Critics rounded on the British government yesterday over its surprise delay in final approval for the controversial Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant, as a trade union called the decision to review the project “bewildering and bonkers”.
Prime minister Theresa May’s government had been expected to rubber stamp the project after the board of French energy firm EDF voted late Thursday to proceed with building two reactors at Hinkley Point despite concerns over the financial risks to the company.
But business and energysecretary Greg Clark said the government would “consider carefully all the component parts of this project and make its decision in the early autumn”.
Clark gave no reason for the delay in the 18bn pound project in south-western England, leaving observers to speculate that it could be linked to fluctuations in energy prices, the growing cost to the public, or concerns over a Chinese state-run nuclear firm joining the project.
“Theresa May’s decision to review the go-ahead on Hinkley Point C is bewildering and bonkers,” said Justin Bowden of the GMB, one of Britain’s largest trade unions.
“This unnecessary hesitation is putting finance for the project in doubt and 25,000 new jobs at risk immediately after Brexit,” Bowden said.
Broadcaster ITV, without giving any source, said May had “accepted French President Francois Hollande’s offer of more time” to consider the project during talks in Paris last week.
The Confederation of British Industry, which represents some 190,000 businesses, said it was “crucial we see clear and timely decisions, and send a definite message that the UK is well and truly open for business.”
Tom Greatrex, head of the Nuclear Industry Association, also urged the government to “quickly endorse the decision to show they are serious about... securing inward investment to create our low carbon energy supplies of the future.”
Opposition Labour lawmaker Barry Gardiner, the shadow energy secretary, said the government had projected that public subsidies to the 60-year project, which is scheduled to begin producing electricity in 2025, would reach some £6bn ($7.9bn) but the projected cost of clean-energy subsidies has now risen to £30bn, the National Audit Office said in a report in mid-July.
The government agreed in 2013 to pay £92.5 for each megawatt hour of electricity from the plant, but wholesale energy prices have slumped since then.
“Government incompetence means we have no guarantee that Hinkley will be ready when we need it but billpayers will still pay a premium price,” Gardiner said on Twitter.
Kate Hudson, general secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, said the government should scrap the project, which would “saddle future generations with an astronomical environmental and economic debt.”
But Malcolm Grimston of the Centre for Environmental Policy at London’s Imperial College believes the project will go ahead “because the case, fundamentally, hasn’t changed” and a short-term fall in energy prices is “irrelevant” to a 60-year project.
“My own view is that the gas price can’t stay at its artificially low levels, as it is at the moment on the back of the oil price collapse, forever,” Grimston told BBC Radio 4.
  British trade unions criticised the government yesterday for delaying its final decision on the Hinkley Point nuclear power plant, seen by British media as backtracking on the project.
“Theresa May’s decision to review the go-ahead on HPC is bewildering and bonkers,” said Justin Bowden, the GMB union’s national secretary for energy, about Britain’s new prime minister.
“After years of procrastination, what is required is decisive action not dithering and more delay,” he said.
Kevin Coyne from Unite, Britain’s biggest trade union, said jobs could be lost and the delay could penalise economic growth.
“Any further delay or backsliding would hold back the economic boost and the accompanying creation of thousands of skilled jobs that this major infrastructure project will bring,” he said.
After years of discussion, French energy giant EDF on Thursday approved the £18bn project ($24bn) for two EPR nuclear reactors in Somerset in south-west England.
EDF chief executive Jean-Bernard Levy yesterday said at the company’s earnings announcement: “I don’t doubt the support from Theresa May’s British government”.
French unions have re-asserted their opposition to a project that they say risks plunging the group in financial difficulties.