Horizon Chief Executive Officer Duncan Hawthorne said that the subsidiary of the Japanese firm Hitachi is concerned that $1.57 billion already invested in the proposed Wylfa Newydd nuclear power plant might never see any returns, given the British government's ambivalence over the Hinkley Point C project.
Hawthorne is requesting reassurances from Britain's new Prime Minister Theresa May that the Wylfa Newydd project will not run into a government-created stone wall.
In late July, after many delays and much drama, the board of French utility Electricite de France (EDF) finally decided to finance the third round of reactor projects at Hinkley Point in a project known as Hinkley Point C. With that decision made, the new British government stepped in at the eleventh hour – with contract signing ceremonies already scheduled – and backed away from the project, saying the government required more time before deciding to permit the project to continue. Prime Minister Theresa May said the government needed until sometime in early fall to make a decision on the deal that was to culminate in a project capable of supplying Britain with 7 percent of its electricity generation.
But there is another nuclear power plant project in the works in Britain, the Wylfa Newydd project to be built by Hitachi subsidiary Horizon.
In light of the last minute reversal concerning Hinkley Point C, Hawthorne is now seeking assurances that the government will not pull the plug on his company's project.
“We've spent $1.57 billion on this project that we may never see again if we don't get a successful conclusion,” British media are quoting the executive as saying. “A statement from this Prime Minister would be highly valuable,” he said.
In a related story, EDF chief executive Vincent de Rivaz has made public a letter to the British government attempting to reassure naysayers that the Hinkley Point C project is a solid bet.
On the surface, the two projects are very different. Two different reactor designs are in play – the EPR design at Hinkley Point, while Horizon plants to construct an Advanced Boiling Water Reactor in Wales to replace the two retired Magnox reactors at the Wylfa Nuclear Power Station. The Hinkley Point C project includes a minority position held by Chinese companies, which has prompted concerns over potential security issues, since the contracts also call for Chinese involvement in a new Sizewell power plant and a majority-owned Chinese plant at the Bradwell site.
de Rivas sought to reassure the government that Chinese involvement posed no security risk. “We know and trust our Chinese partners,” he wrote in a letter published in the Sunday Telegraph. “Beyond that, the UK independent nuclear regulator has only granted Hinkley Point a nuclear site license after being satisfied that security has been properly addressed.”
The World Nuclear Association notes that Hinkley Point C has regulatory approval and that foreign investment in nuclear power in Britain is not new or isolated to Chinese companies. Horizon Nuclear Power bears an English sounding name, but its owner is Japanese company Hitachi. NuGen is owned by Japan's Toshiba and Belgium's Engie. EDF, meanwhile, is a French company.