Lead
On July 15, 2010, Sean Kumen, director of engineering and construction at Internachonell, was hooked by Vincent de Reeves, the CEO of the British nuclear power company.
The two men exchanged memos, as if they had seen two towering nuclear power plants rapidly appearing in the Hinkley Point area.
While Sean Kumen is ambitious and believes that Hinkley Point will be the "Dawn Star" of the British nuclear power industry, ushering in a new era, Vincent de Reeves is worried, and it is unknown whether the Hinkley Point nuclear power plant will be a huge alchemical laboratory and whether it will bring "wealth".
But unexpectedly, this is the wishful thinking of the British, and the nuclear power plant in the Hinkley Point area has become the "pit king" a few years later, and the fuse of all this is because China refuses to invest and gives up participation, and the result is a big surprise.
The privatization of nuclear power in the United Kingdom is complacent.
As one of the developed countries, the United Kingdom has always put environmental modernization in the country's development strategy, in addition, the United Kingdom is also quite committed to reducing carbon emissions.
However, although the UK is no stranger to environmental issues, it has not found a suitable direction in terms of energy, especially in the 80s of the 20th century, when nuclear power was regressed by privatization.
For nuclear power, the UK began to dabble in the 50s, in the 60s a number of efficient nuclear fuel processing plants were established, and in 1975, the UK also established its own export processing plants, thus making nuclear power from large-scale application to commercial application.
However, with the process of economic globalization, the idea of privatization has also spread to various fields, spread, and entered a further stage of development in the 90s of the 20th century.
For the privatization of nuclear power, Britain is also busy scrambling to build nuclear power plants and create funds, but in 2006, a survey report published by Deloitte Consulting told the British people good news.
The survey report shows that after 20 years of privatization of nuclear power, the UK's technological innovation has almost stagnated, and its nuclear power technology has also gone from the beginning to decline.
Therefore, the British government immediately suspended the ongoing nuclear power privatization project and replanned a set of hard-core policies, but this did not bring much hope to the UK's nuclear power industry, but a new opportunity.
This means that in the low-carbon development environment, the proportion of nuclear power in the power supply will drop to a normal level, and a new direction will emerge.
In 2010, after the British government made remarkable achievements in the European economy, it refocused on the environmental topic of reducing carbon emissions, and soon the United Kingdom launched the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant project, planning to build it into the largest nuclear power plant in the United Kingdom.
Since then, however, the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant has run into unavoidable trouble.
First, the vast majority of the components of the nuclear power plant come from the nuclear reactors produced by EDF, and the second is that the British people are deeply worried that if the problem of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant occurs, the maintainability pressure will fall on them, so that if the cost rises accidentally, they will have to pay a lot of money.
As a result, more than a year has passed since the completion of the nuclear power plant and the resolution of both problems, and it was not until 2012 that the construction of the nuclear power plant officially began.
But it was not China's withdrawal that left the British completely confused, but the approval of the Hinkley Point nuclear power plant, which was delayed for at least two years because the plant was built on the front line of environmental protection.
The European Union intervened for another two years to check whether EDF had been unfairly treated in the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant, and it was not until 2015 that the EU officially approved it.
However, the approval problem in front of the EU seems to be only a small problem, and EDF did not expect that when the matter is almost dealt with, it will run into the most difficult trouble for them to solve.
Forcing China away and forcing away capital.
After the approval, EDF thought that the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant could be built smoothly, however, three years of grinding and grinding passed in this way, seven years, they were not even standing on the starting line, because of the initial lack of thought, EDF did not bring China's CGN into it.
No, when CGN entered it with the "black technology" of China's nuclear power industry, the people of EDF were instigated, worried that some of CGN's technical means would enter the semi-public-private partnership, which would have a considerable impact on their interests.
As mentioned earlier, EDF's EU review took nearly two years, and CGN's sudden emergence put a lot of pressure on EDF, because some of CGN's technical means come from China, which is very different from EDF.
In 2018, it is also another big trouble faced by EDF, the Sino-US trade war, because the trade between China and the United States involves the energy sector, China opened an emergency plan and introduced a new trade policy, which also affected the interests of EDF, so it chose to completely terminate the relationship with China General Nuclear Power Corporation and gradually withdraw from the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant project.
