BRUSSELS: The EU will recommend approval of Britain’s ambitious plan to build its first nuclear plant in a generation, with backing from French and Chinese energy giants, after ruling that it met state aid rules, a spokesman said yesterday.
The Hinkley Point project, to be built by France’s EDF for
$26bn, is one of the world’s most ambitious nuclear deals and is seen as a key boost to an industry brought to its knees by the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan.
The European Commission launched the probe in late 2013, delving closely into the project’s elaborate price guarantee system that critics claim will prove hugely expensive to British consumers for decades to come.
Environmentalists also see Hinkley Point as an unnecessary bow to nuclear energy just when the use of renewables, such as wind and solar power, is beginning to take hold.
“As our discussions with British authorities have ended with an agreement, the Competition Commission will recommend a positive decision” on the Hinkley Point project, a spokesman for Commissioner Joaquin
Almunia said.
“In principle, the decision should be made in October,” he added.
Anti-nuclear activists at Greenpeace called the impending approval a “backroom deal”, pushed through at the behest of the nuclear power lobby before the Commission ends its mandate at the end of October.
AFP
