Business and political leaders will meet to discuss ways they can help workers affected by the suspension of work on a new nuclear power station. Japanese firm Hitachi’s decision to halt its Wylfa Newydd project on Anglesey was described as a “tremendous blow” to the north Wales economy. About 9,000 workers had been expected to build the £13bn plant. Economy secretary Ken Skates will be at an emergency meeting of the North Wales Economic Ambition Board later. Mr Skates said he wanted to discuss what job opportunities there were for people in similar fields in and around Anglesey. Energy is not currently devolved to the Welsh Government and Mr Skates said he was “deeply concerned” and wanted the UK government to “step up to the plate” to give assurances about the project and the wider implications for the regional economy.
BBC 21st Jan 2019 read more »
Almost every farmer who owned land on the prospective new Wylfa B site sold it to Horizon. All, that is, except one. Richard Jones and his wife Gwenda refused steadfastly to sell their farm to be torn up for the nuclear site. It had been in the family for 300 years. “They could have offered us a billion pounds an acre and we wouldn’t have sold,” said Richard when we met in their cosy farmhouse kitchen last year, drinking warm mugs of tea and eating three kinds of homemade cake. Richard pulls out a map that shows all the farms sold off around him. “Churchill said something like ‘you cannot reason with a tiger when your head is in its mouth,’” he said. His farm is positioned like the head inside the tiger’s mouth, surrounded on three sides by lands sold to Horizon. But he and Gwenda did more than reason with Horizon, they defied and challenged the company and its frequent emissaries to their farm. When the local activist group — People Against Wylfa B (PAWB) — brought the former prime minister of Japan, Naoto Kan, to Anglesey, he met with the Jones family (and hopefully was also treated to some of Gwenda’s delicious cakes!) The family had been getting quite a bit of press for their refusal to sell out. Horizon didn’t like it.
Beyond Nuclear 20th Jan 2019 read more »
