PARIS: France faces a unique challenge as it moves to save nuclear reactor manufacturer Areva and salvage one of its world-class industries and jobs, while at same time reducing its own reliance on atomic power.
The French presidency on Wednesday endorsed merging Areva’s reactor-building unit with state-owned electricity company EDF, adding that the government would spend “as much as necessary” to recapitalise the troubled nuclear group, which is also controlled by the state.
Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron said Thursday that the government aims to “stabilise, save” the nuclear sector he termed “an industry of the future in France and abroad.”
France has the world’s second-largest nuclear sector, and generates around 75 percent of its power needs through nuclear capacities — a greater proportion than any other economy.
It has also made the export of nuclear technology an economic priority, with Areva and EDF promoting the European Pressurised Reactor (EPR), a third-generation reactor design that France considers the most advanced and safest in the world.
But the industry has slumped since the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan, with several countries moving to reduce or even eliminate nuclear energy, like Germany’s plans to phase it out by 2022.
Even France now aims to cut its dependence, with legislation to reduce reliance on nuclear to 50 percent by 2025 nearing final adoption.
Meanwhile, Areva has run into major construction difficulties with its first EPR reactor in Finland, which is now expected to begin operating in 2018 — nine years late, and at nearly four billion euros ($4.5 billion) in costs to Areva.
It has also recently been discovered that Areva’s reactor at EDF’s EPR facility in Flamanville, France, has a serious manufacturing defect.
Doubts over nuclear’s future and the repeated manufacturing problems have provoked a meltdown in Areva’s finances.
The company, which is 87 percent owned by the French state, suffered a record net loss of 4.8 billion euros in 2014 from costs linked to delays.
Last month Areva said it would slash up to 6,000 jobs worldwide amid one billion euros of cost-cutting by 2017.
