The BBC Radio 4 programme More or Less is, more or less, right up my street because it is about numbers and statistics and their use and misuse and quite often about logic and public argument and the absence of the former from the latter. If I’m in the car and it’s on the radio then I usually listen unless I have an urgent need for Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, The Jam or Puccini.
But, it was a reference on LinkedIn (a type of work-related Facebook) which made me go back six weeks to the episode of 31 December to listen to whether More or Less had said that the cost of fish protection measures at the Hinckley C nuclear power station (in construction) would really cost a quarter of a million quid for every fish saved (£250,000/fish) because that seemed ridiculously unlikely to be true.
I listened to the 31 December episode, as you can now – click here, and at 15m:26s into the episode I found that, in a rather throw away line, More or Less did say that the cost of saving fish was around £250k/fish. If I had been in the car my eyebrows would have shot up or maybe one of them would have lifted quizzically because such a figure is vanishingly likely to be true. Vanishingly likely – not remotely, feasibly likely. But I didn’t hear the episode in the car, I read about it on LinkedIn before I went and checked by listening myself, and the post on LinkedIn did a good job of persuading me that More or Less were talking rubbish – maybe somebody else’s rubbish, but rubbish. And since More or Less‘s rationale is to poke fun, in a very helpful way, at others’ errors of numerical fact then they need to tread very carefully themselves.
I thought the post I read did a good debunk of the figure but, because I’m like that, I did some more checking of my own. I read the following (which you can too):
- Guardian, 10 February, good overview and more recent update – click here
- what EDF, the French developer says, 10 February (and source for much of Guardian piece) – click here
- a blog hosted by Green Alliance, 11 December, which claims to bust some myths – click here
Where I come out is like this: the fish protection measures cost £700m (of which the derided ‘fish disco’ aspect is a small part (but one that seems to work well)). Fish protection measures are not just ‘let’s be nice to fish’ measures as they are also nuclear power plant protection measures because no-one wants their cooling system blocked, harmed or damaged by living or dead fish. In addition, some of these fish are of European importance in their populations that migrate up the Severn Estuary and up the Rivers Wye and Severn. The conservation importance and legal protection are not surprises for either government or developers – they are a consequence of choosing this site, so deal with it.
The £700m is a cost spread over 70, 60 or (in an extreme version) 25 years of the nuclear plant running. Let’s call it £10m/year (it will be higher if 25 years is the best number to use, but I don’t think it is, and we can come back to that).
£10m/year. If it costs £0.25m to save each fish then the £700m measures are saving how many fish a year? Yes, 40 fish/year. If 40 fish/year were being affected and saved then nobody would want to spend £700m on saving them. But that, behind the throwaway witty remark, is what More or Less asked you to believe. You shouldn’t believe it because it’s daft but it will be one of the few things that many people will take away from that radio broadcast. More or Less did a crap job in checking their figures and they are a radio programme which is about checking your figures.
I wonder whether that line in the script was discussed or whether it was such a good line, such a funny (ha! ha!) line, such a memorable line, that no-one put their hand up and asked “Is that figure right? Have we checked it? Where does it come from?”.
According to the Green Alliance blog, government experts (maybe the Environment Agency – I don’t know, I’m trusting this figure) say that between 2 million and 200 million fish (round numbers) may be killed by the power station water intake. And according to EDF, the fish protection measure will save 90% of them. Now, I partly believe 2-200 million because it sounds like a large number (and I’d expect it to be a large number) but it also looks like it has come from somebody who has done their best to estimate something which is difficult to estimate and come up with a wide range. Compare 40 fish with 2-200 million fish: the former is more precise but I’m sure will be less accurate and the latter is very imprecise but is much more accurate.
If it is 2 million fish/year saved (ignoring the 90% figure for mathematical ease) then you are saving them at £5/fish. If 20 million fish/year are saved they cost 50p/fish, and if 200 million fish/year are saved that is 5p each. If you take the mid-range figure of 100 million fish/year that’s 10p each. And this is where you can more than double those figures if you think 25 years is the right period (I don’t think it is).
Someone has to decide whether these costs are reasonable (although it is a legal requirement not to trash protected species so something has to be done). You (for the costs will come back to the tax payer and electricity user one way or another) have to decide whether there are other ways to save fish or other places to generate electricity, or maybe even better ways to spend money so that we need less electricity. But if we go ahead with this nuclear power plant then we are spending £700m (over decades) on fish protection to protect sentient beings, to protect the conservation importance and ecosystem and to protect a nuclear plant. That is the public policy decision.
But More or Less screwed up, either carelessly and mindlessly, or deliberately for the sake of an amusing line – only they would know. The post on LinkedIn where I learned about this said that this issue had been raised with the BBC (through a complaint) and suggested that the BBC did not give a very reassuring answer. It appears there has been no correction nor apology and just a vague promise of coming back to similar matters at a later date.
