Examination of Witnesses (Questions 511
- 519)
WEDNESDAY 27 JANUARY 2010 (afternoon)
DR CARL
CLOWES AND
MR JIM
DUFFY
Q511 Dr Whitehead:
Good afternoon, welcome to our evidence session this afternoon
on the national policy statements, their content and effect. We
are this afternoon particularly concerning ourselves with the
national policy statement on nuclear power for the future and
we are charged as a select committee with looking at the fitness
for purpose of those national policy statements, whether they
need revision, whether they cover the points they are required
to cover and whether indeed the applications that come up in front
of the Infrastructure Planning Commission arising from those national
policy statements will therefore be properly informed and properly
serviced in terms of the work that that Commission will do. I
appreciate that that sounds as though it narrows the particular
scope of our discussions here this afternoon but I trust we will
have time this afternoon for all the relevant points to be made
by our witnesses and from the questions. What I would like to
do this afternoon—and I understand all our witnesses this
afternoon are in the room with us now—is we have a schedule
of witnesses from a number of different parts of the country,
campaigns and organisations concerning particular local nuclear
power plants and local developments of nuclear power plants. I
would ask each witness to avail themselves of up to ten minutes
to make a statement to this Committee; obviously you do not have
to take ten minutes if you do not wish to. We are very grateful
for the written evidence that all our witnesses this afternoon
have provided this Committee with and you may wish, therefore,
to rely to some extent on that written material and add to it
rather than taking an entire ten minutes, but you are welcome
to take up to that period of time, after which each group of witnesses
will be questioned briefly by our panel here this afternoon. We
will then proceed to the next group. Could I first welcome Dr
Clowes and Mr Duffy; Dr Clowes from People Against Wylfa B and
Mr Jim Duffy from Stop Hinkley. Dr Clowes, would you start our
proceedings?
Dr Clowes: Thank you Chairman.
Thank you for the opportunity in the first instance to present
this afternoon. As you rightly say I am from PAWB, which is a
useful acronym, it works in both languages, Pobl Atal Wylfa B,
People Against Wylfa B. It had been my intention, I had indeed
asked, that I give representations this afternoon in my mother
tongue, in Welsh; that was an opportunity that was not afforded
to me so I will continue in English if I may. The response from
PAWB is in two parts; firstly more general arguments against nuclear
new build but, secondly, arguments against the location proposed.
It is fair to say everybody is beginning to appreciate by now
that the waste from the high burn up fuel proposed in the new
reactors will be far hotter than previous waste, and high burn
up fuel will use more enriched uranium and leave it in the reactor
for longer. As a result it will be twice as hot and twice as radioactive
as the legacy fuel. At the moment we have a process for dealing
with that but no solution. It will be twice as radioactive and
will take twice as long to cool down, not surprisingly. Then it
will be stored on site for up to 160 years, and of course this
is of great concern. There are real uncertainties about disposal,
the nature of that final product and indeed the economics of who
will deal with it in the long term future. I do not think that
has been addressed adequately. Despite this the IPC will have
no remit to consider the question of waste and this absurd statement—everybody
is focusing on it—in the NPS, that the Government is satisfied
that "effective arrangements will exist to manage and dispose
of the waste that will be produced from new nuclear power stations.
As a result the IPC need not consider the question." That
I find quite remarkable as we are as a society are being urged
to reduce waste and recycle and yet here we see one of the most
toxic waste products being stored in a multiplicity of sites for
an indeterminate period. This proliferation of sites also of course
proliferates the number of opportunities for an attack or terrorist
response. It was on the basis of these concerns in relation to
waste that Wales' Minister for the Environment, with responsibility
for all waste management in Wales it would seem, except this particular
kind of waste, called for an inquiry, under the terms of the 2005
concordat. This concordat was signed by all the home countries;
Wales was deemed a justifying authority under that concordat and
the minister, as I say, called for an inquiry in that regard.
Unfortunately, that has been rejected by Minister Lord Hunt, a
decision that seems contrary to the democratic process. Correspondence
from the Welsh Assembly Government to PAWB, to our organisation,
makes it quite clear that Wales has no need for new nuclear build
in its energy future. In their words "Wales' electricity
consumption is around 24 terawatt hours per year currently. With
sufficient innovation and investment [these are all key words]
the right government framework [again, key] and public support
Wales could produce over 33 terawatt hours per year [in other
word, nine terawatt hours in excess of consumption] from renewable
sources with about half from marine, a third from wind and the
balance from sustainable biomass." This is the Welsh Assembly
Government's considered view. I must also say in relation to new
nuclear build that it is proving a huge distraction from alternative
sources of energy which are sustainable, I must say also in our
part of the world that the county of Ynys Môn, Anglesey
which has the lowest GVA in the United Kingdom—it is also
proving a major distraction for any sustainable socio-economic
development strategy because it is paralysing any meaningful discussion.
