When £700m on fish isn’t enough

Hinkley Point C may be forced to spend even more on fish

Facts matter. A few weeks ago, I warned that a group of MPs and Lords were organising a letter designed to force the Government into another damaging U-Turn, this time on their pledge to implement the recommendations of the Fingleton Review in full. I noted then that the letter was based on a briefing by The Wildlife Trusts’ public affairs team. This briefing, it turns out, contained multiple factual errors and in one place, verged on straightforward dishonesty.

In anticipation of the letter, I published a blog highlighting the errors. My aim was two-fold. First, that MPs and Peers considering signing the letter would read it and think twice. Second, that Parliament’s many pro-nuclear MPs and Peers would have it as ammunition to defend vital reforms.

Unfortunately, I appear to have failed on the first front. 70 MPs and peers signed the letter to Ed Miliband calling on him to drop the Recommendation 11, 12, and 19 of the Fingleton Review. The letter re-iterated the Wildlife Trusts’ claim that the Fingleton Review’s use of evidence was flawed.

“Environmental groups have highlighted that these recommendations were primarily made based on just one nuclear case study in the review, that of the Hinkley C nuclear project. This case study included incorrect statistics which understated the environmental impact of the project and overstated the cost of environmental mitigation measures. It also omitted to set out the marginal role that environmental matters have played in the escalating costs and delays to the project, due largely to mistakes made by the developer. These [sic] result of these inaccuracies, and the extrapolation of the one flawed case study to wider development, has been the erroneous portrayal of nature protection as a significant blocker to nuclear energy requiring a sledgehammer solution in the form of recommendations 11, 12 and 19.“

And in response to my rebuttal, the Wildlife Trusts’ public affairs team, published his own, making it a rebuttal of a rebuttal of a rebuttal of a rebuttal. It’s called ‘the deceptions driving deregulation’. It describes Britain Remade as ‘corporate lobbyists’ (we aren’t) and being deceptive in the arguments we make (we weren’t).

I won’t do another line-by-line rebuttal, but I do want to pick on one specific bit. In their original briefing, they say Fingleton misleadingly claims Hinkley Point C spent on £700m on fish deterrence when the plant’s acoustic fish deterrent only cost £50m.

Except he didn’t. The Fingleton Review states clear: £700m is the total cost of three separate fish protection measures at Hinkley Point C.

When you’re in a ditch, the advice is to stop digging. The Wildlife Trusts’ lobbyists have not followed that advice.

Instead of conceding the point, they have decided to quibble about definitions. In their view, only the £50m acoustic fish deterrent counts as a ‘fish protection measure’. The £500m spent on low-velocity side intake heads, which allow fish to escape being sucked into the intake pipe from as close as 2 metres in a 20-kilometre-wide channel and the £150m spent on a fish recovery and return system do not count.

“The other two – the most expensive - components of this package are not purely fish protection measures. Low velocity intake heads and a fish return system form part of a core structure for the nuclear plant itself; the cooling system which brings in water to stop the nuclear reactor overheating.

…all nuclear plants spend money on measures to prevent solids getting too far into the cooling system, including low velocity intake heads and fish return systems. Plant protection, not nature protection is the core aim of these measures”

In other words, they’re claiming that because the measures might have benefits beyond fish protection they cannot be described as fish protection measures. (They made this claim again in a recent press release.)

The only evidence they provide that fish return systems are a normal feature of nuclear plants is a powerpoint presentation from an ecologist advocating for the use of an Acoustic Fish Deterrent at Hinkley Point C. Curiously, it notes that Oldbury nuclear power station (within the Severn Estuary) was built without a fish returns system. It also notes that while fish-returns systems were trialled at Sizewell B, they ultimately were not used.

One of Hinkley Point C’s Low-Velocity Side Entry Intake Heads. It is 44m long and 8m high. The cranes built to install it sit on a platforms the size of a football pitch.

In fact, none of the existing nuclear power stations built in the Severn Estuary (Hinkley Point A, Hinkley Point B, or Oldbury) used either low velocity intake heads or a fish return system.

Of course, they were built a long-time ago. It might be the case that the industry has moved on since and now these features are de rigeur. Flamanville 3 in France and Olkiluoto 3 in Finland use the same European Pressurised Reactor design as Hinkley Point C.

I called up EDF to find out if either of them use a fish return systems or low velocity intake heads. So do they? No, they don’t. And they re-iterated to me that Hinkley Point C contains more fish protection measures than any nuclear plant built in the history of the world.

Put simply, the Wildlife Trusts are completely wrong to say that the £650m spent on a fish returns system and low velocity intake head was not money spent on fish protection.

