A project by French energy giant EDF to build two European Pressurised Reactors (EPRs) at the Hinkley Point nuclear power plant in south-west Britain has mobilised large numbers of its staff and management against the move. They believe that the huge industrial and financial risks for EDF may result in a meltdown of the group. Martine Orange reports.
The French utilities group EDF is now officially the sole company overseeing France's nuclear industry. This follows an agreement in principle signed earlier this week between EDF and the ailing French nuclear firm Areva which will create a joint company in charge of designing and building new nuclear reactors. France's economy minister Emmanuel Macron has sought to draw a line under the French nuclear industry's recent financial fiasco, preferring to speak instead of a “new adventure” for the sector. Mediapart's Martine Orange analyses the deal.
The giant French nuclear group Areva, whose core business is making nuclear reactors, has just announced staggering losses of 4.8 billion euros in 2014. That comes on top of nearly 3 billion euros of losses racked up in preceding years. In a bid to resolve this disastrous situation the state-owned company is now drawing up a restructuring plan that could lead to thousands of job losses. However, the group's woes cannot simply be blamed on recent events such as the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan or a cyclical downturn. Instead the group's terrible financial position has been building for many years thanks to industrial squabbles, bad management decisions and poor strategy. But as ever, says Mediapart's Martine Orange, it looks as if it will be the workforce who will pay the price of the group's failings rather than France's industrial, civil service and political elites despite their responsibility for this industrial fiasco.
Mediapart’s resident singer and songwriter La Parisienne Libérée, who regularly commentates current affairs in music and images, says France’s European neighbours should be concerned about the potential dangers of the country’s 58 nuclear reactors. Earlier this week, the oldest French nuclear plant, at Fessenheim close to the border with Germany, was shut down after a pipe from an engine room condenser was discovered to be leaking. It was the latest in a series of recurrent incidents and safety alerts over recent years at Fessenheim and several other plants across the country, including two on the Channel coast. La Parisienne Libérée composed a ‘Nuclear SOS’, written and sung in English, to remind countries surrounding France that nuclear clouds “have no borders”, made all the more pertinent by the events at Fessenheim this week.
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