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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 876-v House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE welsh affairs committee
Tuesday 21 March 2006 MR WAYNE THOMAS, MR PHIL WHITE and MR TYRONE O'SULLIVAN MR DYLAN MORGAN and MR HUGH RICHARDS Evidence heard in Public Questions 480 - 571
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the Welsh Affairs Committee on Tuesday 21 March 2006 Members present Dr Hywel Francis, in the Chair David T. C. Davies Nia Griffith Mrs Siān C. James Mr David Jones Mr Martyn Jones Albert Owen Hywel Williams ________________ Memorandum submitted by National Union of Mineworkers, South Wales Area
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Mr Wayne Thomas, Area Secretary, National Union of Mineworkers (NUM); and Mr Phil White, Marketing Director, and Mr Tyrone O'Sullivan, Chairman, Tower Colliery; gave evidence. Q480 Chairman: Can I welcome you to this session of the Welsh Affairs Committee. Could I also mention that some of the evidence later on this morning will be in Welsh, but not this part of the session. Could I begin by asking you to introduce yourselves, please? Mr O'Sullivan: Tyrone O'Sullivan, Tower Colliery, Chairman of the company. Mr White: Phil White, Tower Colliery. Mr Thomas: Wayne Thomas, General Secretary of the NUM in South Wales. Q481 Chairman: Thank you very much. Mr O'Sullivan, could you begin by giving us some background information about the current output of Tower Colliery and your projections for the next couple of years? Mr O'Sullivan: Tower has been here since 1808 (?), so you can quite understand perhaps the next part of my story. Presently we produce about 630,000/650,000 tonnes, predominantly at Aberthaw Power Station; also we sell about 110,000 tonnes of products, which go through the UK plus Belgium, France and parts of Ireland. That is our market; it has been a very steady market for the last 12 years, because we have now passed our tenth anniversary. People say to me the sorrow of it does mean now that we have worked Tower practically right to the last ounce of coal, and I would say, the next two years, according to the speed at which we mine the coal and the demand, and if it is like it is at the moment, it will be dead in two years and Tower will come to an end. Probably people see it as sorrow, I see it as an incredible performance, that we have managed to get there and actually mine every last ounce of coal in the mine, and I think very few pits in the history of mining have been able to achieve that. Although probably it will be a sad moment for me, because I have worked there for 40 years, I still feel that we have achieved an incredible position in life by managing to mine our coal to the last couple of tonnes. Q482 Chairman: You have anticipated my next question. The DTI have told us that in 2008 Tower will close as a result of what they call 'exhaustion'. Would you describe that as an accurate statement of theirs, or is it a question of economics? Mr O'Sullivan: No; that is an accurate statement. I think that we have got two bits of coal left above us, a bit in the four feet and a bit in the nine feet, and if they were together I think we might have made that last effort to get the coal in, but because they are about a mile and a half apart, the two drivages, to be separate, to get that sort of tonnage, it is not about economics and I think it would be silly to attempt to mine that coal. Q483 Chairman: So no advances in technology would help you in any way? Mr O'Sullivan: Twenty million pounds. I could probably take the risk for that. To be honest, I have spent all my life defending mines and trying to stop them being closed and to finish use, but I do think that now Tower has reached the end of its economic life. Chairman: That is very helpful. Q484 Mr David Jones: Good morning. Evidence we have taken from United States witnesses tends to indicate that they are very optimistic about the future of coal as a source of reliable and potentially clean energy. How would you rate the future of coal in Wales and the UK as a whole? Mr O'Sullivan: In Wales, if you looked at, probably you received the document we put out, it is a British Coal document, 1979/1980, and it stated that, the pits working then, there were 250 million tonnes of coal left in reserves in South Wales. Much of that coal is in shallow workings and probably could be reached through refining. If I were looking at the coal industry, I think it could be a booming industry in Wales, but money would have to be found. I have got no doubt that there is plenty of coal left under our feet in South Wales, there are a lot of shallow seams, very diverse quality of coal, probably the most diverse quality anywhere in the UK, from steam to anthracite to coke, you name it, the coalfields of Wales are very diverse. I would say that the future of coal-mining in Wales, if the will were there, would be very powerful. Q485 Mr David Jones: And the UK as a whole? Mr O'Sullivan: I am not an expert judge of that. I would say that many a pit in Wales has struggled for 200 years; some of the seams in England still left behind are fantastic seams round about six feet, which I think probably are perfect for mining coal today, thank you very much, with seams of only a six feet to eight feet range. I would say, probably, in Britain, we have 500 million tonnes still left in England, but I am not an expert in that and it would be silly for me to qualify them. Q486 Mr David Jones: Mr Thomas, would you like to comment on that? Mr Thomas: It is interesting you make the remark regarding the UK coalfield. We are all aware of UK Coal, as an industry, being reduced to a business and being further reduced and cut back in the Yorkshire coalfield, as we know, and the Selby complex now has been sterilised. It is interesting, from my perspective, that we see Mr Richard Budge now considering reopening Hatfield with I am not sure of the specific amount of money obtained there but certainly a substantial amount of coal reserves left there. Our concern is that UK Coal, as a company, are sterilising the majority of the coal left in the UK and we have got great reserves of that. The UK NUM officials met the Prime Minister in December of last year to raise these fears with him and if we do not approach it on a UK basis before long our fears are that this coal will be lost to us for ever. How we do that is extremely difficult and really we have to commit to it, and, without going too forward and too deep, renationalisation may not be an option for most people within politics, but certainly I think we have got to consider realistically the way forward for us in five or ten years. Are we allowing a business to dictate what the policy of the UK energy policy direction is going to be; there are huge issues therefore for us to address. I am sorry to widen it from Wales but really we have got to put it in a UK context and we have got to grasp that. Again, the perspective we are looking at from within the NUM nationally and there will be a spin-off directly to Wales as well, we do believe that a body such as the Coal Authority, who have the licensing rights at this moment in time, possibly could orchestrate, or administrate, the UK coal industry, in some way, shape or form, along with obviously this Select Committee, looking at the clean-coal technology. We really do think there are options there; it is going to be difficult, with huge hurdles to overcome and we think there has got to be joined‑up thinking right throughout the UK. Q487 Mr David Jones: What you are saying effectively, Mr Thomas, is that this is a matter which requires political will? Mr Thomas: Certainly I think it does need political will and, from my perspective, certainly it does what the NUM have been preaching for a number of years, and probably people are sick of hearing it, as regards coal being a product again in the future and coal being partly an answer to the energy difficulties we face within the UK. Certainly, I think, in conjunction with the energy policy, we have got to take a decision on how we manage the supply of energy from within the UK. We have got those reserves in the UK, we do need a target specifically of how much of the accessible reserves there is and we do need to look at the issue of how we administer those reserves with the joined‑up thinking of Scotland, England and Wales, and I think that needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency, as urgently as the energy policy itself. Q488 Mr David Jones: Of course, the Government has announced an energy review; what are your comments on the timing of that? Mr Thomas: It is a welcome review, of course. I just need to look at UK Coal, as I say, reducing the workforce, reducing their tonnages, and it is a case of how far we allow the company to carry on with sterilising the UK's reserves before we take action on that. I think the case for that has already been submitted to the Prime Minister and I have great reservations about how far we allow them to continue to do that. Mr White: If I could comment on that, Mr Jones, the energy review is getting to a stage where we are getting concerned about the deep-mine coal industry; we feel that it is too late where it is today, but there is need to put pressure on the UK Government as a whole, that we need to push forward and get some sensible review with regard to coal as part of an energy balance. Q489 Mr David Jones: What opportunities are there for opening other deep mines in Wales, in both the North and South Wales coalfields? Mr White: Tyrone said earlier that we produced a document, which actually was produced by British Coal, back in 1979. We believe that the reserves identified need further research and we do need further information, and needless to say we do need countless boreholes, just to confirm. Questions may be asked as to why we have not done that sort of development research in the past. Unfortunately, there has not been the type of investment or the enthusiasm to look at the coal industry over the past ten or 15 years against the background of it as a declining industry, but certainly we feel that further exploration needs to go forward. We would welcome jointly further exploration. I think it is fair for us to say at this moment, Tower Colliery, as a 100% employee-owned company, has not got the type of money required. We do welcome what further support or aid can be given to further exploration of reserves. Q490 Mr David Jones: Taking into account the movement of energy prices across the board, do you think that increases the opportunities for deep coal-mining in Wales? Mr O'Sullivan: If I could just say to you, Tower is in Hirwaun; a mile and a half away there are three old collieries, Bridgealban (?), Treforgan and Pentreclwydau. Within those reserves there are about three million tonnes of coal. Thank goodness, the little mine of Aberpergwm has stayed open, under one manager, and is now working as a very small mine. I believe that we are already in discussion with that manager and his team so that we can take that mine back to have a proper deep-mine status, and probably can have some of our old equipment, which to him would be like new but to us would be secondary, so that we can develop that mine to produce probably 450,000 tonnes a year for the next ten years. That is a project which has become available only because of the demand for coal today; this was not viable three years ago. Also, the most important thing, it allows us to continue training our workforce. If we lose those skills we cannot pick them up in Tesco, or Woolworth, if you lose those skills, of mining, this is where we need the help in the next two years somehow to continue. There is an opportunity in Wales, and we want the Government to support it, where not only can we develop a deep mine but also so that we can put some experienced workers in there and retrain the next generation. These examples, as Phil has said, can be lost if we do not start moving on them. There are opportunities, there is Margam, of course that is not directly in energy, it would be more steel, but there are opportunities and I would like the opportunity to show that it can be done. Q491 David Davies: That brings me to my question, which is perhaps a difficult one to answer, but if we were to open up new mines how easy would it be actually to get people who had never been in the industry before to come forward and work as miners, because the image of the job has not been terribly good over the years, as you will appreciate? Also, given today's health and safety conscious world, how dangerous is a miner's job; are you still facing a daily risk of mines falling in? Presumably not, as we do not seem to read about them so often, but it must be a risk that is there. Over the long term, I would assume that it is very difficult to avoid the risks of emphysema and other health problems that have occurred with people who have worked down the mines for 20 or 30 years. Do those threats still exist and would you get people to come forward and take up job opportunities there? Mr O'Sullivan: At the moment, in Wales, and to Wayne afterwards, as the Union, or Phil, as Phil comes from Maesteg, and I am from Hirwaun, if I might say, Abercwmboi, so in fact spread across the valleys, so from that region on our books we have got probably another 300 young people who would love to have a job in mining, because their uncles, their fathers, were all in mining. We have got generations of people working in Tower Colliery now. You are right in one thing; that will not last much longer. It will not last because those people will change. At the moment, probably I could recruit and develop another 200 people through training at Tower Colliery; given another three or four years, that might not be available. Is it safe underground? British coal mines have been the safest in the world. No matter what anyone says, British coal mines are the safest in the world. Tower Colliery - touch wood (it is an old Welsh tradition) - is the safest coal mine in Britain. To that end, I say, yes, I cannot stop the ground falling in, because Mother Nature kicks you in the eye sometimes; you cannot help that, if you are 800 metres underground. Q492 Albert Owen: Just to ask Mr White, when he talked about the image of a declining industry and a lack of research, do you actually see this energy review which is being undertaken as perhaps the opportunity for you to put the case forward, and, as Mr Jones said, with the prices of energy going up and up, this is the opportunity for that research to be undertaken, and who do you think should undertake that research? Mr White: I think you are quite accurate in what you said, although the energy review, to date, and consultations and other observations that I have witnessed or heard about certainly do not come out strongly in favour of coal, or really any form of energy other than renewable energy. I do believe that we are mindful of the fact that the coal industry itself must have an important role to play because they will be the one that needs to provide the skills. I think the major energy forums themselves within the UK, and maybe globally within it, whether that is nuclear, whether that is renewable, whether that is coal or any other fossil fuel, oil or gas, what we are all trying to get sensibly here is an energy balance. I am not sure I am even in favour of where we are today. I think we are producing 30% of our generation, our UK needs, through coal, similarly in