§ 16. Mr. Hooleyasked the Secretary of State for Energy what estimate his Department has made of the aggregate number of scientists and engineers involved in research and development on wind, wave, solar and tidal power, as compared with the numbers involved in research and development on nuclear power.
§ Mr. EadieThe Department's R & D programmes on wave, wind, solar, geothermal and tidal energies are in the main conducted by contracts placed with industrial companies, research associations, universities and polytechnics, and the Department has no data on the numbers of qualified staff employed by them or on the numbers employed on work financed and conducted by private industry. Some 24 qualified scientists and engineers are employed in my Department and in its energy technology support unit in the planning and management of its programmes. In the field of R & D on374W nuclear power, there are about 2,000 qualified scientists and engineers employed on such work in the UKAEA, about 400 in the electricity supply industry and an unknown but small number in the nuclear industry.