Latest / Saving the World From Bad Ideas / Bad Idea #32 "We don’t need nuclear" with Julia Pyke

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Bad Idea #32 "We don’t need nuclear" with Julia Pyke · Saving the World From Bad Ideas

0:00
It's such a great technology, it's got so much it can offer.
0:03
It's really sad that we've had this huge gap in confidence in
0:07
it, but it does look like there is now a international consensus
0:11
to revive it. The case for Sizewell, expensive
0:15
as it is to build, the case for Sizewell is that building
0:18
Sizewell saves £2 billion a year when it's on off consumer bills.
0:25
Welcome to saving the world from bad ideas.
0:27
I'm Mark Linus, and I've had a few bad ideas in my time.
0:30
I used to go out in the night time to destroy GMO crops, and I
0:33
also opposed nuclear power. But then when I looked at the
0:36
science, I found I got it wrong. Boobs.
0:39
I've learned the hard way that none of us are right all the
0:41
time. So now I'm here to challenge the
0:43
assumptions that we all too often take for granted because
0:45
the future depends on us getting it right.
0:48
My guest today is Julia Pike, who's managing director of
0:52
Sizewell C. And the bad idea that she's
0:55
taking on because we're all about saving the world from bad
0:58
ideas here. The bad idea, I think, could be
1:01
we don't need nuclear. Julie, welcome.
1:04
And I presume you do disagree with that, right?
1:06
Thank you very much, and yes, I've devoted quite a lot of my
1:09
life to talking to people about why we do indeed need nuclear.
1:14
Fabulous, fabulous, right? I actually wanted to start by
1:16
asking you about your, your, your career actually, because I
1:19
was just looking, looking up online and I imagined you'd be a
1:23
trained nuclear engineer, but actually you're no more of an
1:25
engineer than I am. You did English and then you did
1:27
law. So how come you've ended up as
1:29
managing director of Sizewell? And start off by saying the
1:32
thing that has stopped nuclear being really built out as it
1:35
should be isn't because we don't know how to build nuclear, it's
1:38
because it's not been financed. And so my big job on Sizewell
1:42
has been to make nuclear new build financiable and to bring
1:47
in equity and debt and put Sizewell onto a financed footing
1:52
with investment grade ratings for its debt.
1:55
And to show that you can indeed take a technology as big and
1:59
complicated as the EPR and you can finance it.
2:03
And that if we can do this with the EPR, then that should unlock
2:07
confidence in financing other nuclear technologies for the
2:10
future programme. You've said EPR twice and we
2:13
shouldn't assume people know what an EPR is or a light water
2:17
reactor or any of those things. So can you just give us like a,
2:20
a basic rundown of what, what, what, what the EPR is and how
2:23
it's how it compares to other nuclear reactors?
2:26
So the majority type of nuclear reactor around the world is a
2:29
pressurized water reactor. And there are 400 or so
2:33
operating very well. They're very reliable.
2:35
They sort of operate for like 92% of the time and the EPR is
2:41
simply a version of that. So it's a version of a
2:45
pressurised water reactor and it has more safety systems added to
2:49
it, which does make it more complicated to build, but the
2:52
safety systems are obviously there for a reason.
2:55
And it's the EPR which the Finns built at Ocaluto in Finland, so
3:00
in Finland. Which I've been to actually
3:03
glorious place, surrounded by nature and lovely sort of, you
3:05
know, coastal, coastal environment.
3:08
Yeah, they didn't let us inside, unfortunately, so I could only
3:11
see the, you know, the big, big Dome type thing.
3:12
But yeah, I mean, it looks just like any other reactor, right?
3:15
With a big Dome and no sense around it, basically.
3:18
Yeah, exactly, exactly. And so it's operating in Finland
3:21
and it's operating in France and it's operating in China.
3:25
And then Hinckley Point C is the UK adaptation of that, and then
3:29
we're copying Hinckley. Right, right.
3:32
Actually, I've been to Sizewell, been to Sizewell B and I did a
3:37
sort of YouTube film with Joel from We Planet looking at the
3:41
waste. Well, I don't really call it
3:42
waste, they call it spent fuel storage, don't they?
3:44
There. And we went and gave them all a
3:45
hug because each of those chemists has apparently saved
3:48
1.5 million tonnes of CO2 from going in the atmosphere.
3:51
And actually a few years earlier we did an action where we went
3:54
in the sea, swam in the sea in brightly coloured bathing
3:57
costumes. So if you want pictures of me
3:59
scantily clad, they're still on the Internet.
4:02
And we had and we had banners saying nuclear for net zero and
4:06
build Sizewell C And you know, and here we are and it seems to
4:09
be actually happening, right? I mean, have you take is the
4:12
final, final, final decision been taken now on size 1, you're
4:15
going to go ahead and go building the thing.
4:17
It is. It is actually happening.
4:19
So after eight years of getting consents and getting the
4:23
financing sorted, it is actually happening.
4:25
So we started building it about two years ago.
4:28
We under the big planning consent, the development consent
4:31
order, we were allowed to do what's called trigger it.
4:34
So you meet all the conditions to be allowed to start.
4:36
So we started on the main site about two years ago.
4:39
So today there'll be 2000 people on site.
4:42
We've started the main civils. We have started all the
4:44
infrastructure around the site that we have to build a railway
4:48
to bring materials into the site.
4:50
We have to build link roads so that we don't have too much
4:53
construction traffic on the roads.
4:55
So yeah, we've been doing, we've been doing that for about two
4:57
years now. You've built your own roads and
4:59
your own railway too. Yeah, we have to build a rail
5:02
spur to bring materials into the site and we have to build some
5:06
bypasses from a couple of villages and we have to build a
5:09
link road so that we can take our construction lorries off the
5:12
roads so that they don't take too much delay.
5:16
Yeah, intrusion, I guess to the local communities, but I mean,
5:19
if you have to build your own transport infrastructure, this
5:21
must be a pretty large scale project.
5:24
So like I remember reading this I think for Hinkley Point C at
5:29
some point that it was like the biggest building program in in
5:33
the country and in Britain at the time.
5:34
I don't you know, is sizeable, presumably if it's a carbon copy
5:38
to coin a phrase is going to be the same.
5:40
So give us a sense of of the scale of this.
5:42
Well, it is going to be 1 of Europe's largest construction
5:45
projects and it will be the same size as Hinckley in
5:48
construction. So in construction they look
5:50
huge because you need a lot of land to store materials, to put
5:55
bits of equipment together etcetera.
5:57
So you take hugely more land than you need.
