The Green New Deal Group (of which I am a member) and the Sizewell C Campaign have issued this joint press release:
Campaigners have called on Rachel Reeves and Ed Miliband to stop Sizewell C, and redirect its funding to generate ‘Warm Homes' jobs in every constituency by the next election.
Building Sizewell C would likely cost around £40bn over the next 15 years. Deducting money already spent, if Sizewell C is cancelled now, the public money saved by 2030 would be £7.1bn.
A paper from Stop Sizewell C and the Green New Deal Group calls for this saving to be added to the extra £6.6bn the government is committed to spend in the current Parliament on energy efficiency in the nation's homes. Turbo charging this ‘Warm Homes Plan' by more than doubling its budget will generate long term, secure jobs, particularly for young people across the UK. It will be quick to implement, so by the next election new jobs and cheaper, warmer, healthier homes will have appeared in every constituency.
Alison Downes of Stop Sizewell C said: “The taxpayers' money being ploughed into risky, expensive Sizewell C - which will inevitably soar higher due to cost overruns and building delays - would be far better spent improving the lives of households nationwide, bringing down their bills, and helping the UK meet its net zero target”.
Colin Hines of The Green New Deal Group said: “At absolutely no extra cost to the nation's finances Rachel Reeves and Ed Miliband could stop funding the nuclear white elephant that is Sizewell C and not only improve the living conditions for homes in every constituency, but create jobs in every constituency, thereby improving their chances of winning the next election.”
The report's summary says:
There is a clear political advantage from halting Sizewell C and redirecting the billions saved into making millions of homes more energy efficient, thus reducing fuel poverty. This approach will benefit every city, town, village and hamlet in Britain.
It will generate long-term, secure jobs, particularly for young people. It will be quick to implement, so by the next election new jobs and cheaper, warmer, healthier homes will have appeared in every constituency. By contrast, continuing to build Sizewell C and, post 2030, the development of new small modular nuclear reactors, will affect a limited number of constituencies.
Should Sizewell C go ahead, it is expected to cost around £40bn between now and when it opens, potentially around 2040: an average of £2.7bn per year for the next 15 years. Deducting money already spent, if Sizewell is cancelled now, the public money saved by 2030 is £7.1bn, assuming (as seems likely) no private investors are found to share the costs.
We propose that this £7.1bn should be added to the £6.6bn to be spent over the current Parliament on home energy efficiency, as promised in Labour's 2024 manifesto. This shift of funds would massively increase the chances of achieving the Government's aim to ‘Make Britain a clean energy superpower to cut bills, create jobs and deliver security with cheaper, zero-carbon electricity by 2030, accelerating to net zero'.
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Far too Keynsian. Far too sensible.
What’s in it for business? It’ll never work!
(Obviously, tongue very much in cheek but in the press I’m sure such “objections” will be trotted out).
On the Sizebad C side: the unions (jobs see), money people (money see), various nuclear companies (money again).
On the other side: energy efficiency (jobs but not union jobs), needs gov money (Rachel from accounts: “computer says no”)
What does £40bn buy on the energy side? at least 10GW of off-shore wind or perhaps 30GW of on-shore. (both @ around LCOEs £50 – £70/MWh). Sizebad will come in well north of £100/MWh – perhaps £120/MWh. If you want the number:
https://illuminem.com/illuminemvoices/nuclear-economics-lessons-from-lazard-to-hinkley-point-c
Lazards are usually spot on the money when it comes to energy numbers.
Why not do both? If we can do it, we can afford it.
We should have started to replace the ageing 1950s and 1960s nuclear power stations two to three decades ago, in time to bring new capacity on stream as the old ones were switched off. We are going to need baseload power for some time to come and we can generate it ourselves rather than importing it or burning gas (no coal now)
But of course we have an economic model that says that a more wealthy and populous UK cannot afford to do the sort of things today that we did when we were poorer, in the decades after the Second World War.