Amusingly, the MPs and Lords letter criticises the report because it relied on a single case study, Hinkley Point C, to argue environmental protections make nuclear more expensive. Not only is this untrue – they cite multiple examples of environmental requirements delaying or adding costs to infrastructure projects – it is also absurd.

Hinkley Point C, when complete, will be the first nuclear power station built in Britain in over three decades. Hinkley Point C will also be the most expensive nuclear power plant ever built. Finland and France have both built plants using the same reactor design for far less. Put simply, there are no other recent British nuclear projects for the authors to study.

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The Wildlife Trusts are not the only environmental organisation to attack the Fingleton Review in the last week. The Times covered a press release from the Campaign for National Parks, which claimed that the Fingleton Review’s recommendation to abolish the National Parks/Landscapes duty from the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act 2023 was based on nothing more than a single blog post.

So are they right? No. Like the Wildlife Trusts’ briefing, they present an extremely misleading picture.

Their PR was based off an Freedom of Information (FoI) Request to DESNZ asking what evidence was used to support the recommendation to remove the national parks duty. The Campaign for National Parks did not link to the Department’s full FoI response.

This isn’t surprising given the FoI response, which I have seen, does not align with the hyperbolic press release. It is clear that it was not based on a blog, but a careful review of a number of judicial reviews and decisions. Contrary to the idea there is certainty about the duty, there have been 6 judicial reviews relating to the duty in its short two year existence. The claim the costs are uncertain is also belied by a number of decisions, some of which see groups seeking tens of millions of pounds: on one road scheme, £38m was requested, on Gatwick, millions were requested, and a recent offshore wind decision saw just over £2m paid out.

Likewise, the Campaign for National Parks claim that no due diligence nor quantified impact assessment was produced to support the recommendation. Yet this isn’t unusual, I know of no independent review where each and every recommendation is accompanied with a detailed impact assessment. For one thing, it would be cost prohibitive to do so when there is no guarantee (in advance) the Government will take the recommendation forward.

The claim that there are no cases where the duty has delayed a nuclear development also misses the point. No planning application for nuclear development has come forward in the short time that the duty has been in place. The point is, as the Fingleton Review says, it could pose a risk in the future given the number of nuclear designated sites near or within National Landscapes. For example, a quick search reveals that this applies to Sizewell, Hinkley, Oldbury, Wylfa, and Sellafield/Moorside. In addition, the new sitting policy means new development could come forward outside of designated sites, meaning it could affect even more development.

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Of the three fish protection measures at Hinkley Point C, it is the acoustic fish deterrent, or as Michael Gove dubbed it, the ‘fish disco’, that has attracted the greatest scrutiny. It may be the cheapest of three measures, but it stands out as the most absurd. Regulators insisted EDF implement the plan to install 250 speakers underwater even after it was revealed that maintenance of the acoustic deterrent would be extremely complex (and potentially dangerous). The dispute dragged on so long that EDF that in the meantime someone was able to invent an easier-to-maintain deterrent based on ultrasound tech used by commercial fishing operations.

This is what a ‘fish disco’ looks like.

This week, EDF published data that suggested the deterrent, despite the fish disco mocking, is in fact very effective at keeping protected fish away from the intake: “The data suggests an effectiveness of more than 90%.”

However, the study also revealed information that further raises questions about the necessity of spending £700m on measures to protect critically endangered fish like the Atlantic salmon.

“It shows that salmon, migrating to the Atlantic, generally use the main channel - well away from Hinkley Point C’s water intakes. In two years, only 2 tagged salmon were detected within 1km of the intakes.”

The Fingleton Review recommended a number of concrete changes to the way nuclear power is regulated. But it didn’t just focus on regulatory structures and rules, it also targeted a culture that prioritised process over outcomes. To change that culture Fingleton called on the PM to issue a strategic steer to Britain’s myriad regulators.

The PM did that and, to his credit, didn’t pull his punches. Here are some choice lines:

“Across our economy, delays cost money. Given the long timescales, this is particularly significant in nuclear. Every month wasted means higher bills for energy consumers and the taxpayer, more uncertainty, and the UK left exposed to the next global shock.”

“Regulators and dutyholders need to collaborate more effectively to stop wasteful gold-plating which is ultimately paid for by the British public.”

“Time must be treated as a clear risk factor in its own right. Where further mitigation offers only marginal benefit, that judgement should be recorded, and we must move forward without delay.”

Have the regulators listened? I’ll leave you with a line from Natural England’s blog responding to the latest study on Hinkley Point C’s fish deterrent:

“This evidence is vital to explore whether further mitigation would be required.”