6:00
When it's built, it shrinks right down to about 33 hectares
6:05
and it will look like 2 times size well B.
6:08
So if people go on holiday to Oldborough and look down the
6:11
coast, you can see size well B Size well C will be like 2 times
6:14
size well B. Once it's built and operating,
6:17
it will be small. But while we build it, we do
6:20
take a lot of land temporarily. I mean and and appreciating the
6:23
temporary for us is sort of like 10 years.
6:26
Yeah, I, I imagine that given that one of these Eprs has
6:30
already been, well is is already well actually tell me how far
6:34
along are they in, in Hinckley in terms of finishing
6:37
construction? Hinckley has finished its main
6:39
civils and it's installing pipes, cable, etcetera.
6:43
The version of of the EPR in Finland has been operating for a
6:46
couple of years very well. The the Chinese version has been
6:49
operating for quite a few years and the plant of Plummerville in
6:54
France are connected to the grid, I think sometime last
6:57
year. So Hinckley's far enough for
6:58
long in construction that you've actually got lessons that you
7:00
can learn from Hinckley because obviously there was a lot of
7:03
talk about it, you know, cost overruns and, and, and things,
7:06
you know, things taking a lot longer than they should have
7:08
done. I mean, I know COVID was a
7:09
factor as well, but like, what are the what are the main
7:11
lessons from, from Hinkley that you'll take to size well to
7:15
hopefully get this done on time and on budget?
7:18
There are huge numbers of lessons.
7:20
So I mean the the first thing to say is that when you build in
7:23
the UK you build to our national laws and regulation.
7:26
So take fire regs. If you import of a non-english
7:30
design you have to change the design to comply with UK fire
7:34
regs, you have to comply with UK construction methods, you have
7:38
to undertake a series of changes to make it compliant with with
7:42
UK law and regulation. And for Hinckley, that involved
7:46
making 7000 changes and the 7000 changes resulted in a lot more
7:50
steel, a lot more aggregates, a lot more cable, etcetera, and
7:55
then adding time to install all of that extra stuff.
7:59
So the first lesson we learned was don't make any changes at
8:03
all, just copy the Hinkley changes.
8:06
We're going to design as built. So we're building it in a
8:09
different place obviously. So we have to make the ground
8:11
conditions the same as the Somerset ground conditions for
8:14
Hinkley. But apart from that, our our
8:16
equivalent of the 7000 changes is fewer than 80.
8:20
It's like an order of magnitude difference in, in terms of how
8:24
many design changes do we have to make to build size well.
8:27
So starting off with design, you save the money because you're
8:30
not redesigning and then it means that you also know what
8:33
quantities of materials you need.
8:35
So you you know what quantities of steel, concrete, etcetera,
8:38
etcetera. And that gives you much more
8:40
confidence in your cost estimate because you're not constantly
8:43
adjusting all the quantities and then adjusting the time taken to
8:46
install them. And then there are sort of
8:49
infinite, infinite numbers of lessons to learn from the way
8:53
you go back consenting. So if you agree in your
8:56
development consent order, things like noise restrictions
8:59
which are too restrictive, you find yourself going back to have
9:02
to have to renegotiate them. If you put your accommodation
9:06
for your construction workforce too far away from the site, you
9:09
end up spending quite a lot of what should be productive
9:11
working time, actually paying people to travel from the
9:14
accommodation to the site. Lots and lots of practical
9:16
lessons, lots of things which are not very technical, but they
9:20
they all mount up into representing quite a lot of
9:24
money. And then we can see the effect
9:27
of learning because it's got 2 units.
9:30
We can see that Hinkley Unit 2 unsurprisingly goes along a lot
9:35
more quickly with fewer problems than Hinkley Unit 1.
9:38
And what we're trying to do is to build size well C, which has
9:43
2 units as effectively Hinkley unit 3.
9:45
And four, yeah, I, I mean, I might be wrong about this, but I
9:48
kind of imagine it's like putting a tent up on a camping
9:51
trip for the first time, you know, and it takes, it takes a
9:53
whole hour to get the tent up and figure out where everything
9:56
goes and, you know, and all of that.
9:58
But by the time you've done it four times, you could put the
10:00
tent up in the dark in the middle of a raging storm, and
10:02
you know you'll you'll be on your fourth time by the time
10:04
you've finished well. Exactly that, that that's the
10:08
idea. And, and when countries have
10:09
built fleets, you know, sequentially within a reasonable
10:12
time frame, then they have learned and they have got
10:16
cheaper and they have got quicker.
10:18
And if you look at the Chinese nuclear building program, you
10:21
know they're doing really, really well because they they
10:23
continuously build and every time they build, they get better
10:26
at it. And there's quite often a lot of
10:29
talk about does nuclear have like negative learning?
10:32
But if you only ever consent one nuclear power station per decade
10:35
or per every couple of decades, it's pretty hard to demonstrate
10:39
that learning effect because you you need learning is obviously
10:42
in people and you need the same people to be working on more
10:46
than one nuclear project to establish can they learn.
10:49
Yeah, it's called, isn't it called the first of a kind cost
10:51
and then the kind cost and you know, economics and so forth.
10:55
Presumably you can use mostly the same supply chain that
10:58
you've already got for Henkley then as well.
11:00
Yeah, yeah. No, we use the same supply
11:01
chain. So the, the, yeah, the, the
11:03
equipment in, in the metal work in inside the buildings is being
11:08
made by the same suppliers. They're making the equipment for
11:12
sizeable unit 1 just as they finish the equipment for
11:14
Hinckley unit 2. So that means that the team who
11:17
are making that equipment is at the height of their learning.
11:20
They've just made two pieces now for us, they're making the third
11:23
identical piece. And again, not only is the
11:27
manufacturing to higher quality first time because they're doing
11:31
third time, but also there's an awful lot of paperwork
11:33
associated with nuclear and presume making the identical
11:36
piece of equipment, you don't have to go through all the
11:38
paperwork again and the paperwork's quite a high
11:41
proportion of the cost of nuclear.
11:43
I mean, you've been in how long you've been in the nuclear
11:44
business for like, well, I. Spent 10 years as a lawyer doing
11:49
the paperwork for Hinckley and then we came over to develop
11:52
size well about 8 years ago. Right.
11:54
So, you know, I mean, I've been a kind of nuclear advocate for,
11:57
well, roughly the same length of time.
11:59
And it's interesting to see how the debate has shifted actually.
12:02
I mean, it used to be about, I don't know, waste and, and, and
12:05
whether it would blow up back to a novel and all that kind of
12:07
nonsense. And it's now really moved on to,
12:09
to economics, hasn't it? And about the cost and the the
12:14
price tag at least the construction cost for size well
12:18
as well what is it 38 billion or something?
