China will have controlling interest in UK’s nuclear power!

Britain’s debt to foreign power: China’s nuclear revolution George Osborne has effectively handed the nation’s nuclear industry over to Chinese and French giants Telegraph, By Geoffrey Lean 18 Oct 2013 How’s this for a turn-up for the books? A Conservative Chancellor, promoter of free markets and defender of national sovereignty, is boasting of “allowing” (a euphemism, it seems, for “begging”) a totalitarian Communist country to build nuclear power stations in Britain.

It will all start – under a deal expected to be finalised next week – with the state-owned China General Nuclear Power joining the equally nationalised Electricité de France (EDF) in constructing a £14 billion brace of reactors at Hinkley Point in Somerset. The Chinese will have a minority share in the project, but have made it clear – and George Osborne accepts this – that they should have a controlling interest in future schemes.

So, much of Britain’s highly sensitive nuclear industry – which sprang from the atomic bomb programme – is effectively to be owned by two foreign powers, one the country’s oldest traditional enemy, the other a bitter Cold War opponent. Few other nations, and certainly not China, would dream of permitting anything of the kind. Doesn’t Mr Osborne see that this could be a bit radioactive, shall we say?

He half-concedes the point. “There are many countries in the world who wouldn’t want other countries involved in their civil nuclear programme,” he admits, but adds: “I do, because if it wasn’t Chinese investment or French investment, it would have to be British taxpayers.”

Why taxpayers? Because British investors and industry shun nuclear power. Indeed the Chinese are replacing Centrica, which pulled out, with rapidly cooling feet, earlier this year. No one has built an atomic power station here since the nationalised Central Electricity Generating Board 20 years ago and it managed only one – at Sizewell – out of a planned programme of 10. Although commentators frequently fulminate about the failure of successive governments to go nuclear, the real problem has been that – in a liberalised electricity market – no one could be persuaded to invest in new reactors……

…..China is a really bright spot, building about half the atomic power stations now under construction in the world. Critics worry about its nuclear industry’s safety arrangements and lack of transparency…….

Hinkley is still not yet ready to go, for the European Union will have to approve the generous price-fixing that ministers have negotiated with EDF to persuade it to build. That could take a year, at best, and is likely to run into opposition from countries such as Germany and Austria.

Even assuming they get the all-clear, new reactors will not solve important, pressing problems. They will not help with the much-forecast coming power crunch: as with shale gas, they will not produce much until well into the 2020s.

And they certainly will not bring down energy costs. The fix, due to be announced next week, is expected to guarantee to pay double the current electricity price for Hinkley’s output for some 35 years, effectively forcing consumers to subsidise the Chinese and French states by about £1 billion a year……..http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/nuclearpower/10389072/Britains-debt-to-foreign-power-Chinas-nuclear-revolution.html