Meeting of the Parliament 24 June 2026 [Draft]
I absolutely recognise that. The member has just taken me back to a tour that I was given of Dounreay, which was an experimental site—did it have fast reactors, or something like that? I am not an expert, but the member is absolutely right that work was being done. We could have continued with it—we did not need to stop.
As Paul Sweeney mentioned a minute ago, the way in which we talk about nuclear in the political discussion often sees us thinking about the nuclear of the past, but that is not where we are any more. Small modular reactors are changing. Wales and England are embracing that; we could, too. We could have highly skilled jobs and good incomes, which are deeply important in rural communities such as Caithness and north Sutherland.
I have received an email from one of the nuclear associations, which said that an electricity margin notice was issued last night. I am sure that members will know what that means, but for anyone who does not know, it means that there was high demand for electricity. I do not know how many members had fans on or the air conditioning on in their hotel last night, because it was so warm. That was the first time since January 2025 that that has happened, but it is predicted that it will happen more often. Apparently, Torness was at full power when that happened. If it had not been there, which the SNP wants, we would be thousands of megawatts of electricity down. I do not know what to make of that, but I think that prices would surge and, potentially, we would have blackouts. That is not a world that I want to live in.
In the communities that I represent in the Highlands, people are getting fed up with having wind turbines on every hill that they come across. Nuclear is important and we need to have a grown-up discussion about it. The SNP needs to change its ideological opposition to nuclear.