In terms of concerns in relation to the local siting, the siting
at Wylfa, one of the main concerns that does not appear to have
been addressed adequately is that relating to the fact that one
minute flying time from Wylfa is RAF Valley where pilots from
around the world are trained. There have been several instances,
sadly, in the last six months where we have seen individuals in
positions of authority throughout the world, from France to Afghanistan
to the US, turning on their colleagues with disastrous consequences.
In a similar vein, the near miss of two RAF Hawk jets from Valley
recently is salutary; just 15 metres from one another when they
had to take emergency measures to avoid a collision. I do not
think there is anybody here willing to taking a bet that there
will be no untoward incident involving the Valley site for the
proposed Wylfa B location within the 160-year timeframe. Prevention
is better than cure it seems to me, we must consider that as a
possibility at the very least. Evacuation from the island: it
is perhaps not often appreciated at a distance but the island
has two points of access and egress, a Thomas Telford bridge from
1820 and another one, a road built on top of Stephenson's railway
bridge. These present the only single carriageway in the whole
length of road from Holyhead to London. This is a major European
route linking Dublin and Ireland of course with continental Europe
and it is fraught with congestion at the best of times because
of the heavy traffic. Amazingly, from our investigations, evacuation
from the island has not been considered in any emergency response
and it is vital that this is a planning consideration. How would
you remove 66,000 people from the island in the case of a serious
emergency? The cultural impact of a new station is something that
I would urge the Committee also to consider. In the words of the
chair of the OND[1]
in a recent meeting at Wylfa some 9,000 people would be employed
in the development. This seems excessive but they were words that
were said in public. This is an area where, until the advent of
Wylfa A, the Welsh language was spoken by over 80 per cent of
the population. Today just four per cent of the children in Cemaes
School next to Wylfa are native Welsh speakers. Can I say that
again: just four per cent are native Welsh speakers from a time
40 years ago when it was 80 per cent. This decline without any
doubt was set in train by large scale migration into the area
to support the development of Wylfa A. The draft statement is
again fundamentally flawed as there is no socio-linguistic impact
assessment of new build at Wylfa and this, I have to say, is one
of the basic tenets and requirements of all planning decisions
in Wales today. We very much appreciate our cultural heritage
and that has to be part of the planning equation. Transmission
of the production down-line: it appears perverse to most of us
that new nuclear build should occur some 200 kilometres from the
main users of electricity in the north west of England. Such distances
for transmission will involve considerable power loss—depending
on which document I read up to 30 per cent—and a considerable
blot on the landscape as larger pylons than ever march across
the rural landscape of Anglesey, large tracts of Snowdonia and
the beautiful hinterland of much of North Wales. Surprisingly,
when questioned in a recent meeting in Cemaes, an officer from
the OND suggested that they had to be placed, in her words, "in
remote areas". Perhaps this was an admission, if one was
required, that safety is not all that it is proclaimed. The environment
around Wylfa is of huge importance. An appraisal of sustainability
identified the potential for adverse effects on sites and species
considered to be of European importance. There are many designated
sites: Cemlyn Bay Special Area of Conservation (SAC) and then
there are three SPAs all within the immediate vicinity. In addition
there are nationally designated sites of ecological importance:
three SSSIs within five kilometres of the proposed site and Tre`r
Gof, actually a site within the curtailage of the proposed development,
so habitat in the words of the appraisal study that could "clearly
suffer effects associated with the development". It is not
acceptable for the government to say that despite the inability
to rule out adverse effects there is an imperative reason of overriding
public interest. I see very little purpose in designating an area
of huge significance environmentally if it can be overridden in
such a cavalier manner. Tourism is the single most significant
economic activity on the island today. Almost the whole coastline
of Anglesey is a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty
and 17 miles of Heritage Coast lie adjacent to the existing station
and a 200 kilometres coastal path has recently been developed
around the island. In the opinion of PAWB there would be a significant
blight on tourism if major new nuclear build took place on this
site which, incidentally, is four times the size of the existing
acreage of Wylfa A. Seismic faults, again, are something that
seems to have evaded those who are responsible for the consultation
document. Wylfa lies in close proximity to several major geological
faults: the central Anglesey shear zone, the Berw shear zone,
the Llyn Traffwll fault zone. In addition it lies adjacent to
the Menai and Dinorwic faults and it was here in 1984 that the
UK's largest land-based earthquake occurred since instrumental
measurements began. Measuring 5.4 on the Richter scale its effects
were widely felt as far afield as Dublin, Liverpool and across
all of Gwynedd and Anglesey. There was damage at the Wylfa site
and we are currently awaiting further information under a freedom
of information request in that regard. In spite of this—and
this is concerning of course—no seismological or geological
survey has been done in relation to Wylfa to date. In concluding,
perhaps allow me to refer again to the whole question of new nuclear
build. The petrochemical industry it may have been but the Buncefield
incident should be a reminder to us all that Murphy's Law applies.