both oil and gas, and I believe that we are very minimal with regard to renewables. I think it shows that Tower Colliery is a very environmentally-caring company; we have been working on ways of producing a lower-carbon content of our coal through coal-firing, and I think we would like an opportunity to elaborate on that at some time later on. I believe, at the end of the day, it needs to be led by industry and not by politicians, with the greatest respect. You do a good job, representing us and the UK as a whole, but really, when it comes to getting serious about energy, maybe as important as at any time, today in the world it needs to be led by industry. Q493 Mr Martyn Jones: Can you expand a bit on the more general technological and financial obstacles in the way of opening new deep mines, on a UK basis? Maybe Mr Thomas will want to come in on that. Mr Thomas: I think the problem with that is, the Margam complex, I think, has become more realistic now than it has been for the last ten years, and I think that is on the basis that Corus themselves are willing to invest in their company to return the coke and coal for themselves. I think, on a wider perspective, the anthracite market is going to be extremely difficult because they have to outlay an awful lot of money to access their reserves, be it drift mine, opencast, or whatever it may be. This is where I think it is going to be extremely difficult for people to outlay their own money into untapped or untested reserves, therefore I think there has to be a solution in boreholes, first of all, satisfying and clarifying what reserves are available, before the commitment will come from private companies. I think that has got to be looked at for the national interest, really I do think so. The Welsh Assembly Government, I believe, are going through the process now of sterilising some easily accessible or easily identified coal and, for opencast, or whatever the case may be, you are aware probably of the two zones there, one easily accessible and one not so easily accessible. Who is going to pay for the boreholes I do not know, but certainly it would be in the national interest for us to get those boreholes down, identifying, then seek to find out who is willing to commit for the return from those coal investments. Again, following through with that, if somebody is willing to commit their own funding to that, would they get investment aid from the Welsh Assembly Government, or Westminster, whatever the case may be. If investment were going to be committed to those firms, what guarantee have we got, as UK taxpayers, that those investments will be utilised for the purpose for which it has been granted. There is a whole host of issues to be looked at before we give commitment in principle. The first stage, I think, is the boreholes, the commitment secondly is to convince the private investor to commit, and thirdly what sort of support will be given from the Government long term. I think all those issues are extremely difficult issues to address, really I think they are. Coming back to the point, if I may, of the health and safety aspect, we have seen obviously that, with the chronic bronchitis, emphysema, vibration white finger, an element of that has come from, we have inherited that from the fifties, sixties and seventies, dare I say it. Ironically, we have seen a lot of Bevan boys, with two, three and four years' exposure to coal dust, being certified now with pneumoconiosis, so we have inherited a lot of that. I can tell you, with my 20 years underground, we have seen, certainly in the seventies and eighties, that the transformation in the technology utilised is absolutely tremendous and I think if any of you took a visit underground to Tower Colliery even some of the older miners would be amazed and surprised to see how technology has moved forward. There is coal dust and there are accidents, of course, but it is vastly reduced and, as Phil has touched upon, we are the safest mining industry in the world. Q494 Mr Martyn Jones: The safest or better than. Mr White: It is supportive; obviously the Welsh Assembly Government are constrained for their own energy policy, it is a UK energy review, they are very supportive of a sensible balance of indigenous energy supplies and they do realise and understand that we have them in Wales as a whole. They are very supportive, but it is a UK energy review and not a Welsh Assembly Government energy review. Q495 David Davies: I think we have all got to think open-mindedly about energy, given the problems we face, but can I put it to you that, in reality, despite the tremendous safety record that you have and that Tower Colliery has and everyone is very impressed with the way it has been run, as you said, Mother Nature can kick you in the eye at any time. It is a dangerous job and if you had a repeat of, say, something like in Senghenydd, with a couple of people losing their lives, what are the public going to make of it? I put it to you that probably they would not find that an acceptable risk, in this day and age? Mr White: With the greatest respect, Mr Davies, there is one individual action, just alone, through terrorism, which is killing more of the people in the UK than the industry itself and heavy industry. We have to have heavy industry if we are going to survive as an indigenous nation of further manufacturing and production; we cannot all be call centres. We understand, we can be as safe as we can, provide the best healthcare we can and, despite what is being said, we have moved on, as an industry, over the last 30 or 40 years and conditions are far better than they were 30 or 40 years ago, but you have got to take them in the light of, if you looked at the UK stats, other than claims for health purposes, they are as good or as safe as anywhere in the UK. Q496 David Davies: I agree with you. I am more worried about what the public at large think and the attitude that there is out there? Mr O'Sullivan: Monitoring positions are incredible today. At Tower, probably we would send everybody home, and the pit is completely monitored, for methane, overheating, rollers, it is a brand-new game. I lost my father in Tower when I was 17. My great-grandfather was killed in Maerdy Colliery and his two sons were killed on the same day, so I know the history, but you cannot compare that with what modern mining is today. None of us would get in our cars if you looked at those facts, we would stay in the house, our kids would not go outside the home, if you kept watching TV. Our industry has moved on; the monitoring today is incredible. We were the gassiest pit in Britain, Tower Colliery; pre our days, I remember ignitions in Tower Colliery. We have been there 12 years and, touch wood, not one ignition, and monitoring is working. That is the world we live in. One point, and I do not know how we are going to get to these points, but the choice you have got is you are going to have to import 30 million tonnes, or more, and that puts us again in the hands of other people, or we can produce it at home. Forget about nuclear, that will come in again, but, at the end of the day, this Government is going to go down the road of clean-coal technology, it is going to spend money on clean-coal technology, and I believe that will be public money, and they are going to do all that to bring in foreign coal? I find that crazy. I think we should be looking seriously at our coal. Q497 Mr Martyn Jones: We talk about the most economically-winnable coal, probably that will be opencast coal, I would guess, but there are environmental concerns about that and how would you say those could be minimised? Mr White: Firstly, they have to be identified and I think a lot of the vast resource they have got could be made available and then I think you have got to strike a balance between the ecology, the environment and the economy. I must say, I am getting a very frustrated person, living in a world of NIMBYs today, because I do not think we can do anything. I had a hostile reaction even in my own town, Maesteg, to having a civic amenity site. I would just like to know where we all think we are going, to be quite honest. I do believe that the importance of us stressing it today is that we need to identify that those reserves are available, and if they are available I think we have got to go through, quite steadily and sensibly, how best we extract those mining reserves and over what periods of time and if we are becoming a bridge. I have got to say, I think it is heartfelt within the industry as a whole that we are not going to meet our targets for renewable generation or renewable capacities by 2011, we are far from it, but we all want to work towards getting it sooner rather than later and I think that the coal industry is a jack on a bridge for the next 20 to 25 years. I think that is what it is going to take us, at least, to build up any form of capacity. Q498 Mr Martyn Jones: Are you part of the discussions about the establishment of a TAN8 for coal-mining? Mr White: From a deep mine opening introduction, there is very little; it is more to do with opencast, as a whole. I think the three of us agree that it is not right that we comment on that, because probably it needs to be felt through the opencast industry itself rather than the deep mine industry. Q499 Mr Martyn Jones: What would you think needed to be included in a new TAN8 for mining generally? Mr White: I will go back and say identification of reserves and that they should be protected and safeguarded until such a time. Q500 Chairman: Who would you say should take the initiative on identifying those reserves? Is the Union engaged in that? Mr O'Sullivan: With respect, I do believe that the Welsh Assembly Government have authorised a consultation document with all local authorities to sterilise or look at the potential of, as I said earlier, the two zones. Zone one is the accessible coal zone; two is coal which probably has never been worked. I think that is already being led by the local authorities within Wales. That is my understanding of it and that will tie in with the TAN8 legislation when it is imposed. Q501 Mrs James: Croeso. I want to expand a little bit on the coal production because it is something, as a champion of the industry and as a champion of Tower Colliery, I know you have worked very hard on, since your establishment, to develop markets and you have a combination of markets, the power generation, domestic, etc. Given that you have already outlined to us that you have a finite resource and a finite limit on your development, where will those resources actually come from in the future, particularly where Aberthaw Power Station comes into the question? Mr White: At this stage, what I can say is that, yes, there is a healthy market for coal, and Tower outlined quite early that we do produce and sell 650,000 tonnes, and that is for power generation, for domestic and for export, calcining and other forms of industrial and commercial uses. In the next two years, I do not know where the 650,000 tonnes are going to come from, which will be lost from Tower Colliery; predominantly, we believe they would be imported. It is only fair to say that we were in Swindon yesterday concluding what may be our last contract, with a bit of regret, with RWE Energy for Aberthaw Power Station. Again, can I say how supportive they are, as a generating company, to see coal at least coming back into focus, but I will be quite honest with you, Siān, I do believe it will be through imports. I do not know where else we will determine, or get determine or planning, even if it is opencast coal before a deep mine. I think, despite what we understand, that if we had the opportunity to open up a deep mine tomorrow and that we had support and we had the skills necessary, which we have in Tower, we believe that is going to take three to four years, so you can see our concern with regard to the industry as a whole. If we do not start getting the energy review sorted sooner rather than later, we might not have a deep mine industry left to supply the skills. Q502 Mrs James: You talked about your role, earlier on, as a bridge into the future, into an integrated energy policy. It has been estimated, some information that we have had here, that there are still over 250 million tonnes of coal reserves in Wales. What proportion of those reserves do you think could be recovered by deep mining techniques? Mr White: I think we want to revisit the Margam and the Glyncastle reserves, identified as far back as 1978, when the National Coal Board, at that time, rather than British Coal, were going to go ahead with those schemes. Needless to say, we know the political climate within two or three years after 1978 to 1979; that was not in favour of coal being in demand for power generation, and the 'dash for gas', etc. I think, quite simply and quite plainly, if you revisited them, the exploration that they require, because it was not concluded or completed by the National Coal Board at that time, I think it is right that we ask ourselves to revisit those two major takes. Fortunately, both of them fall within the Neath and Port Talbot areas. Now whether we say that we specialise in one particular area is a little bit unfortunate to say, but those were definitely the areas identified as far back as 1978. Q503 Mrs James: And the major obstacles to that; you have told us a little bit about them? Mr White: The obstacle of being strapped financially, if we had to do it as a private company. Others are, is there any interest or support throughout the financial institutions now for coal, because the price is increasing and the demand for coal is being looked at for the future. We do not know, we need to revisit them, but, I will tell you one thing, we need to revisit them very quickly. Mr O'Sullivan: They have just brought the productivity scheme back into our industry, of 1978: this is the time for coal, this is the time to drive forward. These coal reserves were established in 1979. I have got no doubt about it, that they were very accurate on the coal reserves left in South Wales. In two years, they have just reintroduced the productivity scheme, they are going to go for extra coal; what happened afterwards is a different story. At that time, of the 250 million, naturally, it was a third. Never mind what we do in life, I can tell you now, the colliery reserves we had in Tower, going back, in 1996, we would lose about a third, so I would say you would be looking more at perhaps 180 million, 190 million tonnes. That is natural in coal-mining; as you get to the reserves, you improve or otherwise. We do need some boreholes to reaffirm these areas of coal. Q504 David Davies: My question is probably to the NUM. Obviously, the big problem we have got with energy at the moment, with gas and with oil, is security of supply; we are importing it from unstable areas, can we be certain that the supplies are going to be maintained at all times. That brings us back to coal. Back in the period you have talked about, the seventies and eighties, the relationship between the NUM and governments of all colours, particularly one though, was not terribly good and I do not think anyone thought the security of supply was there then, and perhaps rightly so. Have we all moved on a bit from that, do you think? Mr Thomas: Again, I would refer back to what we did inherit, myself included. If you think of coal, Scargill and ill-health, I think those three go together in many people's minds, to be honest. Mr Scargill is retired now, as we know. We