New nuclear power plant expected to kill 46 tonnes of fish a year

Once operational Hinkley Point C’s water intake pipes are predicted to kill up to 46 tonnes of fish a year – Finnbarr Webster/Getty Images

A nature reserve is to be flooded by the developer of the Hinkley Point C nuclear plant at a cost of £50m to compensate for the death of fish in its cooling pipes.

An 840 acre swathe of land along the Parrett estuary in Somerset will be transformed into salt marsh as a habitat for marine life to replace fish sucked in by the new power station’s cooling ducts.

The area affected – part of the Somerset levels, where Saxon king Alfred the Great is said to have hidden from the Vikings – includes farmers’ fields used for grazing, as well as a nature reserve.

EDF, the French company building Hinkley Point, will create a new nature reserve nearby to replace the land being lost. The overall changes are expected to cost it £50m.

The massive water intakes used to suck water from the Bristol Channel to cool Hinkley Point C’s reactors are expected to kill up to 46 tonnes of fish a year when the plant opens in 2031.

EDF also explored installing an acoustic fish deterrent, effectively a loud noise to ward away animals, but concluded this would cause more harm than it prevented.

Chris Fayers, the company’s head of environment at Hinkley, said: “An acoustic fish deterrent would use 280 speakers to make noise louder than a jumbo jet 24-hours a day for 60 years with unknown impacts on other species like porpoises, seals, whales.

“It offers a very small potential benefit to protected fish species and would also risk the safety of divers in the fast-flowing tides of the Bristol Channel. New natural habitat is a better solution.”

EDF said it was working with Natural England, the Environment Agency, and other conservation bodies to develop the new natural habitats.

It plans to take out compulsory purchase orders to acquire the land and then destroy its protective dykes so that saltwater can flood in, according to planning documents.

Dozens of farmers around Pawlett Hams, north of Bridgwater in Somerset, have been told their grazing land is likely to become salt marsh. One said: “It’s an existential threat to farmers’ livelihoods.”

EDF has told local people: “We are proposing to create 340 hectares of salt marsh habitat.

“Salt marsh supports fish populations by providing breeding and feeding grounds whilst also helping to develop local populations of birds, plants, marine mammals, and reptiles.”

Because nature reserves are protected, EDF must also find a second swathe of farmland that can be rewilded.

Will Barnard, chair of the Pawlett Parish Council, who also works as an environmental land manager on some of the affected land, said no-one was happy with the scheme.

He said: “The land is partly nature reserve and partly rough grazing for a mix of local farmers. One of them has a herd of cattle that provides milk for the local area and beef for local outlets which we would lose if the land goes. All the farmers’s livelihoods are at stake and they are very concerned.”

EDF won the contract to build Hinkley Point C just over a decade ago. Costs were estimated at £18bn and it was meant to open in 2025. Costs have since risen to £46bn, equivalent to £700 for everyone in the UK, with an earliest start date of 2031.

EDF is responsible for all the costs but has blamed the UK for some of them, claiming they were linked to design changes imposed by UK regulators – including the latest demand for two nature reserves.

Some at EDF are very unhappy at the extra costs and complexity imposed by the scheme. A study by the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas), showed that the Hinkley water intakes would kill 18-46 tonnes of fish a year – less than the annual catch of one small fishing vessel.

EDF has designed the water intake to include a fish recovery and return system so that fish sucked into the pipes can escape.

The measures imposed on EDF are much tougher than on earlier power stations – many of which also used cooling water from the Bristol Channel.

Mr Fayers said: “Power stations have been taking cooling water from the Bristol Channel for decades with no significant impact on fish populations. Hinkley Point C will be the first power station in the area to have any fish protection measures in place.”

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