it. In the years ahead I hope that this programme will not be made the victim of dillydallying or financial stringency—because you never know these days what is going to be sacrificed.
In conclusion, I hope that the noble Lord will be able to answer some of the strictures made by the noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, in particular, and by other noble Lords, on the Government's statement of 29th November, which I think in many ways—although as my noble friend Lord Ross said it is beautifully written—is not at all satisfactory as far as information is concerned.
7.34 p.m.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, if I may be allowed to use an unparliamentary expression, "Wow"! Some months ago I let it be known selectively that I regarded a debate on the fast reactor long overdue. It is appropriate, therefore, that I should be the person responsible for giving the Government's reply to this spectacular debate. I am not a ducker of debates, but when, and on what subject, is of course a matter for the usual channels. Noble Lords have referred to a possible future Statement; I am unable to make any

243
comment on that at all, nor indeed, for obvious reasons, on a future debate on a future Statement which may not happen.
However, before I go into the main arguments of this debate, I feel that some congratulations are in order. First, I should like to congratulate the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, for having persuaded his peers that his Motion should be selected as the first Cross-Bench Wednesday debate this Session. Let no one underestimate this very considerable feat. It gives me great pleasure to reiterate the statement in the speech of my noble friend Lord Mansfield that the Government as a whole share my feelings. Secondly, congratulations are due to all noble Lords for the extreme clarity with which they have expressed their thoughts on one of the most difficult scientific issues facing the Government and the country today.
Since I arrived here, I have come to expect that such technical and complicated subjects will become as clear as crystal when explained by the noble Earl. But I did not expect the House as a whole to have taken to heart the point made in the early 1970s by the late Michael Flanders when he said:
"One of the great problems of the world today is undoubtedly this problem of not being able to talk to scientists because we do not understand science. They cannot talk to us because they do not understand anything else, poor dears".
This cannot be said of today's debate.
Congratulations are also due to those noble Lords who were good enough to give me advance warning of what they intended to say, possibly to ensure that I did not lower the tone of the debate. I am truly grateful to them and I only hope that I do not let them down. Finally, congratulations are due to my right honourable friend for his excellent timing in publishing the Government's decision on the future of the Dounreay project which has been referred to many times already and which I feel has given this debate rather more bite than it might otherwise have had.
The points that have been made are many and various and it would be quite impossible for me to refer to them all. I assure your Lordships that the Government will take careful note of each one of them, whether or not I respond this evening. If appropriate, I shall write to the noble Lord concerned. The central theme of the noble Earl's Motion is the need for commercial fast reactors. I do not intend to follow him down flights of nomenclatural fancy, but the Government have done and said nothing in recent months which differs in any way from the sentiments which he expressed. We fully endorse this.
As the noble Lord, Lord Hinton of Bankside, and the noble Lord Flowers, have said, the question remains: When? Currently we are progressing with our programme of thermal reactors and have already expressed the view that, subject to necessary consents and safety clearances being obtained, the next thermal reactor order placed should be of the type that is the most common worldwide. I refer, of course, to the pressurised water reactor. This has the dual advantage of being a proven technology and a foundation for export of the associated hardware: valves, tubes and the like. The Government have done just what the noble Lord, Lord Hankey, has asked of us. In short, I agree with the noble Lord's analysis of the time-scale.
244
Given our thermal reactor programme and that with the lead time the life of a power station is some 40 years, it would be economically unviable to start the long process of getting on with the commercial-scale demonstration fast reactor just yet. We are, however, past the research stage and into the development stage. Knowing that we shall need to go to commercial series ordering some time in the early part of the next century, we must, as noble Lords have stressed, not lose the knowledge and the impact that has already been gained.
We have reaffirmed our commitment to a substantial on-going fast reactor development programme. Some major challenges—for example, improving the economics and reliability of the system—remain to be faced by all the nations developing the technology, and it will be very costly. This in my book does not mean going slow, although it may look that way to the noble Lord, Lord Kearton. We therefore approached the matter with a view to international collaboration provided that the terms were right. I shall come back to this point a little later. This will continue to make the best use of existing resources and experience at Dounreay and is, we feel, the right way to approach the matter.
