Sir – At £14 billion, 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 £210 million 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.
Signed
William Kendall, Entrepreneur
Dr Andy Wood, OBE DL, Chief Executive, Adnams plc
Bill Turnbull, Broadcaster
Diana Quick, Actor
Cllr David Wood, Chairman, Suffolk Coast & Heaths AONB Partnership
Harry Young, Chair of The Suffolk Coast Destination Management Organisation
Caroline Cranbrook OBE,
Bill Nighy, Actor
Maggi Hambling, CBE, Painter and Sculptor
The Rt Hon Ben Gummer
Matthew Freud, Head of Freud Communications
Guy Heald, Chairman, Hotel Folk (formerly Thorpeness & Aldeburgh Hotels)
Michael Pritt, Owner, Wentworth Hotel, Aldeburgh
Hektor Rous, Henham Park
Melvin Benn, Managing Director of Latitude Festival
Ruth Watson, Restaurateur and Hotelier
Richard Ellis, Chairman of Original Cottages
Sir Kenneth Carlisle & Lady Carla Carlisle
Rev. Canon Christine Redgrave, Rector of the 8 parishes of the Yoxmere Benefice
Kenneth Sillito, FRAM, Artistic Director and violinist & Esmé Sillito, LRAM
Esther Freud, Novelist
Humphrey Burton, CBE, Writer and Broadcaster & Christina Burton
Helen Atkinson Wood, Actor
John Morton, Writer
Mark Hoare, RIBA, Architect
Paul Field, Tech Entrepreneur and Free Word trustee
Read online at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2019/03/21/letters-european-union-could-turn-short-delay-gradual-dissolving/