12:21
Is that right? Yeah.
12:23
And that's, that's how much it costs to, I mean, tell me how
12:25
these because then then I saw a headline in the, in the FT which
12:29
said that the cost for sizeable, you know, balloons to 100
12:32
billion according to our model. Didn't say like, well, not
12:36
according to a model that we've seen at the Financial Times, but
12:38
didn't say whose model or any. It was a very strange piece.
12:40
Didn't have any more details on that.
12:42
But like, which one should I which figures right?
12:45
Which one should I believe? I think that the way we talk
12:47
about the cost of building bits of the electricity system, it's
12:52
really complicated and it needs to be simplified.
12:56
What people pay is an electricity bill, and what
12:58
you're paying for is the entire system which enables you to
13:01
flick on a switch in the dark. And that system is made-up of
13:05
the way you're generating electricity.
13:07
In our case, nuclear, could be wind, could be cellular, could
13:10
be biomass, could be all sorts of things, could be gas.
13:12
And then it's made-up of the system which takes the
13:15
electricity, transmits it from the point of generation to where
13:18
you want to distribute it locally.
13:20
And then the cost of your distribution system.
13:22
And critically, as you move to a system with more and more
13:25
renewables and because they're intermittent, the cost of your
13:29
backup system. So your backup system could be
13:31
storage, your backup system could be making sure that you've
13:34
got gas stations which can turn on, which means that you then
13:37
need the infrastructure to bring on gas.
13:39
So you need gas contracts, you need gas storage, you need
13:41
obviously the entire physical gas network for when you need
13:45
the gas stations. And as we see from what's
13:48
happening to electricity bills and the the dialogue and sort of
13:51
the breakdown of consensus about net zero, what's actually
13:54
happening is that people's bills are not going down.
13:57
And that is primarily in my view because although things like
14:01
renewables are very cheap at the point of generation, it's not
14:05
cheap to run a system which requires an awful lot more grid
14:09
and requires backup system. And of course, over time storage
14:13
technologies will develop over time, all these things may be
14:17
well be smoothed out. But today if you're making
14:20
energy policy and you want to move to clean energy system, and
14:25
although it's counterintuitive, the right amount of nuclear
14:28
actually brings down electricity bills.
14:30
So the case for size well, expensive as it is to build, the
14:34
case for size well is that building size well saves £2
14:38
billion a year when it's on off consumer bills.
14:41
And that is because effectively you need less grid, you need
14:44
less storage, you need less of a backup system because you have
14:48
something which is not weather dependent sitting alongside the
14:52
weather dependent renewables. It's a It's very
14:54
counterintuitive that something so expensive to build is
14:58
nonetheless cheaper than not building it.
15:01
It's very counterintuitive. It's so counterintuitive.
15:03
I'm not sure I believe you, but maybe we just need to go into
15:08
this in a bit more depth. But how can, how can.
15:12
Yeah, so how can it make, how can it make bring down bills if
15:16
it if it costs so much? I mean, you just said, you just
15:18
said that's the case and you said it's to do with the system
15:20
cost of integrating with renewables.
15:22
Maybe explain a bit more how that works because I, I, as I
15:24
understand it, nuclear always has to be on and does the base
15:27
load thing. Renewables like fluctuate up and
15:29
down according to the weather. So aren't they kind of in
15:32
contradiction to each other? How does nuclear help support
15:34
renewables in in the grid in that sense?
15:36
Well, if you assume you need a certain quantity of electricity,
15:40
you've you've got various means of creating that electricity.
15:43
So you've got renewables, you've got interconnectors, you've got
15:46
obviously the gas network, you've got some biomass, you've
15:49
got some, you've got some and you've got some storage having
15:52
made the electricity. So the question is, what does a
15:55
system cost? What?
15:56
What makes the least cost system?
15:58
So if you tried to move to a system which has 100% renewables
16:02
and no nuclear basis of the case for size, we'll see is that you
16:05
need more grid, so spend more money on the grid.
16:09
You need more storage, so you spend more money on storage.
16:12
You need more of a backup system for when you've used up all your
16:15
stored electricity and you nonetheless wish to turn on your
16:19
lights on a cold, dark, windless day with no sun.
16:23
And the cost of that system is reduced because you need less of
16:27
it if you build nuclear, because the nuclear will be there.
16:31
And somebody's presumably modeled this who's not the same
16:33
model at the Financial Times just looking at.
16:35
Yeah, that's right. So some reason was this, I mean,
16:38
not so the £2 billion is a year for consumers when size 1 is on
16:42
that, that's the number given by the Department for Energy
16:46
Security, net zero. So that's, that's their
16:48
modelling. The National Infrastructure
16:50
Commission shortly before it turned into NISTA commissioned
16:53
some modelling from Aurora which showed that if the country were
16:57
to build out the amount of nuclear that the previous
16:59
government had recommended, which was 24 gigawatts, then
17:03
cost to consumers would be hugely reduced by I, I can't
17:07
remember exactly what the number was, but it was about something
17:09
by like £8 billion a year by 2050.
17:13
And it is for the same reason. It's just a scale.
17:15
If you built more of it, again, you need less grid, less
17:17
storage, less backup system and the the other way that I mean
17:21
there are all sorts of ways of thinking about about the cost of
17:24
electricity generation. So another way of thinking about
17:28
it is if you assume that the consumer is broadly
17:32
representative of society. And of course that's not
17:34
completely the case that there are people in society who are
17:36
not consumers, but on the whole the consumer and society are
17:41
pretty much pretty similar to being the same group of people.
17:44
So we have very, very high UK content.
17:47
We cost £38 billion, but over the lifetime of size, well, we
17:50
pay £38 billion of tax. So I'm not claiming that's the
17:54
same number because the tax is paid at a slower rate than the
17:57
money spent in building it. Tax is what is that VAT on
18:00
interest to your tax on What's the?
18:03
It's the combination of corporation tax, it's PAYE, all
18:10
those people employed, it's all of the tax paid by all of our UK
18:14
supply chain. And because we have very high UK
18:17
content, so we have 70% in construction and 90% through
18:20
life, we give rise to an awful lot of tax.
18:23
And then on top of the awful lot of tax, we are very socially
18:28
responsible and we are good employers.
18:32
So we will make positive efforts to, for example, take people
18:35
from benefits. If we take people from benefits
18:38
then we're saving the taxpayer I think something like £55,000 per
18:43
year per person. So the way you look at what's
18:46
the relative cost of generating electricity from nuclear with
18:50
high UK content in comparison with generating electricity from
18:55
something with much lower UK content is not straightforward.
