SIR — Along with other local households, we recently received a copy of Somerset County Council's newsletter.

I'm intrigued by our council's presentation of EDF's proposed Hinkley Point C nuclear development – it's so upbeat it might have been written by EDF's own PR department!

I might find this bias funny if it were not that such whitewashing is seriously misleading the public.

It's all very well enthusing about the money the project could bring in, but we do need to consider the problems. For example:

l The destabilising effect on the local population of large numbers of immigrant workers brought in to work on the project.

l The huge amounts of site-related traffic clogging up our narrow roads.

l The practicalities of evacuating the local population in an emergency, given the limitations of the roads - the 30 kilometre evacuation zone would include Minehead, Taunton and most of Exmoor.

l The risk of allowing massive damage to the site and surrounding areas by preliminary works that don't come to fruition - EDF is around 34 billion euros in debt; add that fact to the current instability of the euro and there is a strong possibility of the project failing for financial reasons.

We also need to think about the implications of a nuclear accident requiring our evacuation.

For example, house insurance doesn't cover nuclear accidents - we'd have to claim against the power company, but the power company can't get insurance either, which leaves us claiming compensation from the Government, who will raise the money from the taxpayers . . . ourselves!

Also, when humans are evacuated, animals are abandoned - those out in the fields may manage untended for a while but those shut in will die, horribly, of thirst or starvation.

People re-entering the area following the Fukushima disaster reported the horror of finding the corpses of abandoned pets and farm animals.

Householders unconvinced by our council's positive spin need to register their concerns about the Hinkley Point proposals with the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) now – the deadline is January 23 -http://infrastructure.independent.gov.uk/projects/southwest/hinkley-point-c-new-nuclear-power-station">http://infrastructure.independent.gov.uk/projects/southwest/hinkley-point-c-new-nuclear-power-station

Caitlin Collins,

Cowbridge,

Timberscombe.