have got two new officials at the helm of the National Union of Mineworkers and, as I said earlier, they met directly with the Prime Minister, so that goes a long way, for me, in clarifying that we have crossed that bridge, I tend to think. I think we have moved forward tremendously. There are trade union laws in place now; there are viewpoints on those laws, of course, but I think we have moved forward tremendously from the eighties. We are in 2006; we are willing to go forward if we need to go forward. The argument we are putting across is that the product is as important to the mineworkers of the UK as it is to the general public of the UK. Surely I cannot see a situation where we would come across the situations we have referred to, back in the seventies and eighties, ever again and we just cannot see that, to be perfectly honest. Logically, as Tyrone has touched upon, the workforce in Yorkshire are coming to the late forties, early fifties, in age, and before long they will all be coming to an end, so to speak. The youngsters coming into the industry, thankfully, did not go through the process of strikes and the disarray within the industry and therefore I think there is a totally different outlook to it, there is a totally different outlook to the product and there is a totally different outlook to the energy requirements of the UK, so I think we have overcome that, from the NUM perspective. Q505 Albert Owen: You mentioned financial help and support. The UK Government has stated that it is spending over £500 million on emerging renewables and low-carbon technologies, in the form of both grants and research and development. What assistance do you think the Government could give to benefit coal production? Mr White: I think that could be included in a balance. If we look at coal as a solid fuel form and we look at many biomass streams as a solid fuel form, I think the combinations of coal-firing and dual-fuelling and overcoming the complexities of utilising all these solid forms of fuel, or energy, today, is something, in itself, which should be blended to the industry. I keep going back, but not to be too repetitive, first we do need to identify the amount of coal reserves, because it does not necessarily all have to be used for power generation. Q506 Albert Owen: A specific with it, they say research is part of that, and the question I really want to ask you is, and it is a follow-on from the earlier question, have you been able to access that money, either from the Welsh Assembly Government or from the DTI? You have said that industry would play a big role. I am suggesting to you that it is both, it is Government and industry and that some of those subsidies are needed? Mr White: I can answer on behalf of Tower. We have played our part in developing coal for other uses and other resources, and we are a part of a current DTI clean-coal technology programme on co‑firing. A disappointing factor is that the DTI scheme is in a major clash with Ofgem, because we were actually blending coal and biomass at our Colliery but it was not allowed in to be generated at Aberthaw Power Station because they wanted more rigorous quality control checks, etc. We have been slightly let down from developing where we have been for the last few years because of a clash of interests between Ofgem, the regulator, and the DTI themselves, who actually hand out the programmes on clean-coal technology. Mr O'Sullivan: I have spent all my life in the industry and our industry was destroyed unnecessarily in the political bloody game, and that is a tragedy, and look at where we are today, and I cannot leave that unsaid. It is 'make up your mind' time. The rest of the world has decided to go for coal and the production is going to double in the next 15 years. If we are different from the rest of the world in Britain, and somehow we could have the magical formula, deciding it will be nuclear, because green cannot get there; it cannot get there, you can do what you like, you can play with as many little windmills as you want, green cannot get our country into the next era, it is bull. Spend money on tidal; the rest is a waste of time. I would love to be there, I would love to have the clay on my head (?), but let us not bull any more. The choice you have got is either you go for coal or you go for nuclear. Go for foreign coal if you want to, but bloody tell us; tell me so I can tell my kids, in my community, what is in front of them. What we could do is go for our own coal, we could develop our own technology, we could start building the things and manufacturing things using clean-coal technology, and if we do not do that, with India and China, we are gone. We are fiddling while Rome burns. Q507 Albert Owen: That takes me on to the next question I wanted to ask you. Can coal compete with renewable energies, such as wind; obviously you are very clear on that? You mentioned wave and tidal; they are options, as part of the mix, but can coal compete with it? Mr White: It is the level playing-field being which industry is the next to be subsidised. We have gone through the issues of gas, we have gone through coal; the only sensible energy policy we ever had was under the Labour Government in 1977, with Tony Benn, where coal was the vogue just then. The Energy White Paper emphasised the importance of such approaches of co-firing, coal and the emerging renewable industry, but yet we see the Forestry Commission, for example, in Wales making available only 100,000 tonnes of wood tree thinnings, chippings, residues. In the overall state of play, where we are in terawatt generation, we are two gigawatts down on what we require in South Wales as a whole. The biomass renewable industry itself as a solid form is going to be a very small player. What it does for the coal, I keep emphasising, is it can reduce the emissions for which coal is being blamed in the world today. We have Aberthaw Power Station investing £100 million in FGD (flue-gas desulphurisation). There are other technologies; there is a range of clean-coal technologies. It is exactly as Tyrone said, while we have been sitting back in the UK, with a lead 20 years ago, we have sat back for 20 years, every other country which has got an interest with its own indigenous resource of coal is pushing forward on clean-coal technology. Q508 Albert Owen: Mr Thomas, on the same line, do you think coal can compete? Mr Thomas: Yes, very much so; very much so. I tend to think that we do need to take to heart the issues and we have got to face the facts and look at coal as a product and the technology as it stands and we have got to make a decision based on that; the old baggage of the past has gone. We have got to make a decision, where we are going to be in five or ten years' time, how we are going to replace the coal-fired power stations now, the nuclear power stations in 2010; we are going to be in great difficulty unless we make realistic decisions today. We have got harsh realities to face up to, but we need to take a wider perspective, as Tyrone has touched upon; globally there are many issues to do with coal, many positive issues to do with coal. It would be a sad day were we to be left behind in that decision-making process. Q509 Albert Owen: What do you think would be the best single form of support that the Government could give to the coal industry, from your perspective; we have heard from Tower? Mr Thomas: Assistance in exploration and identifying specific areas of accessible coal. I think, from the Welsh perspective, that would be assisting us greatly to get there. Again, the difficult decision would come then from different companies, to see whether they would be prepared to invest, and then we need to see whether it would be assistance or subsidies, for want of a better phrase, to make that commitment. Really we need to identify, first of all, accessible reserves and then we need to take a stage as regards committing to accessing and working those reserves. I think we need assistance in identifying the boreholes and then we need to have a discussion on whether subsidies will be available for those companies on that basis, but unless they get a commitment for the long term no private company is going to give that commitment, unfortunately. Q510 Nia Griffith: If we could move on now to speak specifically about the clean-coal technology, I have got to say that, on the recent Committee visit to the United States, we were extremely impressed by how advanced this technology is. We had not really realised, on this, just quite how much they can do, and particularly the way they were using even the carbon capture to get out oil. I believe now that Statoil, a Norwegian firm, is doing that with a gas-fired station in the North Sea, so obviously there is tremendous potential there and, as you said in your review and repeated just now, the issue is that we were ahead of the game 20 years ago. Can you try to clarify for us perhaps where we are now, in terms of UK research, and then what you feel the UK Government is doing at present to increase that development, and finally what should they be doing? So, to start off with, where we are now, what the UK Government is actually doing about this clean-coal technology and what you think they should be doing, because, as I say, we were impressed with the potential there? Mr White: I think the only movement we have seen in the UK in the last 20 years has been the application and the retrofit of FGD; really that is about as much as we have had in the UK. If I could elaborate on the other opportunities for clean-coal technologies, the IGCC has integrated the gas, the combined cycle of converting the coal to gas; the Americans, I believe, are well ahead of the field there, so are the Japanese. We have got the AFBC, the atmospheric fluidised-bed combustion; the coal is burned on a bed of inert material. Again, those technologies have been advancing in most other countries throughout the world. The pressurised fluidised-bed combustion, the air-blown gasification cycle and, of course, the most deadly one that we have been advocating for such a long time is the combined heat and power plants. All these are very much suited to coal, but I do not believe that I have seen any DTI clean-coal technology programme which has moved on from where we set them out ten or 15 years ago. I think there has been an allocation of £10 million released recently for further exploration under clean-coal technology. I think what we are trying to do is reinvent the wheel because they want to pacify us, personally. I do not think we have made any advances from where we were 15 or 20 years ago, on anything other than FGD being installed on a number of our coal-fired power stations in the UK. That is a shame. I think we have got the ability, it has been industry-led, the question was asked earlier, and there are major roles for the universities. We work with the universities, we work with the University of Glamorgan; we have worked on converting waste, on pelletising and converting. To me, we are cleaning up coal again, even by having biomass or waste, RBF, we are cleaning up coal. We are not producing as much CO2, SO2 and NOx and other oxides, but they are only small amounts of work which have been undertaken over the last year or two, really they are not that proven and we are well behind, I believe, countries like the USA. I think, even now, today, as we speak, countries like India and China are coming to the forefront, as Tyrone said earlier, they are turning up coal production. We have seen the gas industry turn up production, we have seen the oil industry turn up production; we have not got much of a coal industry to turn up our production but we could produce more coal in three, five or ten years' time from where we are today. To do that we need also to understand the type of technology which is going to be suitable and the cleanest technology and the type of technology which provide the jobs and the employment. I think it is fair to say that, as an industry, we are very disappointed at the lack of moving forward with further research in this clean-coal technology. Q511 Chairman: We got the impression, when we were in the United States, that the Colorado School of Mines and universities in Illinois were very keen to share their technology and the advances that they were making in clean-coal technology. Do you get a sense, through the NUM or through your experience in Tower Colliery, that there is that willingness to share these new advances internationally and globally? Mr White: You need only go on the worldwide web, to be quite honest, and see the amount of information available and the amount of information being shared, which is the question. I think that is being done and it is being done primarily through the generators, people like Eon, people like RWE Energy, they are the ones which actually are forging ahead and they are the ones which have got the money to forge ahead with, on R&D. As the DTI, as the UK Government, the small amount of money allocated to clean-coal technology through DTI programmes is minimal. I think where every other country has moved on is what we had to share with them 15 years ago, and that is where they have made their advances and we have just stood back in time. They are there to be accessed, I agree with you, they are, and we can do it. Q512 David Davies: Nia mentioned what Statoil are doing apparently, which I think is putting CO2 into oilfields. Have there been any studies done on whether that is practical with disused mines in Wales, and, if so, asking just basic questions, what are the safety issues there, can the stuff ignite, can it escape, is it anything that you have investigated at all? Mr White: I think it is only fair to say, Mr Davies, that what we have in power is to a best practice guide, we have extracted the methane gas for safe working and we have actually generated electricity; now that is something we have proven. I think it is fair to say that, as regards Statoil and other forms of carbon sequestration, there is work being undertaken and work carried out by others, better known in their research, I think that is something we commented on earlier, really again that is for others. It is there, it can be proven; the dangers, again, we do not know the extent of them, or how small they may be. Mr O'Sullivan: The problem is, if you look at our valley, Cynon Valley, we have had about seven mines there, I can tell you this, you could not guarantee that gas would not come to the surface somewhere. There are some very deep mines in Britain which may have that option, but I would say, if you look at gas, it has been under the ground for millions of years, has it not, and never found its way to the surface, and man had to go down for it. I do not think I could say the same for coal-mining because there are so many holes in the ground. Q513 Nia Griffith: What seems a better option, that it goes somewhere under the North Sea, or something? Mr O'Sullivan: Yes, it has got to be there. Mr White: How do you monitor it? In a working mine, I would say, if we felt it would be safer not to introduce then that would be the case, because obviously we are there and working it. In abandoned mines, how do you monitor it, and again further research is required, or in other countries are they that far advanced, then we do not have to reinvent the wheel, we just have to copy them. Q514 Nia Griffith: Would you agree that we have actually got space under the North Sea and it would be preferable to use that rather than, as you