
To be clear, as there were a lot of mistaken tweets doing the rounds, there is no question that several hundred million pounds have been spent on fish mitigations at Hinkley Point C. The fish disco cost £50m and the retrieval and return system cost £150m. The first debate is over the extra large intake, which cost £500m. Some fraction of this would have been necessary either way. My guess is about £50m of it, based on the gauge compared with other cases. I could be part wrong, but not hugely. If I’m right, then £650m of it was spent purely on fish mitigations. There is no chance that only £50m was, but perhaps only £600m was. On the other hand, maybe £675m was spent on fish. The second question is the number of fish. There is no question that only a handful of protected fish are being saved, no one disputes this. The 0.083 salmon per year and 100 twaite and allis shad numbers are not disputed. The ‘millions’ of fish people mention are river lampreys and similar, basically microscopic eels, of which there are trillions in the sea. They are therefore not protected and no one realistically thinks we should protect them. Some people are muddying the waters by trying to make this unclear.






















