The proposals for national policy statements on energy - Energy and Climate Change Contents


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 560 - 565)

WEDNESDAY 27 JANUARY 2010 (afternoon)

MR PETER LANYON, MS VARRIE BLOWERS AND MR BARRY TURNER

  Q560  Dr Whitehead: On a slightly different topic, how far above sea level is the Bradwell site? Mr Turner and Ms Blowers, you mentioned in your evidence that it is a low-lying site.

  Mr Turner: It is.

  Q561  Dr Whitehead: Are you aware of any work that has been done by Essex County Council on coastal protection or policy for future coastal management relating to that site or its environment?

  Mr Turner: They admit that work will be needed to protect it. In actual fact, if I can find it (and it is in our report), there is one of the stupidest statements that I have ever come across regarding the site. The Environment Agency said this, "It is potentially reasonable to conclude that a nuclear power station could potentially be protected against flood risks throughout its lifetime." The trouble is nobody knows what the sea level rise is going to be. That seems to be an unreasonable statement to claim as something that should be relied on. To go back to your question, I have not got the figures in front of me. I will have them in my volumes of information. It is certainly one of the lowest-lying sites. There is only a small part of it which is in flood level two, the rest is all in flood level three.

  Ms Blowers: One of the problems too is that projections of sea level rises only go up to about the next 100 years, if that, and, as you know, there is a proposal to store highly radioactive spent fuel on sites for 160 years, or even longer. Of course, no-one has any idea what will be happening then.

  Mr Lanyon: May I add to that, please? In EN6 on page 53 there is a statement that it is not practicable to consider beyond 2100 at this stage about the defences against sea level rise and flood risk, and, as Varrie Blowers says, the station, or the waste store at least, is likely to be there close on 2200. If you take it from 2025 and go on for 160 years you get very close to that. It is bad enough that we are being asked to cope with a waste store there for 100 years when we do not know whether the coast is going to be there to support it, but far worse than that is that we have not been able to find anywhere in any of these 2,000 pages any reference to the exacerbating effects of offshore aggregate dredging, which is going on nearer and nearer to Sizewell every year. The new proposed zone 430 is directly opposite the Sizewell sandbanks, 11 miles offshore, and it is well-known that the effects of dredging off-shore increases the rate of coastal erosion to such an extent that when, a few years ago, the people who support dredging—this is a scientific report on the effects of dredging—said that the beach might erode a little bit by 2060, in fact, it has eroded already only five years later to that extent; so they were 12 times wrong. Of course, that is the Pro-dredging Lobby and their scientific advisers. We fear that one of the problems behind this is that the Crown Estates make a tremendous amount of money flogging licences and they do not undertake any research, which we insist is necessary in order to make sure what is going to be the state of the coast, but here in the NPS itself it says beyond 2100 we have not a clue. What sort of a basis is that?

  Q562  Dr Whitehead: Previous witnesses to our inquiries have made the statement that it is rather easier to protect a nuclear power station than it is to protect an entire coastline. Is it your view that such sites would be protectable for the next 100 years? I have the image in my mind of a nuclear site surrounded by water out to sea. Is that your view, or do you think there are circumstances under which such sites could be protected?

  Mr Lanyon: British Energy or the Met Office got Halcrow to do the assessment of what effectively would be needed at Sizewell two years ago now, and they were the people who got it 12 times wrong. You are absolutely right about the surrounding water, because the fluvial risk to Sizewell from the Minsmere River coming down from inland and the low-lying country behind Sizewell will make it an island, and God knows what will happen to the 10-metre high bump on which the Sizewell stations at the moment sit and just to the north of there where they propose to put the new station. What, in fact, they are hoping to be allowed to do is to produce this vast new access road which will, they think, provide a bund which will keep the water out of that low-lying land, but they have got to have a bridge under there to let the water out and in, and so that will be the first thing to go if the sea level rises. As you know perfectly well, every time the International Panel on Climate Change reports it gets worse and worse, and the only certainty about this is that it is going to be a darned sight worse than we think already.

  Ms Blowers: I would say it is possible to protect anything if you throw enough money at it, and, as we know, the nuclear industry has lots of money to throw at everything. We can envisage the Bradwell site ending up as an island and also that the amount of protection that will be required for that will have quite a devastating effect on the rest of the coastline.

  Mr Turner: We are a bit puzzled as to how this will be funded. If an operator is operating his power station and subsequently decommissioning it, I can understand he would be expected to pay for that, but if that waste store has to be defended, let us say, for another 100 years beyond against who knows what risk, how is that funded? Who pays for that? The taxpayer, I suppose, against who knows what expense.

  Q563  Sir Robert Smith: Nuclear companies have gone bust in the past.

  Mr Turner: In this case it might be the French Government, might it not? I do not think they will cough up!

  Ms Blowers: EDF is in dire straits apparently.

  Mr Lanyon: By engineering, if you oppose the sea's energy in one place, that energy has to go somewhere. It will merely deflect it up and down the coast, and up the coast you have got Minsmere, Dunwich, Walberswick and Southwold, down the coast you have got Orford and Aldeburgh. The energy is going to go there, so protecting Sizewell for any length of time will damage all these other places. You cannot win; you cannot mitigate those sorts of things.

  Mr Turner: I still find it difficult to get my mind round this. If British Government sponsored surveys have said something is achievable economically to a potential site operator and those predictions prove to be at fault and, therefore, the site operator finds himself investing far more into protection, who would be liable then? The operator might legitimately say, "You told me this was defendable and actually it is not." Who does it then?

  Dr Whitehead: I think that is an interesting question. I am conscious that we are running out of time this evening.

  Judy Mallaber: I am sure you have already covered the question as to whether the groups concerned are opposed to nuclear power in principle or whether it is specifically about the particular proposals and the specific sites. I do apologise for not having been able to be here earlier. I am sorry to have missed the session.

  Q564  Dr Whitehead: I think we have received evidence that by no means all the members of such organisations are necessarily to be regarded as anti-nuclear power but have made representations about these particular sites. That is my understanding.

  Mr Lanyon: We were formed as a consequence of the Chernobyl disaster to do everything we could to make sure it could not happen at Sizewell, and we have been going for 24 years.

  Q565  Dr Whitehead: I think we will have to end our discussions at that a point. Thank you very much, Mr Lanyon, Ms Blowers and Mr Turner, for your evidence this afternoon and thank you also to all the witnesses who I know have travelled very considerable distances to be here today. We are grateful for your evidence and, I repeat my suggestion that, should you have any further information that you wish this Committee to have drawn to its attention, it will be very much welcomed by us in the course of our inquiry.

  Ms Blowers: Thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to come here.






 
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