Late and expensive
As the latest delays and cost over runs are announced for Hinkley C, we question whether this was in fact an accident waiting to happen.
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Late and expensive
There’s nothing new about cost overruns and delays when it comes to EdF building nuclear power stations. Especially the latest generation of European Pressurised Reactors designed by a consortium including EdF, Areva and Siemens.
The European Pressurised Reactor is the model being built by EdF at Hinkley C on the Somerset coast. Hinkley C is probably the biggest single investment in Somerset ever made, whether you agree with nuclear power or not, what happens to it and its ability to produce electricity are important. It is currently the biggest employer in Somerset and the multiplier effect of having a large construction workforce in town has been a major boost to the Bridgwater economy.
Hinkley C is probably the biggest single investment in Somerset ever made
This article is not here to debate the merits or otherwise of nuclear power. If that’s what you want, then look away now. What we are going to do, is examine the Hinkley C project and look at what has gone wrong and why.
The Leveller®, our sister paper, has been writing about this since before the plans were first given the go ahead by the UK government and the EdF board in 2016. It has not gone down well with EdF.
The reason for that is that we have declined to hoover up the party line that EdF in the UK have pushed out about Hinkley C, full of hope, promises and optimistic statements about the project.
Instead we have focused on what was actually happening in two other projects that started long before Hinkley C and were happening even as Hinkley C got under way. These were the Olkiluoto in Finland, originally intended to be commissioned in 2009, started commercial operation in 2023, ad Flamanville in Normandy.
As these projects were well under way before Hinkley was signed off, and as the build was more or less to the same spec, they seemed to us to be highly relevant. An indication of reality perhaps, ahead of corporate PR.