Sizewell – a glowering presence
In the 'The Rings of Saturn' the author WG Sebald walks south along the Suffolk coast from Lowestoft to Dunwich, where he gets lost in the criss-crossing, maze-like sandy paths on Dunwich heath (p174 in Chapter VII), falling into a dazed and confused state, whereupon he recalls a dream he had months later when he is lost on Dunwich heath once more, the cliffs are eroding, houses and people lay broken on the beach below, there is destruction everywhere, and he has a vision of the Sizewell power station, which sits a few hundred metres from the sea, a mile or so south of Dunwich heath.
"Now night is almost over and the dawn about to break. The contours of the Sizewell power plant, its Magnox block a glowering mausoleum, begin to loom upon an island far out in the pallid waters where one believes the Dogger Bank to be, where once the shoals of herring spawned and earlier still, a long, long time ago, the delta of the Rhine flowed out into the sea and where green forests grew from silting sands." [extract from ‘The Rings of Saturn’ by WG Sebald.]
Having walked from Benacre and Covehithe, where the cliffs are rapidly falling into the sea, and in the previous chapter he describes the medieval city of Dunwich which is now lost to the sea after centuries of unrelenting high tides and storms, it’s as though Sebald is seeing into the future, where large chunks of the Suffolk coast have collapsed into the sea and the Sizewell power plant is alone and adrift on an island in the North Sea – a scenario that is wholly possible given the acceleration of the erosion on the Suffolk coast – indeed when I was there in early April 2022 it’s clear there had been an unusually high tide leaving a line of flotsam along the top of the dunes in front of the power station buildings.
The Sizewell A power station had two Magnox type reactors with around 26,500 fuel elements, or 321 tonnes of uranium in each reactor, the fuel rods have been removed to Sellafield, Europe's largest nuclear site - it stopped generating power in 2006 and it has been decommissioned and will be dismantled in the 2090s. The 'Building specification' of Sizewell A (from Wikipedia.org) makes interesting reading - everything about a nuclear power station is staggering, the science and engineering, and just to contemplate the scale of the task of building and maintaining such a structure is almost overwhelming, a true feat of human ingenuity.
"The foundations for the reactors and associated boilers are provided by a reinforced concrete raft 8 feet (2.4 m) thick, founded on the sand with a designed net bearing pressure of 3.5 tons per square foot. The biological shields are 100 feet (30 m) high and vary between 10 and 14 feet (3.0 and 4.3 m) thick. The composite steel and reinforced concrete cap above each reactor is 12 feet (3.7 m) thick..."
"The turbine house is a steel-framed, aluminium clad building 380 feet (120 m) long, 160 feet (49 m) wide and 90 feet (27 m) high, with a reinforced concrete basement 26 feet (7.9 m) deep. The foundations are provided by isolated bases and strip footings with a designed maximum bearing pressure of 3 tons per square foot."
"The pumphouse which supplied the main turbines with 27m gallons of cooling water per hour drew sea water from an intake structure about 1,350 feet (410 m) offshore via twin 10-foot (3.0 m) diameter tunnels. This water was returned to the sea through similar tunnels discharging 350 feet (110 m) offshore." [extract from Wikipedia.org.]
Next to the old Magnox power station is ‘Sizewell B’ which is scheduled to generate power until 2035 with a possible extension to the 2050s or beyond, with the site likely to remain radioactive well into the 22nd century. Sizewell A is a foreboding grey concrete block (“a glowering mausoleum”), while Sizewell B is a sprawling blue and white industrial complex of buildings topped with a massive white dome.
When Sebald made his walk in 1992 the dome was complete but the station was not operational and generating power until 1995. He refers to it in Chapter IX when visiting the Temple model in Fressingfield.
“Thomas Abrams dug out a magazine from under a pile of papers and showed me a double-page aerial view of the Temple precinct as it is today: white stones, dark cypresses, and in the centre, gleaming, the golden Dome of the Rock, which immediately brought to mind the dome of the new Sizewell reactor, which can be seen on moonlit nights shining like a shrine far across the land and sea. The Temple, Thomas Abrams said as we left his workshop, endured for only a hundred years. Perhaps this one will last a little longer.” [extract from ‘The Rings of Saturn’ by WG Sebald.]
Sizewell B is the UK's only Pressurised Water Reactor supplying power to around 2 million homes (according to the operator) - it is built by the sea since it uses millions of tons of sea water for generating steam in the reactor and for cooling. There are 18 million Uranium pellets inside the reactor which is housed under the huge white concrete dome, said to be larger than the dome of St Paul's cathedral - the dome can be seen from miles around and can seem to glow against a stormy sky, but in other light conditions it appears to merge with the sky. Everything about the scale of construction and operation of the plant is staggering, and there are plans to build another station next to this one, Sizewell C which will have two reactors - construction will take many years, will cost billions, but it will provide many decades of low carbon energy. During the week I visted Sizewell the UK prime minister said that the government wants to build eight nuclear reactors, including those at Sizewell, to help the UK achieve our "net-zero" targets.
The power stations are set among the dunes at Sizewell next to ‘Sizewell Belts’, a beautiful marshland reserve managed by Suffolk Wildlife Trust, and the site for the proposed Sizewell C plant. It's a designated site of special scientific interest with many rare plants, insects and birds, such as the Bitten. It's a varied, incongruous landscape, a mixture of marshes, woodland, beach and mega industrial complex, appearing to co-exist.
Sebald walks towards Sizewell at Dunwich, where he would have clearly seen the power stations, but I chose to start at Kenton Hills car park (in Lovers Lane, Leiston) and walk around the perimeter of the Sizewell Belts reserve and onto the beach near to the power station (about 4 miles round trip). The walk starts in mature pine forest, has wonderful views across the marshes, where you won’t fail to see the huge dome of Sizewell B, and reaches the dunes on Sizewell beach by some WWII anti tank blocks. Alternatively, you can start at the Sizewell Gap car park near the beach and walk a few hundred metres to see the power stations, continuing north towards Dunwich, following a line of palings, and turning inland at the anti-tank blocks.
