Representation by Peter Smith
- Date submitted
- 26 September 2020
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
Sizewell 'C' will be unsafe, uneconomic, is unecessary & unwanted. The nuclear waste from the site will remain highly radioactive for 200,000+ years. There is still no proven satisfactory disposal method for plutonium & other highly radioactive isotopes. The UK's existing stockpile of plutonium, the largest in the world, has been poorly managed & its storage methods at Sellafield have been severely criticised by the governments own national audit office & other independent bodies. Water cooled reactors have a poor safety track record. Design criteria claim that a major disaster should occur less than 1 in 10,000 years around the world, yet history shows this to be a myth as reality is little more than 1 in 10 years. The EPWR will be vulnerable to cyber terrorism & a determined physical terrorist attack. Latest climate models by leading world scientists have shown we are currently above what is the 'high emissions' scenario, in fact what the Eurooean Env. Agency call the upper bound prediction. At these runaway CO2 & CH4 emissions we are predicted to reach disastrous sea level rise of 2 metres by 2100 & 5 metres rise or more by 2200! It is utterly irresponsible to build nuclear power plants on the coastline anywhere around the UK with these sea level rise predictions. We are currently on a +4°c temperature rise trajectory by 2100 & all major countries around the world are failing to meet their IPCC Paris Agreements to limit temperature rise to 2°c let alone 1.5°c! With clear evidence of worsening weather extremes from 1°c temperature rise, the result of 2, 3 & 4°c rise could be catestrophic. The last thing we need is for nuclear power plants to be inundated by rising sea levels or affected by any other extreme weather events beyond nuclear plant design criteria, leading to fuel melt & major nuclear accident. Sizewell 'C' will have a design life of at least 60 years & with spent fuel having to be stored on site for at least 100 years, due to high fuel burn design, the highly dangerous spent fuel stores will be at serious risk of flood from unpredictable extreme rising sea levels. There is no satisfactory economic or energy justification for nuclear power. Renewables costs continue to fall greater than all predictions. Britain has massive renewables resources, the best winds in Europe, third highest tides in the world and adequate sun levels. Distributed & diverse renewables with diverse, battery, hydrogen, compressed air & water energy storage systems, can supply all the UK's future energy needs. Nuclear power supporters call their industry a low carbon energy supply system. This is highly questionable when the full nuclear cycle is taken into account. Mining of uranium is a high energy process & toxic to workers. Construction is highly energy intensive, decommissioning taking 100 years currently is highly energy intensive & storage over 200, 000 years is very energy intensive. Stores will have to be rebuilt many times over 200, 000 years with all the radioactive risks & precautions necessary to handle some of the most dangerous materials known on the planet. Finially, the government & most local authorities have declared a climate & ecological emergency. This requires urgent action now to reduce emissions to zero by 2050 or as many eminent & better informed scientists believe, by 2030. New nuclear power plants take far too long to build to have any impact on emissions reductions. In fact construction will sadly massively add to emissions.