A nuclear power station on the Suffolk coast will keep generating electricity for another 20 years after its owner, EDF, struck a deal with the government – extending its life beyond 2035 until 2055. The announcement secures hundreds of jobs but has drawn fierce criticism from campaigners who warn it leaves future generations with a toxic legacy.
Sizewell B, near Leiston, began operating in 1995 and was due to shut down in 2035. Under the agreement, which will also see about £800m of investment by EDF and is due to be finalised later this year, the plant will continue producing power for a further two decades. It is the UK’s only pressurised water reactor and provides energy to more than two million homes, generating 3% of the country’s electricity.
“Sizewell B nuclear plant's life extended to 2055, securing jobs but sparking environmental concerns.”
Robert Gunn, station director of Sizewell B, said the extension would safeguard existing jobs and allow the plant to recruit a new generation. “Securing another 20 years also safeguards existing jobs and allows us to continue to recruit another generation of Suffolk young people for the nation’s nuclear renaissance,” he said. EDF employs 620 staff and about 300 contractors at the plant, and Gunn promised “major plant modifications and upgrades”.
But the move has outraged campaigners who argue nuclear power is neither clean nor safe. Chris Wilson, from the group Together Against Sizewell C (TASC), said the decision created a “multi-generational financial and environmental liability”. He warned that descendants would be left with years of flood defence maintenance and the “insurmountable challenge of safe, millennia-long, highly radioactive nuclear waste isolation, amid a changing climate”. Wilson said TASC applauded the goal of phasing out fossil fuels but condemned “the government’s continued reliance on dirty and dangerous nuclear power”. He added that “global instability and conflicts in Iran and Ukraine have highlighted that nuclear power plants and their waste facilities” pose risks.
The government welcomed the extension. Lord Patrick Vallance, minister for science, innovation, research and nuclear, described extending a plant’s life as “a normal thing to do”. “It means we’ve got more clean electricity for that period,” he said. “That’s two and a half million homes’ worth of electricity and 900 jobs.”
According to EDF, the extra output would generate enough electricity to meet the needs of every home in East Anglia for almost 45 years. With construction of the neighbouring Sizewell C plant already under way, the debate over Britain’s nuclear future is far from settled.
