The Government has hailed a “new era of UK nuclear power” after it ended years of uncertainty to give final approval to the £18bn Hinkley Point C plant in Somerset. Business and energy secretary, Greg Clark, said Hinkley would be the “first of a wave of new nuclear plants” in Britain, while Jean-Bernard Lévy, chairman of EDF, said it marked “the relaunch of nuclear in Europe”. The formal approval of Hinkley came after almost eight weeks of intense debate in Whitehall, says theFinancial Times. The final decision “reached a compromise that took on board the concerns of Britain’s security chiefs while being hailed as ‘sensible’ by the free traders at the Treasury and calming the nerves of diplomats at the Foreign Office”. The “revised” agreement gives the UK government greater say over its ownership, and “significant new safeguards” on future foreign investment in nuclear plants, says the Telegraph. The agreement also allows ministers to veto EDF if it wants to sell its stake in Hinkley, but still guarantees the subsidy deal underpinning Hinkley, which will pay £92.50 for every unit of electricity it produces for 35 years. However, critics of the deal within EDF say that while the project has potential benefits, it risks overstretching EDF’s finances, reports the FT. EDF’s first attempt to build an EPR reactor plant in Flamanville in France is six years behind schedule and €7bn over budget. Elsewhere, former Liberal Democrat business secretary, Vince Cable, said that the prime minister had ducked an opportunity to revisit the economics of the Hinkley contract, reports the Guardian: “The big question is about the economics of it, and that is still unresolved, and worrying.” While shadow energy secretary, Barry Gardiner, said the government had “backed down with a whimper” over its security concerns about Chinese involvement, saying it had announced “new powers they already possess”. Another FT article weighs up whether Hinkley is a good deal for the UK.

Following the approval of Hinkley, China is set for a central role in Britain’s nuclear industry, reports the Guardian. China General Nuclear (CGN) has a 33% stake in Hinkley and will submit designs for another plant in Bradwell, Essex within weeks. CGN is understood to be confident about winning approval for its plans for Bradwell and is also ready to press ahead with proposals for another power station at Sizewell in Suffolk. The Guardian also looks at how the decisions has gone down in Somerset, where Hinkley C will be built.

Arctic ice cover in 2016 has reached its summer minimum, say scientists at the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC), coming in at the second lowest on record, tied with 2007. According to satellite data, the sea ice extent on 10 September stood at 4.14m square kilometres, short of the 3.39m sq km record low in 2012. Ted Scambos, NSIDC lead scientist, said: “It really suggests that in the next few years, with more typical warmer conditions, we will see some very dramatic further losses.” The figures are still only preliminary as changing winds could still push the ice extent lower. The Washington Post and Associated Press also have the story.

In a speech yesterday, President Obama highlighted the world’s oceans as both a unique victim of climate change and a key resource in the fight against it. Obama announced the creation of the Atlantic Ocean’s first national monument, which will preserve an expanse of sea canyons and underwater mountains off the New England coast. The monument designation means that all commercial fishing will eventually be banned, along with any mineral extraction. “Our conservation efforts and our obligations to prevent climate change in fact go hand in hand, because marine areas already have enough to worry about with overfishing and ship traffic and pollution,” Obama said. The New York Times and the Associated Press also have the story.

“The case for Hinkley Point was never strong,” says the Times editorial: “Nine years after it was first presented it is further weakened by soaring costs, unresolved concerns about China’s involvement and daunting obstacles to its construction.” The Times is particularly critical of the returns that EDF will be paid for Hinkley’s electricity, which “Mrs May’s team appears to have made no attempt to renegotiate in the past two months.” Theresa May has overlooked “dramatic advances and cost reductions in smart grid technology, solar power, energy storage and newer nuclear designs that could render Hinkley Point obsolete before it is completed,” it argues, concluding that “Mrs May’s decision to proceed is the latest in a series of missteps that inspire little faith in her priorities or judgment.” Also in the Times, Energy editor Robin Pagnamenta writes that as the UK government’s statement on Hinkley gives no mention to China, it means “big questions persist over whether the Chinese will be willing to invest with so few assurances regarding their future investment plans.”

“Hinkley C is an unproven design that comes at a punitive cost,” argues the Guardian in its editorial. While “keeping the lights on without adding to global warming at a price that consumers can afford is complex…nuclear, with its lethal waste and high decommissioning costs, is no long-term solution.” But the worst aspect of Theresa May’s decision is that it could “[drive] out investment in other, smarter, solutions which are the real technologies of the future,” the Guardian says. Also in the Guardian, Green Party co-leader, Caroline Lucas, argues that the “evidence for alternatives is clear: smart meters, home and grid-scale batteries that store and release excess renewable power, and other modern solutions would be cheaper and more efficient [than new nuclear].” And George Monbiot writes that while nuclear power can make a useful contribution to low-carbon energy, “this preposterous white elephant could scarcely be better designed to persuade people that nuclear energy is an expensive and dangerous distraction from the decisions we have to make.” And finally, the Guardian’s financial editor, Nils Pratley, says the project should have been “binned” on cost and design grounds.

“We have had our misgivings [on Hinkley C]…because the economic arguments were never entirely convincing,” says a Telegraph editorial. “Arguments…are now at an end. The imperative is to get on and build the plant and the four others in the pipeline.” Elsewhere in the paper, Matthew Lynn says “forget the economics of Hinkley Point, the politics are convincing” while Ambrose Evans-Pritchard says “Theresa May had no choice” even though the scheme will be “obsolete before it even starts”. Evans-Pritchard says Hinkley C “will be overtaken by a host of cheaper technologies before it is even opened in the late 2020s, and risks degenerating into an epic white elephant “.

“The last word on Hinkley may not have been written,” says the FT in their editorial. While Theresa May has “addressed the concerns of security chiefs with a compromise that avoids an outright block…[she] eschewed the chance to amend the commercial terms of the project, to be built at the gargantuan cost of £18bn.” The government’s planned new rules governing foreign investment in critical infrastructure could still “put the Hinkley project in doubt” if they are sufficiently stringent, the FT says. Elsewhere in the FT, Nick Butler gives Theresa May a mark of 8.5 out of 10 for her decision on Hinkley. The compromise puts “national security ahead of everything” and “neatly shifts the onus of the decision on Hinkley back on to the shoulders of the EDF board,” he says: “If the Chinese do abandon the project, the French company will have to find the money if it still believes in the deal.” The FT’s Lex column notes that Hinkley’s approval “ends one game only to start another.” Doubts linger over whether China General Nuclear (CGN) will operate another new nuclear plant at Bradwell as originally envisaged, says Lex: “If CGN cannot own and operate Bradwell, arguably the real prize, would China bother supporting a minority holding in Hinkley? Should CGN decide not to proceed, EDF may need another financial partner. That may explain the tepid reaction to the news: its shares fell slightly.”

A special issue of New Journal of Physics brings together “original research articles from leading groups that advance our understanding of the physics of climate,” this introductory article explains. Climate science is a branch of physics that is “just as valid and important as the more traditional branches, which include particle physics, condensed-matter physics, and statistical mechanics,” the researchers say: “The hope is that the issue will encourage more physicists to think about the climate problem.”