Well what an interesting day Wednesday has been. Électricité de France was supposed to debate and possibly decide today whether they ought to go ahead and fund Hinkley Point C. Looks like in abeyance yet again! We were promised that we would be cooking our Christmas lunch with power generated from HPC, looks like I need to make a booking elsewhere as the deadline is getting worryingly close.

It is all down to money, so they say; but perhaps lack of confidence in the whole affair compounded with safety and composition flaws in the nuclear flasks as constructed by the almost defunct company Areva which the state owned Électricité de France has recently inherited.

Away from its financial health, EDF has some pressing and expensive operational matters at home. Especially regarding life extension of its 58 reactors in France estimated to cost about €55bn. That doesn’t bode well either, the cost therefore may be greater to EDF than the HPC build and causing them to be walking away thus abandoning the site and concentrate on issues at home.

The proposed plant for HPC is an EPR. There isn’t a single nuclear plant of this type working anywhere. The three sites where EPRs are under construction are all in serious difficulty. The Flamanville EPR in France is facing huge problems with its metallurgical flaws in the reactor vessel and lid and it's odds on that it will never be completed due to the massively escalating costs, delays, and safety concerns.

Additionally there are questions over the Olkiluoto EPR in Finland, as the costs of completion are now grossly over-time coupled with this flawed reactor which appears may need to be replaced even before commissioning.

Most likely to be completed is the twin-reactor Taishan EPR in China, which was meant to come in last of the bunch but is now well ahead. However there are widespread suspicions that the reactors, again supplied by Areva which may suffer from the same flaws as those at Flamanville and Olkiluoto.

Even if the Chinese plant is built to completion, Chinese safety regulators may never allow it to be turned on due to the above issues with the vessel.

What gets me is should they pull out, it will be like the cat that crept in the crypt, and crept out again. Leaving us with roads and junctions that have been tinkered with, a by-pass around Cannington that nobody uses, and a lot of business owners who will be totally bewildered as to what went wrong; moreover where do they stand now?

I feel for local businesses, although a lot of the procurement will not be local, there have been schemes and other initiatives promised for this area that may well evaporate. Therefore those who have restructured their business, submitted new business plans and invested ready for the project could be left in a parlous state.

One that will sadden me if the whole concept is abandoned will be the loss of opportunity, not only for local business, not only for the knock-on-effect and growth in the area, but the fact a lot of young people would have lost the prospect of excellent training with skill sets for the future. They would have built the legacy and become part of the prosperous community for several generations.

We could have done the job ourselves, and probably made it work.

Alex Reed, Cannington