Ministers are closing in on a deal that could kick China off a project to build a £20bn nuclear power station on the Suffolk coast and pump in tens of millions of pounds of taxpayer cash instead – a move that would heighten geopolitical tensions.

The government could announce plans to take a stake in Sizewell C power station, alongside the French state-backed power giant EDF, as early as next month, ahead of the Cop26 climate summit.

That would be likely to result in China General Nuclear (CGN), which currently has a 20% stake in Sizewell, being removed from the project.

It risks inflaming political tensions, which are running high after Britain’s decision to join the Aukus nuclear submarine pact with the US and Australia – a move designed to counteract China’s military expansion. CGN, the power giant backed by the communist state, is also bankrolling EDF’s Hinkley Point C power station in Somerset.

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Photograph: EDF.

The Guardian – Vincent Ni China affairs correspondent

EDF subsidiary reportedly warned of ‘imminent radiological threat’ at Taishan nuclear power plant

A French nuclear company has said it is working to resolve a “performance issue” at a plant it part-owns in China’s southern Guangdong province after an earlier report of a potential leak there.

Framatome, a subsidiary of the energy giant EDF, told Agence France-Presse news agency that it was “supporting resolution of a performance issue” at the plant. “According to the data available, the plant is operating within the safety parameters,” it said, adding that an extraordinary meeting of the power plant’s board had been called “to present all the data and the necessary decisions”.

The statement came shortly after the US TV network CNN reported that Framatome had previously warned the US energy department of an “imminent radiological threat” in a letter.

According to CNN, the letter included an accusation that the Chinese safety authority was “raising the acceptable limits for radiation detection outside the Taishan nuclear power plant in Guangdong province in order to avoid having to shut it down”.

China’s state-run China General Nuclear Power Group said on Sunday that operations at its nuclear power station in south China met safety rules and the surrounding environment was safe. A US official told CNN “the Biden administration believes the facility is not yet at ‘crisis level’”.

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The Guardian – Stuart Jeffries

This programme was so boring. How boring? Let’s put it this way. It dealt with a 130-metre-long boring machine that is boring three boreholes under the Bristol Channel’s Jurassic bedrock. It’s a machine even more boring than the one boring through the Chilterns to make the rail journey to or from Birmingham less boring. As if that were possible. The machine is so boring it doesn’t have a name, though if there were a public vote it would be called Borey McBoreface.

First, we saw the boring machine arriving by barge then loaded on to trucks and driven under police escort through Somerset lanes. This sequence was so devoid of incident it resembled that four-hour BBC film of a sleigh ride across the tundra in real time. At least the tundra film had huskies. Director Mat Stimpson only had an answer to the question “Where did all the interchangeable male engineers in hi-vis gilets and hard hats go?” Actually that’s not fair: there was a female engineer, whom we saw checking that the ambient temperature didn’t rise too fast to make concrete set too quickly. Which wasn’t boring at all.

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