18:58
The impact on your consumer taxpayer is not straightforward
19:04
to calculate at all. I could never ever claim to you
19:07
that it wasn't expensive to build size or C itself evidently
19:11
is. But counter intuitively,
19:14
consumers are better off if we build it.
19:17
Well, and I guess it's just dawned on me, these things
19:19
aren't 0 sum, are they? I mean, that's the economics for
19:21
you, isn't it? That you, you put money into the
19:23
economy and people spend it and you get growth and you know, and
19:26
the money gets spent lots and lots of times and it isn't just
19:29
once and then it's gone and no one ever cease to benefit.
19:32
But at the risk of borrowing our millions of listeners, many of
19:36
whom aren't based in the UK, could you explain the regulated
19:40
asset based model in this possible way?
19:43
Because this is basically how you've been able to finance
19:46
seismal C, right? And it's different from how the
19:49
from how Hinckley was financed and how big infrastructure has
19:52
been financed before, right? So can you?
19:54
Can you do it in simple, simple terms?
19:57
I'm going to I'm going to try you can you can, you can tell me
20:00
whether or not it was too complicated and or too boring.
20:03
So Hinckley, as you said it, Hinckley has a contract for
20:06
difference. And what that means is that.
20:09
Hinckley agreed a fixed price for the electricity it would put
20:12
onto the system, that price being £92.50 in the money of
20:16
2012. And that's for as long as the IT
20:18
generates for like decades, is it?
20:21
No, no, no it's not. It's actually for about 30 years
20:24
and, and these, these plants have a life of about 60,
20:28
possibly even 100. But, but so Hinckley gets paid
20:31
£92.50, whatever the wholesale cost of electricity, it's being
20:35
paid £92.50. So it's, it's actually in
20:39
comparison with a reference price formula, the reference
20:42
price formula could go higher than £92.50, in which case
20:45
Hinckley would have to pay back into the system for consumers or
20:49
it could be below £92.50, in which case consumers pay, pay
20:52
Hinckley the difference between the reference price and £92.50.
20:57
So that that would have given the shareholders in Hinckley who
21:01
are EDF and CGN, it would have given them profits calculated at
21:07
the time in 2016 when the deal for Hinckley was all signed,
21:12
which have been eroded because Hinckley has cost an awful lot
21:15
more to build than they had forecast.
21:18
So other nuclear developers came along and they looked at this
21:21
model and they looked at at the level of cost uncertainty that
21:26
there is in building not just nuclear, but in but in building
21:30
all sorts of different forms of infrastructure.
21:33
And it was seen that no project went ahead at Wilver in Anglesey
21:39
and no project went ahead at Moorside in Cumbria because
21:42
people weren't confident that this contract for difference
21:45
model, which required the developer to take all the
21:48
construction cost overrun risk would bring forward investment.
21:53
So the government decided to look again to the National Audit
21:55
Office, recommended they looked at the regulated asset based
21:57
model and what is this? So this is the way of financing
22:01
lots of infrastructure which was introduced in the UK roundabout
22:04
of the privatisations. So the regulated asset based
22:08
model is what funds the National Grid, is, what funds
22:10
distribution companies, it's what funds water companies, it's
22:13
what funds the airport industry. And the way it works is that
22:19
there's an asset. So in our case, we build the
22:22
asset over time, we build Saswell Sea over time.
22:25
And once that asset is built, then the economic regulator, so
22:30
for electricity, that's Ofgem, the economic regulator
22:33
periodically sets the returns that investors, owners of that
22:39
asset can expect. So you see these periodic price
22:42
determinations by Ofgem, 4th National Grid and distribution
22:46
companies. You see periodic price
22:48
determinations in the water industry from off what?
22:51
So that's the basic model. What's different about it for
22:54
size, well is that we are a single asset.
22:57
So we're not like the National Grid.
22:58
We don't have a large existing grid and then we build some more
23:01
grid. Additionally, we're just
23:03
building from the start. So we don't have a big existing
23:06
asset. We have lots of digging right
23:09
now. So in order to bring forward
23:11
investment, it was recognised that on the whole investors
23:15
can't the best where they don't get any return at all for a long
23:19
period like the construction period of a big nuclear power
23:21
station. So it was agreed that they would
23:24
get a return on their investment to date through the construction
23:28
period. So if they put in a pound, they
23:30
get a small return on their pound all the way through the
23:33
construction period. And that is really what has
23:37
enabled investors to come in to size well and it operates to
23:42
reduce the costs to consumers because you don't build up a big
23:47
sort of compounding interest debt in the way that you do.
23:52
If you don't have any income through the construction period,
23:55
you reduce the amount of interest which is being paid on
23:58
the debt that we borrow in order to build size.
24:01
Well see. So I don't know if that was
24:02
short enough or simple. Sort of it sort of isn't it?
24:05
It highlights the point that actually the cost big cost here
24:08
is finance is finance is financing debt.
24:11
You know, because you these are very big capital intensive
24:13
projects. You have to borrow a huge amount
24:15
of money upfront and therefore paying the interest back
24:17
throughout the whole time that it that it takes for the project
24:21
to be built when you don't get any revenue in is what really
24:23
make drives the cost up. And that's presumably why
24:26
Hinckley, you know, when they talk about over budget, I don't
24:29
know whether it just cost more to build than they thought or
24:31
whether it's just taken longer. And so it's cost a lot more in
24:34
interest rates or a combination of the two really, but.
24:37
Well, it's but it's it's both, it's both of that.
24:39
I mean, in a big nuclear build weren't any big infrastructure
24:42
bills of time is money. So there's a certain cost to
24:44
just running, running the project for longer because
24:47
you've got, you know, people doing stuff for longer.
24:50
So you can't really separate time and money.
24:54
Right. And it's partly like who are the
24:55
investors in? It's partly publicly owned,
24:57
isn't it? So the government's a
24:58
shareholder who, who are The Who?
25:00
Like what is the ownership structure?
25:02
Well, that's another very good question.
25:05
So Hingley is owned by EDF and CGN and.
25:10
CGN meaning that China. Yeah, China general nuclear,
25:14
right. And for for Sizewell, we hope
25:17
that we've arrived as sort of Goldilocks mix.
25:19
So there is plenty of press and sort of studies into what
25:24
happens if the government wholly owns a big construction project
25:26
like Crossrail or like HS2 and then millions.
