Bradwell at a halt

to indicate that the development of a new Chinese-backed nuclear power plant at
Bradwell-on-Sea is at a halt. Like Operation Sealion before it, this unwanted
foreign invasion of Southern England seems also to have been indefinitely
postponed. The Bradwell B power station project has been led by majority
shareholder, the China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN), a Chinese-state owned
energy corporation, with junior partners, French-state owned EDF Energy. CGN
owned 66.5% of the equity and EDF Energy the rest. CGN had proposed to install
two of its own UK HPR1000 reactors designed specifically for the plant, and the
design received approval from the Office of Nuclear Regulation only in February
2022. However, even before then, things were turning sour for the project. UK –
China relations have been on a downward track for many months and Conservative
MP Iain Duncan Smith described Chinese investors as ‘not trusted vendors’ in
Parliament. Giving substance to this sentiment, the Conservative Government
passed the National Security and Investment Act, which entered into force in
January 2022. This allows Whitehall ‘to intervene in certain acquisitions that
could harm the UK’s national security’ such as civil nuclear power plants, and
Ministers have frequently talked openly about their determination to terminate
Chinese involvement in the Bradwell project. Householders have now received
letters that appear to indicate that the Bradwell B project team is indeed
making a withdrawal from the site. Workers will soon be returning to fill in
the exploratory boreholes they dug from 2018 to 2020 to conduct ‘early
investigative surveys’ into ground conditions. Restorative work will take place
from mid-September to make land available once more to enable local farmers to
grow crops. And there is news that the project team will be ‘closing the
current site compound’ and ‘removing the temporary site offices’ ‘by the end of
the year’. Furthermore, there are no plans to ‘conduct further temporary ground
investigation and load testing works’, for which planning approval has been
granted, in 2023.

NFLA 20th
Sept 2022

https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/beating-retreat-at-bradwell/