New Nuclear Delivery Group-what's the craic?

Earlier this week I attended the first meeting of a new group targeted to overcome the 'roadblocks' obstructing the delivery of new nuclear in West Cumbria. I’ve had a lot of people asking me questions about it since & thought it would be useful to share some of the information discussed about Moorside as well as some of my thoughts so members are well informed.

So first up-the land. I often hear people talking about whether there’s enough land because some of it is needed to deliver on the Sellafield decommissioning mission. There are lots of maps of the Moorside site showing it as around 188 acres of land, in the meeting one of the attendees said it’s actually 166 acres but, in all honesty, either way it’s not a major issue. Even the larger SMRs don’t take up much land, for example the Rolls Royce one is one of the larger ones and takes around 5 acres for the canopy of the power plant, more land is needed for support buildings etc but nothing that comes close to the available land so there is still some available for decommissionning. You don’t need to be a maths expert to understand that balancing the vital Sellafield mission and the desire to do new nuclear is one there is a solution to.

A big advantage for Moorside is being one of the 6 sites nationally already designated for new nuclear which haven’t started building (originally there were 8 sites but Hinckley and Sizewell are ongoing now). Put simply this means part of the process has already happened for Moorside but this is a time limited advantage as other sites will be identified moving forward. That gives a sense of urgency locally for Moorside to be one of the first identified by Great British Nuclear in it’s process.

A big issue for nuclear is what we call “license to operate”, this is about whether the local community are supportive or not. Many communities who haven’t historically hosted nuclear plants are concerned about safety and, in my opinion, nuclear energy suffers from being born out of the nuclear bomb research with all it’s associations. Here in Cumberland we have a council, local MPS, unions and the business community all in a room on Monday proactively fighting for new nuclear in this area. Why would we do this? I think there are a number of reasons.

There’s a sense of pride in our nuclear heritage in this area which means we want to stay at the forefront of nuclear advancement. We want to continue to deliver for the UK economy as we have from the days of coal, through nuclear and into wind. I watched my area go from immense pride in developing the UKs first commercial nuclear power plant into a sense of shame during the demonstrations of the 1970s and 80s back into a developing sense of pride on the way we’re delivering on decommissioning. When I speak to people internationally about Sellafield it is highly regarded but I’m not sure we’ve yet seen that fully translated into how the local area feels. We should be proud of the work we’re doing on historical waste which has already helped new nuclear power stations understand how to avoid being left with the same issues.

Any area wants well paid, interesting jobs for its residents and the nuclear industry, Sellafield specifically, has delivered that for our area over decades. Before the council reorganisation merged Copeland, Allerdale and Carlisle with the county council Copeland was routinely listed in the top 3 areas for average weekly wage. Just imagine that-a rural area listed alongside our capital city for average weekly wage. Now don’t get me wrong there are issues we need to fix because the gap between the “haves” and “have nots” in the area is on steroids and there’s been a lot of work since the Social Value Act in 2012 to look at how we can leverage business activity to deliver fairer distribution of those opportunities for well paid jobs across the area. Sellafield’s SiX has driven an understanding and collaborative effort across it’s supply chain that is viewed as an exemplar by other areas and anchor institutions and being able to take that learning into a new project is a really exciting opportunity. It would also show the government how clean energy can be used to drive economic growth in regions.

Speaking of which this conversation isn’t just about nuclear energy. It’s also about wind. Did you know that Cumbria delivers 15.9% of the electricity produced from offshore wind in the UK? But as wind farms like Robin Rigg approach their project end technology has moved on & being able to upgrade the wind farms for the new larger wind turbines would necessitate a stronger grid connection. And guess what? There’s a commitment that if a new nuclear power station goes onto Moorside the grid would be upgraded as a result. So getting new nuclear there would also help us continue to deliver on wind farms. With community generated suggestions like Project Collette we could, as an area, show how wind farms could also deliver huge community benefit in a new way. Here at BECBC we’ve been delighted to engage with the project early to feed in how it could support local supply chain growth.

One of the big reasons why this area is proactively campaigning to get an SMR on Moorside is the ability to use the clean, reliable energy it produces to attract inward investment. Many modern growth industries require lots of power and, just like in the original Industrial Revolution, areas which can provide this will see industry moving to them. There’s often a lot of talk about how reliant our local economy is on nuclear but actually if we get things right nuclear could be the key to diversifying that local economy. It’s an opportunity we don’t want to lose because otherwise we are too dependant on financial decisions made in London which can heavily impact on our area. I have said in the past that if Sellafield sneezes the area catches a cold. Taking a decision now on new nuclear is a long-term decision which could prevent the area having pneumonia when my great grandchildren are growing up here. Personally I feel that responsibility heavily for all our future Cumberland residents.

I’ve told you all the reasons why we should have new nuclear at Moorside so what’s the problem? It became clear in the meeting that the main concern is around capacity. With a busy project pipeline at Sellafield to deliver on what is a national mission the concerns are twofold. First would we have the people and skills to deliver? Second could our physical infrastructure support the physical movements of people, equipment and frankly huge items of plant?

So lets deal with people first. The labour market is still tight and we are a rural area which needs to attract more residents. But the nuclear labour market is certainly a national, in fact an international one. Any new nuclear project in any location is going to face an issue over workforce. In fact Sizewell C is already facing a similar issue with many clean energy projects in the same area.

As so often happens this is an issue we’ve faced before, in fact the estate I was born onto, Mirehouse, was built to house the workforce we needed to import to build Sellafield. As it happened many of them moved into other areas such as Gosforth and Seascale so the estate become very much one of local residents but with well built houses and great community spirit I can’t see that as a failing!

What about the physical infrastructure then? There is no doubt this needs upgraded but frankly it should have been upgraded decades ago and would have greatly benefitted our local residents and businesses. With far too many single points of failure on our road and rail system all too often roadworks or accidents cause huge delays because there’s simply no other way round. We can’t sit in a room and say this isn’t an issue. So what can we do?

Moorside has many positives balanced against 2 concerns. As an area we now need to make sure we show that if we start planning now, increasing productivity, building a strong comms campaign to attract people to live and work in our region and showing how an infrastructure investment would deliver strong return on investment while combatting any conversations in London which talk down the potential at Moorside.

Interestingly my husband found an old Whitehaven News a few weeks ago from 1992 with the headline “We won’t be rushed on new nuclear”-well we can safely tick that one off can’t we? Let’s make sure we fight to make sure new nuclear finally gets delivered for Moorside. I don’t want to sit explaining in 2044 to my great grandchildren why we failed.