Speeches by Collinge.

“Mustafa, I want to talk about both safety and environmental risk. The public obviously have views about safety, risk and environmental benefits, and they do not necessarily have a huge amount of knowledge about the nuclear sector in particular. Are you concerned that reduction or changes to regulatory control could pot…”

“That is part of it, yes. Are you limited by current regulation in the balance that you can give to different costs and benefits?”

“What are the costs of safe storage while we do not have a GDF, and how do they compare with getting on with a GDF?”

“We keep being told that there is a lack of skilled workforce in the nuclear sector and that there is a concern that people will move from decommissioning into new generation, or will not move from new generation into decommissioning, because of the pay gaps and cultural aspects, to be honest. Do you think that regulato…”

“I want to move on to my favourite subject, the semi-urban population density criteria. EN-7 retained the semi-urban population density criteria, despite the fact that it was created in the 1960s, it was based on technology we no longer use and it does not have the decades of operational and safety data that we now have…”

“We keep being told that there is a lack of skilled workforce in the nuclear sector and that there is a concern that people will move from decommissioning into new generation, or will not move from new generation into decommissioning, because of the pay gaps and cultural aspects, to be honest. Do you think that regulato…”

“—and this has been described as cost-effective and low-risk. Are there any trade-offs for UK sovereign capability and long-term independence with relying on an international partner, however solid the allyship?”

“That is part of it, yes. Are you limited by current regulation in the balance that you can give to different costs and benefits?”

“Mustafa, I want to talk about both safety and environmental risk. The public obviously have views about safety, risk and environmental benefits, and they do not necessarily have a huge amount of knowledge about the nuclear sector in particular. Are you concerned that reduction or changes to regulatory control could pot…”

“How significant a constraint is the lack of a UK civil nuclear test reactor?”

“If it does turn out to be harder to deal with or costlier, where should the accountability for that lie?”

“We have heard evidence that quite a lot of waste already in the UK could be reused for various things; for instance plutonium could be used as a fuel in a mixed oxide reactor, and it could also be used in nuclear medicine or in space batteries for long-term space exploration. But the Government policy—certainly for plu…”

“So essentially, we already have a problem or a thing that we need to do, and your view is that this does not materially add to it.”

“Heysham is lovely.”

“I want to talk about decommissioning and waste. Over the lifetime of nuclear energy, we have seen the nature and type of waste change quite a lot, from the very problematic stuff at the beginning to a much better picture now for the defueling of, for instance, Heysham 1 and 2 in my constituency. I want to know whether …”

“At what point do you think you could come back here and say, “This is what the whole-life cost is going to be?””

“How long will that take?”

“It has been reported by ISAR Global that the parliamentary record still does not hold this information; we have not been able to find it, so that is helpful. We in Parliament have to be confident that we know what these costs are, especially when public money is involved, so how accurate do you think that process will …”

“The modularity, the fleet production and the lower capital costs are meant to offset the fact that you produce less energy in an SMR and AMR than you do in a gigawatt plant. But we have seen projects that have not gone ahead, such as NuScale in Idaho and EDF Nuward in France. Do we have any real-world evidence that thi…”

“I will try to be brief. I want to talk about my favourite subject, the semi-urban population density criteria. Leon, you touched on the new technologies and how they are different from the older technologies. How do you think the difference in the new technologies should affect how the semi-urban population density cri…”