nuclear-news

Let’s hear it for the ‘blockers’ – support common sense, not nonsense!

BANNG.info 10 March 2025 Andrew Blowers discusses this in the March 2025 edition of Regional Life,  https://www.banng.info/news/regional-life/blockers/

With the headline ‘Government rips up rules to fire-up nuclear power’, the Prime Minister launched an intemperate assault on the ‘blockers who have strangled our chances of cheaper energy, growth and jobs for far too long.’

If blocking means using common sense to protect the public and environments from dangerous, destructive developments like new nuclear, then BANNG along with many other groups is proud to be a ‘blocker’.

The PM’s outrageous attack on environmentalists, conservation groups, councils and even regulators was a stream of assertions, misjudgements, half-truths and nonsense.

Let’s look at some of the claims made and our responses:

1) ‘Blockers create delay and obstruction’: Big infrastructure projects must be properly scrutinised to ensure safety and environmental protection.
2) ‘Investors are held back’: On the contrary, it is investors who hold back, pulling out of major projects at Sellafield, Wylfa and Bradwell and still no sign of investors chomping at the bit to get Sizewell C off the ground.
3) ‘Projects are suffocated by regulations’: Regulation focuses on public safety and environmental protection. Cutting rules or corners is a charter for unconstrained development and can lead to disasters like Grenfell Tower. More regulation not less is needed to achieve net zero.
4) ‘Growth is blocked by trivial objections’: The PM scoffs at the campaign by ‘blockers’ to ensure acoustic deterrents are installed to prevent millions of fish being killed at Hinkley Point C through entrapment in the cooling pipes. He is offended when Sizewell C campaigners take EDF to court for destroying a precious native woodland or for failing to secure adequate water supply for the gigantic power station before the go-ahead has been given. Efforts to protect species, heritage and environments from destruction should be supported, not denigrated by uninformed politicians.
5) ‘Rip up planning rules to prioritise growth’: For years nuclear development was ‘restricted’ to eight “potentially suitable” sites [including Bradwell] as part of archaic planning rules that haven’t been looked at since 2011. In fact, apart from Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C, it was developers who shied away from the eight sites, not planners who blocked development.
6) ‘Build nuclear stations in the places that need them’: In effect, the Government has now conceded by scrapping the set list of eight sites and introducing an alternative siting strategy – effectively a developer-led free-for-all so firms can start building nuclear stations ‘in the places that need them.’ Even so, some of the eight sites are already earmarked for clusters of Small Modular reactors (SMRs) – the (not so) mini nuclear power stations that have yet to be developed, let alone deployed. Finding locations where they are supposedly needed is not the same as finding sites where they are wanted. The old problems of safety, radioactive waste and cooling water will arise and provoke resistance from local ‘blockers’.

Paradoxically, Bradwell is likely to be by-passed in the surge for new sites. It is, at long last, delisted and its remote location and vulnerable coastal conditions make it absolutely unsuitable.

So, let’s hear it for the ‘blockers like BANNG and the 10,000 signatories from around the Blackwater of our face-to-face Petition, who put common sense before nonsense to protect local environments and communities.

March 13, 2025 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | spinbuster