> The question is rather why they want front financing. But I have some clues considering who is their current head of govt
I assumed it was, like the UK, because it let them avoid committing to a specific price like all the other competing technologies so they could raise the price later once the project was too far along to cancel.
Maybe for smr, but for refurbs it doesn't make sense - all recent refurbs were either on time or ahead of planned timeline and on budget. Heck, even if refurbs would suddenly triple in price it would still be dort cheap vs any alternative for 1GW of firm power.
And they kinda committed to a price with Hitachi, that's why we can say it'll be worse even than recent failed big projects.
UK has other problems to tackle, mostly heavy overregulation. UK's HPC and french FLA3 are very different in many aspects, ranging from more concrete &steel use, up to a parallel analog system on top of a parallel digital system because UK regulation is 'special'. Maybe things will change, we'll see
To me this front financing looks like a cash grab from political entities since nobody guarantees money will be used in this direction, especially with current Ontario's 'governor', that dude is local trump equivalent but maybe a bit more tempered. Another possible reason is political - this frontload means project can't be easily cancelled if relationship with US gets even worse, since Hitachi GE is an US company. So who knows. Either way, IMO bwrx decision wasn't smart and front loading isn't smart too. But this has nothing to do with refurbs cost which are dirt cheap
I assumed it was, like the UK, because it let them avoid committing to a specific price like all the other competing technologies so they could raise the price later once the project was too far along to cancel.