Representation by Pete Wilkinson
- Date submitted
- 11 September 2020
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
Amenity The construction of Sizewell C will require the urbanization of a rural area, the wholesale conversion of a tranquil, peaceful area of Suffolk into a building site with the influx of thousands of workers, the construction of park and ride facilities, campuses for the workers, new roads, five new roundabouts on the A12, compulsory purchase orders and the disruption of thousands of lives forced to live with 1000 HGV movement a day, constant light, dust and noise pollution for a 10 – 12 year period for the construction of a facility which, by the time it is ready to deliver electricity, will be surplus to requirements. Access to DCO materials During a pandemic, it has been impossible to undertake appropriate scrutiny of materials for such a huge development project which will have a devastating impact on the lives of thousands in East Suffolk. Inappropriate site The Sizewell site is surrounded by areas of outstanding natural beauty (AONB) and sites of special scientific interest. AONBs have specially protected status and can only be infringed if the project is deemed one of overriding national importance, which Sizewell C is not. Quite apart from the legal protection which is afforded to AONBs, the site is underpinned by soft sandstone, is on an eroding coastline and will be, by 2120, according to the Environment Agency, an island. The Sizewell site’s location in a remote rural area accessed by small lanes which wind through sleepy villages is highly inappropriate for such a huge development. The site is too small for the proposed development. In order to create more space, EdF are required to consider the development spilling over into the AONB to the point where Coronation Wood would be felled. AONBs are afforded special protection under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act and the 1949 National Parks and Access to Countryside Act. Spent nuclear fuel To site a nuclear power station close to the Sizewell population of 5,500 people is, a crime under the Human Rights Act, as it threatens the wellbeing of those people in the event of a major off-site release of radioactivity from which there would be no escape, despite the presence of an emergency plan aimed at evacuating the people of Leiston and surrounding areas. Such an evacuation would not be possible in time to ensure that radiation contamination would be avoided. Health All reactors and nuclear power stations emit routine, low level radiation into the environment. The authorized levels of discharge and subsequent exposures are largely based on data collected after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing in 1945 and are recognized to be imperfect in the conclusions they draw about safety, especially at very low levels. Monitoring regimes around nuclear power plants are imperfect: often the sampling of material for the presence of radioactivity occurs in the wrong place, at the wrong depth and in the wrong recipients: only 40% of known radionuclides are within the scope of the monitoring regimes. All predicted health consequences of nuclear radiation exposure from accidents are exceeded by the observed impacts after the event.