Government plans for nuclear power risk handing control of the UK's climate and energy policies to France, according to four senior environmentalists.
Energy giant EDF and reactor builder Areva, big players in the UK's plans, are largely French government-owned.
Jonathan Porritt, Tom Burke, Charles Secrett and Tony Juniper say the firms are landing UK citizens with all the financial risks of nuclear new build.
They have told Prime Minister David Cameron he is being badly advised.
A senior director at Areva, France’s state-owned nuclear champion, has confirmed that he did hire a Swiss intelligence firm to examine its disastrous €1.8bn purchase of a uranium miner but denied that it was part of a plot against Anne Lauvergeon, the company’s former chief executive.
Ms Lauvergeon, known as “Atomic Anne” after 10 years at the helm of one of the world’s leading nuclear manufacturers, shocked the French business and political elite this week when she accused her former employers of spying on her and claimed that she had been victim to a long-running “plot” to destabilise her, directed from the “highest levels of the state”.
PARIS—France's nuclear-safety watchdog ordered immediate upgrades to nuclear reactors to guard against natural disasters, which Électricité de France SA said could require €10 billion, or roughly $13 billion, in additional costs.
In a review following last year's Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan, the Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire concluded that no plants needed to be shut down immediately but that steps should be taken as "soon as possible" to improve safety at France's 58 reactors.
Qatar’s prime minister met French president Nicolas Sarkozy this week in an attempt to resolve the stalemate over a capital increase for Areva, the French state-owned nuclear group.
Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani was in Paris for a stopover to discuss the terms of Qatar’s proposed investment in Areva.
WARSAW (IDN) - Backed by the U.S. and France, Poland is set to tread the nuclear path and hopes to start generating atomic power by 2021. Presently, coal accounts for over 93 percent of the eastern European country's electricity, demand for which is expected to double by 2025.
A four-stage plan announced by Hanna Trojanowska, the government's Plenipotentiary for Nuclear Energy, envisages appropriate legislation by the end of 2010; site, technology and construction arrangements between 2011 and 2013; technical plans and site works in 2014 and 2015; and construction from 2016 to 2020.
The European Commission will table a legislative proposal on the treatment of radioactive waste before the end of the year, commission president José Manuel Barroso told a conference on nuclear energy in Paris on Monday.
Energy commissioner Günther Oettinger hinted at legislation on nuclear waste management at a European Parliament hearing in January. He said setting the "highest possible" safety standards for disposal would be a priority. "Further costs cannot be a consideration," he warned.
The French nuclear industry is in turmoil as uranium supplies have dried up and the treatment of spent fuel has been blocked amid an increasingly bitter row between the heads of its two main state operators.
EDF, the electricity group that runs 58 reactors in France, said that Areva, the nuclear energy group, had stopped uranium deliveries on January 4 and was refusing to take away spent fuel for reprocessing.
Anne Lauvergeon is used to fighting tough battles, but this time the chief executive of Areva, whose combative style has in the past earned her the soubriquet “Madame Non”, is in danger of facing her final round.
The French government is nearing a decision on the future of Areva, its state-owned nuclear champion, and with it the fate of one of France’s most internationally recognised business figures.
The European Union and India are to co-operate more closely on civil nuclear research and development as a way of strengthening a partnership that has often been seen as falling short of its potential.
Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s president, and Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, announced the agreement on Monday at an EU-India summit that also produced promises of closer co-ordination of climate change and energy security policies.
Paris, 17 September: Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico and French President Nicolas Sarkozy today signed an agreement on cooperation in nuclear energy and agreements on strategic partnership which is expected to enhance all-round relations between the two countries.
"France and Slovakia have clearly opted for nuclear energy. It covers 50 per cent of electric energy consumption in Slovakia," the French presidential office said on the meeting.