say, mines which have got exits? Mr White: Presuming we pull all our oil and gas out of there; we should have plenty of room in there now, should we not, we should have a major vacuum. Mr Thomas: That seems a much more realistic option as it stands, because I think the strata, as Tyrone has already said, once you extract the coal from there you are breaking the strata therefore you are breaking the seals within the geography itself. I would have great difficulty with South Wales because predominantly the mines are close to the surface anyway, if you break the strata you have broken the seal, in effect, so I would welcome further investigations on that, but at this moment in time I think the research has to be for the North Sea option. Q515 Hywel Williams: You have already referred to using methane in Tower. Can you tell us how that is done and what use you make of the methane, you referred to electricity production? Mr White: Yes. It was not done under British Coal, it was done under Tower Colliery as a private company. We have to extract the gas for safe mine coal production anyway and that is transported out through the mine and up the shaft, predominantly it is pumped away; the holes are bored at the coalface, it is then pumped away, up to the shaft and it hits the interface. That interface means then that the gas is collected, cleaned and put onto gas turbines and generated, and we generate close to nine megawatts. That was not done until Tower Colliery came back as a private company. We had done that with Hyder, at the time, it was good to have the two Welsh companies working together, which we did, I do not know whether they are now, whatever company they are and controlled by whoever, but we have got a good practice guide of how we actually crack the gas, bring it to the service and generate. Q516 Hywel Williams: That electricity is used just within the mine itself, is it? Mr White: Yes. It is playing a role of about 30% of our consumption needs at this moment. Q517 Hywel Williams: There was a reference earlier on to using mines to store carbon dioxide. Just looking at methane extraction, is there any scope for using carbon dioxide to push out more methane than you are expecting at present? Mr White: Again, it is something similar to what has been looked at in the USA, in particular. I do not know how proven we are to say how efficient that is. I think, when we look at the costs, the costs certainly outweigh the advantages of doing that, at this moment in time. It is something that should be looked at and I am not sure whether it would be coming too late for the industry if we did that, so we may be a contributing factor to having something done of a global nature rather than a UK or Welsh nature of affairs. Mr O'Sullivan: When you say the practical side of it, one example I can give you is Tower Colliery. The next pit to us is Glyncorrwg; that finished mining many years ago. The story over the years was that had built up with methane and it had become practically a gasometer; none of that went to the surface, it remained sealed, underground, as a gasometer. Then, about five years ago, we had a bit of an earthquake, which never in our history had affected us before, and actually caused a crack through from their mine to our mine; after six months we could not even go to the mine because of the amount of gas pouring out of it. We have captured that gas now, we have put in a line. That is the practical experience, that you can store, but it would not be for us, we had one little mine, a workers-owned mine; we do work with universities and others. That is a perfect example of gas being stored underground for 30 years, which then we tapped and used to generate electricity in Tower Colliery; so there are proven examples that it can work, but where else in South Wales I do not know. Mr White: There is the opportunity of the hydrogen economy; we could go on and on, could we not. It is all based around what we do with coal, what we do with mines, do we re‑open them, do we keep them working where they are. I do not think we can go to abandoned mines. I keep seeing something in focus now going "abandoned mines, abandoned mines." No. I think if we can develop a mine, develop mines for more than producing coal, and look at it as an opportunity for carbon sequestration and hydrogen. Q518 David Davies: I am being a bit mischievous, but actually to put a serious point, does not your experience with capturing methane and reusing that, something that was done, as you say, by a private company, rather demonstrates the benefits of not being nationalised, the fact that actually you can put ideas to work like that without having to go through a whole rigmarole first, and you have that incentive to do so? Mr White: It was done, essentially; it was done under the Coal Board and British Coal. Again, I have to say, we are not here to reinvent the wheel. All we have done is, essentially, we have seen it as an economic benefit but also it was economically beneficial to the National Coal Board and British Coal. Just because we were a private company it did not mean to say that we had the advantage of doing that; a lot of it was undertaken under the Coal Board and British Coal. Q519 Mrs James: I am going to use that very trite 'in unity there is strength', that there needs to be a lot more co‑operative working, there needs to be a lot more sharing of technology. I do not think that we can see it in isolation, of small companies taking on huge burdens. You have talked very much about the Government and its role and the Assembly's role; are you convinced that is the way forward? Mr White: We can be at least one of the peas in the pod, can we not; we do not know why. We think that a lot of people know a lot more than us but I think it is fair to say that we are always prepared to give it a go and give it a go if it is right economically, give it a go if it represents the best interests in doing what we are going to be committed to doing. I guess, overall, we culminate those decisions to ourselves a lot more easily, but there are disadvantages of being the type of company we are too, against that background. Mr O'Sullivan: I do not think we have got a choice. It is public money and somebody has got to start spending it. We have got to stop kidding ourselves. Either you spend it on nuclear or you are going to spend it on clean-coal technology, importing foreign coal, or you can spend it on British coal; but you are going to spend it, do not kid yourselves. I will come back in ten years time and wag the stick and tell you "It's the way you spent it," but you are going to spend it; make up your mind where you are going to spend it, but it is going to be spent, it is public money. You cannot have energy today without governments taking huge parts of that resource, you cannot have it; it is a fallacy to think that some private company can do it. Rubbish. Q520 Mr David Jones: Mr O'Sullivan, you seem to suggest that the choice is between nuclear and coal. Would you not accept that it is quite possible to have an energy mix which includes both nuclear and coal? Mr O'Sullivan: Yes, I will accept that. Q521 Mr David Jones: You just said it was either one or the other? Mr O'Sullivan: It could be both, I quite accept that. I believe, at the moment, you are not talking both, you are likely to be talking nuclear, or imported coal. Q522 Mr Martyn Jones: The DTI also told us about your briquetting plant, where you are combining coal with waste. Can you tell us a bit more about that? Mr White: Yes. The market was against us, four or five years ago; initially, we felt that we had an opportunity of utilising multi-fuel, in coal and biomass, but we did start actually on waste and the refuse-derived fibre and we have been able to produce pellets and briquettes with coal and refuse-derived fibre or waste derived from municipal solid waste. We have broken the back of that. Subsequently we have worked on other biomass streams, predominantly wood, waste woods, sawdusts, we have worked with wheat, we have worked with olive expeller, more cereal products. We have worked on producing organic binders, like the old phenol and molasses-based binders, we have done a lot of that work; time is running out for us finally to conclude and complete. It has cost us an awful lot of money, I have got to admit, but, it is what Tyrone said earlier, you have got to do it or you die, against a background of emerging; we feel that work needs to go on. We have not had the technical support I think we would have liked to have, but, as I said earlier, we have had universities, like the University of Glamorgan, working with Proctor's of Burnley on a one megawatt chain-grid stoker, to prove the point that, by combining coal and the waste, or coal and biomass, you can get the right kind of equipment to monitor the emissions, because you are constrained through the Environment Agency about the type of monitoring equipment. The briquette plant is there, it is a new plant, it is still being worked on traditionally to produce those multi-fuel-based products. I keep reverting back, if we can look at coal as solid fuel and look at the renewable industry split into wave, tidal, wind, as we said earlier, and solid fuel forms. A concern again is that every time that we wanted to make advances with regard to producing products for the domestic market we could not get the source of the biomass; we could not get the source of the biomass. Biomass streams that were available five years ago of giveaway were problems, they have now turned around, that the cost outweighed the production cost and the availability was not there. Q523 Mr Martyn Jones: You have touched on my next question, Mr White, because one of the problems that we have at the moment is that everybody is competing for sawdust, it is actually a feedstock for the chipboard and MDF industry? Mr White: We are not producing it in the quantities that we require. Q524 Mr Martyn Jones: It is actually damaging one of our industries to go into biomass fuel, which is a problem. I am interested that you mentioned also you are looking at refuse waste, which is far more easily available? Mr White: If we look at the Biomass Task Force, of the last Commission, I think headed by Sir Ben Gill, mentioned in there quite clearly is that waste is overlooked as a resource. We have been fighting the issue for waste, to say it is as good as biomass - it is as good as biomass - the only difference is that you need the monitoring equipment because we do not know what everybody puts into the black bag or their bin every day of the week. Now we are getting to such a consistent source of fibre as a fuel and not compost and, may I add, for our interest, it is energy and not compost, because I felt at one time in Wales we were going to be swimming through compost, but we have moved on to look at it as an energy value. Combined with coal, it has a future, it has potential, and Ben Gill and his team identified it, it is a resource and not a problem, it is a solution, and all that has become available, through the technologies, to convert the MSW into waste-derived fibres, such as a mechanical biological treatment and aerobic digesters. We can solve two problems in one; we can produce energy and take waste as a resource rather than a problem. Q525 Mr Martyn Jones: Have you got a market for the briquettes yet? Mr White: Yes. The coal solid fuel market has been depleted horrendously; we have got to admit that, over the last five years, against the Agenda 21, the low-carbon economy, that by producing a briquette with either biomass or the waste we clean up the coal. We bring down the fixed carbon elements, we bring down the SOx and the NOx and the other oxides, so actually we are cleaning up the coal and preparing a fuel which is on a par with gas, honestly, it is on par with the gas for the emission values, and we have the documentation and the research and development proof actually to go along with that. There is a future; just the opportunities are wanted, on our behalf. Chairman: Could I thank you all for your evidence, both your written evidence and your oral evidence today and, despite all the problems that you have outlined, for your enthusiasm and your sense of the future. I am reminded, of course, in the matter of Tower Colliery, of the words of Benjamin Franklin, 'eternal vigilance is the price of freedom' and you have certainly endorsed that very much today. Diolch yn fawr iawn; thank you very much. Memoranda submitted by Pobl Atal Wylfa B/People Against Wylfa B and Welsh Anti Nuclear Alliance Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Mr Dylan Morgan, Secretary, Pobl Atal Wylfa B/People Against Wylfa B; and Mr Hugh Richards, Secretary, Welsh Anti Nuclear Alliance; gave evidence.
Chairman: (Through an Interpreter) A warm welcome to the Welsh Affairs Committee. I understand that Mr Dylan Morgan intends to provide his evidence in Welsh, and I welcome you. Q526 Mrs James: My first question is to WANA, the Welsh Anti Nuclear Alliance. In your written evidence you use the term 'umbrella organisation' for anti-nuclear organisations and groups in Wales. Could you give us an indication of the size of your organisation and how many groups and individuals you represent? Mr Richards: We are lean and fit, I think you would describe us as. You can imagine that what has happened since 1980 is that the number of individuals actively affiliated goes up and down; it may be many thousands while there is a proposal to build a nuclear power station, such as Hinkley, it does not have to be in Wales. Basically, there is a core of organisations affiliated to WANA. These themselves can have numbers that vary; for instance, a constituency political party might be affiliated. We are non-party political but obviously each individual constituency might decide to affiliate, simply to get information from our newsletter. The old-fashioned paper mail-out is probably of the order of 150, something like that, but a larger number is e-mailed out to people who have expressed an interest in staying in touch over the years. Q527 Chairman: (Through an Interpreter) Mr Morgan, could you tell us a little bit about the background of PAWB? Mr Morgan: (Through an Interpreter) Thank you, Mr Chairman. PAWB was established in 1988, less than a year before Catena (?) was established in Trawsfynydd area, and both groups have co‑operated closely over the years. PAWB was established, of course, in 1988 knowing that the old Central Electricity Board was presenting a bid for a second power station in Wylfa, in the same pattern exactly as they intended for Sizewell C and Hinkley C. It is fair to say that we had a very energetic campaign. We received financial support in 1989 to employ a part-time officer and practical financial and political support from Greenpeace. In 1988, when we were established, we became part of the Anti Nuclear Alliance and we had a strong national campaign to object to the building of Wylfa B Power Station in 1989. Not only did we receive support from Wales but also from parts of England, especially north England, the Isle of Man, Scotland and Ireland, and I can also tell you today that many of those links are still in place. I am sure that you are aware that in the last few days there has been an increasing interest in the issue of the Government's current energy review. There have been references in the newspapers recently regarding the Isle of Man, and Ireland is certainly taking great interest in the whole issue. One small point regarding numbers. I