Nuclear Suffolk
SIR – At £14billion, the cost of building Sizewell C is huge, but there will be a much heavier price to pay on Suffolk’s beautiful heritage coast and Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The impact on protected sites will be devastating.
Sizewell has been home to nuclear energy for almost 60 years, so it was no surprise that the site was selected for further development.
But what is being proposed is of a very different order to what has gone before. Sizewell C is planned to be as big as Sizewell A and Sizewell B put together, with woodland and fields destroyed to make way for it.
The recent collapse of nuclear projects at Moorside and Wylfa has brought Sizewell C to the top of the nuclear queue. With stage three of EDF’S consultations drawing to a close, the impact of the project is now known to be far greater than previously thought. We are deeply concerned that landscapes, wildlife and people in this unique part of the British Isles will suffer enormously.
For the past six years, EDF has said that the materials for this enormous project could be substantially delivered by sea. But the company now says this is not possible due to the potential damage to the marine environment. So up to 1,500 lorries a day could soon be clogging Suffolk’s roads, delivering construction materials, disrupting the lives of residents and jeopardising the area’s £210million-a-year tourism industry for the decade or more that it will take to build the plant.
In short, we believe that Sizewell C will industrialise a region known for its beauty, wildness and tranquillity. If the project cannot be delivered by sea and by rail, without encroaching on Suffolk’s Sites of Special Scientific Interest, Minsmere Reserve and the heritage coast, and carving up farms and communities, it should not be delivered at all.
William Kendall
Dr Andy Wood
Chief Executive, Adnams
Bill Turnbull
Diana Quick
Bill Nighy
Ben Gummer
Maggi Hambling
Cllr David Wood
Chairman, Suffolk Coast & Heaths AONB Partnership and 20 others, see telegraph.co.uk