We should not do both. Nuclear fission is an undesirable white elephant. See my comments below.
@ Andrew,
There’s no reason (apart from a lack of will) that renewables can’t provide baseload:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://skepticalscience.com/print.php%3Fr%3D374&ved=2ahUKEwjFxbXtpqKMAxXgSaQEHSObJcQQgMkKegQISBAK&usg=AOvVaw3eKwjEXykVNqn6pV413v2e
Thanks
I’d agree on the comment re post-war UK, but you’re missing the point on baseload.
I’ve bored the pants off folks over my insulation project to a now 12 year old house, but the 70% reduction in these sorts of winters proves the point that the baseload can be dramatically reduced if conservation is done nationally, and just figure what it would ‘the grid’.
With switchable sources you can have any ‘baseload’ you want really, you can’t just ‘switch off’ nuclear.
You can even have gas turbines if the hydro runs out, or the ‘dead calm’ never recorded in the annuls of the Admiralty finally occurs, or the sun blows a fuse or the tides stop working, etc, etc..
Stop wasting it and anything is possible…
Agreed
Sorry to mention these again but someone has already written a report that could be implemented now
https://www.architecture.com/knowledge-and-resources/resources-landing-page/homes-for-heroes#:~:text=Our%20report%20on%20solving%20the%20energy%20efficiency%20crisis%20in%20England's%20interwar%20suburbs.&text=local_offer%20Policy-,Homes%20for%20Heroes%3A%20solving%20the%20energy%20efficiency%20crisis%20in%20England's,built%20between%201919%20and%201939.
Also of course why not have compulsory energy efficiency improvements on properties when they are sold.
When a house is sold sellers get a report which gives the energy efficiency measures needed to bring it to (say_ band B with estimated costs & savings
Instead of Stamp Duty buyers have to deposit a percentage of the sale price with the local authority or other stakeholder. This is then used to pay bills from an approved contractor for the work recommended in the report.
It might only work on freehold properties and you would need something different for flats
Thanks
Laudable. But this makes too much sense for the current Labour Government. One has almost come to expect that every decision they make to be the diametric opposite of what is needed to help the people of this country and the planet. They may as well be hostile aliens from the Planet Neolib, come to plunder the Earth’s resources and subjugate it’s population.
Sizewell C is another white elephant vanity project like HS2. 🙁
I’ve been thinking about nuclear power for decades. I have flip flopped over the years about whether it is a good thing. Initially I thought it a great source of energy. Then I realised the dreadful problem of radioactive waste (I worked in the radiochemical industry for a short while). But then I thought, despite the problems it might a better alternative to fossil fuels. From time to time I’m near Bradwell power station. It ceased generating in 2002. It is, and will remain a dreadful carbuncle, on the countryside for generations. 🙂 Please let’s not build any more.
Now, with the availability of solar power of wind power, and other alternatives, there really is no need for nuclear fission power (I’m reserving judgement on fission power – it might be good if ever possible but I’m not convinced we need it or that it will be economic).
Not only is there no need for fission nuclear but it is also uneconomic. Renewable is far cheaper.
Proponents of nuclear fission power, and opponents of green power, say it is vital as a “baseload” supply. That’s pure bullshit. The argument for non-renewable base load is that it is needed “when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow”. But, if you need it then, you need it to supply the full electricity requirements. And if it can supply the full electricity requirements then you don’t need renewable. One or the other, but not both.
So how do we solve the issue of no sun and no wind? The answer is storage, obviously. The opponents of renewable say that storage is not adequate. Again bullshit. There are a plethora storage solutions. One of my favourites is to use electricity to create liquid air. The liquid air can drive turbines and regenerate electricity as it returns to the gaseous form. This is decades old technology. Liquid air can be stored for long periods (months). It can, and is, shipped around in tankers. And the whole process is efficient (circa 80% efficient from memory). But there are lots of battery solutions too, including industrial scale, some of which are being built now. Sodium ion (as opposed to lithium) batteries are becoming available now. They have cost and performance advantages over lithium. The disadvantage is that they are heavier, but this doesn’t matter for fixed installations.
