Hinkley Point C comes a step closer (From Bridgwater Mercury)
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Hinkley Point C comes a step closer
9:17am Tuesday 2nd August 2011 in News
Campaigners outside West Somerset District Council offices on Thursday
ENERGY giant EDF last week won permission to prepare land at Hinkley Point for a new power station.
Planning authority West Somerset District Council gave the go-ahead on Thursday to the applications for site preparation work, including fencing and site clearance, backed by support from Sedgemoor District Council.
Campaigners against the new power station said EDF had “jumped the gun” as it has yet to apply for planning permission for the whole project, and stood in protest outside West Somerset Council's offices in Williton.
Stop Hinkley spokesman Crispin Aubrey said: “This is like giving a developer permission to excavate a Greenfield site even before they have permission to build the actual houses.”
EDF is expected to apply to the Infrastructure Planning Commission later this year for consent to build a new power station.
In the meantime, it says the preparatory works will create up to 500 jobs - the majority will be for people in Somerset - and has issued a commitment for more than £25 million worth of measures to mitigate the impact of preparatory work.
After receiving permission for their site works, EDF applied for a nuclear site licence from the Office for Nuclear Regulation and an environmental permit from the Environmental Agency.
EDF Energy chief executive Vincent de Rivaz said: “These are significant milestones. They demonstrate that we are progressing and delivering, while we also carry out the work to incorporate learnings from Japan and from our other new build projects internationally.”
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Comments(8)
MINIME2
says...
7:36pm Tue 2 Aug 11
I can tell you exactly why EDF are in such a rush they owe millions and millions to the French goverment and want to get on with this project so they can pay some money back. I was told that at a meeting held last night Monday 1st August 2011. Your last comment about your bypass DONT HOLD YOUR BREATH it's not going to happen. Pick up the French paper La Monde and read how bad the workmanship of EDF really is it will really open your eye's.
Alex@SDA
says...
12:32pm Wed 3 Aug 11
Centrica is now considering pulling out their financial interest and it has been widely reported that it is not to be assumed as a "done deal"
edF are skint, but is partly owned by the French Government and as long as they keep it together should be ok
Samej1
says...
8:20pm Wed 3 Aug 11
Allied to that, new doubts have been raised about the reactors too I am led to understand?
MINIME2
says...
8:28pm Wed 3 Aug 11
Alex@SDA
says...
11:21pm Thu 4 Aug 11
However, if we simply look at the situation and do nothing, then nothing will change.
There is such a thing as people power and it up to us the people to use this power to the best of our ability.
MINIME2
says...
7:44pm Fri 5 Aug 11
Alex@SDA
says...
11:40pm Fri 5 Aug 11
MINIME2 wrote:Which meeting? Where you say was "about EdF and only 900 people turned up" If that was a one-off meeting, for this area where the population have still not smelt the coffee, I would say that was a fair old turn-out.
Alex@SDA,Cannington. There was a meeting about these proposed plans by EDF. How many residents live in the area that will be affected by EDF ? There was a meeting about EDF a few weeks ago and nly 900 people turnd up. What does that say ?
There have been loads of meetings & forums and I have attended as many as I can. To see 900 at such an event would give me goose pimples, and possibly give EdF the jitters.
If you mean the collective from the round of meetings as held recently where EdF are doing a few tweaks here and there re traffic; they were "drop-in" sessions taking place over several hours, in which case the numbers would look artificially small.
Whether anything gets achieved is perhaps debatable, but we need to keep up the profile.
EdF are fully aware and recognise, Cannington will get the brunt of all the traffic etc. In their words "There is WHITE HEAT in Cannington over the proposals"
Doesn't that say it all?
Alex@SDA says...
9:56am Tue 2 Aug 11
It has been well documented what this will mean to this whole area regards traffic etc. Safety will be another concern.
This planning application should have been put in abeyance, and integrated with the whole application to the IPC in the autumn. But it was deemed appropriate to force things through despite the fact the permission for the build has not been authorised.
I find it bizarre that there seems to be so much urgency to undertake this preliminary work, yet they have not even applied for planning permission for the Cannington Western By-Pass. Is that because they are looking at the Bridgwater by-pass after all? Or perhaps cynically because they have no intention of even building a by-pass around our village at all.