Talk:Hinkley Point C nuclear power station

Height above sea ?

How high above sea-level are the reactors? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.30.55.165 (talk) 21:39, 14 October 2017‎ (UTC)

According to this ref it is to be built 14 meters above sea level and located slightly inland, with a 900 meter long seawall that will be 13.5 meters tall.

Citation needed

"...[T]he project has been subject to several delays, including some caused by the COVID-19 pandemic..." - where is the evidence for this? At the source used later in this article, at the end of the section on "Costs to consumers", a source from soon after the beginning of the first official lockdown of the pandemic, has EDF itself saying "Hinkley Point C is making incredible progress on-site in terms of construction." https://www.edfenergy.com/energy/nuclear-new-build-projects/hinkley-point-c/about/realising-socio-economic-benefits This Wikipedia article is talking about "Since construction began in March 2017" but it therefore does not seem that there was a delay in construction caused by the pandemic as very soon in the first lockdown, EDF itself is saying there is incredible progress in terms of construction. Apart from this, generally I question the likely widely-held assumption that many things are "caused by the pandemic", a rhetoric often repeated that has yet to be proven in respect of most things. These things, such as delay to the construction of a nuclear power plant, although the source at EDF puts in question whether this has occurred, may have happened *in* the pandemic but this does not show that they were *caused* by it. Apart from disruption and closure of the international travel business, including flights into and out of the country and disruption to business directly linked to this, including the business of travel agents, which regardless of response to the pandemic would have been required anyway, including New Zealand that didn't need widescale closure over extended periods for industries and extended lockdowns of its population including furlough but instead dealt effectively with the pandemic by keeping its virus out - clearly it still had to shut down much of international travel and subject it to the impact from restrictions of managed isolation so, either way, the travel industry would have been affected by the pandemic, therefore this is caused by the pandemic. Additionally, changes to government legislative programmes and business were caused by the pandemic: in New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern was still pulled away from other business and into making coronavirus briefings aimed at the New Zealand public and her government passed Covid legislation. The UK also passed Covid legislation so, whatever the response, clearly this was a change to the legislative programmes that had been planned by the governments and therefore the pandemic did cause such thing.

However, beyond this, I dispute that the pandemic is the cause, including of things such as disruption to the business of construction workers or any other people involved in building the plant or otherwise delivering projects such as this on time. My no doubt controversial position (therefore I haven't amended the article) is that the UK Government was the cause of such things, including construction workers unable to be at work and continue their work on building the plant, if indeed this ever was the case although did not the UK Government actually give an exemption to enable construction industry to carry on in the early part of the pandemic? This Government appears always concerned to prioritise short-term economic interests and only closed down the economy when forced to do so at the last possible moment in March 2020, along with other Governments in the UK acting at the same time under a four-nations approach, it is the failure of the UK Government to ever have effective border controls to stop the virus coming into the country and to have an effective test and trace system to stamp out the virus if it did get through - New Zealand shows that it was, under the Wuhan virus at this time, a *substantial* amount of time before the virus got in again. The UK and New Zealand show very different outcomes at this time, despite both of them dealing with a pandemic being in the world. The lack of effective border controls in the UK is an intervening event that breaks the chain of causation back to the pandemic and is not caused by the pandemic: there would not be delay in construction of projects when people able to go to work and continue much as normal life in long periods in New Zealand when it effectively had stamped out the virus, and the information from EDF doesn't support delays in the pandemic anyway, instead, in May 2020, saying incredible progress is happening in terms of construction. Even if a source often considered to be reliable is referenced that claims delays "caused by the pandemic" (or similar), I would dispute reliance on such a source as such usually reliable sources often claim numerous things to have been caused by the pandemic but I have seen no substantiation from any of them to prove that this is the case and to satisfy the causation test to show the pandemic was the cause, rather than later Government action or inaction. Where is the evidence there even were delays in the pandemic given I dispute causation to it for anything except international travel and connected industry and disruption to government business (no evidence of delays to this project from EDF itself on that page from early in the pandemic and indeed instead appears to say the opposite of what this article claims)? aspaa (talk) 16:25, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

The immediate cause may have been the government's pandemic management strategy (and the strategies of other governments too, given that not all contractors on the project are UK-based), but that doesn't change the fact that the root cause was the pandemic itself. A different strategy might have resulted in less (or more) disruption, sure, but if there hadn't been a pandemic, this disruption wouldn't have occurred. Rosbif73 (talk) 06:50, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

I agree with Rosbif73, the pandemic was the root cause and it's not misleading to point that out, as per the source. Bellowhead678 (talk) 08:18, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Length and listing

Rather a lot of the early part of the article isn't really about the reactor or the establishment, the power station, or even about its particular situation.

It could be summarised as "various objections did not prevent the project proceeding".

The detailed list of them is not so much encyclopaedic as boring. Midgley (talk) 00:28, 3 January 2024 (UTC)