In the words of that inquiry "mechanical and human error
was to blame". If something can go wrong it will, somewhere
at some point. Wylfa was closed in the 1990s for two years following
a breach in safety regulations and fined £500,000 including
costs by the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate. 350 farms in
Gwynedd remain subject to orders on movement of sheep following
Chernobyl 24 years ago; still a living memory for those involved.
The increased incidence of childhood cancers of course are seen
in the KiKK study of 16 stations in Germany and a metanalysis
of studies elsewhere is of real concern. One could elaborate on
that of course if the wish was there. Of course, finally, there
are hidden subsidies to nuclear. This is often dismissed by governments
as being a non-starter but we have a document here—all of
you as MPs hopefully have read this, it was sent to you all. Energy
Fair produced a document Nuclear Subsidies and that is
in the area of indemnity, policing, the creation of a nuclear
academy and so on, a multiplicity of areas where the industry
is subsidised. Sadly, to me at least, there are adequate alternatives.
Q512 Dr Whitehead:
Dr Clowes, could you draw your remarks to a close?
Dr Clowes: The last sentence.
There are adequate alternatives which could be effected more cheaply,
earlier and with long term sustainability. It is our duty to follow
this path now and avoid not only the inherent dangers for this
generation but also the irresponsible legacy that we are creating
for future generations. Thank you for your hearing.
Q513 Dr Whitehead:
Thank you very much Dr Clowes. Mr Duffy.
Mr Duffy: Thank you Chairman.
Jonathan Wright kindly phoned me up a little while ago and said
that he would like me to talk about local process issues, looking
at the DECC consultation as it applies locally, so I have restricted
my comments, both in the written report and in this summary report
which I will read out, to those issues. Before I begin I would
like to say that we have some colleagues who wanted to join us
this afternoon to give us some moral support who, unfortunately,
cannot be here. They turned up this morning to the EDF, RWE and
E.ON presentations, unrolled a banner and gave out some leaflets
and were duly arrested. Their arrests did not lead to any charges
but they have been barred from the building for the day and they
were very distressed that they could not be with us this afternoon.
I also wanted to say that I have just received an email from Dr
David Lowry to say that he, after three years of following up
a freedom of information request from DECC, has actually got the
information that he was asking for which relates to nuclear waste
policy and nuclear waste costs. Unfortunately, DECC have been
so slow in releasing that information that it had to be forced
out of them through the Freedom of Information Act. There are
three areas of concern that we have as a local group with regard
to the consultation process: first of all the timing, advertising
and location of the DECC exhibition and public meeting that was
held around about 19 November near Bridgwater; secondly, the role
of the Infrastructure Planning Commission as prescribed by the
national policy statement; and, thirdly, the national policy statement
consultation and the justification consultation will close before
COMARE has a chance to examine the German leukaemia study which
Carl referred to a few moment ago, the KiKK study. First of all
the DECC exhibition was announced at very short notice. We had
ten days from the first email that I got to the event occurring,
at a remote location by the side of the M5 motorway, near the
Bridgwater exit. Nobody that I knew actually knew of the location
and I have had connections with the area for 25 years yet I did
not know it. The exhibition was staged in the middle of lots of
other meetings. In the past three months there probably have been
something like 60 meetings that members of the public could go
along to which included quite a lot of EDF consultation meetings,
parish and town council meetings as well as district council meetings
and also, if you were really keen, you could go along to the pylon
meetings as well, all related to the infrastructure around this
new project. On top of that there have been campaign meetings,
not only our campaign but other groups that have set up in the
area who are opposed to the project, even if they are not opposed
to nuclear power, a group in Cannington in particular has raised
an 800-strong petition saying that they do not want their village
to be traumatised by the local infrastructure. The event was poorly
advertised and when people got there, there was no sign by the
side of the road. What I am building up a picture of here is that
DECC really did not seem to want to engage the local people, and
it seemed to be an accident if you happened to run across this
event rather than something that DECC really sincerely wanted
to involve people in. It was poorly attended. A colleague of mine
got to the first day of the exhibition and stayed there for three
hours while he was talking to DECC officials and explaining our
position. During that three hours there was just one other so-called
member of the public who turned up and that happened to be the
site project manager for the Hinkley C project from EDF, so not
really a member of the public. On the day of the meeting itself
about two dozen people only turned up to the public meeting, a
public meeting which relates to the policy of West Somerset and
Bridgwater. I should say that the meeting was held in such a place
that you could not get to it by public transport and one friend
cycled there and another friend took a car. It is unfortunate
that the department related to climate change should be pushing
people into their cars to get to meetings which could easily be
held in, for instance, Bridgwater or Cannington, which are towns
very near to Hinkley Point where people would not have to burn
more carbon in order to get to the meetings. I fed this information
or my feelings about it into a meeting with DECC on 17 November.
