A new blow for Hinkley Point C: a delay, a price increase, and a lesson for Serbia.

French energy giant EDF announced in its latest financial report that the first new British nuclear reactor in the last 30 years, Hinkli Point C, will not be operational before 2030. This additional one-year delay will cost the company an astonishing 2.5 billion euros

From 18 to 35 billion pounds: cost explosion

Hinkli Point C becomes one of the most expensive infrastructure projects in history: the initial estimate from 2015 was 18 billion pounds. Today's projection is 35 billion pounds – almost twice as much; and the original plan for completion was 2025, and now the earliest term mentioned is 2030.

In addition to the financial and technical challenges, EDF has abandoned plans to build a new camp for 1,000 workers in Bridgwater, arguing that the number of on-site workers is actually smaller than expected.

And despite these losses on British soil, EDF's CEO Bernard Fontana emphasizes that the group's operating results in 2025 were stable, thanks to projects in France itself.

And we remind you of our previous analysis – the British regulator at one time demanded over 7,000 design changes on the HPC project, turning construction into a bureaucratic nightmare. Because of this, Britain is considered one of the countries where the construction of nuclear capacity is the most expensive and most complex, about which we have previously written, and the government has started to reduce the regulatory framework so that such projects could be faster and cheaper.

Lesson for Serbia?

But this is a warning for Serbia: EDF is being mentioned here as the potentially most serious partner for building a nuclear power plant in Serbia. But in EDF's offer there is currently just the EPR reactor design which – as we can see – often has problems with price and schedules. And Sizvel C – otherwise, the sister project of Hinkli Point C – has several times breached deadlines and projected costs. In France, in Flamanvilu, an EPR reactor has also been installed which ultimately lagged more than ten years behind the original plan and cost significantly more than initially planned.