One of the government’s top climate advisers has raised doubts over EDF’s competence to build nuclear plants and called the decision to locate a proposed plant at Sizewell C in Suffolk ridiculous.
Lord Deben, who chairs the climate change committee and lives in Suffolk, was accused by EDF of being a nimby after making the comments at a nuclear conference yesterday.
EDF, the French energy group, is in talks with the government over Sizewell C and confirmed that it hopes to secure a taxpayer investment by the end of July in the estimated £20 billion project, which could power six million homes. It is already building a plant at Hinkley Point C in Somerset which is now expected to start up 18 months late and up to £8 billion over budget.
Lord Deben said: “The nuclear industry has a problem because it doesn’t deliver things on time and it doesn’t deliver them to budget. EDF has still got two nuclear power stations which aren’t finished and the reasons they’re not finished are nothing to do with nuclear. So there’s a real concern with people about how qualified these people are to do these things.”
He said the most common argument he heard against nuclear power was that “you can’t trust these people because they never deliver on time and they’re always more expensive”. “That is true of Hinkley: it’s late and it’s much more expensive than it was going to be,” he said.
Lord Deben, who lives about 20 miles from the proposed Sizewell C site, said Suffolk was the wrong place for a new nuclear plant because “if you believe in levelling up, it’s ridiculous to put it in a place of high employment”. He said the area was already facing the construction of big new cables for fresh offshore wind farms and it was “not surprising the public is bloody cross”.
Asked about Lord Deben’s comments, Julia Pyke of EDF, said: “I think the word ‘nimby’ is probably one I could use fairly.” She said that independent polling showed twice as many people in the area were in favour of the project as opposed. EDF has blamed staff reductions during the pandemic for the delays at Hinkley.