Dear Clerks,

Happy New Year. Please could I request you to immediately circulate this message to your Council members given the urgency of item 1? Thank you.

 

1. Ministerial Visit, 15 January.

Energy Minister Andrew Bowie is visiting Sizewell on Monday 15 January, earlyish in the morning. As we understand it, there will be an event on site to mark the triggering of the SZC DCO (Development Consent Order). The Minister is not staying for long; certainly not long enough to fulfil his promise to extensively and inclusively meet elected representatives of affected communities. We have expressed our ongoing dismay at this broken promise, especially as such a meeting should have taken place before the DCO was enacted. The Minister will however hold a couple of short meetings, including with ourselves, so if you have issues you would like raised with the Minister, please let us know urgently.

 

Stop Sizewell C and TASC intend to have a peaceful gathering at the main gates to the Sizewell site on Monday morning between 8.40 and 9.30am. You would be very welcome to join us. 

 

2. Triggering the DCO

It's been anticipated for some time that the DCO would be triggered early in the New Year. We are told by the SZC team that this legal instrument allows the SZC project to release funds for mitigatory schemes and start to apply for construction permits. SZC Co MD Nigel Cann told us that next steps would include fencing around the whole site to "secure boundaries", completing designs and apply for permissions. He said there wouldn't be a sudden increase in activity, more of an incremental process. We understand the current workforce is 500 strong.

 

It's important to emphasise that a Final Investment Decision remains some months away. It could be as soon as the Spring, or later in the year. The Financial Times reported yesterday that Minister Bowie said the project was "on track" to raise £20 billion in financing and debt before the end of 2024. A government official told us that triggering a DCO before a FID was "common practice", but it remains at the project's risk.

 

3. Nuclear Roadmap published.

Yesterday the government published a "Civil Nuclear Roadmap" outlining steps to build up to 24GW of nuclear capacity by 2050. There is plenty of press coverage, including The Times which featured our reaction, but a few key headlines are:

- The "ambition" is up to 24GW but no minimum target has been set.

- The government will "explore" another large scale project beyond Hinkley and Sizewell C, but it will look beyond EDF and the EPR reactor.

- The aim is to consent projects that will deliver 3-7GW every five years from 2030.

- No funding commitments were made aside from up to £300m for fuel strategies to remove Russia from the supply chain by 2030. The RoadMap contains no costings or commitments to certain funding routes (eg RAB, private capital, state funding etc).

- A consultation on siting of new nuclear infrastructure was also published. Of greatest note are proposals for developers to identify "suitable" sites outside of the eight designated in the (now out of date) Nuclear National Policy Statement. This consultation is open for 8 weeks. The Times today reports that this could mean smaller reactors could be located almost anywhere.

 

Please let us know if you have any questions and we would love to see some of you on Monday morning at 8.45am

 

Best wishes,

 

Alison

 

Alison Downes

Stop Sizewell C