Representation by Save Our Sandlings (Save Our Sandlings)
- Date submitted
- 30 September 2020
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
The application to build Sizewell C and D should be rejected. The negative impact of its building would greatly outweigh any benefits. EDF is hugely in debt and desperate to sell its new over-complicated unproven reactors to save itself from bankruptcy. If EDF goes under the company will not be able to afford to maintain its previous generation of nuclear reactors that France relies on. The test reactor at Flammerville was giving the go ahead despite having known flaws in the reactor casing to be mended or replaced at a later stage. Why should Britain build an un-needed massive nuclear project to bail-out EDF and France’s antiquated reliance on nuclear. These problems also indicate that the stated costs and timescale will spiral. Any UK Government or British taxpayer involvement would be extremely bad value with the much lower cost of renewables such as windpower. The government minister Ed Davey who gave the go ahead on Hinkley now says he thinks Sizewell should not be built. East Suffolk is a very special area with Minsmere bird reserve and a coastal strip of AONB with many sites of special scientific interest. A sizeable preportion of the world’s endangered Sandlings heathland is here. All this within a couple of miles around Sizewell. You could not pick a worse area environmentally to build a truly massive project like this. This coast has been eroded with villages now under the sea yet these power stations are proposed where it is likely to be an island in the next century. Nuclear is not low carbon when you take a plant’s whole life - getting the uranium, ten to twenty years construction on a gigantic scale with all the concrete and lorries, operating time and then the storing spent fuel for centuries. The cost of this has not been factored in and will fall on the taxpayer making the overall cost of the electricity produced soar more and more in the long term. Sizewell B radiactive waste is still on site as nowhere has been found for it. Loss of local jobs in the Tourism industry will out-way jobs created in the construction period or while the plant operates. Construction jobs will not be for local people. Itinerant construction workers will cause social problems as they did with Sizewell B with towns and villages becoming like the Wild West. Tourists will not want to come here for the walks, landscape, or wildlife. They will not want to come to the cultural centres of Snape and Aldebugh etc in the construction period with all the noise and pollution from lorries on the roads. Local house prices will fall and the quality of life for residents will be intolerable. Governments such as Germany and International companies are forsaking nuclear as it is not cost effective, out of date and dangerous in the long term - especially with global warming causing climatic events and global terrorism. If built Sizewell would be a very expensive white elephant with the technology out of date before it was finished. The dangerous costly legacy lasting for the foreseeable future. Its construction would have ruined one of the most beautiful parts of the country. It must not get the go ahead because of pressure by vested interests or foreign countries. The interests of the whole of the UK taxpayer and East Suffolk residents and visitors are that Sizewell C and D should not be built.