Fresh pressure on UK to scrap Hinkley project
After China firm is hit by US spying claims, Australia bans Far East from energy deals
FRESH doubt hung over the Hinkley Point nuclear power station deal last night after damning allegations that Chinese firms are involved in espionage.
First it emerged that Britain’s Chinese partner in the project, China General Nuclear Power (CGNC), has been accused in the US of trying to steal nuclear research secrets.
Then Australia announced that it was blocking bidders from China and Hong Kong from taking a controlling stake in its largest electricity network due to national security concerns.
The revelations increased fears for the future of the £18billion Hinkley Point scheme and new calls were made for Theresa May to scrap the deal.
The Prime Minister has already delayed a decision on the project.
According to reports, CGN is accused of planning to steal nuclear secrets to bypass research hurdles in a plot the US claims threatened its national security.
Court documents show that Szuhsiung Ho, a Chinese-born US citizen also known as Allen Ho, 66, is alleged to have recruited six US-based experts to help China develop its technology.
The allegations raise the prospect that China could build a nuclear power plant in Britain using technology stolen from the Americans.
The Hinkley deal came under fierce scrutiny when Mrs May paused the decision hours after the board of EDF, the French state-owned firm overseeing the project, gave it the go ahead last month.
Angus MacNeil MP, chairman of the energy and climate change select committee, said that while it was unclear the UK would have any nuclear secrets China would want to steal, the US’s accusation ‘does raise questions about how honourable the company is and whether it could cut corners on construction methods and issues like that’.
Molly Scott Cato, a Green Party MEP, said: ‘These latest revelations must be the final nail in the coffin for Hinkley.’
And Paul Dorfman, a senior research fellow at University College London, said Mrs May had nothing to lose if she pulled out of the deal.
He told The Guardian: ‘No other [highly developed] country would let China into its critical nuclear infrastructure, given its history of nuclear weapon proliferation.
‘May has already taken the diplomatic “hit” for this, so what’s she got to lose?’
In a statement to the media, the Australian Treasurer Scott Morrison said the foreign investment proposals from Chinese and Hong Kong bidders ‘were contrary to the national interest’.
China’s State Grid Corporation and Hong Kong’s Cheung Kong Infrastructure Holdings (CKI) had been attempting to buy a 50.4 per cent controlling stake in Ausgrid.
It is New South Wales’s electricity distribution network, the largest in the country.
Mrs May wants to personally review the Hinkley deal, thrashed out under ex-Chancellor George Osborne, to ensure it provides taxpayers value for money.
Her decision inflamed diplomatic tensions and earlier this week the Chinese ambassador to London delivered a thinly veiled warning to Mrs May.
He said ‘mutual trust’ between the countries would be damaged if the project was cancelled. The US court case follows an investigation by the FBI, and it is being prosecuted by the National Security Division of the Department of Justice.
Mr Ho is alleged to have arranged experts’ travel to China, as well as any payments. In an email sent in 2009, he he is said to have written: ‘China has the budget to spend.
‘They want to bypass the research stage and go directly to the final design and manufacturing phase.’ Mr Ho is also accused of working to pass secrets to CGN from 1997 until his arrest in 2016.
When the indictment was
‘Final nail in the coffin’
unsealed in April, Michael Steinback from the FBI’s National Security Branch said: ‘The federal government has regulations in place to oversee civil nuclear cooperation, and if those authorities are circumvented, this can result in significant damage to our national security.’
Mr Ho faces a maximum sentence of life in prison and a £193,000 ($250,000) fine if found guilty of unlawfully helping with production of nuclear material outside the US.
Green Party Leader Natalie Bennett said Mrs May should cancel the Hinkley project, adding: ‘These revelations are deeply worrying and add one more concern to the deep fog of uncertainty surrounding this utterly flawed project.’
On Tuesday, former business secretary Lord Mandelson dismissed security concerns about Chinese involvement in the plant.
Comment - Page 14