Keyword: EDF

The two men and one woman in their early twenties were detained with at least one drone near a nuclear power station, say officials.

Power firm EDF says the unmanned aircraft did not affect safety or the running of the plants but it has filed a complaint with police.

Proglio, an opponent of French government plans to reduce nuclear energy dependence, is to be replaced by Thales boss Jean-Bernard Lévy.

Appointed five years ago, the staunchly pro-nuclear EDF boss Henri Proglio faces a stern political battle in his bid for a second term of office. 

New wind farm using technology partially inspired by stealth warplanes due to start operating near Perpignan in southern France in 2015.

Officials say no restart date has yet been agreed for reactor at Fessenheim power station, which President Hollande promises to close by 2016.

France’s nuclear safety agency, the ASN, has warned of the potentially catastrophic danger posed by faulty electric circuit breakers found in a number of nuclear power plants located around the country, and which could eventually cause the meltdown of their reactor cores. Recorded incidents have shown that numerous circuit breakers regularly failed to function since they were first installed four years ago. While the plants’ operator, utilities giant EDF, has played down the gravity of the problem, the ASN has ordered it to start looking for replacement equipment “as of now”. Jade Lindgaard reports.

French utility giant EDF ignored warnings issued to it by France’s supreme nuclear safety watchdog, the ASN, of dangerous faults in the machinery being used for the construction of a reactor in what will become one of the world’s largest nuclear power plants, Mediapart can reveal. Alerted to the problem, the Ministry of Labour has now ordered EDF to halt use of the machinery until the flaws are corrected. As Pascale Pascariello reports, the problem is just one of a series that have blighted the building of the European Pressurized Reactor at Flamanville, in northern France, with its completion already delayed by four years amid spiralling costs.

French government caught in difficult situation as its pledge to defend households' spending power conflicts with aim to boost renewable energies.

French utility giant Electricité de France has suffered a major setback in its plans to export European Pressurized Reactors to the United States, where the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has rejected its subsidiary’s application for a licence to build and operate an EPR reactor in Maryland. With its flagship EPR plant at Flamanville, northern France, suffering recurrent construction delays and overruning costs, the American debacle is a significant blow for both EDF, with debts of almost 40 billion euros, and for EPRs in general. Meanwhile, development of EDF's two EPR projects in the United Kingdom have become bogged down in a row over the true subsidised cost of the energy they will produce. Jade Lindgaard reports.

Utility giant EDF says France won't be able to develop 6,000 megawatts from offshore wind turbines by 2020, undermining its renewable energy plan.

A Greenpeace paraglider has landed in a French nuclear plant in a stunt to highlight what the organistaion claims are gaps in reactors' security.

Antoine Frérot, chief executive of Veolia, the world’s biggest water utility by sales, faces a boardroom coup orchestrated by EDF boss Henri Proglio.

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When French publicly-owned nuclear giant Areva bought Canadian mining company UraMin in 2007, it boasted of having secured major uranium deposits in Africa. But five years on, no uranium has ever been mined there, and Areva has had to write off nearly 2 billion euros in its accounts. Here, Martine Orange investigates the roots of the fiasco and attempts to cover up what promises to become a major industrial scandal, along with the intrigue surrounding the company's sacked and furious CEO Anne Lauvergeon (pictured).

The French nuclear industry has been ordered to implement urgent safety improvements costing several billion euros after a nationwide stress test of the country's major nuclear sites found they were vulnerable to major natural disasters such as that which struck the Japanese plant at Fukushima last March. "We are not asking for these investments, we are imposing them," said André-Paul Lacoste, head of the French Nuclear Safety Authority, adding that the significant cost of his watchdog's demands could force plant closures. Jade Lindgaard reports.