This week the government announced that it had reached a deal with EDF energy to allow the construction of a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in Somerset. This is excellent news for the country and I hope it will prove to be so for Dungeness in the future. The decision to go ahead with Hinkley Point is based on an agreement between the government and the energy company on the price that will be paid for the electricity that the new power station will generate; this price is considerably cheaper than other forms of energy like offshore windfarms. This is the start of the next generation of nuclear power in the United Kingdom. Now that the market price has been established, EDF will begin to look at sites for the next power stations, and other investors can also consider entering the market.
I have continually pressed the Government over including Dungeness on the list of approved sites for new nuclear power stations. Last year, following my request to the Prime Minister, the government published a review of the advice it has received about whether or not the site would be suitable. It certainly passes all of the tests on safety grounds and is an excellent location to supply power to the grid, as it is located in an area of high energy demand. The only issue with Dungeness has been due to the regulations concerning nature conservation on the shingle that surrounds the site. However, the government has made clear that if no areas of shingle that have never previously been disturbed are touched, then it should be possible to proceed. This should not be an insurmountable barrier as large areas of shingle around the current power stations were disturbed when the nuclear reactors were built, and more land will soon become available at Dungeness A station when the turbine hall is demolished as part of its decommissioning.
Advances in nuclear technology mean that smaller reactor types many soon be possible that can be constructed off site and then assembled on location. These types of ‘modular’ reactors could suit a site like Dungeness which is more constrained in terms of the land available than a location like Hinkley Point. On Monday in the House of Commons I asked Ed Davey, the Secretary of State for Energy about this, with specific reference to Dungeness. He replied that I was “a doughty champion of Dungeness, and it may have a role to play in the future” and he agreed that new technology supporting smaller reactors “could be part of such a role”.
Ed Davey has previously met with me and the leader of Shepway Council to discuss the future of Dungeness and has assured me that his door is open to any energy company that want to discuss plans to take forward a proposal for a new nuclear power station here. The fight goes on, but the overall news of the progress with the UK’s next generation of nuclear power stations makes a future Dungeness C more likely than before.