While I can do nothing other than praise the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, on his science, I must take issue with him on the subject of economics. The noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, also referred initially to the economics of this whole question and took the view of my noble friend Lord Mansfield. It is most unlikely that the fast reactor will be economically viable until the early part of the next century. The reasons for this are that the long-term availability and price of uranium now look much more favourable. On the supply side, the political constraints on the mining industry in some countries have been eased and more deposits have been proved. On the demand side, the deferrals in nuclear programmes worldwide have markedly reduced projections of uranium demand. As availability and price of uranium is one of the most important factors determining the competitiveness of fast reactors, the time-scale for their introduction now looks longer than seemed likely at an earlier stage. However, the Government are confident that series ordering of fast reactors will be necessary early in the next century.
It is true that the availability of spent fuel arising from the thermal reactor programme will have a beneficial effect on fast reactor operating costs. But even taking this into account, fast reactor electricity would, at the present capital cost differential and at present uranium prices, be significantly less economic than electricity from thermal reactors. A continuing aim of the Atomic Energy Authority's fast reactor development programme has been to reduce this capital cost differential. The noble Lord, Lord Hinton, mentioned the new conceptual design of fast reactor announced by the authority last year. This is a significant step forward in this direction, though further development work is still required as it is still, as I say, at the conceptual stage.
The noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, spoke about the length of time that the Government have taken to review the fast reactor policy. It is only fair to tell him that the Government have effectively been committed

245
to this review since taking office—as they have, indeed, to a review of the whole paraphernalia of Government for which they became responsible. But this particular exercise only started in earnest earlier this year, around Easter; it therefore took some seven or eight months. Considering that this is the Government's largest civil researach and development programme, a thorough review of this magnitude could not have been conducted in any shorter time-scale, and I hope that when the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, comes to reply—
The Earl of Halsbury: My Lords, I should have said "Governments".
Lord Skelmersdale: Ah, my Lords, that is rather different. Had I been asked that question I might have given a different answer.
The noble Viscount, Lord Thurso, asked at some length about double-speak and asked what on earth the statement given in my right honourable friend's Written Answer was all about. He suggested that the statement disguises a major setback for the United Kingdom's fast reactor programme. The answer to this is quite obviously, no; it is the opposite. The Government are fully committed to the Atomic Energy Authority's research and development programme, with its objective of developing the fast reactor as a successful commercial technology for the longer term.
Several noble lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Ross of Marnock, were worried about the effects on jobs in North-East Caithness. I agree that the valuable experience of individual people who have been in the project since its beginning—the people who, as the noble Lord, Lord Ross, told us, you breed; they are not made—is obviously important, and I can tell the House that jobs at Dounreay will remain at broadly their present level. I feel, as obviously does the noble Lord, that this is extremely important, given the unique facility that the noble Lord mentioned of the local population knitting in with visiting scientists.
Several noble Lords including the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, and the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury—who seems to have mentioned just about everything—spoke about the morale at Dounreay. It is right that the Government should evaluate the progress of all the projects they pay for from time to time. It should be done as quickly as possible in order to do the least possible damage to morale, and I believe that my right honourable friend has achieved this. The noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, mentioned what is commonly known as the brain-drain. I am advised by the Atomic Energy Authority that there has been no significant loss of scientific or technical personnel from Dounreay during the period of the Government's review of fast reactor policy. In the year ending 30th September 1982 115 staff have resigned out of a total establishment of 2,300. The authority considers that this is generally comparable to figures for previous years.
Almost all the speakers in this debate tonight have speculated on the lead time. They have asked: what does the future hold for the fast reactor? It is a fair question which, I believe, deserves a fair answer, a fact pointed out with customary clarity by the noble Lord, Lord Ross of Marnock. The fact that the Government believe that series ordering of fast reactors will be
246
needed in the early part of the next century does not, of course, mean that the next major steps towards commercialisation will be delayed until then.
Noble Lords can be reassured that we intend to press on with the programme at the optimum speed consistent with sound economic sense and with the results of the development programme, which is to continue at Dounreay. Quite obviously, there will be a requirement for a lead reactor well before the series ordering stage. The Government acknowledge and support this prospect. Although we do not believe that a start on this lead reactor needs to be made in the immediate future, we shall make a commitment as soon as we believe it is appropriate. In the meantime, there is time to develop and refine the technology. We must make the best of this.
The noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, gave us a most interesting economic view. Obviously, I am not allowed to ask rhetorical questions from this Box, but I can assure the noble Lord that his argument has been taken into account in our discussions on the fast reactor at Dounreay. Indeed, we pre-empted him by deciding to get the prices of our major fuels into broad balance when we first came into office, and we believe that we have achieved this.
On the use of nuclear power stations, the Government believe that, as long as they are built to time and cost, they will provide the cheapest method of achieving base load electricity. With the falling supply of carboniferous fuels—not surprisingly, a fact referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy—which are, of course, finite, they are bound to become more expensive as their life becomes exhausted. Natural uranium is also a finite resource, and as there is no doubt that the fast reactor is the best way forward, for the reasons given by the noble Lord, Lord Hinton, and the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, we take some comfort in our decision.
The noble Lord, Lord Tanlaw, asked about the generating costs of the pressurised water reactor visà-vis the fast reactor. Pressurised water reactor costs are a matter for the CEGB. They will no doubt deal thoroughly with the economic aspects at the forthcoming Sizewell inquiry. I shall be very disappointed if they fail to achieve this. At this stage it is far too early to make any reliable estimates of fast reactor generating costs. The noble Lord also asked about the Atomic Energy Authority's terms of reference for a revised fast reactor programme. He asked whether they include provision for combined heat and power. I would be glad to know whether he considers that the fast reactor raises CHP issues which are not relevant to other steam-raising electricity generation plant. In the absence of an answer, I assume that it is the same for both, and perhaps I can delay an answer to another time.
Several noble Lords mentioned the subject of safety. I believe that the safety record of the British nuclear industry is second to none. During 25 years—some 300 reactor years of commercial operation at nuclear power stations in the United Kingdom—no accident has occurred which has given rise to significant public hazard. I agree with my noble friend Lord Campbell of Croy and with the noble Lord, Lord Bowden, on this. We have an excellent safety record, which is reflected by the concern for safety shared by successive Govern-

247
ments and the nuclear industry since the earliest days of nuclear power. Probably in no other industry has so much time, effort and money been devoted to the maintenance and supervision of safety. Very high standards of safety in design, construction and operation apply throughout the industry and statutory safeguards exist to ensure that these high standards are maintained.
Nevertheless, the Government are not complacent. Every effort will be made to ensure that these high standards are maintained and, where appropriate, improved. Also, through the Royal Commission and other bodies so ably served by the noble Lord, Lord Flowers, the public should be completely and utterly reassured. The noble Lord, Lord Flowers, also referred to the possible location of a commercial-scale fast reactor and to a public inquiry. Obviously, it is far too early to say anything about the location. It is the Government's firm intention that an application to build such a reactor would be subject to a full public inquiry, but I do not agree—to answer some other noble Lords—that five years is the time required for such a process. I do not anticipate five years for the PWR inquiry announced at the beginning of this year and which is already under way. The main hearings of course start on 11th January next year.
I could not agree more with the noble Lord, Lord Sherfield, on the good sense of the people of north east Caithness in positively encouraging the expansion of Dounreay. They have taken to heart successive Governments' assurances on safety. In the same way, the fact that Dounreay provides so much of the local employment obviously came to weigh heavily in the Government's thinking in the course of our review. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, referred to the lead times for nuclear projects; and the fast reactor, I should tell him, will be no exception. We are committed to a full public inquiry before the next reactor is built.
The noble Lords, Lord Kearton and Lord Hinton, and others, talked about the problems associated with the PFR. The PFR reactor itself has operated at very high availability during its six years in operation. The greater difficulty has been in the steam raising plant, particularly the steam generators themselves, where periodically weld leaks have meant that the reactor has needed to operate at below design output. There is every confidence, however, that these problems can be overcome and that the plant will continue to operate for many years.
One noble Lord, I cannot for the life of me at the moment remember which one, spoke about the cost of this—it was the noble Lord on the Cross-Benches, I think—and suggested that it would be something like £23 million spread over two years. The answer to that is that I have not the slightest idea, but since we are paying something like £98 million for the development programme it would, of course, come out of that money, so that no extra costs would be involved.
As last year's Government White Paper on nuclear power explained, there is no straightforward choice to be made between investment in, for example, power stations and investment in energy conservation. Both
248
are necessary. It is not a simple choice of alternatives but of making the best and most economic use of all our resources the diversity of which is for individual suppliers and consumers to consider.
