Who wants to boast about pouring the most concrete in the country?
At a time when Climate Change discussions are in everyone’s minds, and individuals are looking at what energy they are using and the waste they are producing, the French company EDF are moving thousands of HGVs full of aggregate across the county and making the biggest pile of concrete this country has ever seen at Hinkley next to the Severn Estuary.
Taking into account the carbon footprint of such large infrastructure projects, remember this starts with Uranium mining where around 1% is usable, the rest is immediately radioactive waste for indigenous people to deal with. The end of the nuclear process is high level, dangerous, radioactive waste having to be looked after for hundreds of thousands of years. Should we not be questioning how something with such a huge carbon footprint is being dumped on the next generations to somehow deal with?
The biggest concern of all this having been planned using last century technology so long ago, is the impact of global warming and sea level rise predictions of today.
The height of the concrete platform has literally been set in concrete!
Is the base of the structure high enough to keep the nuclear reactor and waste stores safe for the next 160+ years?
There is no flexibility with nuclear, do we want such a hazardous fixed structure on our coastline?
So many questions and EDF can’t possibly reassure us with any of this as they have committed themselves to this white elephant.
Jo Smoldon
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