So why, I wonder, do politicians love nuclear? I finally concluded they love the control. Big centralised facilities, (archetypically) like nuclear power, have to be centrally managed. This gives politicians control.
Instead of big centralised generation we need decentralised generation. Individual homes with solar panels and batteries linked together in a smart grid. This is efficient and resilient (something highlighted by the debacle at Heathrow airport). And if course we need a refactored and enhanced grid to carry wind power. This doesn’t need new technology. Everything exists now. It just needs government to stear the country in the right direction (it will happen anyway, but more slowly, because of economics). That’s where government investment should be directed.
We definitely don’t need new nuclear. It will become uneconomic and obsolete before the end of its life. It will cost a fortune. It will leave more monsterous carbuncles littering the countryside and an appalling legacy of toxic nuclear waste.
Thanks
Apologies to anyone who used the links in my earlier post; I mangled one of them with a hurried cut and paste. The Wikipedia page on Energy in the United Kingdom is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_Kingdom
You make a strong argument Tim and I am prepared to change my mind. The economics and environmental arguments are absolutely in favour of renewables. On occasional days we can already power the UK from renewables. And that is clearly the long term direction. (And by the way improved energy efficiently and insulation is a no-brainer. Our housing stock is terribly bad.)
But can we manage without nuclear in the short to medium term, say 20 to 50 years? The remaining five UK plants are due to close within a decade, and only one new one is under construction. How long until we have enough renewables capacity and enough storage for a week of cold dark windless winter days? Who is building it? And if they aren’t, why not?
(I think you are reserving judgment on nuclear fusion not fission. It is a possibility and has been for most of my lifetime – more than five decades – but also not entirely clear of radioactive byproducts that will require long term storage. And until we have a workable solution capable of deployment that remains a hope.)
Each GW of nuclear cuts the renewables storage capacity we need so we can switch off the gas sooner. For example right now the UK is using 37GW. 10% nuclear (a few years ago the nuclear would have been almost twice as much). 43% gas. 20% wind. 5% solar. A few other bits and 20% imports. Most of the imports are from France. So we have outsourced the nuclear power generation.
See other answers on base load, Andrew, which I found interesting.
Andrew:
Thanks for spotting my typo. Yes, I am reserving judgement on fussion not fission.
I wonder if you missed my argument on base load? If you need fission for base load then it replaces renewables all the time.
You could have gas for occasional base load, but we’re trying to get away from fossil fuels.
But renewables is cheaper for new power generation than either nuclear or fossil. Furthermore it is quick to build, not 10 or 20 years. A few years. If you want more details on the economics of green energy see many articles by Ambose Evans Pritchard in the Telegraph (hardly a bastion of environmentalism – though judging by the comments he generates many readers hate him).
And liquid air storage is already being built (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crgg81j2xdpo) operational in 2026. Many battery grid storage systems are already built or being built. Anything but renewables and storage is rapidly (in the next few years, not 10) becoming uneconomic. And that may include fusion too if it is ever realised.
Not sure where best to reply. But I’d like to see some serious comment on the engineering challenge here. It is not just a couple of windmills and a few batteries.
As things stand we are going to need something like 30 to 40 GW of electricity supply essentially all the time. So that will need substantially more than 40 GW of installed solar and wind and hydro etc. Perhaps twice that or more to deliver power in the day and also charge the batteries. What is the current installed capacity?
And 40 GW of storage for as long as it takes for a week or two of dark, still winter days. And even then we’re likely to need gas as an emergency reserve.
One storage plant delivering 250 MW from compressed / liquified air for 10 hours can help overnight but we’d need about 200 of them charged up each day and discharged every night. Probably nearer 500 for a full day and several thousand for serious reserve capacity. Say one new one per a week every week for ten years. How much land and resources will that use?
