Plaid Cymru MP says nuclear plant could help protect the Welsh language

Martin Shipton

Plaid Cymru’s MP for Ynys Môn has made it clear that developing a £20bn nuclear energy plant on the island need not be a threat to the Welsh language and culture.

Llinos Medi was speaking after a report in The Times suggested that such a project was aborted in 2020 because of concerns about the development’s impact on the language.

The Times article said Prime Minister Keir Starmer wanted to create thousands of highly skilled jobs by relaxing planning rules so that a new generation of nuclear plants could be developed. It cites the scrapping of the planned Hitachi plant on Ynys Môn five years ago as a prime example of restrictive planning policy that stifled job creation.

The Times reported how government planning inspectors rejected a multibillion-pound project on the island on grounds including the negative “socio-economic” impact on the local community.

They said it could put pressure on housing, forcing locals to relocate. “In turn, given the number of Welsh-speaking residents, this could adversely affect Welsh language and culture,” the five planning inspectors said in their report.

The 906-page report on the Hitachi Wylfa proposal has been used by nuclear industry figures as evidence of the difficulty with opening the nuclear power stations that Starmer announced his support for last week.

‘Unnecessary rules’

Last week Starmer pointed out that only one nuclear power plant, Hinkley Point C, is under construction, adding that it had faced “years of delay caused by unnecessary rules”. He cited frustrations with companies being forced to produce a 30,000-page environmental impact assessment in order to get planning permission.

Starmer contrasted the process to China, where 29 reactors are being built, while the EU is planning a further dozen.

The bid for the Wylfa power station in Anglesey was made by the Japanese company Hitachi and was worth up to £20bn – said to be the biggest energy project ever proposed in Wales. Planning inspectors examined the case for six months but ultimately recommended to ministers that the “development consent order” be disallowed. Hitachi later pulled out of the project, citing funding issues.

The final report into the project said that it should maintain and try to strengthen “Welsh language and culture as an important part of the island’s social fabric and community identity”.

Temporary accommodation was planned as mitigation by Hitachi for up to 4,000 workers. The company also argued that the scheme would boost employment for Welsh-language speakers, who might otherwise have left the area to find work.

About 57% of 70,000 residents on the island of Anglesey are estimated to speak Welsh — the second-highest rate in Wales.

Planning inspectors were not convinced, and said: “The additional pressure that would be placed on accommodation … could even with the proposed mitigation, adversely affect tourism, the local economy, health and wellbeing and Welsh language and culture.”

Concerns were also raised that the scheme would not meet UN environmental standards, by disturbing Arctic and Sandwich terns.

‘Saga’

Starmer was told there was “no better example of the need to reform our planning system than the saga of Wylfa Newydd” by Sam Dumitriu, head of policy at the Britain Remade think-tank. He told The Times it had been rejected on “spurious” grounds, and added: “The real threat to the Welsh language in Ynys Môn [Anglesey] is a lack of well-paying jobs for locals who have lost their nuclear power station and the aluminium-smelting plant that it provided with cheap green power.

“We need to rewrite the planning rules to fast-track the new power station on the island that locals so desperately want.”

Starmer announced last week that he is changing planning rules to allow small modular reactors (SMRs) to be built for the first time in Britain. At present, rules state that only the UK Government may designate sites for potential nuclear power stations, severely limiting where they can be built. There are only eight designated locations in the UK.

The government will drop that requirement and hopes that the first small reactor will be built in Britain by 2032. Starmer wants them to power the energy-hungry data centres needed for artificial intelligence.

Mega-nuclear power station

Last year the then Conservative government named Wylfa as the third site for the UK’s third mega-nuclear power station — similar in size to Hinkley in Somerset and Sizewell in Suffolk. Ministers said they would seek talks with global energy companies to rejuvenate the project.

Tom Greatrex, chief executive of the Nuclear Industry Association, said the failure of the Hinkey project five years ago was: “absolutely symptomatic of how planning processes for significant infrastructure projects can disappear down a cwningar — the Welsh for a rabbit warren.”

Llinos Medi said: “The people of Ynys Môn deserve a future that balances economic growth with the protection of our unique language, culture, and environment. Scrapping the Hitachi project in 2020 was a failure of the Conservative UK government to properly plan and invest in a sustainable future for our island.

“A well-planned, properly funded nuclear project could bring long-term, high-quality jobs and strengthen our Welsh-speaking communities, helping to keep young people on the island.

“I will continue to press the Labour UK government to provide a clear and realistic strategy that delivers the economic opportunities Ynys Môn needs while respecting our local identity and environment.”

The issue of nuclear energy is highly contentious within Plaid Cymru. The party’s official position is to oppose new nuclear plants, although its successive elected representatives on Ynys Môn have been permitted to back such a development on the island.