The warmest, driest July has ended and August seems to be following in its footsteps. We’re all being asked, as businesses and homeowners, to preserve water as drought conditions are expected to last until … October.
Now as welcome as summer heat is, there’s tales locally and nationally of reservoirs and rivers drying up and in our base of Norfolk, the ancient chalk stream of the river Wensum has stopped flowing through a sluice mill close to its source, which could have devastating knock-on effects for marine and avian life, as well as tourism.
Just down the road from us in Suffolk however, there are plans for a new nuclear reactor whose water consumption is barely credible. Let’s look at this in more detail.
Sizewell C will be built on the coast, near Leiston, where salt water is in abundant supply but nuclear reactors need “potable” water – to cool the dual nuclear reactors and then to cool the irradiated fuel as it is removed. The figures for its predecessor, Sizewell B, may surprise – it needs 800,000 litres per day currently.
But you can double and triple this with Sizewell C as it will need 2 million litres of water per day, when running, and 3.5 million litres per day during its long construction phase.
What do you think about this?
Suffolk is regarded as “water-stressed” – it is, with Essex and Norfolk, one of the driest counties in England with few natural reserves of water. In fact, EDF have planned to build a pipeline from the river Waveney, that enters the sea at Lake Lothing in Lowestoft, to sate Sizewell C’s seemingly unquenchable thirst.
Further feasibility studies have revealed that the Waveney, critically low like other rivers, does not have the capacity to supply the construction phase let alone its operational phase. The Environment Agency have earmarked water pipes from Essex, but, as we’ve said, this is hardly a wet county – in fact it is the driest place in the UK.
Already, campaigners are mounting legal challenges to Sizewell C, with the primary objection being its use of water.
Pete Wilkinson, chair of TASC (Together Against Sizewell C), said:
The case against Sizewell C is overwhelming, as has been carefully documented throughout the inquiry stage and was found by the planning inspector to have merit.
Even to consider building a £20bn-plus nuclear power plant without first securing a water supply is a measure of the fixation this government has for nuclear power and its panic in making progress towards an energy policy which is as unachievable as it is inappropriate for the 21st-century challenges we face.
What do you think of Sizewell C?
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