"France Plans to Reduce Nuclear in Favor of Renewables"

As reported by Eric Marx and ClimateWire/E&E, reprinted in Scientific American:

"France, one of the world’s leaders in nuclear energy production, plans to draw down nuclear’s share of electricity generation from 75 to 50 percent by 2025—giving itself a 10-year time frame equivalent to the complete shutdown now ongoing in Germany."

The article concludes:

“Nothing can stop an idea whose time has come,” said Jedliczka [of the environmental advocacy group Négawatt Society], quoting Victor Hugo. “In the medium to long term, I am very optimistic that PV—both small and large—and wind will develop on their own without public support,” he said.

“Even in France,” he added, “where the opposition has proven itself adept at inventing, testing and improving all kinds of pitfalls for postponing the development of renewables technologies.”

New French EPR in Finland now estimated to come in nine years overdue

As reported by NucNet, the Finnish nuclear utility TVO has revealed its latest estimate for grid connection of its Olkiluoto-3 reactor in Finland: 2018. That's nine years late, a major part of the reason that the original price tag has also soared. The new reactor is a French Areva EPR (European Pressurized Water Reactor).

Farewell Flamanville? French reactor may be toast

Such serious flaws have now been found in the French prototype EPR reactor still under construction at Flamanville in France (pictured) that the project may have to be scrapped. Authorities have found that the project has a faulty steel reactor vessel at risk of splitting, a 100% unacceptable outcome. But because the reactor vessel is already encased in a concrete well it would be laborious and very costly to replace. The alternative is to scrap the project.

Pierre-Franck Chevet, president of France's nuclear safety authority (ASN), told the French daily newspaper, Le Parisien, the anomalies were in the "base and lid" of the vessel, which is "an absolutely crucial component of the nuclear reactor on which no risk of breakage can be taken."

The major setback is just the latest in a string of disasters for the EPR once touted as the poster child of new nuclear reactors. Enormous delays and equally vast cost-overruns have plagued the Flamanville project as well as the EPRs under construction in Finland and China. China recently stopped loading fuel into its EPR reactors over safety concerns. More. 

French anti-nuclear activist acquitted in defamation case brought by Areva

Anti-nuclear activist, Stéphane Lhomme, president of L'Obsveratoire du nucléaire, was acquitted today by an appeals court of defaming the French corporate nuclear giant Areva. Lhomme had originally been convicted but appealed the decision. In December 2012 he had revealed through documents evidence that Areva had paid the government of Niger (where it mines uranium) 26 milllion euros, of which 15 million had been used to buy a plane for the country's president. The donation and purchase were confirmed by the Niger president. Areva denied that this amounted to corruption. When originally convicted and charged a fine in February 2014, Lhomme was told by the court that he had not proven corruption. 

EDF seeks to end its U.S. nuclear misadventure

NRC file photo of Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant on the shoreline of the Chesapeake Bay in Lusby, MDAs reported by the Baltimore Sun, Exelon/Constellation Nuclear will pay Electricite de France (EDF) a $400 million "special dividend" payment, in exchange for severing partnerships at three U.S. nuclear power plants, totaling five reactors, including Calvert Cliffs Units 1 & 2 on the Chesapeake Bay in Lusby, Maryland (photo, left), and the Ginna and Nine Mile Point Unit 1 & 2 nuclear power plants on the Lake Ontario shore of Upstate, New York. EDF then has the option to sell its 49.99% stake in the nuclear power plants to Exelon between 2016-2022.

When Constellation abandoned the project, not wanting to risk its own skin in the game in exchange for a $7.5 billion federal nuclear loan guarantee offered by the Obama administration, EDF was left holding the bag as majority owner of the proposed new reactor, Calvert Cliffs Unit 3. But foreign ownership is illegal under the Atomic Energy Act, and no other American partner stepped up. The proposed new reactor was to have been a French Areva EPR (1,600 Megawatt-electric Evolutionary Power Reactor). Numerous additional proposed new EPRs have been indefinitely postponed or outright canceled across the U.S. and Canada.

As reported in the article, 'EDF Chief Financial Officer Thomas Piquemal said Tuesday that the deal represents what he hopes is "the last chapter of our U.S. adventure with Constellation," Bloomberg reported.

The Baltimore Business Journal also reported on this story.

As reported by Power Engineering International, EDF's CEO, Henri Proglio, speaking at a news conference in Paris, stated: "The circumstances for the development of nuclear in the US are not favorable at the moment. We are a major player in nuclear, but we are not obsessed by nuclear. Our development in the US will focus on renewable energy – that will be our vector of growth in the US.” (emphasis added)