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Macron rubbing hands with glee as UK energy crisis means EDF poised for ‘£30bn payday’

Macron rubbing hands with glee as UK energy crisis means EDF poised ‘£30bn payday’. EMMANUEL MACRON could win big from the UK energy crisis, with EDF being tipped to secure contracts worth nearly £30 billion.

Dr Paul Dorfman, an associate fellow at the University of Sussex said: “The UK has a very strong relationship with EDF, they own and run the substance of UK reactors and are helping to build Hinckley point and the rest of it.

“However, EDF are in debt. Moodys, the financial organisation has recently downgraded EDF’s credit rating. A quarter of all of France’s reactors are currently offline due to safety and security problems, that’s
largely because they have an ageing nuclear fleet, like us.

“In order to kind of try to prolong their lifespan, the French government has big upgrade of their nuclear. “The cost estimates are around £70-80 billion just to upgrade, just to keep them tottering on.”

EDF is currently constructing the Hinckley Point C nuclear power station and is also adding new reactors to Sizewell C in Suffolk and Bradwell B in Essex. Dr Dorfman has warned that these new reactors constructed by EDF are the same type of EPR reactors that were built in France, which the French court of Auditors estimated cost an extra €19billion (almost £16 billion). He continued: “EDF is clear about the need for Government investment in order to proceed with Sizewell C.”

 Express 1st April 2022

https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1589803/emmanuel-macron-uk-energy-crisis-edf-boost-nuclear-power

April 4, 2022 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, France, politics international