Chris Seeks Single Ownership Of Nuclear Site Planning
Q78 Sir Christopher Chope: Is not one of the key issues in regulation and licensing the need for applicants to have a one-stop shop? We are such a long way from that. What can you do, or what advice can you give the Government, to facilitate the creation of a one-stop shop? At the moment we have duplication and conflicting objectives. If I am an individual applicant wanting to apply for a small nuclear reactor, I am just one person, yet I have to deal with a whole range of different organisations. The personnel in those organisations change, and if it is anything like my local planning authority, you can get one planning officer who says x, but that officer retires and the replacement comes along and says no, definitely not x. How can we relieve the burden on applicants and give them a one-stop shop?
Mike Finnerty: It is a fair question. We have the vires and the statute under the legislation to issue a nuclear site licence to a developer, and we regulate under that licence. We work very closely with other agencies—for example, the Environment Agency as part of our generic design assessment. We also work closely with them on sites.
There are examples of us working in partnership with other regulators. Other agencies have different vires, and they have to regulate under their own statutory requirements as well. It is a difficult question, but we are trying to ensure that we can work together as much as possible within the current framework, so that essentially we can deliver to the benefit of society.
Q79 Sir Christopher Chope: But is it not possible to have one person in charge? If you are the chief executive of an applicant, in preparing your application, you are meant to have already taken into account all the issues around the environment, safety and so on. Why can we not have one individual appointed to decide these issues, instead of continually being held to ransom by rival organisations? In my experience, you have the Environment Agency, Natural England and Old Uncle Tom Cobley and all, each wishing to assert its own authority and importance. That is to the detriment of efficient and timely regulation.
Rebecca Phillips: If it helps, under the Planning Act there is the opportunity to bring together non-planning consents as part of a DCO, but it would require the regulatory body or the licensing authority to agree to it.
Q80 Sir Christopher Chope: Is that going to happen?
Rebecca Phillips: That is not for me to—
Q81 Sir Christopher Chope: That is a bit of a cop-out. So you are saying that these individual licensing authorities have to agree to do it? Do you think that is a satisfactory state of affairs, bearing in mind the problems?
Rebecca Phillips: As it stands and as I understand it, the Planning Act provides the opportunity, but it will depend—
Q82 Sir Christopher Chope: I know that, but would you like to see the legislation or guidance changed?
Rebecca Phillips: It will depend on individual regulatory bodies to agree. There are things I cannot answer, because obviously we are operating under the Planning Act, but there are different licences that could be agreed. However, we are not the authority for that.
Q83 Sir Christopher Chope: Are you asking for this power?
Rebecca Phillips: We have not requested it, no.
Mike Finnerty: It is part of the regulatory taskforce. There may be elements in this. I would suggest that we are not rival regulators; where we can work together, we do—and quite successfully, I think. We will see what the taskforce recommendations come out with. It is too early to pre-empt what they will say, but there may be opportunities within their recommendations for there to be further co-operation and further ways in which we can work more closely together to get to the point that you are suggesting.
Catherine Anderson: Building on that, within any project, whether it be nuclear or any sort of major infrastructure, there are behaviours in place that we are very focused on, as applicants. NIPA supports a lot of applicants in this space, and consultation fatigue is very real within both regulatory and stakeholder organisations. We have been very keen to hone things, behaviourally, within the major infrastructure space.
There are good examples out there where technical working groups within the environmental impact assessment space—bringing together both regulatory and planning processes—have worked well, ensuring that information is created once, and done well, to then support both DCO and regulatory processes. So, while it is not a legislative requirement, there are behaviours and practices in place that try to minimise that kind of fatigue.
Q84 Sir Christopher Chope: May I ask some specific questions? Mitigation of seismic risk is a non-negotiable requirement for a site licence, yet it is being added into EN-7 as a planning consideration. Is that really helpful? What is the point of it?
Mike Finnerty: That comes in as part of the criteria for a very early assessment about whether a site is clearly unsuitable or not. That is the go/no go situation I was talking about. Under the site licensing approach, the licence is given to a corporate body, which then looks at a specific design on that site. The assessment that goes into that is much more detailed, looking at various safety justifications made by the developer, and we need to be satisfied that they do not have the potential for an intolerable accident as a result of any seismic activity.
Chair: Yes, I think we have understood why it is a safety requirement, but why is it being added as a planning one? Why is it needed?
Mike Finnerty: Again, it is for DESNZ to comment on what the criteria are and what the—
Chair: But do you think it is needed, as a planning one?
Q85 Sir Christopher Chope: Would it affect safety, for example, if we did not have EN-7, and a nuclear project instead had to rely solely on the generic aspects of EN-1?
