> At 10 pence/kWh the two reactors at HPC will produce electricity worth £200 billion.

2 things, 10 pence is a lot. Not for retail but no power plant gets anywhere near that. It's mostly like 6 or 7.

Aside from that, the money you put in today is not spent on other things so there's an opportunity cost there too. That 40 billion at 2% interest is 60 after 20 years for example

> And even so, this "damning" verdict was that it FV3 would only be somewhat and in the worst case marginally profitable. But still profitable. Which is better than pretty much every intermittent renewables project out there, certainly in Europe.

What do you mean? Plenty of renewables are built without any government backing..