The government's agreement to underwrite the Hinkley Point nuclear power station could turn out to be economically insane and hugely costly to consumers, City analysts have warned.
Analysts at Liberum Capital said the government's deal with France's EDF will make Hinkley Point the most expensive power station in the world with the longest construction period in the world.
AFP - The European Commission said Tuesday it would examine British government support for a massive 19-billion-euro nuclear plant to be built by French and Chinese firms.
London announced Monday plans for two reactors to be built by French energy giant EDF, backed by the world's leading nuclear power company, Areva of France, and Chinese nuclear firms CGN and CNNC.
LONDON/PARIS (Reuters) - Britain is set to sign a deal with France's EDF for the first nuclear plant to start construction in Europe since Japan's Fukushima disaster raised safety concerns worldwide, at a cost estimated at around $23 billion.
Under the deal, expected to be announced on Monday, the French utility will lead a consortium, including a Chinese group, to construct two European Pressurised Water Reactors (EPRs) designed by France's Areva.
INVESTIGATIONS have been launched to determine how a train carrying nuclear flasks derailed between Roose and Barrow stations.
Emergency crews raced to the scene, just behind Salthouse Road, Barrow, at about 2.15pm yesterday and St Luke’s Avenue was cordoned off.
A spokesman from International Nuclear Services Ltd, a subsidiary of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, which is responsible for the management and transport of nuclear material, said the train had been on the way to Sellafield carrying empty flasks when it derailed while travelling at approximately 5mph.
With a deal over subsidies now weeks away, Emily Gosden looks back at the tortuous path to this point and the challenges that remain.
Ed Davey was adamant. He had never given a “day-by-day or week-by-week account” of the negotiations with EDF, and nor was he about to start — no matter how much the assembled journalists wanted to know whether a deal to build Britain’s first reactor in a generation would finally be agreed in the few weeks before the energy firm’s end-of-year deadline.
Electricite de France SA’s deal with the U.K. to build the nation’s first new nuclear plant in two decades will be probed by the European Union once an agreement is struck and regulators are informed, the EU’s antitrust chief said.
“The U.K. government has announced to us that they will notify in the coming months a program linked with investments in nuclear energy, in new plants,” Joaquin Almunia, the EU’s competition commissioner, said in the margins of a conference in Florence, Italy. “Once this notification will take place we will need to assess if this scheme, this program complies or not” with the EU’s rules.
ED DAVEY, the energy secretary, will travel to Beijing this month to lay the groundwork for a sweeping new partnership that could lead to Chinese-designed nuclear reactors being built in Britain.
The trip is the latest sign of the government's desperation to find backers for its troubled £200bn low-carbon overhaul of the energy industry. Last week Michael Fallon, Davey's No2, signed a memorandum of understanding to co-operate on civil power with Rosatom, the Russian state nuclear monopoly.
BRUSSELS/LONDON (Reuters) – European Union rules to be published over the coming weeks could make it easier to justify using taxpayers’ money to fund new nuclear power, which would pitch major EU powers against each other.
The European Commission, the EU executive, says its mind is still open on the topic, but it is under pressure to set a legal framework for state aid to nuclear projects after several member states, including Britain, sought its guidance.
The EU should stop "skewing" Europe’s energy market in favour of renewables and allow the UK to build a £14 billion nuclear reactor at Hinkley C, the deputy director-general of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) has told EurActiv.
“We would hope that the European Commission would see nuclear as being a core part of our energy mix,” said Neil Bentley. “We have to start somewhere and Hinkley C is exactly the right place.”
“Let us get on with it,” he said.
As the FT reported on Friday, negotiations on the terms for new nuclear have advanced and there is increasing optimism that a deal can be done. The meeting between David Cameron and Francois Hollande in Paris two weeks ago amounted to a declaration of agreement in principle. Just three issues remain to be resolved.