At the same time, in 2019, the British government held a referendum on Brexit, which also cast a shadow over EDF, which is known to be one of the European Unions, and relations between France and the United Kingdom have become increasingly tense due to Brexit.
EDF's dilemma is not only a matter for their country, but also a matter related to the overall environment, so the issue of EDF's interests plus the issue of approval is enough to make the British government dumbfounded.
EDF started a rapid downsizing mode and terminated relations with China's CGNPC, which also made the British nuclear power plant construction plan completely collapse, and since the first one has withdrawn, there will naturally be a second, so the withdrawal of CGN will bring a series of consequences.
The British SWF Foundation saw that the momentum of this matter was not right, and it felt like a discord between the two governments, so it immediately shot two units, and the originally planned investment of 45 billion pounds was decisively withdrawn, the reason for this is nothing more than not wanting to burp the capital of the two countries because of the different political positions of the two governments.
This is simply a great gift from the British government to China, and the fiercest time for the two sides to fight was in 2008, when the British decided to implement a privatization policy because of financial coercion, but not everyone in China thought so.
The UK's enlargement of state-owned assets has led to a lot of skepticism in the country, but the debate about state-owned assets has faded away and has been replaced by the idea that the UK will privatize all state-owned assets.
The UK's nuclear power industry has been a difficult and dangerous journey, and finally it has become a mess, and the shares of EDF have plummeted, so it was also in 2018 that EDF fell into a debt crisis, and the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant project began to lose money significantly.
The pit cries in France, and the green light of the grass is not smooth one after another.
The Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant project was resolved in 2010, and the British government has done its best to solve the problem of nuclear power plant approval, not only in terms of people, money, but also in terms of materials.
In 2012, the construction of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant was officially launched, and it was not until 2010 that the project problem was solved, and EDF couldn't hold back its efforts, but I didn't expect this good thing to come first, and then a series of bad luck.
The first is the issue of approval, and the construction site of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant is a prominent sign of the front line of environmental protection, so in order to pass the approval, a series of environmental standards must be met, which is not a simple task.
According to the process, environmental issues have arisen at the project approval stage, but because no environmental assessment has been conducted, the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant project has been shelved for three years, and it was not until 2012 that the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant project ushered in the light of day.
However, the approval of Hinkley Point C did not stop there, and it was not until 2014 that the approval problem was completely resolved as a huge obstacle to the success of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant, like a guardrail or a fence.
At that time, the British government conducted a two-year investigation to find out whether EDF was building the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant in accordance with legal procedures.
For the construction of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant project, although the British government took a skeptical attitude, it also considered the energy industry, so in the end, the British government allowed the construction of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant project.
But just when EDF thought that this matter was over, the EU pie came, and the EU was also skeptical about the construction of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant project.
Therefore, in order to confirm whether EDF has been treated unfairly in the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant project, the EU conducted a two-and-a-half-year investigation into the construction of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant project, and it was not until 2016 that the EU allowed the construction of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant project, and this approval subject was considered to be the end.
However, due to CGN's involvement, the EU's suspicions became even more serious, until after 2018, the Sino-US trade war and Brexit, CGN was no longer able to carry the beam, after the withdrawal, the UK for the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant construction repeatedly setbacks, in the end, EDF can only support the beam.
The rest of the story is well known, EDF spared no effort to solve the urgent problem of the construction of the nuclear power plant, but in 2016 alone, the construction of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant was delayed for two years.
Despite all the efforts to build the plant, the construction of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant has been torn apart by financial problems.
The first is the sharp drop in EDF's share price, which is a huge shock to EDF and the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant, and the second is that the British government withdrew a £45 billion investment, which ultimately led to the construction of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant being delayed until 2029.
epilogue
For large-scale infrastructure projects, innovation in technical issues and the choice of partners are crucial, and China has been working on this for many years, and has seen a lot of success, and we look forward to more international recognition of our technology.
At the same time, in international cooperation, we should strengthen communication, accommodate and learn from each other, avoid the consequences caused by various political factors, and also have more in-depth contact with the public, so as to reduce the occurrence of all approval problems and environmental protection problems.