To the noble Lord, Lord Flowers, to whom the last remark was addressed, I think I must fairly say that we have not been shilly-shallying about. The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority have for many years participated in a number of international collaborative arrangements on fast reactor research and development. These have largely been undertaken with the main overseas countries with major fast reactor programmes; with France and the USA and, more recently, Japan. At present important agreements exist between the UKAEA and the United States Department of Energy covering information exchanges and reciprocal irradiation experiments, and between the UKAEA and the PNC in Japan covering information exchange in a broad number of areas.
The noble Lord, Lord Bowden, asked about the cost of reprocessing Dounreay fuel. I think it would be appropriate, since this is complicated, if I were to write to him, and also I would not like to pre-empt the debate on the Second Reading of the Energy Bill. If I may, I shall write to him on that subject. The noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, said that we had had little commercially over the years from nuclear power. I must say that I could not agree with him less. Currently 11 per cent. of all electricity is generated from nuclear power stations. When the current AGRs all come on stream this will go up to some 20 per cent.
Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, I do not think I said that at all. Could the noble Lord repeat what he thinks I said, because I do not believe that I said that at all?
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, I was certainly here for the introduction of the noble Viscount's remarks. What he said was that the country had had little commercially from nuclear power. Those were his words. We may, or may not, disagree on the subject. Perhaps we can both apologise to each other, if appropriate.
Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, what I intended to imply was that we had not really reaped any important reward from our lead in the field from exports abroad. That was the shorthand of what I was trying to say.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, in that case I was even more dense when listening to the noble Viscount than I expected. Perhaps when we have both read Hansard we may come to an amicable agreement on this, and I shall be able to answer him rather better than I can tonight.
Lord Hankey: My Lords, might I interpolate? We have in fact sold a power reactor to Japan and another to Italy.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, I am not sure but I believe there is one on stream going to India in the near future, so all is not yet lost. The noble Duke, the Duke of Portland, with his vast experience of the European nuclear scene, referred especially to collaboration with a view to saving the public Exchequer. The more we

249
have formal collaboration with other successful countries, the more we as a country will both learn and contribute and stand to benefit from the commercial results. I do not believe that the only criterion should be to be first, in which I obviously disagree with many noble Lords. I believe, like the noble Duke, that it should be to get the best value for the consumer and hence for the country.
The noble Lord, Lord Rugby, not surprisingly, gave us a complete run around the historical energy field. He is, of course, correct. Nuclear energy provides the least pollution of any system currently known to man as long as the waste products are carefully and safely disposed of. As the Government's White Paper made clear earlier this year, there are no technical reasons to prevent this from being achieved.
Lord Davies of Leek: My Lords, will the noble Lord give way on that sentence? That is a huge claim after Windscale. I am reading now and will ultimately attend a seminar on radiation. I would not go so far as to say that. There is a lot still to be learned so far as radiation and pollution are concerned. Monthly we are taking account of the effects of radiation day by day in milk and vegetables, as the Ministry of Agriculture knows.
Lord Skelmersdale: No, my Lords, I will not retract or reconsider the statement I have just made. What I said was on nuclear waste—not production—there are no technical reasons to prevent safety from being achieved, and I stick by that.
Lord Davies of Leek: My Lords, may I come back? I apologise but it is important for the record. The Irish Sea is already one of the radioactive polluted seas, and seepage from Windscale takes place. That is known.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, if I may be allowed to, I shall come back to that, but I shall try to answer the noble Lord.
Lord Davies of Leek: I am sorry I interrupted.
Lord Skelmersdale: I agree that it should be on the record. The noble Lord, Lord Energlyn, took us on, if I may so call it, a slight flight of scientific fancy into the future. The commercial fusion power is a much longer-term prospect than the fast reactor. The Government fully recognise that fusion is a potential energy source of great importance. However, the costs and time-scales involved in developing a commercial reactor are enormous. Therefore, the best way to proceed is on the basis of the widest possible international collaboration. The noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, mentioned Culham, and this is of course exactly what I am talking about. This has the twin merits of pooling resources and the wide dissemination of research results. The other scientific suggestions for producing electricity in the future that the noble Lord mentioned may well come about, but I should stress in the future. They are inevitably even further off than fusion power.