25:31
Of international listeners, it's the high speed rail link which
25:35
is currently under construction and Crossrail was.
25:38
That's not the Elizabeth line in London, isn't it?
25:39
Yeah. So there are also studies that
25:41
get published saying that if government is the sole owner of
25:45
one of these big projects in construction, the bureaucracy,
25:49
which is inherent in government decision making, which isn't a
25:52
criticism, it's just it's inherent in making decisions
25:56
through lots of committees that that bureaucracy is not good for
26:00
bringing in a big undertaking to time and budget.
26:04
So there are plenty of reports into into, you know, what's gone
26:07
wrong, for example, on HS2, part of what's gone wrong on HS2 is
26:11
held to be the ownership and governance model.
26:14
So for Sizewell, we end up with the government having a big
26:18
continuing stake, so around about 44% at the moment.
26:23
And that I believe is going to be popular with the public
26:26
because I think people are probably of a mind to think that
26:30
a big piece of nationally critical infrastructure like
26:33
Sizewell, part of the purpose of which is to increase energy
26:35
security, should sit partly in public hands, but not wholly in
26:40
public hands because of the issues with ownership
26:44
governance. When something is in holy public
26:47
hands, there is a majority of private sector shareholders.
26:50
So adding to the government, we have Lacquess, which is a
26:54
Canadian pension fund. It's owns a lot of
26:58
infrastructure in the UK and indeed around the world.
27:01
I think it's the second largest investor in infrastructure
27:06
globally. And then we have Amber
27:09
infrastructure which is Auk fund which invested in the very
27:12
successful Thames Highway tunnel project.
27:15
And we have Centrica who for old listeners are British Gas and
27:20
who are a British household name who have a a multiplicity of of
27:25
different investments across the UK energy mix.
27:28
And so they're very helpful investor to us because one of
27:33
our ongoing issues is, you know what is the role of nuclear in
27:37
the UK's energy mix. So to have somebody who's sort
27:39
of living that and expert is very good for us.
27:43
Yeah, you mentioned the role of nuclear in the UK's energy mix.
27:45
I mean, do do you think more of these are going to or should be
27:49
built? I mean, they're only cheap,
27:51
cheaper, cheaper to pops like 40 billion each.
27:53
I mean, they might just want to go with a whole bunch more solar
27:57
and offshore wind and stuff. But like what, what's, what do
27:59
you think the actual, the ongoing role for nuclear is
28:02
going to be in the UK energy energy sector?
28:06
Well, this government hasn't actually set a target for
28:08
nuclear, but as as I said the previous government set, set a
28:13
target of roundabout 24 gigawatts and I think that is.
28:17
And what's that as a proportion of the whole grid?
28:20
What do gigawatts mean? Well, it would be sort of
28:24
slightly less than 1/3. I mean, of course it depends on
28:26
how you forecast demand. But for a sense of scale size,
28:30
we'll see will make 7% of the nation's electricity and it is a
28:34
3.2 GW plant. So, and so that nuclear would be
28:38
made-up of a mix of big plants, Pinkley, Sizewell B, the
28:43
existing power station, the one that turned on in 1995 and
28:46
Sizewell C. And then the question about
28:49
whether or not there are any more big GW plants is obviously
28:52
a question for government. We saw the announcement either
28:55
either yesterday or today about the government building small
28:58
module reactors, Rolls Royce small module reactors in North
29:01
Wales. So they're obviously going to be
29:03
small module reactors joining the nuclear family.
29:07
And then I think there are lots of really exciting advanced
29:09
modular reactor proposals, which if they did come to fruition, I
29:14
think a real game changer because they're passively safe.
29:17
And if it's agreed these things are passively safe, that does
29:21
take out a whole layer of cost and it does, it does open up
29:25
sort of citing put putting nuclear actors, for example, in
29:28
industrial complexes to provide in particular clean heat.
29:32
And so I think that if AMRS take off, I think the role of nuclear
29:36
will expand and sort of be quite focused on heat production.
29:42
And I think that if we're talking about gigawatts and SMRS
29:46
only, then it will expand. But I think less so because I
29:49
think they'll be primarily producing electricity.
29:52
And as you say, Mark, there are other ways of producing
29:54
electricity. The point of building nuclear is
29:56
to have electricity, which is not weather dependent and is
30:01
within our borders. So we're less reliant on
30:03
interconnection. You know, interconnection can be
30:05
great additionally, but it doesn't inherently give you
30:08
energy security. So I hope there's, I hope
30:11
there's some more GW, but I really that's just for the
30:15
government to decide what they want.
30:16
Yeah, I mean, it does feel like the whole momentum's shifted to
30:19
SMRS and AMRS and, you know, basically new types of nuclear
30:23
attacks. So it might, you know, I suspect
30:26
that your EPI will be the last one that gets built.
30:28
But does your supply chain help with other nuclear type projects
30:33
or are they all just two different?
30:34
I mean, the the SMRS, the Rolls Royce proposals, I think that's
30:38
a will there in Anglesey, isn't it?
30:40
I mean, those are little, little pressurized water reactors too,
30:43
aren't they? So there is.
30:44
It's not like it's a totally different technology.
30:46
No, it's, it's the same technology.
30:49
It's, it's the same, it's just smaller.
30:51
So yes, I would, I would expect quite a lot of the supply chain
30:55
to our pressurized water reactor to also compete to supply a
31:00
fleet of small pressurized water reactors.
31:02
Yeah. It's interesting actually the,
31:03
the, the consensus on net zero is sort of fragmented, somewhat
31:06
like the Conservatives now in the UK are, you know, have have
31:10
well, basically gone gone back on that, even though I think I
31:14
think they were in power when it was originally legislated,
31:17
right. But there there isn't, there
31:19
hasn't many sign of the consensus on new on the need for
31:22
nuclear being being dragged out, dragged down as well.
31:25
I mean, what's your kind of reading of the political
31:26
situation at the moment? It's interesting, isn't it?
31:29
So nuclear is obviously a point of commonality between the UK
31:33
and the USI was at a energy security event where one of the
31:38
US politicians was, you know, talking very critically about
31:42
net zero and renewables, but praising nuclear.
31:45
I'm not obviously personally critical of renewables.
31:48
I believe in getting the right mix for the country.
31:52
And in the UK we are good at offshore wind and we don't have
31:56
that much sun. Sort of mix of, you know,
31:59
nuclear and, and wind seems to me to be a perfectly sensible
32:02
mix. And there's a cross party
32:05
consensus on nuclear between Labour and Conservatives.
32:08
I think the Reform Party is also pro nuclear.
