The board of the French energy giant EDF has finally given its approval to the Hinkley Point nuclear project, reports The Independent.
The board of the company - which is more than 80 per cent owned by the French state - voted in favour of proceeding with the UK's first new power station in twenty years.
In a statement EDF said the first pouring of concrete at the two nuclear reactors on the Somerset coast will take place in mid-2019.
Sources said the vote had been carried by 10 votes to 7 on the board.
Six union representatives on the board as well as Laurence Parisot, the former head of the French employers' organisation, are said to have opposed going ahead.
Earlier in the day, Gerard Magnin, who has a background in alternative energies, had resigned from the board saying that the £18-billion project is too financially risky for EDF and will divert France away from investment in renewable energy.
Despite today's green light the resignation of Magnin and the seven other votes against reflect growing doubts about Hinkley Point and the financial capacity for EDF to deliver the plant.
The firm's chief financial officer, Thomas Piqemal, resigned in March over the project, saying it would jeopardise EDF's financial situation.
“As a board member proposed by the government shareholder, I no longer want to support a strategy that I do not agree with,” Magnin wrote in a letter to EDF chief executive Jean-Bernard Levy which was seen by Reuters.
EDF is listed on the French stock exchange but the French state retains an 81 per cent stake.
When the project to build a state-of-the art European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) on the Somerset coast was originally outlined in October 2014 EDF was only supposed to take a 50 per cent stake.
The rest was supposed to be financed by Chinese state companies and another majority state-owned French-nuclear engineering firm Areva.
But Areva has subsquently stumbled financially and its nuclear unit has been absorbed by EDF. And the Chinese have said they will fund no more than a third of the project, leaving EDF to finance 66 per cent of Hinkely Point.
Since January 2015 EDF's share price has fallen by 50 per cent and its market capitalisation is just 22 billion euros, close to the entire Hinkley Point project value.