think our campaign in 1999 was the largest campaign against any request to build the nuclear power station. We passed every other local campaign; we collected over 50,000 objection cards. Those cards were sent to the old Energy Department, as it was, and Cecil Parkinson was the Minister. Many thousands of cards were also sent to the old Gwynedd County Council and the old Anglesey County Council, so it was a very powerful campaign with considerable support. Chairman: (Through an Interpreter) Thank you. Q528 Albert Owen: (Through an Interpreter) I would like to welcome you both and ask Mr Morgan how many members does PAWB have currently? Mr Morgan: (Through an Interpreter) Currently, I would say we have about 300. Q529 Albert Owen: (Through an Interpreter) Where are they? Mr Morgan: (Through an Interpreter) Locally and in Anglesey and Gwynedd. Of course, radiation does not respect geographical boundaries and there is a lot of concern on the mainland, in Gwynedd, about the nuclear industry in general and therefore there has always been strong support in the north of Gwynedd for our campaign. As Hugh explained, back at the end of the eighties the figure was quite a lot higher, we are talking about 600 or 700, possibly. Q530 Albert Owen: (Through an Interpreter) How many times do you meet in a year? Mr Morgan: (Through an Interpreter) We meet regularly, at least once a month, but of course over the last few months we have been meeting more regularly and indeed we have been meeting quite regularly since 2002 when the first energy review was undertaken. It was a completely thorough review. Posing another question really, why is there a need for another energy review after the first energy review when the most thorough work on the whole issue of energy in Wales was carried out, the most thorough for many years? Q531 Albert Owen: A question to Mr Richards. In your written evidence you say that it is the position of the Welsh Anti Nuclear Alliance that people still advocating nuclear power as a solution to global warming are deluded. On what basis do you make this claim? Mr Richards: First of all, can I ask whether you have received 'this' (The Westinghouse Story)? Q532 Albert Owen: Only just. Mr Richards: It does relate to the actual evidence which you had before. The evidence which I produced at the Sizewell Inquiry and subsequently at the Hinkley Inquiry has been brought up to date. The particular subject that I have honed in on is the history of Westinghouse reactors worldwide and their performance, because I thought it was important to understand why investments in Westinghouse reactors have ceased and many have been cancelled. To answer your question, what I am implying in that really is that we are looking at a historical phenomenon. The time when the standard approach to generating electricity for Britain was on a huge scale, where giant reactors were proposed to power an entire city, those days are passing; what is actually happening out there is that everything is getting smaller in scale. To give you an insight into what I am getting at, there were people who were saying, in the 1970s, all the computing power that Britain needed would be provided in perhaps a dozen large mainframe computers, situated in the business districts of cities. They did not foresee the advent of the micro-computer, the fact that everyone would have a personal computer; it happened very quickly. The same thing is about to happen with micro-generation and the point here is that generating electricity is relatively simple. If you have gas and oil piped to people's homes and businesses and hospitals in order to heat the spaces in which they are, the way it is done at the moment sends most of the heat to waste from central-heating boilers. It is in tapping that waste through micro-generation in, if you like, central-heating boilers which produce electricity. Q533 Albert Owen: I am not disputing that micro-generation; certainly it is one way forward. The question, and really what I am trying to get out of you, is I have not known anybody saying that nuclear was the solution; what I have heard people saying, and I have been immersed in this debate for quite a long period of time, is that it is a part-solution. We heard the previous evidence session here today, and it is a mix that most people are talking about, not the complete solution. Do you not accept that, rather than being deluded, some people actually are looking at it afresh? There have been incidents, there has been evidence, and we have not had chance to read your paper because it arrived just today, but, for many people, and I was born and raised on Anglesey, as Mr Morgan knows, the views of the 1980s have changed perhaps, because of what has happened recently, i.e. the supply of gas, and that has concentrated the mind, also the North Sea reserves actually are lower, so they are looking at different solutions and nuclear is part of that solution. I think your broad statement about us, and I say that as somebody who thinks that it should be a rich mix, including nuclear, we are not so much deluded as looking at it afresh and looking at it being a level playing-field and open-minded? Mr Richards: I am glad to hear that you are open-minded. I should say that I thank you for giving me the opportunity to put evidence before you and I am encouraged by your Committee taking evidence, because really that is what I think is needed, actually to get the evidence upon which to base policy and decisions. What we have been treated to over the last couple of years is a certain amount of enthusiasm for the idea of nuclear power stations being part of the mix, new nuclear power stations, but it has all been based on a rather vague proposal that more nuclear power stations are constructed. Part of what I wanted to bring to you, and what in fact we submitted to the energy review back in 2002, is that when you look more closely at the specifics of nuclear power then the misgivings that you might have felt can be balanced against the advances that you might see. Q534 Albert Owen: I agree totally with that analogy, but there is also the other side to that, that people were kept in the dark about nuclear because there were strong campaigns and fear put into people; now that the evidence is on the table, many are more pragmatic and looking towards it. Would you not accept that? Mr Richards: I would like all the evidence on nuclear power stations to be out in the open. I should say that I am an architect and a chartered town planner. I used to work in local government, for many years, and I am dismayed to read in the planning press that there are planning officers who are frightened at the moment about what is coming, if there is a nuclear programme, because of regulations which they perceive as hampering their ability to disseminate information on nuclear power stations because of the security of nuclear sites. That would put a planning officer in an impossible position, because he would be breaking other regulations if he did not disseminate information on a proposed nuclear power plant. I am on the side of openness. Q535 Albert Owen: Absolutely, and you complimented me on being open-minded, I would suggest that you are rather closed on this issue. I respect your opinion fully and I have followed the debate and your contributions to it over many years. Planning officers are also very concerned about any form of energy generation that happens in their locality, it is a very technical issue for them, but do you not think that the mood of people in close proximity to power stations has changed, or has it always been broad? Mr Richards: If there is to be support for a new generation of nuclear power stations, the rather general support that we have seen over the last few years, I would expect it to come from communities immediately surrounding the nuclear plants that derive some benefit from the employment at the plant. Of course there is a downside, there are quite depressed towns, like Leiston, in Suffolk, where the building of Sizewell B led to a bit of a downturn in the local economy as the construction workers moved away and the local firms could not compete with the salaries that were being paid at the station. I think that is less of a problem with the new stations because they will employ so few people. Mr Morgan: (Through an Interpreter) Can I add there, Mr Chairman, that Amlwch is not strong economically, in spite of Wylfa's presence. Q536 David Davies: I just want to follow up Mr Owen's questions a bit further. You can argue about specifics, as to whether Westinghouse is good or bad, as to what planning regulations need to be changed, of course all these things are up for debate, but what we are trying to get at is a basic principle here. I put it to you that nuclear power stations are up and running at the moment, they produce electricity, they do not produce any greenhouse gases, therefore if your main concern is climate change then it makes sense to incorporate them as part of your energy mix for future years, if you are concerned about climate change. Surely that is a fair point to make? Mr Morgan: (Through an Interpreter) Perhaps you could describe nuclear energy as a comparatively low source, but the whole process of mining uranium to use in the power stations is all heavy on carbon dioxide use or release into the atmosphere, and when you end the cycle for decommissioning that is also heavy regarding carbon dioxide. If you take into consideration ten years from the building of a nuclear power station, much carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere from that process, so you are incorrect to say that it is non-carbon. Q537 David Davies: (Through an Interpreter) Yes, I have heard this before and you can make this point at any time of nuclear power, or any energy power, you could say something about windmills, you would have to release gases out of the air to build windmills. There is nothing in the world which is carbon neutral, but the process of creating energy in the nuclear power stations is carbon neutral, it does not emit any greenhouse gases at all? Mr Morgan: (Through an Interpreter) It is carbon neutral but you have got the problem of the waste created and, according to what the Government itself has admitted, in the White Paper which was published in 2003, following the energy review in 2002, there is no answer to the problem. Q538 David Davies: (Through an Interpreter) I do not accept the point, to be honest, but what about the principle; why cannot you see the point that it does not emit carbon dioxide and therefore it is better than many other energy sources? Mr Morgan: (Through an Interpreter) There are too many of the negative things outweighing - - - ends with NOx (?). Q539 Hywel Williams: (Through an Interpreter) On the principle of building new nuclear power stations, is there any objective research comparing how much carbon dioxide is generated or emitted when building such a power station, compared with, say, a collection of windmills or other sources, obtaining energy from the sea or any other methods? Are there any objective comparisons that have been made, in terms of (how much) the whole process of building a nuclear power station, whatever we think about that? Mr Richards: I think the most up-to-date information on that, and I would defer to them, is the Sustainable Development Commission, who have accepted nuclear power as a low-carbon source but, as Dylan has said, they find that outweighed by other disadvantages. They also add a rider to their deliberations, which is that, although nuclear power produces about one‑twentieth of the carbon dioxide during construction and operation of a gas-fired power station, that does not include the burden for future generations of the fossil fuel that is required to store and to condition the waste and to decommission the stations. That, they admit, is an unknown; so there are unknowns which we are building up and handing on to future generations. Q540 Hywel Williams: (Through an Interpreter) Are there objective figures then about the amount of carbon dioxide resulting from using coal-powered stations? Things we do not know about nuclear we know about producing flue-gas or coal; are we comparing familiar technology with something which is unfamiliar, regarding nuclear? Mr Richards: Really I cannot add much to what I have just said. I would defer to others on this point. Q541 Nia Griffith: Perhaps if we could ask you both what are the main advantages and disadvantages of nuclear power? Mr Richards: I have admitted already that which the Sustainable Development Commission has admitted, that it can be considered to be a low-carbon source during operation. The problem is that a programme of nuclear power stations would take a long time to establish. It would have a divisive effect on the country because people are not in favour of nuclear power stations generally, they would prefer all other alternatives to meeting our carbon dioxide reduction targets to be looked at. Basically, it is slow and what we need is a fairly rapid response. Whether it is clean-coal technology, as you have heard this morning, or whether it is renewables, my guess is, well, it is not a guess, I am speaking as an architect, the most rapid response is vastly more effort being put into energy efficiency. We are very, very profligate and the advantage of energy efficiency is that energy saved is money saved which can be reinvested into more carbon reduction means, such as carbon sequestration, or whatever, so it is a rapid, resilient response. Nuclear power, I am afraid, is hostage to events overseas. The continuity of will, both political and in the investment community, to see through a nuclear power programme would be enormous. Margaret Thatcher's Cabinet committed the country to a programme of 15 gigawatts of nuclear capacity; that was reduced then to a small family of PWRs, one of which was to have been Wylfa B. Eventually that was whittled down to Sizewell B alone, for reasons to do with, I do not know, privatisation and the realisation that they could not actually sell a nuclear power station on the open market. We have seen programmes run into the ground, even with the most committed pro-nuclear Government that you could imagine. The time-frame is something like 15 to 20 years, during which we are going to have three or four Parliaments; in that construction period, it is possible that - it is a horrible thought but it is possible - there will be a terrorist attack on a nuclear power plant somewhere in the world. We hope to God it does not happen, but should it happen it will have an effect on the investors in a nuclear power programme. That is why the lower-tech, more immediate, energy-efficient approach to meeting carbon reductions is more resilient. Q542 Mrs James: (Through an Interpreter) This is a question for PAWB, Dylan. In your letter to the Committee, dated 9 March, you say, and I am going to quote here: "PAWB are opposed to any continuation of use of nuclear powered reactors and is opposed to any new nuclear power stations." Can you tell us why, please? Mr Morgan: (Through an Interpreter) I do not think it is just a matter of opposing a power station on Anglesey. Certainly we have made clear that we oppose it anywhere in Wales and the rest of the UK. The disadvantages are so great. In our written evidence to you, we draw attention not to the cost regarding decommissioning, I was talking to Hugh a few weeks ago and he was quoting me a figure from 1980, when the estimate of the cost of