Hinkley Point C is one of a small number of European Pressurised Reactors (EPRs) worldwide, a next-generation design from EDF that has been plagued by massive cost overruns and construction delays.

The new budget is above the range of 31-34 billion pounds announced in January 2024, and well above the initial estimate of 18 billion pounds when the project was launched in 2016.

The first of the site's two reactors is expected to be operational in 2030, inside the range of 2029 and 2031 that EDF gave in the 2024 update.

France's only EPR project to date, at Flamanville in Normandy, has also suffered delays and budget overruns.

During a call with journalists to present EDF's 2025 earnings, chief executive Bernard Fontana said the new forecasts were "more realistic", with a startup date "within a range that has not changed".

EDF is also building the Sizewell C nuclear plant in eastern England, expected to cost 38 billion pounds and come online in the 2030s, powering around six million homes.

The state-owned company announced a net profit of 8.4 billion euros ($9.9 billion) last year, down 26 percent from the record earnings its booked in 2024.

EDF said the decline was due in part to a 2.5 billion euro write-down of the value of the Hinkley Point project after the British government lowered the guaranteed electricity price for power from the site.

Once operational, the plant is expected to generate around seven percent of national electricity consumption in Britain.

Lower market prices for electricity also weighed on earnings last year, but EDF said it was able to chip away at its massive debt load, a legacy of France's rollout of dozens of nuclear plants starting in the 1960s.

Net debt fell to 51.5 billion euros, a reduction of 2.9 billion euros.