Currently (9pm) we generating 33 GW. About 60% is gas. About 23% is wind (no sun tonight) and still 11% is nuclear.
It was a nice sunny day today with some wind. At 1pm it was 31 GW. Nearly 30% solar, 21% wind. But 35% gas and 12% nuclear. There is a really long way to go. Like, not just twice as much wind and solar but perhaps four or size times as much. And an eye watering amount of storage.
Good questions.
I have no answers.
Not so much an engineering challenge Andrew as a political/business cultural one.
The political decision to make England the sole route for power out of Scotland is probably one of the most glaring, check out continental interconnects – eg The Norway-Peterhead interconnect was gazumped at the last minute to go to Drax, the Norwegians came to regret that recently with an energy crisis.
Grid bottlenecks continue to throttle wind farm production – eg Orkney is awash with energy but can’t export it until 2026 when the mainland interconnect gets upgraded, the Orbital tidal array can’t get up to full power until it does, etc., etc..
Despite attempts to shed blame onto contractors, Ofgem, NG etc., these are political decisions.
– You would be surprised how much power COULD be exported were it not for political chicanery, but it is the lack of joined up thinking for the betterment of the populace which rankles most – eg Had the State of a Secretary for Scotland’s forced SG to host SMRs, how many more wind-turbines would have to have been switched off ?
And as for storage – With 1.4 million EVs in the UK and rising, vehicle to grid offers an awful lot of potential before considering community batteries for solar etc..
It’s political will and greed we have to solve, not the engineering.
I think we need the enghineering too
Let’s be realistic: political will cannot solve this without the right tech.
The engineering and kit is ever available Richard, all it needs is the political will and funding to get rolling – An amusing observation from elsewhere on the government line on SMRs for the UK’s energy security – The fuel is only available from Russia…
Political will is how things get done. Implementation is engineering. Interconnectors, grid, storage (large facilities or millions of EVs), load shedding, all of that is engineering. It may not be rocket science, but then neither are roads or pylons, but it is a complex system and by any measure the transition will be complicated to deliver.
In response to Andrew’s remark in his comment last night:
Andrew> “As things stand we are going to need something like 30 to 40 GW of electricity supply essentially all the time.”
This assumes that we only need to replace our existing electricity requirements. If we are to eliminate the problem of CO2 emissions, then we have to include other things such as heating, transport and manufacturing industries, all of which are currently dominated by fossil fuels. Currently our total energy requirement is much larger than the electricity-only number, at about 188 GW, based on recent government figures: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1020152/2020_Energy_Consumption_in_the_UK__ECUK_.pdf
and referenced in a Wikipedia page on Energy in the United Kingdom:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_theted_Kingdom
With inefficiencies in storage and conversion, this is like to translate into a total requirement of ~250-400 GW —approximately 10x the figure in Andrew’s comment.
As ever, a good place to for insight and data is the late David J. C. MacKay’s “Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air”
http://www.withouthotair.com/
I’ve also found this Nature paper to be useful: “Spatial energy density of large-scale electricity generation from power sources worldwide”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-25341-9
@ Richard (7.23),
I’m with Bob on this; the technology is there. Some of the basic ideas are quite old, but are being refined; other ideas are being rapidly developed:
https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/solar-panel-window-transparent-efficiency-record-b2720986.html
The materials referenced in the above, perovskites, are highly adaptable and low cost:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perovskite&ved=2ahUKEwijisb_nKWMAxUQSkEAHdPBLsIQFnoECBQQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2SnFDYHvKtkC_Hsmb15zmE
There are some issues to crack, not least of which is finding environmentally friendlier solvents, to apply the perovskite layer.