decommissioning and cleaning after the industry was 40 million. In the evidence which we have presented to you, the NDA, by 2001 that had increased actually to 40 billion; the NDA last year have acknowledged that the cost will increase to 56 billion, and recently the NDA acknowledged that this will increase to 70 billion. These are phenomenal figures and the costs are increasing minute by minute. Just another note which we have included, from Mark Williams, who I understand is a member of this Committee, although I have not seen him here this morning, in the Western Mail he was quoted as saying that the nuclear industry received £111/2 billion in research and development funding. I am sure that the NUM and colleagues from the Tower Colliery today would have been happy to receive a fair percentage of that research funding and I am sure that any renewable energy company would have been pleased to receive such support from the Government. I do not think there is a level playing-field and I do not think it exists now. A real level playing-field would ensure that much more financial resource would be provided for research into renewable energy. That is just one point. All the concern about accidents, we have always had that; perhaps it was easier for us to argue back in 1989 against building new nuclear power stations because it was so soon after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, but you should all be aware that in a month we will be noting 20 years since the Chernobyl disaster. Last week, figures were released that 355 farms in the highlands of Wales are still under restrictions, 200,000 sheep are under restriction in Wales, England and Scotland, but in England and Scotland about 11 farms in England and nine farms in Scotland, so we have suffered substantially because of Chernobyl. The nuclear industry has to be unlucky only once anywhere in Europe to create an environment of disaster, as we saw in Chernobyl, and any such disaster, whether it were an accident within the power station or possibly a terrorist attack, would destroy the confidence of any investors in the industry. Q543 Mrs James: (Through an Interpreter) BNFL have been here and provided evidence about the fact that they can deal much better now with the waste. Do you have any confidence in this? Mr Morgan: (Through an Interpreter) No. There is a write-up I had seen last week from a magazine for engineers, New-skill Engineer (?), and that outlined the costs related to decommissioning and it was focusing on two pieces of the Sellafield work, B38 and B41. It was quite frightening the way they were finding problems as they went on, the fact that there was a lot more waste at the bottom of B38, for example, than they had imagined, and they are having to devise new systems on a regular basis to try to cope with these problems. That of course is reflected in the cost which the NDA are faced with; the cost is increasing all the time. Q544 David Davies: (Through an Interpreter) Would you agree that the cost is more important than the effect on the climate? You have talked about the cost; the cost is not important, is it, what is important is ensuring that climate change does not take place? This is far more important than the cost of energy. Mr Morgan: (Through an Interpreter) I agree with that, certainly, but I think that with the correct investment in the correct sources of energy there would be a lot better opportunity to reach the targets that this Government should be reaching. This comes back once again to the lack of a level playing-field and there is financial prejudice in favour of the nuclear industry which neglects other sources of energy. Mr Richards: I would add to that, I think it is essential, whichever government is in power and whatever your policy aims are, the most cost-effective ways of supporting those policy aims are adopted. What worries me about the nuclear programme is that, although we have been assured that no public money will be used, the history tells us that there are many ways of getting hidden subsidies into the nuclear industry, such as insurance, that sort of thing, and the available capital that the country has, if it is put into nuclear power as a way of meeting our carbon reduction targets, will not go as far as it would if it went directly into energy-efficiency measures and micro-generation. Q545 David Davies: Which brings me to my next question really, which technologies could we use to replace nuclear power, which currently accounts for about 20%, I think, of electricity generated? Mr Richards: Most recently, the DTI put it at 19%, I think. First of all, let us look to, say, 50 years hence, when the Government wants really, really good reductions in carbon that we are producing. I think even I would agree with Sir David King, the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser, that where we want to end up is with an economy which is based and powered on renewable energy, and we have got to get there, and it does not matter where you are from, whether you are from Tower Colliery, or from us, or Sir David King, really we are all debating how we get to it. We are talking about a bridge. I will give you one insight, as an architect. The replacement cycle for central-heating boilers is 15 years; now I know that not everyone in 15 years is going to replace their central-heating boiler with one which generates electricity from the waste heat, but over three cycles, up to the year 2050, I think it is entirely possible that we will see a shift very much in that direction. Q546 David Davies: That is all well and good, but it is not going to plug the gap, is it? Where are you going to plug the gap in not just 50 years but in five years' time, when those nuclear power stations have been shut down and you have got to find that 20%? From where is that 20% going to come? Mr Richards: I think that we are going to have to concentrate on fossil fuel-burning but very much more efficiently; combined heat and power stations on the larger scale. If you look at the demand centre for the growth of electricity in Britain, for many, many decades it has been Slough. Poor old Slough; no‑one is going to suggest that you build a nuclear power station there, although that might be a good test of public acceptability. David Davies: I think you are being very honest, I have to say, but you have almost answered my next question. Chairman: There is a question which Mr Albert Owen wants to ask. Q547 Albert Owen: I am very interested in what Mr Richards said about hostages to fortune overseas, I think that was your sort of terminology, and also what Mr Morgan said about the waste legacy. Actually I accept exactly what both of you were saying, there is a huge mess that is the waste legacy. What I am trying to fathom out is why countries like Finland, which are seen as environmentally-friendly, have decided that the new generation is going to be an improvement. They had an open debate, they brought in the environmentalists, who contributed to that debate, and how to deal with the waste. In this forum, in which we are having a review now, I think that is the way forward. I accept totally that it has been a mess and previous governments have not handled the waste issue well but I do not see that necessarily the future will be the same. Do you not accept that? Mr Richards: I will tell you what I will accept. It is not the case, but if you were to go down the pro-nuclear route, you wanted to consider seriously a new nuclear power programme in Britain, the smart thing to do would be to watch what happens in Finland. What has happened so far is that a commitment has been made to build a fifth reactor; it is of a type that is called the EPWR, the European pressurised water reactor. Interestingly, the Westinghouse design was rejected as being not aircraft-proof; the EPWR was thought to be somewhat more robust. It has been suggested to me by a nuclear inspector, obviously whom I cannot name, that part of the reason why the French and the Germans have heavily subsidised this reactor, which is of an untried type, is that they wanted it built in Finland. Q548 Albert Owen: I fully understand the background to it, but the point I am making is that every technology is improving. We have talked about wasted opportunities with coal, had we invested in clean coal in the seventies and eighties we would have been at a different point now. The same with windmills; they are improving their technology and their output. Why cannot you accept that nuclear has gone the same way? I want to add just one caveat. You say "Wait and see." If we wait and see in this country, which is part of the argument of the energy review, then India, China and other developing nations, developing fast, will go for it and the technology will not be available. Also France will have it and we will be importing nuclear energy from France. Is not that the danger? Mr Richards: I agree, to this extent. It is perfectly true that there have been missed opportunities in clean-coal technology and carbon sequestration, that sort of thing. What I am saying really, with this chart, is that, with the nuclear power industry, they also have had a hiatus, a gap, in their development; it has lasted for 33 years. Westinghouse have not had an order that has survived cancellation in the USA, its country of origin, for a third of a century. What it means is that they are starting over again; they are starting with a design that is 18 years old, the AP600. Congress withdrew support from it in 1997 because they saw that there was no prospect for its commercial adoption, they went on then to the AP1000, which increased the output, to try to regain economies of scale. They have been developing this design as a concept over the years; it has not been built or tested anywhere. They could have applied for a licence in this country years ago. Dylan and I challenged them to apply for a licence a year ago, together with Greenpeace, and they did not apply for a licence; so it is a bit rich when now they come and say, "Oh, it's all a bit of a rush, we've got to rush this thing through." No. Albert Owen: The answer to the question why did they not go for it is because everybody went for the 'dash for gas.' That is why we are behind in renewables, that is why we are behind in clean coal, that is why we are behind in nuclear. I think really that is the answer as to why other technologies were not developed. Q549 Mr Martyn Jones: In your written evidence, Mr Richards, you outline concerns about the effects of pre-licensing new reactor designs. Can you tell us what the current re‑licensing process is, in the UK, and how it could be improved in order to address some of the concerns that you have? Mr Richards: I have to say, I may be anti-nuclear in my sentiments but I have great respect for the Health and Safety Executive and the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, as long as they stay truly independent from political interference. What terrifies me about the call that the HSE conduct pre-licensing, or consider pre-licensing, of nuclear, amongst other energy forms, is that, as a retired mines inspector, an HSE inspector told me at the weekend, one interpretation of that is that you do not need a Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, you simply pre‑license it and that is the end of it, you do not need an Inspectorate. The reason you need an Inspectorate, in my opinion, completely free from political interference, is that they apply stringent safety principles to the operation of nuclear power stations in Britain. My interpretation of those safety assessment principles is that the designs being proposed currently would not get a licence. Q550 Mr Martyn Jones: A question to both of you. Should the Government's energy review conclude in favour of nuclear power, which would be the 'lesser evil', in your view; would it be the extension of the life of the current Wylfa Magnox plant, a new-build on that site or another plant, somewhere else in Wales? Mr Morgan: (Through an Interpreter) Regarding the question of the extension, of course, there has been considerable discussion on this recently to extend Wylfa's life for two years. Of course, Wylfa is the property of the NDA, since last February, and the site is being worked on licence by Energy. It appears that there are basic practical problems regarding giving the two‑year extension that will create the working on the brief extension from March 2010 to December 2010. We will hear before long what will happen with that, but the problem that Springfield in Lancashire will be closing, part of the work which provides the magnox fuel for Wylfa has already started to close and it might all be closed in a year's time, so there is a question about where the magnox fuel will come from for Wylfa. At the other end of the process is the B205 in Sellafield, where Wylfa's exhausted fuel is sent; 2012 has been set as a date to complete the reprocessing work in B205 in Sellafield. That will take into consideration the fuel sent to Wylfa until 2010. It will take another two years to finish reprocessing that in Sellafield. In our opinion, as a campaign group, of course we would not be in favour of building a nuclear power station at all on the current site or on any other site in Wales. Our objection is totally uncompromised. Mr Richards: I have seen reference to a secret document, I have not seen the document itself but it is an assessment of the state of the graphite cores at Wylfa by two experts on reactor graphite. I should say, this was dated 1991 so it is a bit old. That document predicted the failure of certain key components in the core of the reactor by the time the station had operated for 35 years; well, it is now 35 years old. That is why there is concern amongst the public about the state of the Wylfa reactors and the thought that they could be extended. The Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, which I have said already I have great respect for, have put it on an annual review basis, they want to see data on the state of the graphite every year and it operates for about 12 months at a time. That is the reality, and talk of it being extended is beside the point. Everything should be based on its safe operation. Q551 Mr Martyn Jones: With all due respect, none of you has given an answer to what I asked; which is the lesser evil of those three options? Mr Richards: Yes, you did give three options. I can honestly say that building a nuclear power station anywhere in Wales will make matters worse, in terms of the Government's objectives for carbon reduction. It will be worse during the construction period, there will be a carbon debt, if you like, of that construction carbon dioxide that it has to clear. Admittedly, during operation, it will have some benefits, in terms of carbon reduction, but then there is the nuclear waste issue. That does not even address the fact that if lower-quality uranium fuel has to be used within the lifetime of the reactor, which I see that the nuclear industry projects as 60 years, and it is quite likely that within 60 years poorer-quality uranium fuel will have to be used, then the carbon reduction advantages are reduced greatly and might be reduced completely. I think it would make matters worse. In terms of building a nuclear power station as a replacement for Wylfa B, I am afraid that we are already past the point where there can be continuity of employment on that site, except, that is, for the employment that will be increased probably during the decommissioning, if