EU approves Hinkley Point nuclear plant plans

Britain’s first new nuclear power station since the 1990s is closer to construction after the EU approved plans to provide 35 years of financial support to a new plant at Hinkley Point.

EDF’s plans for the £16bn reactor on the Somerset coast, which would heat nearly six million homes, was dependent on the EU agreeing that the government guarantees were not anti-competitive.

The news means the Government can press ahead with a whole wave of new reactors, such as Oldbury in Gloucestershire and Anglesey in Wales, to bridge the country’s yawning energy gap, which will only widen over the next decade as existing nuclear plants reach the end of their lives.

Building nuclear plants is hugely expensive, so EDF would only plunge in with billions of pounds if shareholders were guaranteed a fairly risk-free return. The government guarantee takes the form of a minimum price that would always be paid for electricity generated at Hinkley C, regardless of whether the market price fell below this threshold.

Ed Davey, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, said yesterday: “This is an important next step on the road to Britain’s first new nuclear power station in a generation.

"While there is much work still to do before a final contract can be signed, the announcement is a boost to our efforts to ensure Britain has secure, affordable low-carbon electricity in the 2020s.”

Anti-nuclear campaigners, who have concerns about a possible nuclear disaster and about storage of radioactive waste, believed these were weaknesses in the Government’s case for nuclear, as it constitutes state aid that would have been better spent on developing other sources of renewable power, such as wind farms.