32:12
So there is a broad consensus but with some notable outliers.
32:16
The Green Party is still sort of constitutionally post nuclear
32:19
and the Liberal Democrat Party, I'm never really quite sure what
32:23
their policy is because I think they are constitutionally not
32:26
keen on nuclear. But on the other hand, it was a
32:28
Davey and Liberal Democrat Secretary of State who signed
32:32
off the contract for difference for Hinky Point C.
32:34
So I think maybe they're sort of pragmatic but not instinctively
32:38
favourable. I think the consensus on nuclear
32:41
will hold. I mean, it's not just in the UK,
32:43
it's sort of, you know, we've seen in the US nuclear coming
32:46
back on for data centres and obviously lots of interest in
32:50
investing in future nuclear for data centres.
32:52
And then across Europe we're seeing a re expansion of nuclear
32:56
in countries which had previously decided against it or
32:59
had certainly had a long gap in their build program.
33:03
So Sweden very active now, the Netherlands, Belgium reversing
33:07
some of its previous decisions, the Czech Republic, it basically
33:11
it's taking off again. And I find this sort of sad
33:14
really that that these things do seem to be sort of a bit of a
33:17
fashion, you know, if we just carried on building nuclear as
33:20
we had been or as was forecast in the 1980s.
33:24
There was a piece in the Economist a couple of years ago
33:27
which said if nuclear had been built out as had been planned
33:30
pre Chernobyl, then we literally wouldn't have global warming.
33:33
You know, it's such a great technology.
33:35
It's got so much it can offer. It's really sad that we've had
33:40
this huge gap in confidence in it, but it does look like there
33:45
is now a international consensus to revive it.
33:48
Yeah, well, we need to not tell Trump that nuclear is low carbon
33:52
in case they in case they turn against it.
33:54
It's like it's literally the only thing that they that that,
33:57
that there's a bipartisan consensus on the in the US still
34:00
is nuclear. It's really quite extraordinary.
34:03
I mean, the Biden administration was, was, was pretty strong in
34:06
trying to promote a nuclear renaissance.
34:10
And Trump is, if everything has been even stronger, even to the
34:12
extent of like basically throwing away the safety
34:15
regulator and just saying get on, get on with it.
34:17
I mean, which I'm sure you're not, you know you're not, you're
34:19
not a sport of right. I'm not in favour of throwing
34:23
away the safety regulator, no. Good, good.
34:28
Tell me a bit about how Sizewell's going down in the
34:31
local community. Because when we came to do our
34:34
action, there were some local aunties, accused them of climate
34:36
change denial, but they denied it.
34:38
And they, they didn't seem to quite understand what I was
34:41
talking about. But there were fairly few in
34:43
number. But you know, obviously that
34:45
that's no, doesn't tell me really anything about what the,
34:47
what the community overall feels.
34:49
Do you have any sense really of how positively the project's
34:53
being received? Yeah.
34:55
I mean, in truth it's a mix. So the opposition to size well
34:59
isn't really anti nuclear. It's we bring inconvenience, we
35:02
bring, you know, noise, we bring construction lorries and we
35:05
bring, you know, people doing construction to it into a small
35:09
town. When we do polling, the majority
35:12
sentiment is positive because where we're building size well
35:15
is sort of like many of the places where Nutri is built in
35:17
the UK, quite remote. There aren't fantastic job
35:20
opportunities outside, outside of what we offer.
35:24
There was a survey a few months ago which showed that I think
35:28
only 30% of people who live in Suffolk, the county where the
35:32
power station is being built, was actually satisfied with the
35:34
quality of jobs on offer in Suffolk.
35:37
So the majority of enquiries we get are positive and they're,
35:41
they're about opportunities for people on their, their friends
35:45
families, their kids. There are of course people who
35:49
are not happy with the construction disruption and
35:54
because like any big building project, we do have to cut down
35:58
trees in order to build some of these link roads and we do have
36:01
to cut down some or take out some hedgerows.
36:04
We make promises to replant and one of the things which puts us
36:10
in a better position is because it's taken us a long time to get
36:13
size, we'll see into being. We've been able to actually
36:16
create some very high quality landscape around the power
36:20
station site, which is actually of such high quality that we're
36:24
hoping it will get status as such a special scientific
36:27
interest because it's so biodiverse.
36:30
So I think because we've been able to demonstrate that we do
36:33
understand how to make really high quality landscape, I think
36:37
people accept that we are genuinely committed to the
36:39
environment and we are building this essentially because we care
36:42
about the environment and the people who are building this
36:45
power station. We're not sort of, you know,
36:47
just lovers of concrete for its own sake.
36:49
We're building it because we think there's an environmental
36:52
need. We're committed to leaving the
36:55
land in a better state than we found it.
36:57
So for example, a lot of what we cut down was low grade forestry.
37:02
And when we restore the land which is around the all the bits
37:05
of the site which are currently construction site, but which
37:07
will be restored post construction off the main site
37:10
will restore it to be Suffolk Sandling, sort of a much higher
37:14
quality native state of the land, sort of similar to the
37:19
heathland that you see around Wesselton, which is one of the
37:22
villages fairly near the power station.
37:24
So it wouldn't be true for me to say that it was universally
37:28
popular. It would because it's disruptive
37:31
and we, you know, cut down trees.
37:34
But I think people do believe us that we will restore to a higher
37:36
quality than we found. And I think people do want the
37:41
jobs and they do want the the long term careers that we can
37:45
offer because we're not just a construction project.
37:48
Once it's been built, it then operates for, you know, 60 to
37:51
100 years and employs around about 900 people, offering, you
37:55
know, good local jobs to a community which is short on good
37:59
local jobs. That little cafe on the beach
38:02
side must be doing the roaring trade.
38:04
As well tea, Yeah, as well tea. Lovely bacon butties and all
38:11
that kind of stuff. And I remember the wildlife
38:13
issue was, was being talked about.
38:15
I think RSPB, which is a bird conservation charity was had a
38:18
campaign against it. Have you, have you brought them
38:20
around then with this, with this conservation measures you were
38:22
talking about? Yes.
38:23
I mean, I mean, it wouldn't be true for me to say that RSPB or
38:26
the Wildlife Trusts were sort of, you know, keen advocates for
38:31
Sizewell City. But we had a very positive visit
38:35
to some some of our created landscape in the summer at the
38:39
end of August with RSPB, with the Wildlife Trust, with Natural
38:42
England. And Tony Juniper was, you know,
38:45
kind enough to put something out on social media praising the
38:49
he's. The head of he's the head of
38:50
Natural England, isn't he? Yeah, former former Friends of
38:53
the Earth director, actually. So he's got something positive
38:55
to say. That's quite something.
