Too little............And nuclear at Shepperdine will be too late.........

Horizon don't own enough land to build the site at Shepperdine!

Our campaign group have elicited an admission from Horizon that they do not own enough land to build the site at Shepperdine.

See below an email from Tim Proudler at Horizon Nuclear Power, who plan to build a new massive scale third generation nuclear power station on land at Shepperdine near Oldbury if the government gives the go ahead in the Spring.

Our chairman, Reg Illingworth, suspected they needed a lot more land when he recently visited the Wylfa site and learned that Horizon were trying to buy up more land there. He wrote to Horizon and received the reply below. In this Mr Proudler admits that they "may need more land for use during construction, or for landscaping, ecological or other mitigation measures".

From the words of one of our local anonymous friends who has commented on the Chairman's blog:

"They are going to need a hell of a lot more land to accomodate the necessary landscaping mitigation measures to mitigate the huge visual impact of these cooling towers. Even the so called "smaller" hybrid 70m high towers will need huge banks all around the site planted with trees to screen them. This alone will easily double the site area. This is not a question of they "may" need more land its a absolute dead cert. If you think about hostels for temporary workers accomodation, site storage and parking as well this could end up taking up the entire village of Shepperdine and beyond. Us locals had better standby for the bully boy rackman style evictions."

Why are Horizon saying they 'may' need more land in a way that it makes it sound like a hectare or two. Its obvious to us all that landscaping alone will need a huge area of land. Its just like the cooling tower photomontages they should have revealed a year before they did, hoping we wouldnt notice this before it was too late. Now we find out they will need loads more land but they wont say how much in the hope no one will notice before its too late!

Email received from Tim Proudler at Horizon:

Dear Reg,

Many thanks for your email.

In response to your query on the amount of land required to build the proposed new nuclear power station near Oldbury, I can confirm that the permanent operational plant and buildings we need would be within the 150 hectare site we currently have and which was largely included within the original Strategic Siting Assessment (SSA) nomination. This would include the land needed for either possible reactor design and associated cooling towers.

Consistent with the SSA nomination process, we have always said that we may need more land for use during construction, or for landscaping, ecological or other mitigation measures and in fact, this is reiterated in the public scoping report we published in 2009.

It’s not really valid to make a direct comparison between the Wylfa and Oldbury landholdings. Wylfa has a very different geography, geology and topography, and it is not possible to assume an identical situation for both sites in terms of the required development areas. As our studies continue at Oldbury, and we evaluate flood protection, transport options, and construction needs, further land requirements will become clearer.

With regards to your question about access roads, our view, again as outlined in the scoping report, remains unchanged. We believe that the access route to the existing power station will be sufficient for the purposes of construction with some possible minor upgrading (which will need to be clarified when more information on the proposals is known). We propose a new access road connecting to our site from a point just before the entrance into the existing power station.

Our full transport assessment for the project is still on–going and when completed we are committed to sharing the findings with local people ahead of any formal consultation on our proposals. 

I hope that this answers your queries. Please do get in touch if you need further information.

Kind regards,

Tim

 

Tim Proudler

Oldbury Planning and Consents Manager

Horizon Nuclear Power