decommissioning takes place relatively promptly and is not put off for 100 years. Q552 Albert Owen: I just wanted to take the points you made about the graphite cores. The NII has also said that Wylfa, or the Magnox one, is in the best condition, otherwise they would not have given it a licence, so I think we need to put that on the record. When there was closure in 2000-2001, when it reopened the NII gave it a clean bill of health; so you are referring to a period of 1991, actually it was given a clean bill of health in 2001. Although there is ongoing monitoring, it has a licence to 2010. I think it is fair to put that on the record, because obviously it is important to people in the area as well as people who are anti-nuclear outside, that it is a safe operation at this moment otherwise it would not have got its licence. With the extension, again, just to correct Mr Morgan, it is not simply that Springfield is closing down, Springfield can remain open; the issue is Sellafield and the B205. The issue that the DTI have said to this Committee, in a written response, it is the cost element which is the biggest challenge as well as any safety issue, it is cost on which they will take their decision because it is the only Magnox station there is carrying on, so that is the reason for it, but those costs are being looked at with regard to that. The final issue I wanted to mention was that you have confidence in the NII, as you said, and you respect them, so do you not respect that decision, Mr Richards, that it is operating safely at this moment in time? Mr Richards: Yes, I do respect them, but they evaluate the data that is put forward by the operator of the Wylfa station and my problem with that is that you cannot have full knowledge of the way in which the graphite has deteriorated within all of the core, you can only sample it. If you like, the degree of confidence is decreasing, the safety margin is decreasing, the volume; it is like osteoporosis, the graphite gets eroded by the nuclear fission in the reactor and it loses its volume. If I were an architect seriously going to a building inspection, saying, "The central part of this building, which supports thousands of tonnes of weight above it, has lost up to half its volume," I would be very worried. What I am saying is there are life-limiting components; the life-limiting component in Wylfa is the graphite and that is why the data that is received every year is vital. I am worried that the NII are not getting sufficient data; that is my concern. Q553 Albert Owen: You are not suggesting that the HSE, NII or indeed the workforce there are cutting corners? Mr Richards: No, but I will tell you something that I have discovered over the last few years. The samples of graphite which are taken for analysis go off the site; there is a time delay between the analysis of that graphite and the results being returned to Wylfa and to the NII to interpret. What worries me is that the time delay means that quite serious depletion of graphite in certain key components might have occurred and gone off the site. Albert Owen: They are looked at before they go off site as well, they are monitored, so it is not simply as you say. Q554 Hywel Williams: (Through an Interpreter) Can I just turn to this issue of cost. The BNFL say that the cost of producing electricity through nuclear methods is 2.3 pence per kWh; that is the cost they specify. How do these compare with the figures that you have got? Mr Richards: This graph, which I have put in front of you, tells you about the actual performance of Westinghouse PWRs worldwide; it includes Sizewell B. Sizewell B, as you know, is producing electricity at round about six pence per unit. That is partly because all the costs of the PWR programme were loaded onto Sizewell B because it turns out to be the only one. What that diagram shows, the yellow column shows what the BNFL currently, or what they said to the energy review back in 2002 was, that ties in with the cost figure that you just quoted, that it is based on 90% load factor, it is available for 90% of the time. My analysis of all Westinghouse PWRs worldwide, all of them, is that overall, from the scheduled date that they started at, they have produced about 58% load factor, and from the date they actually started up, in other words, disregarding the construction delays, 73%. Really what I am saying to you is if we go down the nuclear route it will be the triumph of hope over experience. Q555 Hywel Williams: (Through an Interpreter) Can I therefore ask whether any sensible investor, in your opinion, would be willing to invest in the nuclear industry if there were no hidden sponsorship or obvious sponsorship from the Government and from other methods? If anybody looked at it like a commercial decision, as was made during Mrs Thatcher's Government, if one looked at it objectively as a commercial investment, would any investor continue with a nuclear power station, in your opinion? Mr Morgan: (Through an Interpreter) I am doubtful. Toshiba recently has bought Westinghouse, American branch of BNFL previously, of course, for billions of dollars. The first thing that Toshiba have done is tried to sell on 49% of the company. It is obvious that they do not want to take the risk of building new power stations on their own. It hardly shows confidence on behalf of that company and their produce. Mr Richards: You are absolutely correct in your analysis. It was almost word for word what the first energy review concluded. I have had it verbatim from Gordon McKerron that no private finance, purely private finance, of a new nuclear power station has occurred for many, many decades. Where nuclear power stations are being built, they are being subsidised one way or another, whether it is by the state or, as in the case of Finland, as a loss-leader by the manufacturers. Q556 Hywel Williams: (Through an Interpreter) Can I ask just one other question. Would you argue that the decision to continue with the nuclear industry is not only a commercial one but also has a substantially political element to it and that, ultimately, either the questions relating to carbon dioxide, neither those questions or the commercial questions count fully in the decisions, a case of political power and decision? Mr Morgan: (Through an Interpreter) Of course it will be a political decision but if we came back to our evidence and said that we must look a lot further into the future than just this nuclear 'quick fix', it is a fact that the supply of uranium all over the world is going to become shorter and shorter. Nuclear is not a renewable source of energy, it is already becoming more difficult to get uranium suitable to run power stations, so I will come back to the fact that politicians in the UK now have to be a lot more brave and have to be a lot more forward-thinking, looking into the future and getting a mix of renewable energy from all sorts of different sources. We are hearing more and more every day about different technologies, and of course gas is still going to be important for the next ten years. Contrary to the scare-mongering these days by some politicians when they refer to Russia, and so on, and how unsafe gas from those sources is, it is a fact, over the next ten years, that gas will come from very stable countries, such as Belgium, Norway and The Netherlands, and will come into the UK. Alongside that, Hugh has already argued eloquently that burning gas is better. We have heard the Tower Colliery representatives this morning saying about getting carbon dioxide out of burning coal. I think the time has come for us not to take a short-term decision; be brave for the generations of the future. Q557 Nia Griffith: (Through an Interpreter) A question for Mr Morgan. You have mentioned three incidents when risk of a major accident occurred in Anglesey. Can you provide more information about what happened? Mr Morgan: (Through an Interpreter) In 1993, of course, that was the most serious incident and we have outlined in our written evidence to you what happened on that day. This cramp, which was quite heavy, broke free at the joint and fell into Reactor One in Wylfa. What is terrifying about this incident is that this bit of machinery had been into the reactor for nine whole hours. The nuclear power station workers knew that there was a part there which should not have been there; why did it take nine hours for them to shut down the power station? Magnox Electric, I think it was, at the time, was prosecuted in Amlwch Magistrates' Court, following that incident, so it was a matter of great concern for us in North Wales that this set of incidents could happen. Of course, the Health and Safety Executive, on behalf of the NII, went on to prosecute because of this incident and there was a case in Mold Crown Court in 1994, where the operators of Wylfa were fined £1/4 million and costs were awarded of another £1/4 million. The evidence of one of the NII people in the Crown Court in Mold was that it was a matter of luck, rather than design, that the cramp had stopped where it had stopped, about ten inches away from the fuel element in the fuel channel. Before that, of course, there was the issue of rainwater going into the dry storage in Wylfa Number Four. I do not know what caused that rainwater to seep in; apparently it was birds nesting on the roof and that was what caused the rainwater to seep in. We outline there, of course, that the uranium metal corroded and created a great danger of fire, and that involved releasing radiation into the atmosphere. These are not minor incidents, they do frighten people. Q558 Albert Owen: You are quite right to suggest that the NII inspector has said it was a matter of luck, but others had said it was a proactive shutdown. Mr Morgan: (Through an Interpreter) After nine hours; why not after an hour? Q559 Albert Owen: It was a proactive shutdown and they closed the two of them down; that is what happened. I think this proves that the safety built into nuclear power stations actually works, because nobody was hurt in this incident but it was contained. Yes, the NII fined it, for a breach, for not having a spare on site, was one of the reasons they were fined actually, not because of the incident itself. The Health and Safety said, "You have to have a back-up to this." I think it is important to say that. Also in your evidence you suggest, Mr Morgan, and I think Mr Richards as well, about the costs of when the Anglesey Aluminium cannot get the supply, and of course it did close down for two and a half years, but then the inspector said it was safe to go on. The reason it took the length of time it did, and do not accept this, because I am here to ask questions as much as to give opinions, is that it found that there was a crack in one of the steam-rails on one pipe and that, because of precaution, proactive action had to be taken on the others. That was why it took 18 months, that it could have been done very quickly but, because of the overreactive nature of the industry, it took that length of time. (Through an Interpreter) Is that true? Mr Morgan: (Through an Interpreter) It is quite possible it is true, yes, but they were correct in taking the time that they took to make sure that all the pipework was safe, in their opinion. Q560 Albert Owen: I am addressing this to both of you. Is it not a fact that the NII and the inspectors in HSE and the safety on site actually is working, because you are talking about near catastrophes; there has not been a catastrophe in Wylfa for its whole lifetime of 30-odd years, neither in Trawsfynydd? What I am saying to you is, those incidents did happen, they were corrected, but in the future, and this is why we are having this review, those incidents are unlikely to occur because we are moving on to new technology. That is my point. Mr Richards: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to mention the new technology. Q561 Albert Owen: You have done, in great detail, with respect. We have a difference of opinion on it. Mr Richards: Thank you again. It has been said that the new technology coming up will be safer than the existing stations. Put the existing stations to one side. Where is the evidence, I would suggest, that you ask, where is the evidence for saying that the new designs are safer? The truthful answer is, we simply do not know; there may be, there may not be, we do not know because they have not been built or tested anywhere in the world. That is what I mean to say about the gap. There has been a nuclear power industry worldwide, it has stopped, it has come to a halt and now they are trying to restart it with new concept designs on the basis that they are safer. Unfortunately, we just do not know. There was a proposal after the Chernobyl accident that something called an 'inherently safe reactor' be built. The Nuclear Institute looked quite hard at this. The idea of the inherently safe reactor, as far as we are concerned in Britain, is that it might have been possible for the current safety assessment principles to be set to one side, because the idea was that, no matter what happened in this reactor, it could not explode, radioactivity could not escape; that was the idea of the inherently safe reactor. It was abandoned by the nuclear industry, it was abandoned because they were scared of promoting because people would say then, "Well, if this is the inherently safe reactor, does this mean all the existing reactors are inherently unsafe?" So they dropped it and instead they adopted some of the features, called 'passive safety features', some of them, not all of them, and put them into their new designs, which is what we have got now, we have got some designs, concepts, with some passive safety features, but we do not know if they work. Q562 Albert Owen: Just to move on, you are very honest and open with your answers and I do accept what you are saying with regard to why they were abandoned, because of the effect they might have on the nuclear industry and other reactors. Coming locally, and again I am asking both of you, for an obvious reason, because we have a local dimension, from Mr Morgan, but we have a wider dimension from yourself, how could you replace the jobs lost on Anglesey, with regard to the direct closure and possible closure of the aluminium works at Penrhos, should the nuclear power on the island come to an end in 2010? The second question I think you can link in because we have touched on it. British Nuclear Fuels told this Committee that nuclear power is subject to a sort of inverse NIMBYism, i.e. it is popular round the areas, whereas in any other planning application people tend to oppose it because they do not want it in their backyard. First from a non-Anglesey perspective? Mr Richards: This is something I do have an insight into because I worked in local government for several years in economic development. First of all, I would say, the closure date for Wylfa has been known about for a long time. The terms of the contract for cheap electricity between the operators and Anglesey Aluminium have been in place for a long time. The need to find replacement electricity has been known about for a long time. If I had been asked for my input into that situation to the local authority, I would have said, "You've got plenty of time to plan for what is going to happen." On the positive side, at the station itself you happen to have the best possible experts for the decommissioning, they know the plant better than anyone else and therefore I would look to continuity of employment for at least 