The French energy company EDF is expected to give the go-ahead for an £18bn nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in Somerset.



EDF’s board will meet in Paris on Thursday and is almost certain to approve the project – the UK’s first new nuclear plant in a generation.

The decision to proceed will be criticised by environmental groups such as Greenpeace, which have called for more investment in renewable energy sources.

But unions will welcome the much-delayed project because it will create 25,000 construction jobs.

Hinkley Point C will provide 7% of the UK’s electricity over its estimated 60-year lifespan and is scheduled to go online in 2025 – several years later than planned.

That timetable could be highly optimistic given it will use the same reactor design as a plant being built in Flamanville, France, which is years behind schedule and more than three times over budget. Also France’s nuclear safety authority has found weaknesses in the reactor’s steel.

The delay in approving Hinkley Point has been largely due to concerns about EDF’s financial health, which has been compounded by the burden of the Flamanville project.

French unions have warned that the company – 85% owned by the French government – could be ruined by the cost of the UK project. EDF has sought a partner to spread the burden and China General Nuclear Power Corporation is expected to take a 33% stake in the project.

EDF said recently that Hinkley Point was a “unique asset for French industry as it would benefit the whole of the nuclear industry and support employment in major companies and smaller enterprises in the sector”.

Speaking on Thursday on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, the former Lib Dem energy secretary Chris Huhne said the project was worthwhile, not least as the main risks were being carried by EDF.

He said: “It’s certainly a risk for EDF, because the nuclear industry has not delivered a power plant on time or on budget anywhere in the world for years and years.”



But Huhne said EDF and the French government had a strong interest in delivering the plant. “The reality is, if they can make Hinkley Point work, and they can finally crack producing these things on time and on budget, there’s a potential market there in a low-carbon world which could be very valuable to French industry,” he said.

Tom Burke, from the environmental group E3G, told the programme that Hinkley Point was a huge waste of money. “There is no doubt we need the electricity,” he said. “We just don’t need electricity from Hinkley, at enormous cost, very unreliably. We’ve much better ways in which we could achieve the security of supply that we need at affordable cost and in a low-carbon way, without going to this sort of trouble.”

But Huhne argued that, at least in the short term, the UK needed nuclear energy to augment any move to renewable sources. “The reality is that in the northern hemisphere, when it comes to January and February we have amazingly high demand for energy and our ability to produce it from intermittent renewables is, at the very best, variable.”

The business and energy secretary, Greg Clark, said last week: “New nuclear is an essential part of our plan for a secure, clean and affordable energy system that will power the economy throughout this century.”

Unite urged the EDF board to approve the project, which the union said will generate thousands of skilled jobs and help meet the UK’s energy needs for decades to come.



Kevin Coyne, Unite’s national officer for energy, said: “The cost of not doing so could result in the lights going out in Britain and the West Country missing out on the much-needed economic boost that this major infrastructure project would bring. Workers are shovel ready and raring to go – all they need is the green light from the EDF board.”

Garry Graham, deputy general secretary of the Prospect union, said: “Energy margins for the UK continue to decline and we need to take the practical steps which ensure that we keep the lights on and transition to low-carbon generation. A final investment decision will be good for jobs, good for consumers, good for the environment and good for the economy.”

John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace, said: “Every time EDF has tried to build a reactor like Hinkley, it has failed. There isn’t a shred of evidence that Hinkley can be built on time or on budget, and if it hits the same problems as its predecessors, it can’t be relied on to keep the lights on in the UK.

“The UK government doesn’t have to sign the contract with the French and Chinese state-owned nuclear companies. We need to invest in reliable home-grown renewable energy like offshore wind which is powering other northern European countries more cheaply than Hinkley, even taking into account the backup cost when the wind doesn’t blow.”