TASC letter to Secretary of State DESNZ 26.01.24

26^th January 2024

FAO Claire Coutinho, Secretary of State, DESNZ

Cc Andrew Bowie, Energy Minister

Caroline Botwood

Aurelie Hulse

Dear Secretary of State,

FUNDING OF SIZEWELL C & HINKLEY POINT C

Together Against Sizewell C [TASC] wishes to express extreme disappointment and deep concern at the government’s decision to invest an additional £1.3 billion of taxpayers’ funds into the Sizewell C [SZC] project. The timing of this announcement published late on 22nd January 2024 also requires explanation given that DESNZ must have been fully aware of the statement to be made by EDF the following day regarding Hinkley Point C’s [HPC] staggering cost increase, potentially up to £46 billion in 2023 money, and delays till as late as 2031. This delay also has implications for the UK’s CO2 emissions – HPC was due to be operational in 2017 so if operation is delayed until 2031 that represents a 14-year delay and lost electricity production, which TASC calculates to be circa 25 TWh a year.  Each year of delay means more unabated gas is burnt, which, at 380g/kwh, TASC calculate will result in about 133 million tonnes of additional carbon over the 14 years. The extra £1.3 billion for SZC, now means the government has committed a total of £2.5 billion of taxpayers’ funds into the risky SZC project. Of the £2.5 billion, only £1.7 billion had previously been budgeted by government. It is therefore imperative that DESNZ discloses the origin of the additional £800 million of new money and which other budgets will suffer.

The extra funding for SZC is even more disconcerting as members of TASC and Stop Sizewell C recently, on Monday 15th January, had discussions with DESNZ Minister Andrew Bowie and officials including Caroline Botwood concerning the government’s reckless decision to trigger the SZC.

Development Consent Order [DCO]

• in advance of a final investment decision,
• without update or transparency on predicted costs,
• without a nuclear site licence,
• with still no guaranteed potable water supply essential for Sizewell C’s 60 years of operation,
• nor a final design of the sea defences required to keep the site safe for its full lifetime (until all spent fuel is removed and the interim spent fuel store decommissioned), both of which could incur considerable extra costs for the SZC project.

All these matters were raised at the meeting yet have clearly been ignored as evidenced by this further injection of cash into SZC. This is even more frustrating as it is TASC’s understanding that the HPC DCO was approved with only high-level architecture with none of the detailed design being complete and design work for HPC still continuing today, being a cause of the many time delays and cost overruns the HPC project has and still clearly is experiencing today. As pointed out at the meeting, this is now being replicated at SZC, so we fail to understand how lessons are being learned from HPC as EDF, even with HMG being the majority shareholder in SZC, are being allowed to continue in the same fashion at SZC.

At a meeting on 13^th December 2023 representatives from TASC and Stop Sizewell C met with directors of Sizewell C Ltd (SZC Co) and officials from DESNZ (including Caroline Botwood) and during that meeting one of the SZC Co directors stated that the triggering of the SZC DCO would not result in a rapid rise in  the number of workers on the project. We now find that the DESNZ press release of 22nd January 2024 states “The funding….will support ongoing preparatory works such as improvements to roads and rail lines around the Suffolk site” which we assume will result in a ramping up of the workforce, contrary to what we were told at the meeting. TASC is appalled that UK taxpayers are funding more environmental destruction in a National Landscape and SSSI, for a project that may never see completion. We, as UK taxpayers, now find we are also being required to pay for what EDF proposed in their DCO as mitigation for the SZC project. Moreover, remedial work required should the project be cancelled, has unlikely to have been costed and more likely will fall on the taxpayers’ purse as it is well documented that French government owned EDF are over £64 billion in debt.

Allowing the French government to play such a central role in our nuclear industry, has put the UK in a vulnerable position. French government owned EDF’s financial woes at HPC and this government’s willingness to throw money at the SZC project exposes the UK to manipulation by France. TASC is concerned the UK government will yield to Frances’s demands for UK taxpayer investment into HPC or alternatively to use UK taxpayer money to prop up the French state by ploughing extra funds into the SZC white elephant. This exposes the risible claims of a ‘home grown’ ‘Great British Nuclear’. UK nuclear has French owners, French developers building French designed (inherently flawed) EPR reactors. SZC should be cancelled now before it inflicts any more environmental damage to Suffolk’s designated sites and wastes any more UK taxpayer funds.

In summary, we call on DESNZ to:-

1. Cancel the Sizewell C project and ensure that all the environmental damage inflicted by the works to date is made good.
2. Publish an up-to-date costing for SZC, confirm the amount that the UK government was proposing to invest in SZC and then Invest that amount in renewables, energy efficiency, decentralisation of generation, microtechnology, energy storage, smart grids and insulation of the UK’s building stock. These will be far better investments of taxpayer funds allowing quicker deployment at vastly reduced costs and leaving no radioactive waste burden for future generations.
3. This will enable the UK to make up some of the shortfall in achieving the UK’s 2035 net zero targets created by the continued delays at HPC, something to which SZC is unable to make a contribution.
4. Provide the detail of the budgets from which the additional £800 million injected into the SZC project has been allocated.
5. Confirm that the UK government will not be providing finance to the HPC project.
6. Provide TASC and Stop Sizewell C with a response to the 10 areas of concern that we submitted to Caroline Botwood on 18^th December 2023 (copy attached).

Yours faithfully,

Together Against Sizewell C