EDF’s former finance chief tried to persuade the French energy giant to postpone plans to build an £18 billion nuclear power station at Hinkley Point, Somerset, for at least three years, he told French MPs yesterday.
Speaking publicly for the first time since his resignation in March after a boardroom row over the project, Thomas Piquemal said that he quit in desperation because he feared signing off a decision in which he did not believe and considered a threat to EDF’s financial stability.
“In January 2015, I proposed to negotiate a three-year delay with our client [the UK] because we reasoned that it would weigh too heavily on EDF’s balance sheet,” he told a parliamentary committee. “I could not sign off on a decision that could one day put EDF in the same situation as Areva, having to recapitalise the company a few months before defaulting on payments.”
Areva developed the French nuclear reactor earmarked for use at Hinkley. It collapsed last year amid spiralling debts amassed during the botched construction of two earlier reactors in Finland and at Flamanville in Normandy.
Mr Piquemal said that staying on at the company would have been a “professional mistake” under the circumstances.
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“Who would bet 60 to 70 per cent of his equity on a technology that has not yet proven that it can work and which takes ten years to build?” he said.
Areva’s problems deepened further this week after it emerged that the state-owned company was being investigated by ASN, the nuclear safety watchdog in France, because irregularities were found in 50 large components installed in French nuclear reactors.
ASN said that the discovery of weak spots in the steel reactor vessel of the Flamanville plant had triggered a review of manufacturing procedures at Areva’s Creusot steel forging plant, which has built equipment for the French nuclear programme for decades.
ASN has asked Areva to determine the potential impact on the safety of France’s 58 nuclear reactors that generate nearly 80 per cent of the nation’s electricity.
Yesterday, Ségolène Royal, the French energy minister, sought to damp public fears that up to 30 French reactors could contain faulty components.
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“I can tell you . . . that the initial results are good, that is to say the components meet regulations. It is the documents that were badly prepared,” Ms Royal said in an interview on RTL, the French radio station.
Experts say the investigation of Areva may affect EDF’s willingness to launch a bailout because of the potential liabilities linked to the discovery of faulty components inside a reactor.
A similar investigation in Japan led to the shutdown of 17 nuclear reactors.
Areva has told ASN that its investigation had found evidence of irregularities in hundreds of components produced at the Creusot plant since 1965.