Jim Armitage: Think smaller and cheaper on nuclear and ditch China

China’s reaction to the PM’s security concerns over its involvement in Hinkley Point gives a valuable insight into the superpower’s view of our lopsided relationship: we are your overlords — do as we say.

This week, it has been using our new-found need for trade deals since the Brexit vote as extra muscle in that stance.

Such bullying will be familiar to the belligerent nation’s neighbours in the South China Sea. But for us in Blighty it has been enlightening to see how Beijing’s benign mask can slip so quickly.

In reality, though, national security is nowhere near the prime concern about this dismal project, even in light of disclosures today that the US is prosecuting our Hinkley partner for spying.

I don’t buy it that Beijing will one day launch some Project Doom attack on our infrastructure through a few power stations. I doubt it would be physically possible, let alone in China’s interests, to switch us off like that. Also, issues of whether China may be out to nick western nuclear technology, as alleged in the US case, is Washington’s battle, not ours. We blithely sold most of our nuclear industry abroad years ago.

No, the more important reasons to kick Hinkley into touch are far simpler: the outrageously high price we have agreed to pay for its electricity and the fact that the engineering behind it is clearly flawed. The vast European Pressurised Reactor design it uses may be the safest in the world, but that’s only because none are actually working yet.

The EPR being built in Normandy is years behind schedule, three times over budget and suffering from weaknesses in its steel. The other, in Finland, is also three times over budget and close to a decade behind. The vastness of these reactors clearly makes them far too difficult and risky to build.

Since the first concrete was poured in Normandy in 2007, nuclear technology has moved on to make smaller reactors far more favourable. The hope is that these could be built on a production line with minimal construction risk. As such, they promise to be far cheaper and quicker to deliver than a Hinkley Point.

Better still, the technology is largely British, so we may not even need the Chinese to help deliver them. The government has given small-reactor technology some support, but nowhere near enough. Let’s get behind it with some of the £18 billion that was going to be blown on Hinkley and shoot that white elephant once and for all.

Elliott’s big squeeze

Twice in a fortnight, activist investor Elliott has squeezed extra cash from a bidder by buying into the takeover target at the last minute and causing trouble; first on SABMiller’s bid for AB Inbev and now in Steinhoff’s Poundland tilt.