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Publicatie Laka-bibliotheek:
Should Britain buy the Pressurised Water Reactor

Auteur	FOE, W.Patterson, Boyle, Majot
Datum	september 1986
Classificatie	2.05.8.20/11 (GROOT-BRITTANNIË - SIZEWELL)
Voorkant

Chapter 1

Introduction and Summary

Remember Sizewell? Lord Marshall hopes you won't. As chairman of the Central 
Electricity Generating Board he hopes that everyone has long since lost interest in 
Sizewell. He may be disappointed.
In 1979, nearly seven years ago, the first Thatcher Government put forward a plan to 
import an American design of nuclear power stations, and to order ten such stations 
by 1992. In due course the CEGB declared its intention to build the first of them at 
its site in Suffolk. The new station would be called Sizewell B. To deflect public 
concern, and perhaps to exhaust both the opponents and their coffers, the 
Government arranged to hold an Inquiry. It would have no formal influence on the 
eventual decision as to whether the station would be built; that decision would be 
made by the Government, as the Government saw fit. Butt he inquiry would buy 
time -time, as it turned out, to cover up the failure of the CEGB to produce a design 
the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate could licence.
Friends of the Earth debated long and deeply before taking part in the Sizewell 
Inquiry. Memories of an earlier Inquiry - the Windscale Inquiry of 1977 - were 
much too vivid. That inquiry culminated in an official Report so bizarre and 
unrepresentative of the evidence that many critics despaired of influencing British 
nuclear policy with rational argument. In the end, nevertheless, FOE joined forces 
with a battery of other organisations to confront the CEGB in the forum of the
Sizewell Inquiry. David could have got more favourable odds against Goliath.
The Sizewell Inquiry began more than three years ago, in January 1983. It ended 
more than a year ago, in March 1985. But the official report of the Inquiry is still 
unfinished. The timetable- as is usual for Britain's nuclear planners- has slipped 
beyond recognition. The intention nevertheless remains. If Sizewell B gets the 
go-ahead, it will be only the first in a series of nuclear stations based on the 
Westinghouse pressurised-water reactor or PWR. The CEGB has already indicated its 
desire to add further PWR stations at sites including Druridge Bay in Northumbria, 
Hinkley Point in Somerset, Winfrith Heath in Dorset, Dungeness in Kent and 
probably elsewhere.
In due course the Inspector, Sir Frank Layfield, will hand over to the Government 
his report on the Sizewell Inquiry – a report he has clearly found very difficult to 
write. Regardless of what the official report says, however, Britain's PWR lobby will 
at once move into high gear, to ram the proposal through Parliament and override 
any lingering public objections. The PWR promoters will be hoping that the length 
and obscurity of the Inquiry, and the delay in drafting the report, will have left the 
public yawning and turning its attention elsewhere.
In the interim, while waiting for Layfield, Friends of the Earth have compiled their 
own concise record of the Sizewell Inquiry. It is presented in the following Chapters, 
as a guide to the debate at Snape Maltings as it appeared to those unimpressed by 
the case for Sizewell B. This FoE report does not pretend to be exhaustive, or even 
complete. It does, however, provide an outline survey of the major themes addressed 
by the Inquiry, the arguments and counterarguments of proponents and opponents. 
In due course it may serve as a crosscheck on the official report. In the meantime its 
authors and editors hope that it will help to reawaken awareness of one of the most 
important issues facing Britain. Sizewell shall not succumb to Marshall boredom.

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