So, I have complained to the BBC – use this link – as follows.
I am complaining about an episode of the BBC Radio 4 programme More or Less first broadcast on 31 December 2025 which stated that the cost of fish protection measures at Hinckley C power station would be £250,000/fish. This figure is not just a little bit wrong but is likely to be between a factor of 10,000 and 100,000 wrong.
Does the BBC accept that this was an error?
Has the BBC corrected the error publicly with as much prominence as the original?
If not, why not?
If I am unsatisfied by your response please let me know where I take my complaint further.
You could complain too. You could even say that you know that some bloke called Mark Avery has complained and you will be looking with great interest to see what sort of response he gets when he writes about it on his blog and through his newsletter.
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EDF has been trying to ditch its acoustic fish deterrent at Hinkley Point for several years. The company was searching for excuses to abandon this important fish conservation measure back in 2021 when I worked for the Environment Agency. If I recall correctly, one of the main justifications then, was it would be too dangerous to send divers down to inspect and carry out maintenance work on the power plant’s intake cooling pipe. I should point out, the pipe is massive. You could drive a double decker bus through it. Following further negotiations, it seems some bright spark thought it a good idea to dub the deterrent a ‘fish disco’ to belittle its benefits and inflate the cost. Stupidly, the BBC fell for this misleading version of the facts ‘hook, line and sinker’ and broadcast a highly misleading item on its ‘More or Less’ programme . An apology and correction is most certainly due.
Mike – thank you for your first comment here.
As a regular ‘More or Less’ listener, I heard this piece within a day or so of broadcast and was troubled by the tone and approach of the segment on major projects and planning. They trotted out the £100m HS2 bat tunnel without much context or discussion, before moving onto Hinckley and fish and the £700m figure. The natural environment was therefore given significant prominence on a piece that began with a ‘number of the year’, which was £38 billion. This is the expected cost of Sizewell, which the guest stated had gone up from an initial £20 billion. He went on to say that this increase was likely due to the passing of time, inflation, supply chain costs and changing economic circumstances. Then added as a key factor, the way we plan and design mega projects, a regulation thing, with safety and environmental reviews required. So quite a list of reasons for Sizewell costs going up. So why did the programme then talk in detail about the change to Nature regulations sounding like a possible panacea? It sounded so much like a continuation of the Governments bats and newts scapegoating rhetoric. Very disappointing for a fact checking programme.
I also emailed the programme immediately after broadcast saying it was sloppy use of figures and challenging them to justify them. I received an automated reply and nothing further
me too
I’m afraid I’m highly suspicious of this sort of thing having experienced the way private companies can inflate costs – and with it profits. + Of course this is all grist to the mill of Labours attack on nature.
Thank you, Mark, for that work – it gave me some figures to quote back to them in the complaint I have made just now. I was fuming (as I have told them) when I listened live, so I’m very glad to be able to complain. I agree with Tony above re. Sizewell C and that the attitude of the programme sounded like the Government bats and newts scapegoating rhetoric. Very disappointing.
Particularly disappointing from a programme whose raison d’etre is supposedly to expose slapdash or deceitful misuse of data.
Hi Mark
Did you ever receive a reply to your complaint? I heard the programme live too, and Id been looking up the issue the previous week as Id heard a passing comment about it on the news. The BBC really do need to employ someone to check out all their broadcasters misguided comments about wildlife, nature etc.. As an aside, I’m fed up with The Archers Podcast beginning to sound like a propaganda programme for “British Farming”.
Wendy – I have had a response saying that they aim to respond within two weeks but sometimes it takes longer. I am wondering whether that means that my newsletter and blog elicited enough comments that they feel they can’t ignore then – but I may be flattering myself.
I’ve just belatedly sent in a complaint ending with ‘Please let me know when the correction is going to be out on the next series of More or Less so that I can listen in.’ I mentioned that I read about it on your blog, then listed to the programme.
Unfortunately the Guardian has now also printed the same nonsense figures. In their Saturday magazine Issue 232 7th March, an article by Sam Dumitriu of Britain Remade mentions the exact same figure of £250,000 per fish and goes on to compare all kinds of totally different situations, with the HS2 bat tunnel thrown in for good measure. I have complained to the Guardian and BBC following your excellent example.
Jane – interesting. Thank you.
Just nitpicking slightly here, but your article doesn’t make clear if the figure of 2-200 million fish is per annum or over the lifetime of the power station.
I can see from your subsequent calculations that it has been taken to be an annual figure but I think it would be to clarify this earlier in the text.
Stephen – nit picks very welcome. Thank you.