In our modern world there are often bitter arguments between different interest groups over things like the expansion of airports, the dangers of nuclear power plants, the siting of wind farm turbines and protection of the environment. Near the town of Lydd, England, all four of these issues collide. Lydd is a picturesque located on the edge of the Romney Marsh wetlands near the English Channel. The Dungeness Nuclear power station is near Lydd. There is also a small airport near the town which is being considered for expansion to handle major air traffic. And, finally there is a proposal to create a new wind farm in the area.
In this one village on the English Channel we see a collision of the need for electricity, reduction of carbon dioxide, increased air transportation, movement into renewable energy, protection of wetlands and fear of nuclear reactors.
The current airport is surrounded by protected bird habitats including a Royal Society for the Protection of Birds preserve. The area is under one of the main migratory bird routes for Southern England. This guarantees that there will be a lot of birds in the air. Wind turbines would kill many birds over the Marsh. Increasing air traffic with more and bigger planes landing and taking off will increase the probably of major air accidents caused by birds being sucked into engines. Plane crashes in the Marsh would result in destruction of bird habitats and pollution of the Marsh with fuel from plane crashes.
The siting of a nuclear power plant in a wetlands area and major bird habitat is already problematic. The construction of the second set of reactors at the Dungeness plant was authorized in 1965 and scheduled for completion in 1970. A series of design, construction and equipment problems delayed completion of the project for fourteen years until 1985, ultimately increasing the cost to over four times the original estimate. In 2009, Unit B21 was shut down for routine maintenance but serious problems were discovered which kept the reactor shut down for eighteen months. Also in 2009, a small fire shut down Unit B22. Since then both reactors have had to be shut down for months at a time on several different occasions. These are gas cooled reactors so at least there is not a problem with release of heat into the wetlands as discussed in my previous post.
If there was a major accident or terrorist attack at the Dungeness nuclear power station and radioactivity was released, the results would be devastating for the Romney March environment in general and the bird habitats in particular. In addition to problems internal to the power plant, the increased air traffic would also pose risk. If a plane was brought down by migratory birds or any other cause such as mechanical failure or terrorist act and crashed into the Dungeness reactors, the results could be horrible for the Marsh.
There are always tradeoffs between the competing needs and desires of different interest groups in regional planning but this problem is especially acute in Lydd near the Romney Marsh on the coast of England.
