On Wednesday evening, Vincent De Rivaz, Chief Executive of EDF Energy, was interviewed on the UK’s Sky News channel. It was the same day as the UK government announcing its latest nuclear power strategy.

The interview is worth watching because of the evasions and contradictions in what Mr De Rivaz said. Unfortunately they weren’t challenged by the interviewer so, in a short series, we're going to challenge them instead.

Answering the question about how his nuclear ‘renaissance’ will be funded (‘Will it happen with government subsidy?’), he said:

I’ve always said we don’t ask for taxpayers’ money. We don’t ask for government subsidy. I’ve always said that. I’m still saying that. I will continue to say that.

That’s pretty definite. And it’s a nice little piece of spin. Mr De Rivaz isn’t asking the British government to directly support EDF. No, he’s a little more subtle than that. What he actually asked in May this year was for the British government to fix the energy markets to make financial life easier for EDF…

New nuclear power stations will not be built in Britain unless the government provides financial support for the industry, the head of the country’s biggest nuclear generator has warned.

Vincent de Rivaz, chief executive of the UK subsidiary of EDF, told the Financial Times that a “level playing field” had to be created that would allow the nuclear industry to compete with other low-emission electricity sources such as wind power.

‘We believe nuclear is competitive,’ he said in the Sky News interview when he actually doesn’t believe anything of the kind. He believes it could be competitive but only with serious government intervention.