FRESH proposals to develop nuclear reactors in the Maldon district have been branded "outrageous".

Rolls Royce announced that it is looking at the Bradwell site, owned by EDF, as a potential base for four to six small modular reactors (SMRs).

The Blackwater Against New Nuclear Group (BANNG) has strongly opposed any plans as it believes it would be larger than the proposed Bradwell B, which is under consideration by Chinese company CGN.

Professor Andy Blowers,chair of the Blackwater Against New Nuclear Group, said: "This proposal, if it ever came about, would place up to six nuclear reactors on the Bradwell site.

Maldon and Burnham Standard:

“And they are hardly ‘small’ since each reactor would be close to the size of the old Bradwell A station.

“Together these reactors would comprise a nuclear complex larger than the massive proposed Bradwell B currently under consideration for development by the Chinese company, CGN.

“It is hard to state how utterly inappropriate such a development, which would include long-term storage of highly radioactive nuclear wastes, would be on the low-lying Bradwell site, threatened by the impacts of climate change and sea level rise.

“It is an outrageous proposal which must be nipped in the bud before it gets anywhere near off the ground”

The group attended a meeting for the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) NGO nuclear forum and asked if CGN had withdrawn from the Bradwell B project.

The group was told “there was no change to the proposals for Bradwell B but that further discussion was not possible because of commercial confidentiality”.

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BANNG has written to the Government to urge it to declare that the Bradwell site is unsuitable and to remove it from any further consideration by Rolls Royce or any other nuclear developer.

The anti-nuclear group has been campaigning to protect the people and the environment of the River Blackwater estuary for years.

Its aim is to raise awareness of the consequences of new nuclear development and to challenge any proposals for future nuclear power at the Bradwell site.