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French nuclear company EDF should not make a final decision on investing in the UK's Sizewell C reactor project until it reduces its exposure to its other British project, Hinkley Point C, the French state auditor said.
The Court of Accounts also said it was state-owned EDF It must ensure that any international projects are profitable, and must not delay the program of new nuclear projects in France.
The auditors' comments on Tuesday came just hours after the Financial Times reported that the cost of building the Sizewell Sea project in Suffolk was… It is likely to reach £40 billiondouble the estimate in 2020.
The new figure reflects rising construction costs as well as the effects of delays and cost overruns at sister site Hinckley in Somerset.
Delaying the final investment decision from EDF could further hinder the project and cause costs to rise further.
The UK government and EDF, the initial backers of Sizewell C, are trying to raise billions of pounds from new investors, with a final investment decision now postponed until at least the spring.
When asked about the Financial Times report, Coeur du Compte said the increase seemed “logical” given cost overruns in other similar projects.
The Court of Accounts also recommended that any final investment decisions for the EPR2 programs – the technology on which Hinkley Point C and other new reactors are based – should be postponed until funding is secured and detailed studies to evaluate the projects are carried out. .
This could lead to a more cautious approach by EDF towards six more EPR2 reactors in France, announced by French President Emmanuel Macron in 2022. The Court of Accounts estimated the bill for these plants at around 80 billion euros.
The Court of Accounts also criticized the long-awaited Flamanville project in northern France, which recently started supplying electricity to the grid, 12 years behind schedule.
The head of the Court of Accounts, Pierre Moscovici, said that he expected “modest profitability” for the project based on the data available to him, adding that EDF had refused to provide him with information about the factory’s profitability. She predicted that the energy group would never recover its capital investment.
These fears come as France did Pledge to build And an additional six new reactors domestically in the coming decades to meet its electricity needs — an ambitious and expensive goal that critics say will be impossible to achieve.
In the UK, questions about Sizewell's future will add to concerns about the British government's nuclear revival strategy, which aims to generate stable “base load” as the electricity system shifts to a much higher reliance on intermittent renewable energy.
The first new power station was supposed to be Hinkley Point C, which was originally expected to be completed by 2017, but was later postponed to 2025.
Early last year, EDF admitted the Somerset scheme would not be completed until at least 2029, with the cost jumping to as much as £46bn.
The French company then blamed the recent problems on the complexity of installing complex electromechanical and piping systems.
EDF did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Court of Accounts report.
