The French government is pressing the UK to help plug a multibillion-pound hole in the budget of nuclear power projects being built in Britain by France’s electricity operator EDF.
The call for a contribution from the UK is likely to cause tensions between Paris and London, a day after state-owned EDF admitted its construction of a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in Somerset would suffer further costly delays, taking the bill to as much as £46bn.
The UK has said it will not put cash into the project, which counts EDF as a majority shareholder, and is already backed by a government guarantee on its revenues once it is up and running.