Wednesday 3 October 2012

The Chinese walk away from Wylfa B?

The talk was, especially amongst local politicians,  there would be at least 3 strong bids to take over Horizon and build Wylfa B.

And according to this weeks Holyhead and Anglesey Mail that would indeed seem to be the case. "Plans for Wylfa B have taken a major step forward as bids have been submitted for Horizon....bids have been received by three consortiums" they say.

However, according to the Financial Times this Wednesday (in an article by Guy Chazan, Anousha Sakoui and Jim Pickard) "A Franco-Chinese consortium has walked away from the race to build Britain’s new generation of reactors in a setback to the government’s hopes of ushering in a revival of nuclear power."

Also the Westinghouse consortium had failed to secure Chinese state backing and the Finacial Times says "Some industry experts believe only Chinese companies have the financial firepower to shoulder the immense cost of building new reactors."

So it seems on Friday that only two bids were received from Westinghouse and Hitachi, and we may know who is the preferred bidder in about three weeks,  but even then there is still uncertainty as to whether Wylfa B will ever be built.  

1 comment:

An Eye On... said...

Was reported in the Holyhead Mail this week that 3 bids had been recieved to but Horizon. In th eperiod of time from when they went to print and it hit the shops, one did a swift about turn and pulled out !!!

My money is on no new reactors being built. The remaining bidders asking for guarantees of £140MW/Hr when current prices are around £45. That shortfall would have to be met by taxing the consumer.

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