12 May: BEIS Minister Paul Scully has today announced a new deadline of 8 July for the decision whether or not to grant Sizewell C planning consent, a delay of over six weeks from the original deadline of 25 May. [1]
The decision to delay coincides with EDF’s AGM and ahead of an anticipated announcement of the scale of cost and time overruns expected at Hinkley Point C. [2]
Alison Downes of Stop Sizewell C said: “This delay is down to the dozens of really difficult problems with the Sizewell C application – including water supply, transport, coastal erosion and biodiversity. More importantly it questions a major cornerstone of the government’s Energy Security Strategy. The dinosaur that is Sizewell C has already been 11 years in the making, and a lengthy construction is still some way off if it ever begins. Especially in light of the failure of the Taishan EPR reactor, [3] the government must stop this overpriced, lumbering project and focus on cheaper, faster, reliable alternatives that will cut energy costs and fight climate change.”
BEIS had set a deadline of 23.59 on 23 May for Interested Parties to comment on new information provided by the Applicant and other stakeholders in the post-Examination period. Given the huge level of public interest in the project, hundreds more representations were likely to be submitted, giving BEIS less than 48 hours to read and consider them all. [4]
1. Minister Scully said “I have decided to set a new deadline of no later than 8 July 2022 for deciding this application. This is to ensure there is sufficient time to fully consider further information provided by the applicant and interested parties in response to the Secretary of State’s post-examination consultation.”
2. In January EDF announced a new review of Hinkley C with the results expected Q2 2022. It’s already been widely reported that there will be cost and time overruns but the exact figures are not yet public.
3. EDF says of Taishan, in addition to the fuel failure “inspections carried out on the assemblies and the inside of the vessel also revealed a localised phenomenon between the assemblies and a component covering the core related to hydraulic exposure.” See https://www.edf.fr/sites/
4. Invitation to Interested Parties to respond https://infrastructure.