A nuclear kettle of fish at Hinkley Point C
7 min read
Is a trawler’s worth of fish getting in the way of our nuclear ambitions? Tali Fraser investigates something fishy going on around Hinkley Point C
Among ministers of the last government, it is known as “the fish disco”, and it is, they say, a cautionary tale that illustrates the nation’s inability to build critical infrastructure.
The story centres on the massive construction site on the Bristol Channel where EDF is building the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station that is essential to meet the nation’s future energy needs.
Nuclear reactors need to be cooled – one reason they are often based on the coast – but the intake of the water poses a risk to fish. EDF’s initial solution included what they called an “acoustic fish deterrent”, essentially a series of 280 underwater speakers blasting a series of high-pitched sound pulses louder than a jumbo jet.
The company, however, has begun to argue that the deterrent, mockingly dubbed “the fish disco” by former environment secretary Michael Gove, is unnecessary and wants instead to mitigate the risk by other means. Critics, however, say the company is reneging on a promise it made to win planning consent because it wants to save cash (the cost of the deterrent is estimated to run to the tens of millions of pounds).
The upshot, say former ministers, is that a lot of time and money is being spent in various agencies and companies arguing about theoretical risks to fish.
“It is so infuriating that we’ve managed to get ourselves into this position. It’s the reason that it’s so expensive and takes so long to do anything in this country,” former Desnz minister Andrew Bowie says.
Hinkley Point C, according to owner EDF, could be delayed to 2031 and cost up to £35bn. When the project was given the green light to go ahead in 2016, its completion date was set at June 2027 and cost was estimated at £18bn.
It would just make your eyes water if you knew the cost of money involved
Although the reasons for the delay are multiple and complex, the controversy over the ‘fish disco’ has played its part.
“It was so infuriating when you used to meet with the Hinkley Point guys, EDF, and talk about the delays and the costs. Of course, this [fish deterrence] was a primary driver of the reason that this cost existed,” Bowie adds.
“When I was in post, everybody just sort of accepted it wasn’t going to work, but it was going to be done anyway because they had to agree to it.”
Part of the reason for this has been environmental issues, including the fish deterrence. But this has proved itself a problem, as Bowie explains, because it was flagged in their development consent order (DCO) agreement.
“I believe this was a stipulation within the DCO planning consenting regulations that they had to develop this ‘fish saving machine’ for want of a better phrase to get permission to build, as well as all the other things like the offsetting, the trout farm, the wetlands.”
Sam Dumitriu, head of policy at Britain Remade who visited Hinkley Point C with EDF, says: “Part of the problem was, I think in their planning application, they suggested that they could use an auditory deterrent system. But I suspect what happened is when they suggested that they hadn’t fully assessed whether it was a good or a bad idea and hadn’t quite realised the kind of risks involved.”
He adds: “EDF have been wanting to change it, but the actual process and the amount of agreements and paperwork you have to do to get the Environment Agency and the planning inspectorate to approve that your change makes sense, it just seems to have layer after layer of bureaucracy.”
EDF is currently in the middle of an application to install the first two fish protection measures, including a fish recovery and return system and special water intakes designed to reduce the number of fish entering the power plant’s system in comparison to older stations while removing the acoustic fish deterrent.
A public consultation will be held before a full planning application in front of the Energy Secretary in 2025.
Quite how many fish are at risk is a matter of wide disagreement. EDF believes that it is the annual equivalent of the catch of small trawler (indeed the company explored the possibility of buying a small trawler’s licence as part of the mitigation – seeing as it would offset the same amount – but was told firmly that that would not work).
But marine biologist Dr Paul Naylor, who delivered representations to a public inquiry that originally required EDF to install the deterrent in 2021 and formerly worked at the Environment Agency on nuclear regulation, told the BBC: “The amount of fish that will be killed is massive… Imagine if these were air cooling towers and they were sucking in birds and shooting out dead ones – millions of dead birds.”
Bowie laughs at the suggestion: “Millions! There’s not millions of fish in the estuary. It’s nonsense.”
At a public event this July, Gove regaled an audience that included his former special adviser Dominic Cummings about the “fish discos”.
“At Hinkley Point C… [EDF are told] we need you to deploy speakers, essentially boom boxes, in the Severn Estuary, playing disco music in order to scare the fish away. And it has to be music of a particular kind.”
It just seems to have layer after layer of bureaucracy
Gove’s conclusion was that, to get nuclear power “in the way that we need”, Keir Starmer “will have to say, ‘Sod the fish’!”.
There are concerns that the £20bn-plus Sizewell C nuclear power station is set to experience the same difficulties – and discussions have taken place in government to “see what could be done to avoid a similar situation, because by that stage Hinkley was too far gone”, one source says.
Bowie confirms that such conversations existed towards the end of the last government: “There were discussions around how we could avoid a similar situation happening at Sizewell because obviously that’s the next project coming down the tracks. They’ve already had to fill out about 20,000 pages of environmental paperwork before a spade even went in the ground. That’s already twice as much as Hinkley had.
“There are things that Sizewell are having to agree to, for example, that you would just make your eyes water if you knew the cost of money involved versus the amount of species or habitat is going to be protected as a result. And ultimately what we’re trying to do is reduce our emissions so that we can actually, you know, build a better environment.”
The ultimate solution, Dumitriu suggests, is that “you get various secretary of states around the table, and then they tell the Environment Agency to expedite this decision” because the “various environmental issues delayed the project and pushed up costs”.
Lord Ravensdale has taken the issue up in the House of Lords, recently calling for “a more sensible regime” and for there to be a minor amendment to the Energy Act to give the government more powers to “look at the habitats regulations and speed these projects through the system”.
As former MP and chief executive of the Nuclear Industry Association Tom Greatrex tells The House, both environment and nuclear fans should be in favour of getting Hinkley Point C operational: “New nuclear power stations are absolutely vital in protecting the wider environment in the battle against climate change. Nuclear has the lowest land use, the lowest lifecycle carbon and lowest impact on the ecosystem of all electricity sources according to the UNECE and the only clean power source that’s available 24/7, making it essential as we cut our reliance on gas.
“Put simply, if we don’t build new nuclear stations at pace and at scale alongside renewables we will continue to burn harmful fossil fuels, further threatening our ambitious climate and environmental targets.”
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