20 or 30 years after the station closes. I was talking to someone from Bradwell. I was talking about Trawsfynydd, they were talking about Bradwell. Trawsfynydd had shut and Bradwell was still going. They told me about the run-down of employment, the way it had been scaled back over the years while it was still operating, and I said, "That's exactly the same profile of employment reduction that's taking place at Trawsfynydd after it's shut." In other words, there is a general run-down in employment on nuclear sites. It is known, it is a knowable, so, as an economic development officer, I would say let us look at the plus side. Q563 Albert Owen: People are doing that. I linked the Anglesey Aluminium works deliberately because they were both built almost side by side and there was a baseload down to the aluminium works when Wylfa was planned and opened. The question I am asking is how are you going to replace those jobs? Again, the timetable was known since 2000 for 2010, but at that time they were also talking about 2021 with regard to magnox as an alternative, it is just that the Government turned its back on that because of costs and different issues. To be fair to Anglesey Aluminium, they have gone down that road, they have commissioned a report, it is just that the price of gas has gone so high that nobody will commission a station at this moment in time. When their contract ends, in 2009, they are looking for an alternative supply; they take 37% of their cost to be electricity, so that has gone up by another 30% to 40%, so they are in an economic situation now which is not of their doing. Again, I agree with Mr Morgan, they do look at, say, 2009, where the price might change substantially because of the connector coming from Norway. They cannot risk that, because in 2009 their contract ends and the gas comes on roughly at the same time, but in the meantime they need to build a station. Economically they cannot do that now for gas. That is why it is a unique situation. Really my question is, two of them and you have not answered either, how do you think they can fill those, because we are talking about £47 million into the local economy and nobody has been able to come up with an answer, and I think economics are important, as is safety and other things that we have mentioned? Mr Richards: Given that they have got to make an investment, if they are to stay on the island, they have got to make an investment in some new supply. All I would suggest to them is that they try to form a consortium with industries of the local area and see if it is possible to do a combined heat and power plant, the most efficient plant possible. Q564 Albert Owen: They have looked at other options and what they are telling us locally, me, as a local MP, and the local economy, is that an extension to Wylfa will give them breathing space. They raised that issue and that is why locally they are together. Can you deal with the inverse NIMBYism which occurs around areas where the local economy has been reliant as regards GDP and wages? Anglesey Aluminium has wages 65% higher than the average, on Anglesey, and Wylfa some 40% higher than the average wage. Can you understand, Mr Morgan; from your perspective, can you talk about inverse NIMBYism? Mr Richards: All I would say is that, yes, it is obvious that there is going to be some support for nuclear power from an area that has derived benefits directly from it; yes, why would I deny that? Also, I would say there is a downside, which is that other local firms cannot compete with those sorts of wages, therefore there may be a bounce-back once those wages are taken away. I am saying that. Q565 Albert Owen: You say the nuclear industry is based on hope. I think that is a high hope as well. Mr Morgan: (Through an Interpreter) A discussion has started in the past few weeks locally about other sources of energy. The information which I have received recently about the Pelamis wave energy converter, there is a company in Scotland which is called Ocean Power Delivery which is looking at, well, they are trialling these things at the moment. The tragedy really is that Portugal is at the forefront with these trials. There are some trials in Cornwall and Scotland, but this company has identified the coastline in the south-west of Anglesey as an area of great potential, and, although Ireland shadows Anglesey from the Irish Sea, it does not quite do so, there are strong waves coming in to Anglesey. I have got figures here about these inventions and that 40 Pelamis instruments, inventions, could produce 30 megawatts of electricity, so 340 of them in nine square kilometres could produce 270 megawatts and much more than the 250 megawatts which Anglesey Aluminium wants. Q566 Albert Owen: (Through an Interpreter) I agree with that. There is potential in the sea and in all sorts of other energy sources, but how would you fill this gap, if Anglesey Aluminium were to close, and we are talking about large salaries? Mr Morgan: (Through an Interpreter) The gap will exist anyway, will it not, because if you had permission yesterday to build nuclear power stations, it would take some time to build them and it would be closer to 2020. Q567 Hywel Williams: (Through an Interpreter) Can we turn to the question of terrorism, which gets a lot of attention because of the danger of being vulnerable to attacks. We have had evidence from the Electric Power Research Institution in the United States which says that there will be no radiation being released if any kind of aircraft were to strike a nuclear station. They have looked at these possibilities and they say that, the picture that one has of the aircraft striking into one of the twin towers, if it did so in Wylfa then no radiation would be released. What is your response to that and the response in general to the question of terrorism? Mr Richards: I have got a paper in front of me here from an independent nuclear expert, John Large, but he is quoting the British situation. The background is we live on a small, overcrowded island, between two huge continents. We have thousands of flights over us every day. The acceptable risk of an aircraft flying into a nuclear power station, regardless of terrorism, the basis on which our present nuclear power stations were built and planned, is that the chance of a direct hit from a big aircraft would be one in 70 million, which is something we live with because it is so incredible that you do not actually have to go down that route and do too much planning, or, at least, that has been the view of the Health and Safety Executive. As you say, that has been replaced with the rather more daunting possibility that a 'plane might be flown directly into a reactor. I have here the calculations made in Britain about aircraft flying into a nuclear power plant; there are two exceptions that they do not worry about. They do not worry about military aircraft, because they think that the pilot, no matter what trouble he is in, will make the adjustment and avoid it, sacrifice his life. The other exception that is made in Britain to an aircraft strike is aircraft with a mass of less than 2.3 tonnes. Between 2.3 tonnes and a wide-bodied jet, the biggest that is around, there is quite a bit of scope, and so I would not put too much credence on American research that is theoretical. What we have is 'planes taking off all over Europe, the average, say, Schiphol, Amsterdam; by the time that one of those 'planes gets over Wylfa it has still got 160 tonnes of kerosene on it. I am not an engineer, he is; he is saying that this is not being planned for. As I said earlier, I did ask the nuclear industry proponents, one month after 9/11, and they said, "What would you do, would you put them underground, would you build bigger containments around them, or thicker concrete?" and he said, "Where there's a will there's a way." It has not been thought through. I do not think that any of the implications of this nuclear power programme have been thought through, it is all a kind of generalised chorus in the background, and when it gets down to the actual nitty-gritty it will fall apart. Q568 Hywel Williams: (Through an Interpreter) Can I turn to a key question, in my opinion, the alleged link between nuclear power and nuclear weapons. I say 'alleged' because I happen to believe in it myself, but that is a matter of another argument. The evidence which has been presented to us is, whatever you allege about the link between the nuclear industry and nuclear weapons, these days the techniques and the methods out there and the materials already out there to set up power stations will not have any impact. As someone told us, the genie is already out of the bottle, as it were. How do you respond to that sort of argument? Mr Morgan: (Through an Interpreter) The Government itself accepts that (Not Through an Interpreter) "current nuclear designs operated within an effective security and safeguard framework, such as the UK's, should create very little risk of proliferation." (Through an Interpreter) They do not say that there is no risk at all and therefore out attitude is however much of this material is available the greater the chance for it to fall into the wrong hands. To go back to the issue of terrorism, we have received information recently there is a lot of hypothesising about the 'plane that came down in Pennsylvania on 11 September. One theory was that apparently the Chechnyans were planning to crash a 'plane into a reactor in Russia. They found out in time that this ploy was being organised and it was prevented; but also reports that detailed plans have been found in a vehicle belonging to one of the suicide bombers in London last summer containing detailed maps of nuclear sites in Britain, including Sizewell. Q569 Hywel Williams: (Through an Interpreter) (- Inaudible -) presented the argument, and I think it is a very good one, that the nuclear industry is open to one, large disaster which will change the climate regarding confidence in the industry and the economic climate as well. Even if an aeroplane were to strike Wylfa and it did not lead to the release of radiation, what do you think that would do to the confidence of the Government, the public or the commercial side; what would be the effect on the nuclear industry? Mr Morgan: (Through an Interpreter) I think, as I said earlier, that it would demolish the confidence of the public and also the confidence of companies. Mr Richards: Absolutely. Even an unsuccessful attack, and let us hope to God that if and when it happens it will be unsuccessful, you are quite right, what will be affected will be confidence. If there were no alternative to going down the nuclear route then you can see that people might take it on the chin. Well, it is tough, you know, you win some, you lose some; but there is an alternative. We do not have to go down that route. Q570 Mrs James: (Through an Interpreter) I want to turn now to nuclear waste, and the question is for both of you. Could you explain the concern you have about nuclear waste? We have heard a lot today about the steps forward and about new technology and safety, etc. Have these helped to alleviate your concerns? Mr Richards: There is a lot of discussion, a lot of talk about radioactive waste. You could say this is where I came into it, because back in 1980, when there was a test-drilling programme for high-level radioactive waste disposal, I was working for the local authority and I was told, basically, "Stop it; go out there and stop it." As a local government officer, that was like giving me 007. Basically, I did do a lot of 'phoning round, I spoke to a lot of people and one of the persons that I spoke to was Sir Kingsley Dunham, who had just retired as the Government's Chief Geological Adviser, and he was quite worried. He had made a speech about his worries about plutonium, long-lived radioactive waste, and it was for that reason I tracked him down and had a conversation with him. Basically, I asked him, "What are the geological characteristics of a place deep underground where you could dispose of radioactive waste?" What he said was that it needs to be flat-bedded, sedimentary rock which has not been subjected to tectonic activity, it has not been crumpled up by mountain-building, with a very low, or no, water table and no population; in other words, a desert in the middle of a continent. I said, "Well, where does that leave us, in Britain?" and there was just silence; so I assume that is the sort of advice he was giving to the Government before he retired. Everything we have had since is looking at the possibility of disposing of radioactive waste in Britain and this is where I find it is terribly, terribly simple. Can you dispose of it, which means relinquish control over it, or not? If you cannot relinquish control over it, because you have not got enough scientific certainty about what will happen to the method of encapsulating it and putting it underground, then you have to store it. I would suggest that, in 200 or 300 years' time, the only possible decision that now we have to make in this country, that will be seen as anything like responsible, would be not to close off the options; in other words, not to create a situation where you have put stuff in the ground and you cannot get it out again. What really got me was, Michael Heseltine, bless him, obviously he was having second thoughts on whether you could put this waste underground because it emits heat, heat‑emitting waste, basically he said, this was before he abandoned the idea, "We are still considering putting it underground but we will monitor it." What is the point of putting it deep underground and monitoring it if you cannot do anything about it? So that is where we are up to; so I have grave misgivings. Q571 Mrs James: The point you are making is that it can be monitored but if something goes wrong we will not know how to deal with it? Mr Richards: Exactly. Mr Morgan: (Through an Interpreter) Can I just add then, of course you are aware that CoRWM will produce a report in the summer this year and Gordon McKerron, the Chair, has said, the Scottish Parliament has said, that they have made perfectly clear that they would not be too happy to see new nuclear power stations on their land, unless the nuclear waste problem is to be solved, and it does not look likely that this body and that the sponsorship of the Government has found a final solution to the problem. Can I just refer also to one piece of our evidence where we refer to burying deeply in the ground and the point which was made was that even at three and a half kilometres under the ground, even in such depth, the microbes still exist, water exists, so things are not stable. That is part of the biosphere, in the same way as above the ground is part of the biosphere. Another point which we made in our evidence was that in such a deep area geographically the rocks are very old, but yet again in 1984 we had the strongest earthquake that we had had for many, many years, so the earth's crust is not stable. So the whole question of burial, there are so many problems involved with this, and is it possible to have a final solution, I am very doubtful. Chairman: (Through an Interpreter) Thank you very much for your evidence and your very full evidence. If you wanted to provide additional evidence to us, we would be very grateful. (In English) Thank you very much for your evidence and if you wished to add anything further, we would be very pleased to receive it.
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