38:56
No, it is, it is quite something.
38:57
So he, he, he was, you know, kind enough to praise the
39:01
quality of the landscape that we have created.
39:04
So, you know, taking what was quite a not an unbiodiverse
39:07
onion farm and making very high quality landscape and, and said
39:12
that we are a demonstration that you can have big infrastructure,
39:15
which can be nature positive. And RSPB and the Suffolk
39:19
Wildlife Trust, I think are, you know, similarly happy with the
39:23
landscape we have created. That's not to say they wouldn't
39:27
prefer that we weren't building. I wouldn't want to, you know,
39:29
put words in their mouth, but I think relations are now good and
39:35
I think that the more we are restoring landscape, the more we
39:38
are creating much more high quality lands than we are using
39:42
for the permanent footprint of the power station.
39:45
The more people can see that you can, as Tony said, have a big
39:49
infrastructure project which is genuinely nature positive.
39:53
Yeah, I mean, of course they're all in favour of more 0 carbon
39:57
power because they all believe fervently in.
40:00
The climate crisis and the need to get to net zero.
40:03
So you've got to have that coming from somewhere.
40:05
And RSPB is also a campaign against offshore wind for, you
40:08
know, because of bird collisions and so on.
40:10
So you've got to kind of make your mind, if I remember doing
40:12
an event once with with the late Lord May and he said the only
40:16
kind of energy generation that satisfied everyone was magic.
40:19
And it made me think because actually, yeah, that's pretty
40:22
much what's going on here with a lot of the a lot of these
40:25
objections. People do want the lights to
40:26
come on and they want it. They want us to solve climate
40:28
change at the same time, but they don't want any of the
40:30
infrastructure or any of the choices that that actually
40:32
involves. Yeah, I think that that is a
40:34
really good point that that is what people would like.
40:37
I think if I think if you could just like drop size, we'll see
40:40
into place without going through the the pain of the building
40:44
phase. I don't think there will be much
40:46
opposition at all. I think as I said, people just
40:49
don't like construction activity and I don't blame people.
40:52
I'm not sort of judging people who are opposed to construction
40:55
activity. And it's it's only human to not
40:59
like changing your landscape. But obviously we believe it's
41:04
very, very much needed and in a good cause and we have
41:08
undertaken to leave things in a better state than we find them.
41:12
Now, producer Rob, who's the beard you can see in the top
41:14
right hand corner of your screen, asked me to ask about
41:18
the direct air capture side of this.
41:21
Was you, wasn't it, Rob? No, he's shaking his head.
41:23
Well, somebody did, because I just think this is really
41:25
fascinating. You're actually going to, well,
41:28
capture CO2 from the atmosphere directly.
41:30
Is that still part of the project?
41:31
So we have a pilot project which has been actually funded by the
41:36
government, which is aimed at demonstrating that a technology
41:41
based on heat convection rather than electricity can capture
41:45
carbon much more cost effectively than the current
41:48
director capture electrically powered fans technology which.
41:51
Uses huge amounts of energy and is really just completely
41:54
completely bonkers actually. But you can do this with waste
41:56
heat essentially. Right.
41:57
The idea is to do it with waste heat.
41:58
So the state, the status of this at the moment is that we have a
42:01
prototype which you can go and see on the Portland at
42:04
Lowestoft. It's sort of it's been built, it
42:07
started doing some capturing and we are just waiting to see
42:11
whether or not it works as planned.
42:14
And if it does, then it will definitely be an option for
42:18
people to develop this for use with waste heat.
42:21
It sounds very qualified. It will be an option for people
42:24
to decide to develop. Doesn't sound like it's
42:26
inherently part of the project. Already.
42:28
Well, I mean, it's not the pilot.
42:30
The pilot project is in Lowestoft which is you know,
42:32
some miles away. There's a decision to be taken
42:35
about do we actually extract heat from size?
42:39
Well, we could, we could extract 400 MW thermal of clean heat and
42:43
we if we did that it would reduce the electrical output by
42:46
about 3%. So it's actually very good value
42:50
for consumers because the the plant is overall more valuable
42:53
with that balance. But there is a decision to be
42:55
made about whether or not we want to make the decision to put
43:00
in all the kit to extract heat, and that decision has not yet
43:03
been taken. But the direct air capture
43:05
technology can take heat from any source.
43:08
So there's no there's no necessity for the heat to be
43:11
nuclear. It's a valuable thing in its own
43:13
right, provided it works as planned.
43:16
Well, producer Rob Stroking is beard appreciatively, so I think
43:19
he he approves. Do you know, like do you end up
43:21
with a liquid CO2 stream or does it come out as a solid?
43:24
I mean, how do you actually go about disposing it once you've
43:27
once you've captured the CO2 from the atmosphere?
43:29
It's comes out as liquid. And then there's do heat based
43:32
direct air capture. There are choices to be made
43:35
about whether or not you, you want to, you know, sequestrate
43:38
it in the oil and gas network of the southern North Sea, which is
43:42
the sea next to where the power station is, or whether or not
43:46
you want to use the CO2 for making, for example, clean
43:50
fuels. I think it's probably worth
43:51
doing just for the PR value I mean.
43:52
Down the cost because it's like this should be the world's
43:55
first. I mean, you're already 0 carbon
43:57
in terms of electricity production, but you'd be the
43:59
world's first carbon negative. You know it would if it if it
44:03
all works. Out and you know it's decided to
44:05
do it and this technology works as planned it would be fantastic
44:07
we would be significantly carbon negative well this is a bit of
44:11
an and finally. But I know you're a singer,
44:14
right? And you have a you have a
44:16
sizeable choir. Yeah.
44:18
Come on. Tell me about that.
44:19
Well. The reason we have the choir is
44:21
because. You have, if you're building one
44:24
of these big projects, you, you have groups of people who are
44:26
sort of working insanely hard for years on end.
44:29
If people are working at the site, they're very frequently
44:31
living away from home. And if they're working in
44:34
London, then it's a sort of there is no let up, there's no
44:38
letter from when you decide, you know, you're committed to
44:40
getting this project to happen all the way through the eight
44:42
years to reach financial close, then all the way through the 10
44:45
years to build it out. It's relentless.
44:48
And one of the things that the nuclear industry hasn't been
44:50
great at is communicating. So it's not been great at
44:53
communicating with the outside world and to a degree it's not
44:57
great at communicating internally either.
