ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies the Government’s publicised intentions for the Sizewell Inquiry, placing them alongside the diverse aspirations of its participants. It looks at how the several match up, and how the inquiry system fared in meeting the demands made upon it. The experience of the Sizewell Inquiry clearly points to the need to reform the procedures by which major planning proposals are subjected to public scrutiny. The fact that the inquiry was essentially a local planning inquiry, held in response to a particular planning application, greatly helped the Government and the Central Electricity Generating Board in their efforts to restrict questioning to this one-off proposal. An important feature of the nuclear power debate is its diversity: areas of common concern range from precise technical queries of component design to the enormous moral questions of nuclear waste disposal and plutonium usage.
