Lord Cope's speech in the House of Lords

House of Lords debate 9th March 2010 – Lord Cope of Berkeley spoke against cooling tower proposals for Oldbury

Extracts from the House of Lords Daily Hansard on the House of Lords Debate Energy:

Draft National Policy Statement for Nuclear Power Generation (EN-6) 9th March 2010

For complete record see http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200910/ldhansrd/text/100309-gc0001.htm#10030975000024

4.22 pm

Lord Cope of Berkeley: My Lords, I have long been a supporter of nuclear power generation.

When I was a Member of another place, there were two nuclear power stations in my constituency, Berkeley and Oldbury. I lived between the two and I was a supporter of them then, and I still am. I therefore welcome the fact that, after wasting a decade-as my noble friend Lord Jenkin said so powerfully-the Government are now considering all this and are to take it forward.

My noble friend spoke about the whole area, but I want to concentrate on one detail.

I recognise that the planning process for such large facilities was in need of improvement.

Objectors should be able to have their say, but it is not in the national interest that they and their lawyers should be able to spin things out for many years. So I accept the framework of what we are talking about. However, I also think that when autocratic powers are in place, it is essential that, in the opinion of the citizens, they are used with due care, as anything else would be a failure of democracy.

That is why I am sad that this document is flawed in at least one important respect, the respect that I know best: the proposals about Oldbury-on-Severn or, more accurately, next door in Shepperdine. The present Magnox station was opened in 1967 with an enthusiastic speech in favour of nuclear power from the then Minister, Tony Benn. I recommend the speech to anyone who wants to make a good speech in favour of nuclear power. Some excellent points were made in it. That power station will not be generating for much longer, yet the local people have accepted it for many years. Successive managers and their teams have worked very hard to cultivate good local relations. Many visitors-and every local organisation for 30 miles around that has outings-have been shown over the power station. They have come away reassured about its safety and impressed with the fact that it very cheaply produces large quantities of electricity, enough electricity to power the whole City of Bristol one and a half times over.

At first sight, it is therefore rather surprising that every local council and many other bodies are firmly opposed to the ideas expressed in the document about building a replacement station in the area. Despite the local jobs that that would save or create, they are opposed, and so am I. We are opposed not to a replacement of Oldbury power station but to the specific proposals in this strategy document. The most important reason concerns the proposed cooling arrangements.

The present station was built at Oldbury because it could be cooled by the water from the Severn, on whose banks it stands. The same was of course true of Berkeley-the first commercial nuclear power station in the world-upstream, and of Hinkley Point, downstream where the Severn has widened out into an estuary. At Oldbury, the river is about two miles wide with an enormous tidal range at that point. However, the new proposals reject the idea of using the river water for cooling. Some may think, as I do, that as the available river cooling water was the point of choosing the Oldbury site in the first place, that would rule out using the site for the new station.

Yet it apparently does not. The idea in this document is instead to build cooling towers, as if it were an inland power station instead of being adjacent to tidal water, and that is the key reason why local representatives and people are against it.

It is proposed to have up to four cooling towers, which will be up to 200 metres high with plumes rising well above that. Big Ben's Clock Tower is 96 metres to the top of its golden finial; the cooling towers would be more than twice that height. Big Ben, of course, also comes to an elegant point, whereas the towers would be vastly bulky at the top. There would be no golden decoration there. Can you imagine what that will do to the views over this splendid estuary from miles away, including from both the Cotswold and Wye Valley areas of outstanding natural beauty? The cooling towers will not only dominate a vast area of estuarial beauty but stick up above the surrounding hills. They will actually be seen for 30 miles.

The overall document, EN-1, worries about the high visibility of development on undeveloped coast and talks of minimising the harm done to highly valued landscape by landscaping schemes.

This document says that that site is, "suitable ... because ... the nature ... and scale", of the effects of landscaping are "uncertain", yet there is no way that 200-metre cooling towers could be mitigated by, for instance, planting trees. The largest tree in the world, a Californian redwood, is 115 metres high-just over half the height of the proposed cooling towers-and has only reached that height after 1,000 years or more.

I realise that some may, by this stage, be thinking that this is all pure nimbyism. In my case, that charge fails on a technicality as we now live some way away, in Bath. In any case, that is to misunderstand the specific objections. My objection is not to a new power station at Oldbury but to cooling towers which would be a monstrous and unnecessary intrusion. Oldbury is, incidentally, the only site mentioned in the document where it is proposed to have any cooling towers. It is primarily those which have converted supporters of nuclear power into dedicated opponents.

There are other objections on which I shall not expand: the risk of flooding and the effect on the very special habitats there. These considerations are raised in the document as things that still need to be dealt with. It says that, "it may be possible to avoid or mitigate impacts"- for instance, on designated sites of biodiversity. There is also some discussion about the effect of all this on the possible schemes to harness the huge Severn tides which are also being considered. Depending on the outcome of those considerations, that may well, in any case, destroy the habitats, so we will probably not have to worry about the birds or fish by then. It might also make more river water available for cooling, although I doubt it.

I have a wider concern about all this. Draconian power-which is what these new strategic planning arrangements are-must be used with sensitivity if it is to be acceptable in a free society.

I believe that the Government, in their new-found concern about coming energy shortages and in their rush to correct their error of ignoring nuclear power for a decade or so, have cut corners and abandoned logic. Oldbury, which is currently a well accepted nuclear station, is closing, but they said that we can build a replacement there. When they then found out that they could not use the river water for cooling, someone, who was probably sitting on a sofa at the time, said, "Well, cool it some other way". In any case, I do not think that the matter was given enough thought. I think that that destroys the case for the site, and it certainly destroys popular acceptance of it.

When you convert friends of nuclear power into enemies on this scale, it is time to think again about this aspect of the document.

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath: “………………………… The noble Lord, Lord Cope, who is a strong supporter of the nuclear policy in general, expressed concerns about the cooling towers in the development at Oldbury. The existing Magnox station is direct-cooled. It passes water from the Severn directly through its condensers and back into the river. The new station may have more than eight times the electrical capacity of the current station. If it were direct-cooled, it would need to extract from and discharge into the river in the order of eight times the quantity of water. The fear is that the warm water discharge would impose an unacceptable heat load on the river and the estuary.

That is why an indirect cooling system would be required. The sustainability appraisal recognises that, given the height of the reactor buildings and the assumed highest cooling towers, methods of mitigation are limited and that all visual effects will be mitigated fully. If an application came forward, the IPC would have to consider the issue using the guidance on visual impact in the overarching NPS. The IPC would have to judge whether the visual effects on sensitive receptors, such as local residents and visitors to the area, outweigh the benefits of the project. It is also worth bearing in mind that before the IPC will formally accept an application, the developer will have to have gone through extensive local consultation.

I understand that one of the developers, Horizon Nuclear Power, has stated publicly that it is looking at all cooling tower options, which may include cooling towers shorter than 70 metres, such as hybrid cell towers, and it will consult on the feasible options as part of its pre-application consultation. I take the point that the noble Lord raised, and I hope that he will accept that, as with the other site, this is not a done deal and that there are specific reasons why cooling towers have been proposed. This will all have to be considered if the NPS is adopted with the sites currently in it. Those matters will have to be gone into very carefully by the developer with the local community before the formal application can be accepted by the IPC………………….”