Message from the Planning Inspectorate (read at http://infrastructure.planninginspectorate.gov.uk/document/EN010012-003036)

Highlights
* EDF's new proposals - with 15 changes - have been put up on the PINS website, see link below
* BUT, the Examining Authority has said it won't decide whether or not to accept them for examination until after the Preliminary Meeting takes place.
* AND they have decided that the Preliminary Meeting will not take place until March/April (instead of February/March)
* HOWEVER, following the questionnaire on digital hearings, the Preliminary Meeting will take place virtually, with the option - if the health situation improves - for some physical events.

There are a few other things that the Examining Authority has asked EDF for by 4 February including status of negotiations with Network Rail and a visualisation of the permanent BLF when in use

EDF's proposals are online here - https://infrastructure.planninginspectorate.gov.uk/projects/eastern/the-sizewell-c-project/?ipcsection=docs

Nuclear option
Apparently the Centre for Policy Studies is “Britain’s leading centre-right think tank”. But who knew it was changing its name to the Centre for the Promotion of Sizewell C?

Its latest missive comes with a press release headed: “Net zero target at risk without investment in new nuclear”. And given the report’s general drift, you’d think all 58 pages had been penned by France’s EDF: the cost-overrun and late-delivery specialists behind the consumer-fleecing £22.5 billion Hinkley Point C. Actually, you’d be wrong. EDF merely “supported” the report. Ask the CPS what that means and it admits it paid for it — or at least “contributed funding”.

Hence, perhaps, the CPS’s glowing take on the industry. As it notes, seven of Britain’s eight “ageing nuclear plants” face decommissioning by 2030. And “wind and solar provided less than 20 per cent of daily electricity demand on 82 separate occasions in 2020”. So how about a new nuke at Sizewell in Suffolk, creating “thousands of jobs”, as EDF’s UK boss Simone Rossi put it in his chunky quote on the press release?

Yes, the report’s a bit more nuanced than that. It admits nuclear is “not without its own drawbacks”, not least “radioactive waste”. And that it needs a better funding model. But it’s pretty lame to recommend “exploring innovative financing methods, such as the regulated asset base model”. That’s already been explored to death. The key problem? It leaves consumers on the hook for construction cost overruns.

True, Britain needs an energy mix. And there may be a role for small modular nukes. But Sizewell C? That also brings flood risk and money from the Hong Kong crackdown experts of Beijing. And the National Infrastructure Commission reckons a “highly renewable power system” plus “flexible technologies”, including hydrogen, “could be substantially cheaper” than relying on a “fleet of nuclear power plants”. A fake independent report from the CPS hardly improves their case.

Dr Poulter's letter also says: "I am concerned that the contribution that rail might make is wholly focused on night haulage of freight and this will further increase the concerns of those who live near the line."

https://www.eadt.co.uk/news/poulter-revives-four-villages-hopes-6907834