There are further pointers to perovskite applications, in and below this article:
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35978127/&ved=2ahUKEwiCltjinqWMAxX0QEEAHUmmOaIQFnoECBcQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2KST3fRir0Iadbx_JY8cj9
I’m not sure I follow the argument that renewables can supply ‘baseload’ power. Can you explain it in more detail for me, I’m a bit of a dunce!!
In countries like Denmark & Germany, what’s the highest load renewables have ever supplied? About 70% I thought.
This is a genuine request for more info, I’m not picking a below the article fight!!
With regard to the liquid air solution to storage, 3 plants are currently under construction in the UK. https://highviewpower.com/projects/#uk-projects
For the purposes of comparison the one on the Clyde will be able to supply 2.5 gigawatts for 10 hours, Hinkley Point is supposed to generate 3.2 gigawatts when both reactors are going, if it ever happens.
Sizewell B was built and commissioned between 1987 and 1995, and first synchronised with the National Grid on 14 February 1995. The cost of Sizewell B has been quoted as £2 Billion (1987 prices) with a quarter of that cost being related to civil engineering works. Approx 7 billion at 2024 prices
Hinkley Point C was estimated to cost between £25bn and £26bn in 2015. Construction started in 2016. EDF now say that the first reactor will not be in use until at least 2029.
The projected cost is now between £31bn and £35bn in 2015 figures and up to £46bn in today’s money, according to the Bank of England inflation calculator.
Hinkley Point C is a major scandal. There is no case whatsoever for Sizewell C.
The liquid air storage battery on the Clyde might provide 2.5GWh in total – e.g. 200MW for a total duration of 12.5 hours before it has to be charged up again. The press summary doesn’t mention the charging time back to 2.5GWh which would be useful to know to an engineer.
It’s an interesting technology for sure and it would be marvellous if it worked. We could use prices to do the calculation compared to conventional battery storage and pumped storage.
The thing that has always got me cross about Sizewell C is that it’s being built in such a stupid place. Right by the sea! It won’t surprise me if Global Warming begins to kick in seriously before I die – I’m 76 and very disabled by ME/CFS but hopefully I’ll last another 10 years.
So when the sea starts flooding land, what’s that going to do to a nuclear power station built right by it? I’m tempted to say “don’t tell me, I don’t want to know”! But I hardly think it’s just going to get dried out as the water leaves the building, and goes where? Presumably some will drain back into the sea, and whatever it may carry with it will affect all the local (and eventually the not so local) sea life.
I’m probably just being stupid and over-worried, but what’s new?!
It is by Dunwich – where the coast line has receded by well over a mile in 7 centuries – and this may need to be there longer than that
To be fair, looking at the OS map for the area, the topography of the existing power station at Sizewell is all above the five metre contour. Subject to no expansion into lower surrounding land then you would expect five metres above sea level to be sufficient? If sea level to rise more than five metres then we would have much larger environmental and societal issues to be worried about ?
Have you been there?
This would leave it on a tiny island.
And coastal erosion here is massive, as I have noted.
You are missing the point.
I believe that the coastal erosion at Dunwich is now around 1 meter each year. The old ‘City’ is now no longer visible, and the ‘seaport’ has gone, all lost to coastal erosion. The Friary is a ruin (since Henry V111). At least 8 churches there have been ‘lost’ to the sea by erosion – a church (St James Church) was there the last time I visited (June 2024), and currently not too close to the sea, but the old fishing boats, pulled up on what remains of the beach, looked unused, certainly the huts from which I previously could purchase fresh fish looked obsolete. Only a short way from Dunwich is Minsmere – any further Sizewell development will surely have a detrimental effect on, not just the birds, but possibly the fish on which they feed, and other copious wildlife in and around Dunwich Heath and Forest. The sandy cliffs are eroding, but not helped by birds (?sandmartins) who live in them. Why make matters worse by building Sizewell C, when the funds (£££) can be used in a much wiser way such as you suggest.
All to agree with.
