The excellent progress that is being made with the decommissioning of
the old Dungeness A power station, could be about to offer a new hope
for our campaign to secure a new C station at that site. Last Friday I
attended a breakfast briefing given by Magnox and the Dungeness A
station director Ray Jepps, who has over 30 years experience of
nuclear energy at Dungeness. This was later followed by a tour of the
decommissioning works on site. Earlier this year Magnox completed the
process of removing all of the nuclear fuel rods from the old power
station. They have now been sent to Sellafield in Cumbria for
reprocessing and safe storage of the waste product. Now that this
de-fuelling work is complete plans can be made for the removal of
other buildings on the site. Ultimately Dungeness A could be returned
before the end of the century to a natural shingle habitat.
Magnox have been successful in finding funding to remove the old
turbine hall for Dungeness A which is a large rectangular building
which sits behind the two reactors. This work will be completed now by
the end of 2015 instead of in 2027 as was originally planned. This
acceleration of the decommissioning will save millions of pounds of
costs that would have otherwise been spent on basic maintenance of the
old building prior to its removal. There is another, potentially more
significant benefit however, in that the removal of the turbine hall
will free up land that could be used as a construction yard for a new
Dungeness C power station. This decommissioning at Dungeness A will
free up around 7 hectares of land by the end of 2015 with its own
already existing access road to the site where the new power station
would be built. Given that the sole objection from Natural England to
the building of a new power station was that it would lead to the loss
of protected natural habitat, this could be avoided by using this
reclaimed land and the pre-marked site for the new station that was
levelled during the construction of the existing stations.
I believe we have to keep up the fight for a new power station at
Dungeness and the thousands of jobs its construction would create. I
have now secured a meeting with the new Secretary of State for Energy,
Ed Davey to discuss Dungeness’s nuclear future and I will be
presenting to him this new and helpful information from the
decommissioning of the A station. I am also pressing for a government
review of the objections raised by Natural England in general which I
believe fail to take into account the fact the vast majority of the
protected habitats at the Dungeness peninsular will be unaffected by
the building of a new power station and that they have placed far too
much significance on the impact of the loss of relatively small area
of land. We have to get the balance right between the interests of
local people as well as the natural habitats, and in this case I
believe that Natural England have got it wrong.