Press Release 30.08.23
UK government increases taxpayer funds propping up the Sizewell C white elephant to over £1.2 billion
In response to Nuclear Minister, Andrew Bowie’s announcement of an additional £341m government support for the Sizewell C project, TASC deputy Chair, Pete Wilkinson, said “There seems to be a bottomless pit of public money when it comes to funding Sizewell C, so besotted is the government with this already redundant nuclear vanity project. Not so for cash-strapped public sector workers though. The £341m recently announced, taking taxpayer funding over an eye-watering £1.2bn, is apparently designed to speed up preparations for construction of a plant which has yet to receive dozens of licences and permits – not the least of which is the Office for Nuclear Regulation’s permission to build on a site threatened by climate change impacts – and is still subject to determination of an outstanding legal challenge. Put another way, it is public money to be spent on the destruction of a coast which is designated as an area of outstanding natural beauty for a project which may still not happen. It also claims that it will ‘help to drive Putin further out of global energy markets’, apparently missing the point that uranium supplies – essential for the mythical nuclear renaissance and already at peak supply – come largely from Russian-influenced countries, so out of the oil and gas fire into the uranium frying pan. As for the ‘rapid expansion of UK nuclear energy’, the fantasy of 24GW from nuclear, should it ever be attempted, will be cripplingly expensive and generate a mountain of waste for which there is no universally acceptable disposal route, in short, a recipe for future financial and environmental disaster rather than energy security”
