EDF

Parliamentary report puts pressure on state-backed power utility EDF which operates nuclear plants and faces massive bill to extend their life.

French tility giant EDF has dismissed a TV report that it has a secret plan to delay reducing the share of nuclear power in France's energy mix to 50% by 2025, as required by a law passed two years ago, to 2050 instead, describing the suggestion as "malicious rumours". 

Utility giant EDF has agreed a compensation deal for the closure, now planned for 2018, of the almost 40-year-old power station at Fessenheim, close to the border with Germany in eastern France and built in an area vulnerable to earthquakes and above one of Europe's biggest underground water reservoirs.

French utilities giant EDF, which will build the controversial new nuclear power station extension in south-west England, greeted the news as "the relaunch of nuclear in Europe”.

Just hours after EDF board voted to go ahead with the controversial project to build new reactors at English power plant, London postponed decision until autumn.

The French utilities giant is now committed to the controversial project in south-west England, despite fears the cost could threaten EDF's future.

French head of state threw his weight behind it after his energy minister Ségolène Royal questioned financial sense of £18 billion project.

Thomas Piquemal, who resigned in March over plan to build nuclear plant in UK, told French parliament it carries a 'major construction risk'.

French energy firm admits there will be no final word on £18 bn project until at least the summer as it pledges to consult works committee.

Plans by French energy giant EDF to build two European Pressurised Reactors (EPRs) at the Hinkley Point nuclear power plant in south-west England have already triggered the resignation of the company's finance director, led to opposition from unions and raised doubts from France's financial watchdog. Now, Mediapart can reveal, in an unprecedented move a number of EDF's own engineers have also expressed their deep misgivings about the multi-billion euro project and called for it to be delayed. As Martine Orange reports, the engineers fear the Hinkley Point construction could threaten the group's plans to renew France's own nuclear power stations in the near future.

French economy minister Emmanuel Macron said utility giant EDF will be given extra ressources for disputed project to build nuclear reactors in UK.

French utility giant EDF is facing mounting pressure to abandon its project to build two nuclear reactors at Hinkley Point in south-west Britain. Days after the resignation on March 7th of the state-owned group’s finance director over the financial risks involved, it was the turn of France’s national court of auditors to sound the alarm amid a damning report on EDF’s international operations. Martine Orange reports.

The Swiss canton, or state, of Geneva has launched legal action aimed at forcing the closure of the ageing, accident-prone French nuclear plant at Bugey, which lies just 70 kilometres from the border with Switzerland. The lawsuit is for “the deliberate endangering of lives” and “water pollution”. If successful, this extraordinary move could encourage other countries bordering France and its network of 58 nuclear reactors to take similar action. Agathe Duparc reports from Geneva where the local authorities presented their case at a press conference on Monday.