I tend to get to Minsmere twice a year and first visited Dunwich in the 60s – there was more of it then.
Sea level rise is inevitable with the melting polar and Greenland ice, so Sizewell is very vulnerable. Not to mention the difficulties of sourcing uranium in 2040 and the impossible problem of dealing with the lethal nuclear waste with a half life of thousands of years. As for nuclear fusion – a complete pipe dream for many decades if at all.
Apologies, technical point. Please forgive. Land ice from glaciers – e.g. Greenland, as you say – when it melts does contribute to sea-level rise, because it’s not already in the sea, so it’s extra. On the other hand, sea ice – frozen sea-water, such as the Arctic ice-cap – does not, because the water generated by melting takes up only the volume of the ice that is underwater, so there’s no net change in the level on melting.
It is part of our unwritten constitution that no government can explicitly rule out nuclear. Its a national virility symbol – and part of our signalling that we are still a great (nuclear) power. The industry has always been an entanglement between nuclear weapons and nuclear power.
The fact that we haven’t replaced most of the exhausted first and second generation stations mean that we know that new nuclear makes no economic or environmental sense. The easiest way out for government is to say to the cheer leaders for SMR – fine get on with it – . That would kill it stone dead – it uninsurable, and makes no sense for private investors.
My old prof of nuclear physics chaired a royal commission decades ago recommending no new nuclear until the waste disposal problem has been resolved – it still isn’t.
I so agree with the lady point.
A friend of mine, the son of Adrian Malone who made “the Age of Uncertainty” with JK Galbraith, did this interview with Susie Greaves about the cover up at Chernobyl and the related corruption of Western science and its institutions
https://shows.acast.com/646f238900e5b10011da2c52/episodes/65cd65dcfcbe4d0016bb5f21?
This is the film which was made in Belarus about all the sick children from Chernobyl
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obGxLxbId9Q
Now is the perfect time politically to can Sizewell C, whilst it’s still possible to blame the Tories for all the sunk costs. Leave it a year or two and Labour will have to shoulder much blame too. And it is a real political win to spend instead on insulating homes, which will create far more jobs and alleviate energy poverty for many people, as well as pleasing the green lobby.
Totally agree that there’s a crying need for insulation of our homes, and for renewable energy, which does bring with is a need for energy storage. Good use of those billions.
There are many ways of storing or moving heat around to save the need to burn fossil fuels and to store any excess from renewables. Some are not workable, others are proven. Some have been mentioned here already. All are location dependent and it needs money and political will to make them work.
In this country, there’s Sheffield – incineration of municipal waste generates electricity and hot water that is pumped around the city centre, providing hot water and heating in the winter and hot water and electricity for Aircon in the summer. The water is at 106C, to increase the heat/energy content of the system, and so the system is slightly pressurised.
Look at ‘Bunhill 2’ (google it) – this is in Islington and provides heat for tower blocks and leisure facilities using heat pumps to take heat out of the hot air in the Underground.
A company called Deep Green builds small Data Centres with a heat pump system to use the heat for the water and heating in a leisure centre (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-64939558). Note that Data Centres do two things – they provide internet services (your cloud storage etc. etc. etc.) and they turn electricity into heat. Big Time! Thus they have massive cooling systems. Use that heat beneficially – a ‘second bite of the cherry’, as it were. In fact, make it part of the planning system that any Data Centre HAS to have locally beneficial energy recovery to get consent. (The engineering company GE are big into this – so there’s loads of fully-tested big kit for this job. Other engineering companies are also available!)
Think on – an aircon system is just a heat pump. Instead of dumping the heat to the outside, use it beneficially (e.g. for water pre-heat in the building it’s cooling). You could introduce a building regulation that says only aircon systems that do this are to be used. Maybe this already happens but I worked in a modern building where it didn’t (it was built only a few years ago and the original design concept even included wind turbines – have a guess if they actually materialised, but no prizes!).
