149: NEWS - first new nuclear power station pre-application consultation launched

This is entry number 149, first published on 19 July 2010, of a blog on the implementation of the Planning Act 2008. Click here for a link to the whole blog. If you would like to be notified when the blog is updated, with links sent by email, click here.

Today's entry reports on the launch of the pre-application consultation for Hinkley Point C nuclear power station.

EDF Energy, under the name of its subsidiary the NNB Generation Company Ltd (which I guess stands for 'new nuclear build'), has started the formal pre-application process for the authorisation of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station.  The London Gazette notice can be found here - and note that a previous blog entry is being kept updated with all such notices. 

This will be the first nuclear power station in the UK since the application for Sizewell B was made on 1 October 1980.  The Hinkley Point C application is currently timetabled to be made in December 2010, and so there will be a gap of over 30 years between the next nuclear power station application and the previous one.

A short sidetrack on the Sizewell B application.  The application was made by the Central Electricity Generating Board on 1 October 1980, under the Electric Lighting Act 1909, enacted two years before Ernest Rutherford even established what an atom was made of.  That act was repealed in 1989, but was still used in the 1980s to authorise electricity generation.

A public inquiry was convened, with Sir Frank Layfield QC as the inspector and four assessors appointed on technical issues - Sir Christopher Foster (economics), Professor William Hall (nuclear angineering), Dr Jack Vennart (radiation safety) and Professor John Alexander (transport of radioactive fuel).  The inquiry sat at Snape Maltings in Suffolk for 340 days between 11 January 1983 and 7 March 1985.  At the time that was the longest ever public inquiry in the UK, but it has since been overtaken by the Heathrow Terminal 5 inquiry, which sat for 550 days between 16 May 1995 and 17 March 1999.  It could be said that the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE), now a fixture of the environmental scene, first gained prominence at the Sizewell B inquiry.

The government issued its approval on 12 March 1987 (see Hansard extract here).  Thus, the time taken from application to approval was just under six and half years.

Compare and contrast with Hinkley Point C, which is to be authorised under the Planning Act 2008.  If it gets decided between the date that the Nuclear Power National Policy Statement (NPS) is finalised (expected early 2011) and the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) is abolished (expected April 2012), then those six and half years will have to be crammed into a single year.  If the application is indeed made in December 2010, then the decision will be during that year-long window.  Even if the decision is taken before the NPS has been finalised or after the IPC has been abolished, then there will only be an extra three months allowed in the timetable.  It is possible to lengthen the timetable, but Sir Mike Pitt, chair of the IPC, will be reluctant to do this, as it is he who has to confess to the Secretary of State that the timetable needs to be extended.

It is likely that the IPC will appoint three commissioners to examine the application, and it is also open to the IPC to appoint assessors as for Sizewell, and may very well cover the same four subjects in doing so.

As its name suggests, Hinkley Point C will be the third nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in Somerset.  Hinkley Point A was a Magnox reactor that closed in 2000, and Hinkley Point B, a pair of Advanced Gas-cooled Reactors (AGRs), is operating but due to close in 2016.  Hinkley Point C will consist of two European Pressurised water Reactors (EPRs).

EDF Energy published its announcement of the start of its pre-application consultation to the general public on 9 July, and the consultation will close on 4 October 2010.  The consultation website is stated to be www.edfconsultation.info, but to get to the plans and other documents relating to the application, you need to click on 'Hinkley Point' in the left hand column and then 'Public documents' across the top (or just go straight here).  I think that the 442MB Environmental Appraisal, Volume 3, is the largest PDF I have ever seen.  It has also been compressed and broken down into chapters for ease of use, though.

Of interest is a document towards the bottom setting out the 'planning requirements and obligations' that EDF is offering up.  These are equivalent to conditions attached to a planning permission and elements of a section 106 agreement.  Promoters of projects are advised to submit these with the application rather than wait for the local authority or authorities, or the IPC, to impose them.

In tandem with the public consultation, EDF has also issued a second 'Statement of Community Consultation' (SoCC), which sets out how they propose to consult the community in the vicinity of the project.  They are adopting a five-mile radius for the most focused consulation, with events also held in surrounding towns.  The SoCC was first published on 29 June and the first public exhibition was on 10 July, so EDF have given a little more notice than the government did when it consulted on the NPS.  There are two public exhibitions yet to take place, on 8 and 11 September in Bridgwater (at Morrisons and Asda respectively - very balanced).  The documents can also be viewed at EDF's Bridgwater office from tomorrow onwards.  There will be other workplace exhibitions, workshops and focus groups, to be advertised in the local media.

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