Sizewell C campaigners slam poll showing support for the project
Opponents of the proposed £20billion station questioned the validity of the ‘two-thirds’ claim made by EDF when the poll had been conducted among a sample of 1,000 people, with 800 responding over the phone and a further 200 online ……. EADT
TASC full response
Marjorie Barnes begins her statement about the ICM poll with what appears to be a great misunderstanding of what ‘two thirds of the people in East Suffolk’ actually means. The survey does NOT show that two thirds of people in East Suffolk are in favour of Sizewell C. It shows that 610 people representing less that half of one percent of the 246,000 people in East Suffolk support SZC and makes no mention of views held by the remaining 245,390. So insignificant is the result of the poll that the ‘EdF media team’ is reduced to making a mountain out of a very small molehill. Indeed, the opposition to SZC shown over the last five years by 20,000 signatures on petitions run by TASC and Stop Sizewell C, as also expressed by the 100,000 signatures to the RSPB’s ‘Love Minsmere’ campaign and the 1000 people attending two recent demonstrations at Sizewell far outweigh this pathetic attempt to bolster flagging support for the unnecessary white elephant EdF want the British public to pay for on its eroding and crumbling coastline.
And it’s not just East Suffolk residents that support reducing carbon emissions – we ALL support that goal but most responsible people want to achieve it quickly and cheaply by the rapid deployment of renewables and energy efficiencies rather than laboriously over 12 – 15 years and at huge cost by building a polluting and environmentally damaging nuclear plant which will take years to pay off its own carbon debt and then be too late to contribute to the net zero target. As for self-sufficiency, EdF should know – and what’s more it should tell the people it interviews for its surveys – that nuclear power relies on imported uranium, currently from Russia, and that the design is French and the plant will be owned by the French government – so much for home grown energy!
As for the government handing over £700m of public money to EdF, we should all be aware that such a handout was necessary because of the lack of commercial investors in SZC. And who can blame them? Nuclear is a declining industry being outstripped in every department by renewables and advances in battery and other storage technologies which will leave nuclear power redundant and SZC reduced to a lame duck by the time it is ready to turn its first kilowatt of electricity – if it ever gets built, which is increasingly doubtful.
This poll is yet another disingenuous attempt to con the people of East Suffolk into believing that SZC is good for the area. That’s not the view of the 100 business people who you might expect to benefit from the plant’s construction, who have registered their opposition to it and, we submit, is not the view of even one third of the people of East Suffolk, let alone the laughable claim that two thirds support it. Do the sums, Marjorie!
Pete Wilkinson TASC Chair
