Fishing boat skipper Steve Yeandle was in no doubt. “Bring it on. We all want the lights to work when we press the switch. We need secure energy. Yes, I’d prefer it if it was our government putting the money in, but you can’t have everything. Nuclear seems to be the viable way to go, and if it is Chinese money making it happen then so be it.”
Yeandle was working on his boat – Scooby Doo Too – in the harbour at Watchet, a modest town on the Somerset coast a few miles west of Hinkley Point. For more than 30 years, he has escorted anglers on to the Bristol Channel in search of cod, skate and whiting. They tend to quiz him briefly about the squat towers of the Hinkley A and B nuclear power station as they chug away from the harbour – and then get on with their fishing.
“People don’t get upset about Hinkley around here. We’ve lived with it for years. Actually, what more people get upset about is the emissions from the Aberthaw coal-fired power station [across the water in south Wales]. That’s like a yellow snake streaking across the sky. Nobody around here worries about Hinkley.”
Yeandle’s friend George Reeder, who works at the chandlery at Watchet, agreed. “Hinkley is a good thing. I would say that, I know, because my son works there. But this area needs those sort of good jobs.”
Reeder pointed to the stationary harbourside crane. “Only me and one other person know how to work that now. Skills in engineering are being lost in this country. If we can get some of them back by creating jobs at places like Hinkley, that’s a good thing. It doesn’t matter where the money comes from.”
West Somerset is a picture-postcard kind of place. Just inland from Hinkley are the rolling Quantock Hills; further west, past Watchet, Exmoor plunges into the sea. It is a landscape that inspired the romantic poets William Wordsworth and his friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who lived briefly in a cottage a few miles from where many thousands of tonnes of soil are now being moved to prepare the way for Hinkley C.
“It’s beautiful,” said West Somerset council leader Anthony Trollope-Bellew, “but there are areas of hidden deprivation.” As far as the council is concerned, too many of its able, ambitious young people tend to move away to find well-paid, challenging jobs.
Which is why West Somerset, neighbouring authorities and the Somerset Chamber of Commerce is working hard to make sure that local businesses – from bakers to skilled technicians – will benefit from the vast building project when Hinkley C gets the final go-ahead.
Asked if he worried about Beijing being involved in West Somerset, Trollope-Bellew said: “That’s not in my remit. That’s for central government. But it will be used as a stick by the anti-nuclear lobby.”
Sure enough, on the roundabout at the site’s gates, a hardy band of protesters had set up camp to protest against nuclear power in general – and Chinese involvement in particular. Nelly, a giant blow-up white elephant (borrowed from Friends of the Earth Scotland), poked its head above the camp fence. A poster stuck to Nelly’s side read, in Mandarin: “Nuclear power the wrong investment.”
Protestor Theo Simon, from Shepton Mallet in Somerset, said it was deeply disturbing that the Chinese would be so closely involved with Hinkley. “George Osborne has had to go to China to get them to bail out this project, hitching our nuclear energy future to the Chinese state for 100 years,” he said. “We can have no confidence that will always be a good relationship, but they will be at the centre of our most hazardous electricity generation.”
Another protestor, Nikki Clark, who lives down the road in Bridgwater, the nearest town to Hinkley, said she did not swallow the line that the project would create 25,000 jobs. “Most of those jobs will be short term. There may be 25,000 tasks to carry out, but there aren’t 25,000 sustainable, long-term jobs.”
Simon and Clark claim opposition to Hinkley C is growing in the area. “We’ve had people come to us and tell us privately that they are against it, but can’t speak out because there are so many vested interests here,” said Simon. “We’ve been given more cakes and supplies than we can eat. That shows the level of support for us.”
Up the road at the village of Nether Stowey, retired health managers Gordon and Margaret Alexander, 84 and 78 respectively, were admiring the flowers outside Coleridge’s old cottage. “I think it’s disgusting that Chinese money is being used,” said Margaret. “Why can’t our government find the money?” her husband said. He would much rather money be ploughed into renewable energy sources. “We’re storing up problems for future generations,” he said.
Nether Stowey butcher Andrew Pope, who lives on a farm next door to the site, was more relaxed. “You grow up with Hinkley, you get used to it. My father used to work there, and I know loads of people who are still there. The new plant will be good for business, good for the area. Yes, it does seem strange to think of Chinese investment coming in, but that’s the way of the world now. We’ve just got to get on with it.”