On a larger scale, there’s this: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSdKL0Nnk-k). Storing waste heat from thermal electricity generation as hot water is a great idea, but it’s very much a local solution.
There’s also the well-known hydroelectric pump-storage system. I was never sure about that, but it’s supposed to let thermal generation run at an optimum steady rate, storing excess when demand is low and releasing it when demand is high. There are losses, but presumably overall it’s more efficient?
Add these to the obviously essential need you raise for insulation of older homes and a system starts to emerge that will add to the decarbonisation we’re aiming at. (I say older homes assuming that new-builds have decent insulation built-in. Is that a safe assumption?)
There’s so much than could be done with those £billions! So very, very much. The solution to implementing these has already been given in this discussion, several times – it is, quite simply… Political Will!
I was up at Sizewell last week from Ipswich: my parents used to live in Leiston, the small adjacent town that is bearing the brunt of what is ALREADY happening all over Suffolk because of this ludicrous and indefensible project. From where I am sitting, it already looks like an exclusive get-rich-quick scheme – and little more than that.
The environmental destruction already happening is really horrifying. The whole area is already like a vast building site. Trees and hedgerows ripped up; fields dug up and being rapidly tarmaced; huge trucks and equipment everywhere, dust, dirt, traffic and a legion of hi-vis-bedecked construction-mercenaries everywhere you go. Lunchtime in Leiston High St is now quite unbelievable: we waited a quarter of an hour last Thursday while a lone police officer supervised a vast pantechnicon blocking the entrance to the Co-op carpark while performing a 180 turn outside the chipshop. As the traffic jam gridlocked the town, a bunch of hi-vis’d workers anxiously eyed their vans in case they were obliged to abandon the queue for the chippy to stave them from being rolled flat in the chaos.
And all this is before it’s even confirmed that Sizewell C going ahead.
Increasingly, we are praying that it doesn’t. Though it will take decades to heal the scars already sustained.
One rumour around here is that EDF have already spent most of their foreign nuclear investment budget on the calamity that is Hinkley Point, and the French government is not intending to give them any more. If true, that leaves an even bigger chasm in the Sizewell C budget than caused when the Chinese pulled/were forced out. I am aware that Johnson’s government lavished quite a lot of public money on trying to attract investors to fill the budgetary hole; but, again, as a simple Suffolk paeon, I have been unable to discover what happened subsequently. The lack of politicians enthusiastically trumpeting any subsequent inward investment suggest that the holes in the budget remain. Any further info on this from people who know much better that I would be much appreciated.
A lot of the locals in favour of this think it will bring jobs and prosperity to the area. All I can see is people being brought in from elsewhere to fill the jobs, such as they are; and the chaos and destruction firmly killing a major plank of the local economy: tourism. With once-picturesque country roads now turned into 30mph tracks through miles of metal fencing, filthy earthworks and industrial-scale building sites, it’s hard to see why anyone would come here for the peace, the views and the wildlife any more.
I guess my views on Sizewell C – and my bias – are pretty evident from this. But the current spectacle, and the future for the area that it promises, really is heartbreaking. Leaving aside all the very sound reasons, cogently stated on here, why this, and nuclear generally, is a terrible idea, this alone is sufficient for many of us who call this place home.
So much to agree with
Here is a good article with more background info on the crisis at EDF and the implications for Sizewell and Hinckley https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/edf-reduces-stake-in-sizewell-c-as-boss-sacked-25-03-2025/
Thanks
there are lots of great ideas out there for green energy storage. this is an interesting idea!
https://www.rheenergise.com/how-it-works
SMRs = ‘Small Modular Reactors’ – right?
According to Dr Pangloss Reeves, the rash of big data centres the government is waving through to add to the Growth ledger and placate Musk et al, will be powered by SMRs. Problem solved. But is my brief search right? Isn’t it true that there is no commercially proven SMR anywhere in the world?
You are right