The Hinkley Point nuclear project has been described as “close to unravelling” after France’s ruling socialist party last week decided to support trade union leaders and called for a fundamental review of the high-cost scheme.
The party has warned that Hinkley Point threatens the financial viability of EDF — the state-owned energy giant responsible for two thirds of the £18 billion funding and for limitless liabilities if the project goes ‘belly up’.
A spokesman said: “The socialist party judges that a project of such importance, one that involves the solidity and survival of the national energy group, makes it imperative to ask every question and raise every concern before going any further.” It has also endorsed a complaint by the six trade union members on the EDF board who said the final go-ahead for the project was “pushed through” in late July without full disclosure in a “governance scandal”, and that the decision is now “null and void”.
The spokesman added “The whole relationship with Britain, whether political or economic, must be reviewed in light of its withdrawal from the EU, and a project as important as Hinkley Point cannot reasonably be exempted.”
Energy Minister Segolene Royal (pictured,) is said to have deep misgivings about the European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) technology planned for the UK, saying EDF had been “carried away by unproven and frighteningly expensive kit”.
The EPR technology is not yet working anywhere. The first plant at Flamanville in France is seven years late and £6 billion over budget, while its planned sister plant at Olkiluoto in Finland is also experiencing cost over-runs.
Meanwhile, the Chinese ambassador in London last week wrote a letter to the Government saying that “China-UK relations are at a critical historical juncture” and that Downing Street should approve the project “as soon as possible”.
Prime Minister Theresa May has postponed the plan until a new review is completed later this year. China is paying for a third of the project in exchange for a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ that its own companies would later build the next set of reactors in Essex.
The ambassador wrote that China has invested more money in the UK than in Germany, France, and Italy combined over the last five years “precisely because the UK was deemed a trustworthy country and was open for business. It has not been easy for China and the UK to have come this far. Up to £100 billion of future investments could be affected.”
Tong Zhao from the Carnegie-Tsinghua Centre for Global Policy in Beijing, said Chinese leaders were “flabbergasted” by the sudden decision to freeze the plan and they “doubt assurances that the dispute is over costs. Beijing interprets this as primarily a move against China and a policy shift to protect critical infrastructure. They suspect that there will be more instances of this in the future.”
He added that the Chinese press have “made much of an article” written earlier by Theresa May’s joint chief-of-staff, Nick Timothy, warning that foreign owners of the UK’s nuclear plants could “build weaknesses into computer systems that will allow them to shut down Britain’s energy production at will. Hinkley was a flagship project for China and was hailed at the time as a break-through into the Western nuclear market.
“President Xi Jinping himself promoted the project when he was in London and it became bigger than a mere contract. It has taken on symbolic meaning at a political level.”
Richard Black from the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit ‘think tank’ said: “In a world moving towards cheaper, flexible, decentralised power systems, investing in expensive plants that are always on ‘base load’ looks like a 20th century solution for a 21st century problem.
“If the chief reason for continuing the project is to preserve good relations with France and China, the whole story is a textbook example of why it is hazardous to strike commercial deals with foreign state-owned companies.”