Mike Finnerty: I think the issue here is that if EN-7 did not exist and something came through the licensing process with something that EN-7 would have picked up to say, “Look, it is clearly not a sensible approach for a nuclear power station to be sited here, because of these safety factors,” it could potentially involve a lot of money and cost to justify something that could have been picked up far earlier. That is the point: it gives a ready go/no go guidance that would then be picked up by the nuclear site licence. What we do not want is for a developer to spend a lot of money and effort on something that could clearly have been identified, at an early stage, as unacceptable from a siting point of view.
Q86 Sir Christopher Chope: But you speak as though this is an exact science—“Is a nuclear power plant in this particular area going to be safe?” These are matters of judgment, essentially, aren’t they? What is happening is that you have competing regulators exercising different areas of judgment at different stages in the process. Could it not all be done at an early stage?
Mike Finnerty: A huge amount of technical assessment is required as part of site licensing. It is not judgment; it is actually a technical assessment. That is there to give those robust assurances that the site can be operated safely and securely.
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Q89 Sir Christopher Chope: If it is not safe, you will not get a licence for it so there is no point in going through the planning processes. Surely, the person who makes the application is going to have to have satisfied themselves that they meet all these criteria, and they will have entered into pre-application discussions with all the regulators. If all the regulators have entered into separate discussions with the applicant, why can’t the regulators collectively reach a prima facie conclusion on the basis of those negotiations with the applicant, prior to any application being made? It can then be dealt with quickly and not sequentially.
Mike Finnerty: Because as part of the licensing approach, that is where the assessment happens. The claims will be made, but then they will be tested. It is about claims, arguments and providing evidence. My understanding is that claims may be made as part of the NPS solution, but I am not sure whether there is evidence of sufficient authority and robustness that it would be able to satisfy that licence requirement.
We mentioned advanced nuclear technologies earlier. Very big claims are made about advanced modular reactors—about how safe the safety systems are, with passive safety features and so on—but they have never been substantiated. That technology has not been proven.
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Q100 Sir Christopher Chope: You say that it is difficult to evaluate claims that are made—that applicants will claim this, that and the other, and that you as regulators have got to try and see whether those claims are valid. Instead of second-guessing that, is it not possible instead to bring in conditions to cover? If the applicant says it is going to be like this, that and the other, you can grant permission on the condition that that is what is met. You do not then have to second-guess or investigate whether the claims are valid, because you can ensure that if the claims turn out not to be valid, then the conditions will not be met.
Mike Finnerty: Rebecca mentioned the early engagement we have. I think the early engagement should go a long way for the developer to understand exactly what our requirements are, and for us to understand what the design is and what the level of those claims are. Building nuclear power stations is expensive. It would be wrong for us to say, “You go ahead and we’ll take on face value what you are saying. You go ahead and build your power station,” and then many years down the line, say, “You said you would build this like this. Actually, it is not like this at all. We will put an order in to stop you operating.” I think that is the wrong approach.
Also, in this country, the regulatory framework is goal-setting. We are not prescriptive. We do not tell the developer how it should go about meeting the requirements. It is up to the developer, but through that early engagement we can assess, “How do you think you might meet these requirements?” We can have that dialogue and that advice. Through that enabling approach, we have a really beneficial system. Certainly, I would not want to leave it for developers to go and build something and then tell them, “You said this, but in fact you haven’t done this, so we’re not allowing you to operate.”
Q101 Sir Christopher Chope: So because you are not prescriptive, you are not validating these claims?
Mike Finnerty: No, we do validate the claims. They have to meet a particular standard, but it is up to the developers how they meet those standards.
Q102 Sir Christopher Chope: But if they said how they are going to meet those, why is there a problem? Why does it take so long?
Mike Finnerty: Because they need to then actually demonstrate—the analysis that goes into a big nuclear power station is hugely complex. They are hugely complex beasts, and they have to look at a range of potential fault conditions and demonstrate the quality, and they need to demonstrate that it is built to the right specification and all these things. All of that needs assessment and all of that takes a huge amount of time.
Q103 Sir Christopher Chope: Don’t we know it! A good friend of mine—a Member of Parliament, actually—made a fortune out of being counsel to the Sizewell B inquiry, and he never looked back. I thought the whole idea was that we were going to try and simplify this process so that we can get these small nuclear reactors up and running in our lifetimes. Isn't that the objective?
Chair: Did you cover this earlier, Catherine?
Catherine Anderson: I think so.
Chair: Do you want to try again? You were talking about condition or control mechanisms.
Catherine Anderson: It is important to recognise that not everything is going to be Sizewell C scale when we are talking about modular reactors. We need to remember proportionality: the scale of a small nuclear small modular reactor could be as little as 20 MW. When the same regulatory process applies—granted. So it is all about scale and proportionality.
To answer your question, Sir: there are clear opportunities for EN-7 to direct between control or condition: control through regulatory processes and condition via the DCO process. Therein lies the opportunity. That is the recommendation that we have made via the consultations to the taskforce.
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