I have a rather unhappy answer to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Leek, on the subject of pollution of the Irish Sea. I am told that this does not impose any
250
significant environmental hazard, whatever that may mean. I shall obviously have to come back to him. Perhaps it would be appropriate if the noble Lord would consider putting down a Question for Written Answer on this subject.
The noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, said at the end that we must come to a genuine cross-party agreement on nuclear power. How I wish that could be so, but I do not think it is really realistic. Not only are there now five political parties in Parliament, but it must be the responsibility of the one forming the Government to decide the delicate fine-tuning, even if the other parties to the agreement do not agree at that moment.
It is essential therefore that nuclear power—whether we are talking of today's thermal reactors or tomorrow's fast reactors—should be seen in the broad context of world energy demand. Fossil fuels, particularly oil, which meet 45 per cent. of total demand, have a finite life. Nuclear power cannot be judged as an end in itself, but it can play a vital role in reducing the world's dependence on fossil fuels. Safe and economic nuclear power is therefore an essential ingredient in a balanced energy strategy, and after a quarter of a century of the safe operation of nuclear power stations, this country stands in an excellent position to take advantage of the substantial benefits that nuclear power can offer.
The fast reactor represents the next generation of nuclear power stations. As we have discussed today, commercial fast reactor stations are not required immediately, but the Government believe they will be economic and thus be vitally needed in, as has been said many times, the early part of the next century. The Government are committed to ensuring that, when we need it, reliable, safe and efficient technology is available to us. Today's debate shows that the House endorses our aim. Last but not least, this debate—with its split, incidentally, of speakers (10 hereditary and eight life Peers)—must put one more nail in the coffin of the abolitionists of this House.
8.2 p.m.
The Earl of Halsbury: My Lords, we have had a very good debate on a very interesting subject, and I thank all noble Lords who have participated, for both what they have said and the patience with which they have listened to me and to one another. Needless to say, I am delighted to think that my initiative has been thought timely. I am particularly happy at the tributes that have been paid by the Government and noble Lords in all parts of the House to the quality of the staff at Dounreay. It is extremely heartening for people as far away from the centre of things as they are to know that this high court of Parliament knows of their existence and applauds their efforts and enterprise.
I have had the pleasure of sitting in a Select Committee on my own Bill with the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, and I am well aware of his capacities; it is always a pleasure to hear him at the Dispatch Box, with his quick assimilative grasp of the matters before us. I listened with great interest to all the replies he gave, and there is only one point which I hope he will relay back to his right honourable friend as, I believe, the message from the House arising from the debate. It is that, whatever Government policy may be, the

251
Government Statement has failed to couple the minimum maturation time for a requirement to the minimum lead time for the delivery of the necessary plant. If the lead time and the requirement time are the same, then we have not got time in hand. That is the common factor in all the criticisms that have been made, and I hope the noble Lord will pass that back to his right honourable friend.
On this question of lead time, there seems to be quite a consensus that it is about 20 years. The noble Viscount. Lord Thurso, gave a bracket of 19 to 29, which was not far from the bracket of 19 to 30 which was given by the noble Lord, Lord Hinton. But whereas we seem more or less in agreement with one another on the total lead time, we reach it by somewhat incompatible conclusions. I do not wish to abuse the fact that I have the last word to enter into an argument with Lord Hinton, but his figures and mine for the trouble with the steam unit at Dounreay are very different. I have allowed in my mind about two years to put it right; he feels it requires seven.
On the other hand, when it comes to the time necessary to run the reactor before you feel safe to indulge in serial ordering, I would require 10 for that, whereas he allowed two. There are a lot of what accountants would call compensating errors here, and clearly this is a technical matter which should be debated in another forum in terms of a device called the critical path, into which I will not go, save to say that when you build a house you do not build it all at once. You build the foundations first, then the walls and then you put the roof on. While you are building the foundations, there is still time to decide on the final design of the chimney stack.
In so far as there is a very great deal of civil engineering work to be done in constructing one of these huge plants, that gives one time in hand to settle some of the details of certain matters that have not yet been agreed. I was at Dounreay 18 months ago and they thought then that they had the answer to the superheater leaking points. They have produced an answer, but I do not think the noble Lord, Lord Hinton, thinks it a very good one. I shall not argue that with him now because that would not be right.
It only remains for me, once more, to thank all noble Lords who have participated in the debate and beg leave to withdraw the Motion standing in my name.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.
House adjourned at seven minutes past eight o'clock.