NGOs and community groups had asked DECC for a meeting on 17 November
during which we covered a lot of policy areas such as Carl has
just talked about, but we were concerned about this particular
meeting. Since then DECC have actually agreed to hold another
public meeting, not an exhibition, in Stogursey which is a tiny
village right underneath Hinkley Point. We are a bit concerned
again that they have chosen the wrong location because it is a
long way from the centres of population at Bridgwater with 30,000
population, or the other bigger villages, and it is likely to
bring in people who work for the industry, and so the meeting
may be skewed really in what people hear or what people have to
say. There were no public meetings in Bristol, which was a city
that was very closely involved in the previous Hinkley C inquiry
in 1988 and 1989, or in Taunton, Minehead or Weston-super-Mare,
all big conurbations which really will be affected by the building
of two monstrous nuclear power stations, the biggest nuclear power
station project in the country so far. Before I move on I should
say that there is a burden on people who have any campaign interest
in the project in as much as the reading that is involved is humungous
and the number of meetings that you might want to go to is really
daunting. The people I have spoken to have said that it really
is disrupting their family and home life when you have to work
as well as be involved in what really, for many people, could
become a fulltime occupation. Moving on to the Infrastructure
Planning Commission we have wider concerns but one specific concern
is that the nuclear policy statement guidelines to discuss the
so-called interim storage of spent nuclear fuel, the high burn
up fuel that Carl was talking about, are not up for discussion
in the local planning debate. We find that monstrous. This is
going to affect people in terms that it will be a target for terrorism,
the high burn up fuel is more likely to splinter or corrode and
possibly cause local pollution problems. Nor will it be permitted
to examine the Government's ruling that a disposal site will be
available at some time in the future. A lot of people that I speak
to think that there are a lot of difficulties, both technical
and otherwise, in terms of the deep disposal site which, at the
moment, is going through a so-called voluntary process—the
Government has said that they will force it on communities if
the voluntary process does not work. We would have liked to have
seen cross-examination through the IPC and we gather that if a
Conservative government gets in they might change some of the
processes within the IPC planning process. We think really that
a minister ought to sign off on that as well. The timing of the
national policy statement and justification consultations: as
I said at the beginning we are concerned that a very important
piece of work to be undertaken by COMARE (Committee on Medical
Aspects of Radiation in the Environment) who have planned and
timetabled to have a look at the KiKK German leukaemia study,
which is one of the biggest leukaemia studies in the world related
to nuclear power, will only take place in the spring of this year
and therefore both the justification consultation which relates
to the health effects of radiation compared to any benefits from
nuclear power will have finished and have been signed off before
the British government body who will be studying this will have
made any pronouncements. My final point, following on from that,
is that health issues are of particular relevance. Since 1983
there have been local health studies, many of those incidentally
in the early days commissioned by the local health authority,
saying that there are high levels of leukaemia in the area. Our
own group has commissioned local health studies as well which
have been a source of local debate and have been discounted by
groups like COMARE and the South West Public Health Authority,
but many people do accept them because there is anecdotal evidence
that there are extra cancers and extra leukaemias. I used to work
as a psychiatric nurse so I am well-informed from inside sources
that there is a problem at Hinkley Point and that has been known
about for several decades now despite any whitewashing that other
authorities might come up with. Cardiff and East Anglia Universities
produced a study in 2008 that showed that health was top of the
list of concerns in the public who live near Hinkley Point, together
with terrorism, but they said in the study that they did agree
that there was some marginal support for nuclear power but that
that support could waver and could go the other way; it depended
on the fairness of the decision-making process. We feel at the
moment, as you will have gathered, that the decision-making process
has lots of flaws in it and we feel, ultimately, that it does
seem to be unfair. Thank you very much listening.
