How CAN this be a green scheme? It's some of Britain's most fertile land29 Jan 2022 10:51
Only a few miles from the racing town of Newmarket. Another huge Lithium project taking shape.
Covering 2,792 acres, equivalent to 2,115 football pitches, it will be more than 12 times the size of Shotwick Solar Park in North Wales, the UK’s largest such facility built to date.
According to the Planning Inspectorate’s website, this is one of eight such schemes currently being planned across the country
“Once ablaze they emit clouds of toxic fumes, including hydrogen fluoride which is deadly if inhaled, and leading physicists have described them as tantamount to electrical bombs with the force of many hundreds of tons of TNT.
The threat is very real. South Korea saw 23 battery farm fires in just two years and a similar blaze in Illinois last June burned for four days, forcing thousands of residents from their homes.
Yet it’s just such a BESS which will occupy 45 acres of land adjacent to Brookside Stud where Nick Wright’s neighbour John James, a 74-year-old former National Hunt jockey, has been breeding racehorses for more than 30 years.
‘This is the view I have now,’ says John, pointing to a field in which a dozen yearlings frolic in the sun.
‘Then over that hedge is where the battery units would be. They’d be stacked on top of each other three high, so the total height would be six metres and then there’s the worry of them catching fire. It would be like living next door to a ticking time bomb.’
The thought of the BESS going up in flames terrifies John’s wife Kate. ‘I don’t sleep at night because I’m worrying about it so much,’ she says. ‘If the wind was blowing in the wrong direction, the fumes would go straight over the nearest village and there are two primary schools there.’
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