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The state-owned China General Nuclear Power Corp (CGN) has stopped making payments to fund nuclear plant Hinkley Point C amid high tensions between the UK and China, a Bloomberg report has claimed.
The project is currently one-third owned by CGN, with French firm EDF Energy owning a controlling stake in the rest of the project.
But according to the report, which cites people who asked not be named, CGN has skipped “several instalments” in recent months.
This could leave EDF having to fund the £33bn project on its own unless the UK government steps in to make up the shortfall.
Tensions with China have been ramping up in recent years, with the UK increasingly sceptical about using technology built by its companies. It has already made plans to strip any technology made by Huawei out of its 5G networks and last year it banned China-made surveillance equipment from government departments.
It also paid CGN over £100m to exit the Sizewell C nuclear energy project last year amid continued efforts to reduce Beijing’s involvement in UK infrastructure over security concerns. Despite looking for outside investment for the project to replace CGN, Sizewell C is currently 50/50 co-owned by both EDF and the government.
According to Bloomberg, it’s unclear whether CGN’s decision to halt funding for the Hinkley Point project is temporary or permanent. EDF already warned in February that it faces shouldering more of the project’s costs over concerns that CGN would not meet its share of the extra payments needed as budgets increased and delays were incurred.
In 2015, delivery of the project was estimated at £18bn – this rose to between £25bn and £26bn by 2022, but EDF revised this yet again to around £33bn earlier this year.
Once completed, Hinkley Point C is expected to be able to generate enough electricity to power around six million UK homes. It has a projected lifetime of 60 years, but is not expected to be operational until September 2028 at the earliest due to the various delays.