45:00
So the combination of wanting to provide social activity for
45:03
people, create points of connection for people, and also
45:06
to communicate with with the outside world and internally,
45:11
all of these things are sort of met by having a couple of
45:13
choirs. So we have a choir insight in
45:16
Suffolk and we have a choir in London.
45:18
And because we've got the choir, we're able to do things like go
45:20
and participate in the remembrance event put on by the
45:24
local community. We were able to participate in
45:26
the VE Day celebrations that that the community held on the
45:29
beach. It's a, it's a way to engage
45:31
with the community to show that we're nice, normal people who
45:34
can make a sort of reasonable musical contribution to
45:38
community events. People can see us, you know,
45:40
kids can see us. We're there to come and chat to
45:43
in case people want jobs. And it's a real well-being
45:47
issue. People need things to do outside
45:50
work. Singing gives you endorphins.
45:53
It's and and the other thing it does is it's a real leveller.
45:56
I don't know if you can see behind me there's a picture
45:58
called Saints of Patron Saints of Sigh as well.
46:01
So we have an artist in residence.
46:02
So we don't know what that was. I've been trying to figure this
46:04
out for the last 40 minutes. There you are.
46:06
So we don't. We don't just.
46:06
We don't just have. Music, we also have visual arts
46:10
we also have sport. We do all sorts of things.
46:12
But but in terms of creative arts, what the artist in
46:17
residence who's a fantastic guy called Les Bicknell, he's
46:20
created this picture of different jobs, whether it's
46:24
cleaners, it's caterers, it's civil engineers, it's
46:28
financiers, and everyone is shown as equal to me, that's
46:32
very important that everybody involved in science.
46:35
Well see which is thousands of people over the years,
46:38
Everybody's playing their part, whether it's not your cleaning,
46:41
catering, raising money, being the managing director, being a
46:44
civil engineer, being an on site construction worker, Everybody
46:49
is playing their equal part. And I think art, which
46:51
represents that is something that I like a lot.
46:55
And it's that is the other purpose of the choir, that if I
46:58
go and be in the choir, I'm just another person.
47:01
People can talk to me and relate to me socially.
47:04
I'm far more likely to find out sort of what how are people
47:06
really feeling, what are issues that people really want to
47:09
raise. And it's sort of more effective
47:11
really than having sort of lots of official information
47:15
transmission systems is just making yourself available and
47:18
making yourself human to other people.
47:21
And then you find out quite a lot more about what's happening
47:24
in the project. That's really rather lovely.
47:27
Well, if you want a tuneless tenor to come and join the
47:30
choir, give me. I do.
47:31
I do. Yeah.
47:32
Come and join. Actually, I wanted to.
47:35
Also, just just finish up, ask about the, the kind of the
47:37
gender question. There's not many, not often you
47:39
see women in a leadership position in the nuclear
47:42
industry. So I'm I'm I'm a big admirer of
47:45
yours in in that sense. And also like you've made
47:48
efforts in terms of getting the gender balance more effective
47:50
in, in the whole project. Tell me a bit about that.
47:53
Well, if we if we think back to. The question of why, why has
47:56
there not been enough nuclear? One of the reasons is people
47:59
haven't haven't worked out a way to finance it until as we'll
48:02
see. And one of the other reasons is
48:05
that essentially people haven't really wanted it.
48:07
They just haven't really wanted it enough.
48:09
Whether or not those people are politicians or bankers or the
48:11
public. It's not that there's a huge
48:13
anti nuclear movement in the UK, but nor has there been
48:16
enthusiasm. So people haven't been pushing
48:18
for it. So we do quite a lot of polling
48:22
on, you know, what do people think?
48:23
And there's a very, very marked difference between the views of
48:26
men and the views of women. Basically, men are quite pro and
48:29
women are much, much less pro. I think there is probably also a
48:33
similar issue with ethnicity. I think that on the whole, white
48:37
people are more pro and on the whole, people from ethnic
48:39
managers are less pro. And then you look at, well, who
48:42
works in the nuclear industry historically, and the answer is
48:45
lots and lots of white men. No, we like white men.
48:48
You know, I have a white man husband and two white men sons.
48:52
White men are good, but they don't represent against white
48:55
men either, no. No, really, Really.
48:57
You surprised me, but they. Don't represent the whole of
48:59
society. And so if you're if you're going
49:01
to build something like size while C which impacts the bills
49:04
of all consumers in the UK, you should really partly out of a
49:10
sort of moral question of of offering opportunities in a
49:13
shape which looks roughly like society.
49:15
But also from a sort of protective question of we want
49:18
society to like us. You know, we think we're doing a
49:20
really good thing. We want people to also think
49:24
that whether or not people are politicians or the local
49:27
community, and if we don't look much like society, we are just
49:32
inevitably less likely to appeal to society.
49:36
And I've worked very hard to have a better gender balance.
49:41
We have a majority female executive team at the moment and
49:44
we have around I think just over 40% female employees.
49:48
We have a lot of work to do on other issues like the ethnicity
49:53
balance. It's improving but it it's not
49:56
yet representative of society as a whole.
49:58
And recognising, you know, that where the power station is
50:00
built, recognising who works in the construction industry, none
50:04
of this is going to be straightforward.
50:05
We're never going to get to a position where we exactly
50:08
represent society. But we need to get closer and
50:11
and can people come and visit and look?
50:13
Around and run around in front of bulldozers and things.
50:16
I mean, what, what's the, what provisions do you make for
50:18
people to to visit? At the moment we are, I think
50:22
early next year we're. Opening a, a great new visitor
50:25
centre which we will share between size as well B, the
50:28
existing power station that opened in 95 and and ourselves.
50:32
And we'd very much encourage visits to the visitor centre.
50:36
I'm hoping that they'll be viewing platforms so people can
50:38
look over the construction site. We probably don't want people
50:41
running around among the bulldozers, but but people can
50:46
visit Sizewell B can visit the visitor centre and we'll have, I
50:50
hope, viewing platforms oversea. Wonderful.
50:52
And it's right next to Sizewell T.
50:54
The the little cafe on the beach, right it is, and it's a
50:58
great. Beach nice white sand, bit cold
51:01
but other than that, great beach.
51:03
I can testify to that I might come and.
51:06
Take another swim there sometime soon.
51:08
But Julie, we should wrap up now.
51:10
Just I just want to say thanks so much for for for coming in,
51:14
joining us on saving the world from bad ideas.
51:16
And if you find that you want to tell me more about this as the
51:21
project carries on, we'd love to have you back on.
51:23
Thank you. That's very kind.
51:24
I enjoyed it. Thanks, Mark.
51:29
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51:31
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