KEEPING THE LIGHTS ON
GOVERNMENTS always get frustrated when regulators tell them their plans technically don’t work. Their solution? In the case of Sizewell, the new French nuclear power station recently given the go-ahead, ministers simply ignored the strictures of the planning authorities and regulators.
Now, with grim irony on the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a hastily cobbled-together official review has concluded that our nuclear regulatory regime is “not fit for purpose” – everything is too complicated and takes too long. This marks a convenient triumph for EDF and the entire nuclear industry who have long been lobbying intensively for this framing, to distract from their own incompetence.