The British government stands to make more than £400m ($584m) in the hotly-contested auction of land to build nuclear power stations, as skyrocketing prices on Tuesday forced out one of the three main bidders.

The consortium of Spain’s Iberdrola, the French utility GDF Suez and Britain’s Scottish and Southern Energy has dropped out of the race, leaving EDF of France and the German partnership of RWE and Eon to continue in a bid process launched almost two months ago.