Q514 Dr Whitehead:
Thank you very much Mr Duffy. We now have a brief time for any
questions the Committee may wish to ask you. Perhaps I could start
with a very brief question to Dr Clowes. You have made a case
about the Wylfa site which relates to a number of matters including
social matters, geology or seismology and a number of associated
issues. Would you say that notwithstanding your position concerning
nuclear power were the consideration to be made of the suitable
sites for nuclear power within the MPS, which is a spatially-related
document as I am sure you are aware, and that for those reasons
Wylfa would not be a suitable site that you would recommend to
be included in that list? I appreciate you probably do not want
any sites to be included in the list.
Dr Clowes: I am not sure I fully
understood the nature of the question, Chairman, but if I did
then yes is the answer in the sense that for a variety of reasons,
as I referred to—the environmentally sensitive nature of
the area, the impact on tourism, why locate it 200 kilometres
from where the bulk of the energy will be used, the health concerns
that we have both referred to now—these are all fairly compelling
cases in their own right for not developing (a) nuclear energy
and (b) locating it at that site.
Q515 Colin Challen:
Mr Duffy, is the health information that you referred to relating
to inside Hinkley in the public domain or has it been the subject
of an FOI request or is there some way that the Committee could
obtain that information?
Mr Duffy: The Somerset Area Health
Authority published three reports in the 1980s which I can supply
to you—I do not know whether they are in the public domain
or not—which all said that there was a high incidence of
leukaemia, 24 per cent, in youths and children under the age of
25 over a 17-year period and in one three-year period it went
as high as 67 per cent. I am happy to supply you with that. This
was in the days before computers and the internet so I do not
know how widely available that is. We have also commissioned about
five studies ourselves looking at the health issues which are
available on the internet, either through our website stophinkley.org
or the Low Level Radiation Campaign. The information that I had
on the inside was basically just by knowing people who worked
in the health service. A friend of mine was a paediatric nurse
and she said to me that her consultant, a paediatrician, said—this
was for the Somerset area, he worked at Musgrove Park Hospital—there
is a problem with Hinkley Point and childhood leukaemia. Certainly
we have now a 12-year old daughter who, at the age of four, had
suspected leukaemia. We took her to the same consultant and he
said "Maybe it is Hinkley, maybe it is not", so what
health personnel might say privately to one another is very different
to what they would say publicly.
Q516 Mr Weir:
Mr Duffy, you mentioned that the public meeting was very poorly
advertised and you also mentioned that there seemed to be quite
a wide area from Bridgwater up to Bristol with concerns about
Hinkley Point. Can you tell us what advertising was made and how
widely it was advertised within that area?
Mr Duffy: As far as I know there
was an advert that went out on one of the local radio stations
on the hourly bulletin and in a couple of the local newspapers.
I think the problem was that the government announcement came
out on November 9 and this meeting was set for November 19. It
does not make it easy for people to make arrangements to come
along to something at such short notice. The newspapers are weekly
newspapers so if you miss the deadline then the adverts will come
out just a day or two before a meeting like that.
Q517 Mr Weir:
How wide is the circulation of the newspaper? Is it something
that a lot of people in the area would look at or is it restricted
to, say, Bridgwater or something?
Mr Duffy: There is a problem in
as much as there are a lot of newspapers in the area. There are
two newspapers in Bridgwater; I do not think both of them were
advertised in—and there are also two newspapers in West
Somerset, there are two newspapers in Burnham-on-Sea so people
might read one newspaper but not necessarily read the other newspaper,
so there needs to be a wide trawl basically with advertising.
It works both ways for us as a campaign group because our press
releases quite often get out in a variety of different newspapers
but if we have to advertise then we find that we have to advertise
in a lot of newspapers and it is very expensive.
Q518 Mr Anderson:
Dr Clowes, you said in your evidence that the waste would be twice
as hot and twice as radioactive, and that is repeated in the written
statement. The written statement quotes Mr Hugh Richards of the
Wales Anti-Nuclear Alliance saying "We would be entering
completely unknown territory if we use high burn-up uranium fuel."
How do you know and is there anything we can look to that shows
this fuel will be twice as hot and twice as radioactive, if it
is completely unknown what we are getting into?
Dr Clowes: Hugh Richards I regard
as an authority by now on this subject. The point he makes is
that the fuel is burned for longer to a higher capacity and therefore
becomes twice as radioactive. It is the company's way, I suppose,
of trying to ensure greater productivity from the existing fuel.
Q519 Mr Anderson:
Is there any evidence that shows it is twice as hot and twice
as radioactive?
Dr Clowes: That I believe is the
case, yes.
1 Note from the witness: "The Office for
Nuclear Development" Back
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