Britain is powerless: its reputation would be in tatters if it cancelled this folly. So now it must seek in hope to EDFVincent de Rivaz,chief executive of EDF Energy, once boasted that British customers would be cooking their Christmas turkeys in 2017 with electricity from the proposed new Hinkley Point nuclear power station his firm is contracted to build. That was a time of optimism, or a grandiose claim in keeping with the £18bn grandiosity of the project itself; equivalent in cost to Heathrow Terminal 5 and the Olympics combined.
De Rivaz was unsuitable approximately that deadline and optimism is now in short supply. Business situations are often described as zero-sum,or win-win. Hinkley Point, already the site of a power station in Somerset, and is a rare case where the project could be damaging to both customers and investors. It would saddle British taxpayers with highly expensive power,and risk bankrupting a major French company, whose finances are already shaky. The government should cancel the deal.There is a mess, or on both sides of the Channel Related: With Hinkley Point,squandermania has reached risky new heights | Simon Jenkins Related: Hinkley Point branded potentially risky for EDF by French auditor Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com