Thursday, February 23, 2017

How Nuclear Safety Undermines Nuclear Economics

By Jim Green, for Energy Post. – February 23
The crisis over Toshiba that is it hitting the headlines is part of a much deeper crisis in the global nuclear sector. The venerable Japanese company is far from the only nuclear player in crisis. Take France. The French government is selling assets so it can prop up its heavily indebted nuclear utilities. Électricité de France (EDF) announced in 2015 that it would sell €10bn of assets by 2020 to rein in its debt, which now stands at €37.4bn. EDF is being pressured by the French government to purchase parts of its bankrupt sibling Areva, which has accumulated losses of over €10bn over the past five years. French EPR reactors under construction in France and Finland are three times over budget ‒ the combined cost overruns amount to about €15bn. Bloomberg noted in April 2015 that Areva’s EPR export ambitions are “in tatters“, and now Areva itself is in tatters. Read on...http://www.theenergycollective.com/energy-post/2399091/nuclear-safety-undermines-nuclear-economics

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