French Nuclear Industry In Turmoil As Manufacturer Buckles

mdsolar writes with bad news for France and its nuclear industry. "France's nuclear industry is in turmoil after the country's main reactor manufacturer, Areva, reported a loss for 2014 of 4.8 billion euros ($5.3 billion) — more than its entire market value. The government of France, the world's most nuclear dependent country, has a 29% stake in Areva, which is among the biggest global nuclear technology companies. The loss puts its future — and that of France as a leader in nuclear technology — at risk. Energy and Environment Minister Segolene Royal said Wednesday she asked Areva and utility giant Electricite de France to work together on finding solutions, amid reports of a possible merger or other link-up. The government said in a statement that it's working closely with Areva to restructure and secure financing, and would 'take its responsibility as a shareholder' in future decisions about its direction. Areva reported Wednesday 1 billion euros in losses on three major nuclear projects in Finland and France, among other hits. Areva has lost money for years, in part linked to delays on those projects and to a global pullback from nuclear energy since the 2011 Fukushima accident."

Comments

I have said it before

[polar red]

And i will say it again : nuclear power is prohibitively expensive.

Re:I have said it before

[ThatsMyNick]

Nuclear is cheap. Project delays are not cheap in nuclear, or a dam (hydro if you will) or a tunnel or any large scale project. Uncertain political environment is a death knell for large scale projects.

Re:I have said it before

[iserlohn]

That's a simplistic view of the situation. Nuclear translates to specific challenges in design and delivery of facilities due to the dangers of radioactive materials.

Re:I have said it before

[Anonymous Coward]

Those dangers pale to uncertainty and mismanagement caused by political instead of scientific evidence and method based environments.

Other energy sources would be vastly more costly if their waste products weren't already grandfathered in to the public mindset and their true impacts to safety and environmental impact (which is far more spread out than the catastrophic results failures induced by idiocy and insanity cause newer power sources) were actually measured and factored in to the comparison.

Re:I have said it before

[Runaway1956]

Yeah, that's what they're saying over there in Fukishima. "Nuclear is cheap, but this uncertainty is killing us!"

When you begin counting the cost of nuclear, you've got to count ALL the costs. Including, as at Fukishima, basic engineering errors that ultimately cost astronomical amounts years after construction.

Re: I have said it before

[Anonymous Coward]

Then learn to live without technology. In a couple of decades we won't have much choice anyway.

Re:I have said it before

[electrosoccertux]

Yeah, that's what they're saying over there in Fukishima. "Nuclear is cheap, but this uncertainty is killing us!"

When you begin counting the cost of nuclear, you've got to count ALL the costs. Including, as at Fukishima, basic engineering errors that ultimately cost astronomical amounts years after construction.

you mean the basic engineering error where the project manager wouldn't sign off due to the mistake made in concrete formulation so he was fired and a more lenient approver installed in his place?

Re:I have said it before

[itzly]

Every reactor will become old tech in a few decades. And people aren't going to change, so they'll continue to build them in awful places.

Re:I have said it before

[ThatsMyNick]

Nope, France, UK and even Germany were pro nuclear. They havent had support for nuclear in the recent years. Nuclear is not expensive, it requires an upfront investment. 'Subsides' for nuclear are usually just low interest loans, which would more than pay off.

Re:I have said it before

[Rei]

It's not just neutron bombardment either. Your fuel is producing almost every element in the periodic table, anisotropically and varying across time. It's pretty much the worst situation one could come up with from a containment standpoint inside the fuel even before you factor in neutron bombardment.

Then there's the nature of nuclear disasters: they're disasters in slow motion. The upside is that few people usually die from them because there's usually plenty of time to get away. The downside is that they take bloody forever and a king's ransom to clean up, where it's even possible. Picture, for example, an accident at Indian Point that would increase NYC residents' rate of cancer over the next 10 years by two to three orders of magnitude. You could evacuate over days to weeks and it'd have little impact on public health. But you'd be having to pay for the loss and cleanup of New York City. That is, of course, an extreme case, but it's an illustration of the financial challenge faced by an industry that deals with large amounts of chemicals that are incredibly toxic even in the minutest quantities. Screwups can turn out to be REALLY BIG screwups.

Re:I have said it before

[itzly]

That's exactly what they said when they were building the old reactors.

Re:I have said it before

[serviscope_minor]

That's exactly what they said when they were building the old reactors.

And from a tech point it's entirely true. In this case it's the politics killing it.

No one wants (politically) to build new nuclear plants. No one wants to build coal plants either. Enough people don't want renewables blotting large areas of the landscape. The energy has to come from somewhere so those old, dirty coal plants and well-past-their-retire-date, old and less safe than new tech nuclear plants keep getting extension after extension because people really don't want blackouts.

The problem here is all politics, not technology.

Re:I have said it before

[Rei]

All of Areva's renewables investments combined are less than 10% of their business. And they're performing far better than their core nuclear business. I find it amazing that you argue that they shouldn't have invested in the few projects they're involved in that are actually paying off.

Re:I have said it before

[tehcyder]

Nuclear is not expensive, it requires an upfront investment.

And of course, you usually get the public/government to pay for the downstream costs like storage of waste and de-commissioning.

If only it wasn't for those pesky Health and Safety rules, it would be a licence to print money.

Re:I have said it before

[Maury Markowitz]

> Nuclear is cheap.

Nuclear is expensive. http://www.lazard.com/PDF/Levelized%20Cost%20of%20Energy%20-%20Version%208.0.pdf Look at page 11.

> Project delays are not cheap in nuclear, or a dam (hydro if you will) or a tunnel

Too true. But it is also true that reactor construction has a history of going overbudget on average by two times, making it one of the most consistently bad investments in history.

> Uncertain political environment is a death knell for large scale projects

Also very true. Which is why wind and solar are the fastest growing sources of power in history: a large wind farm can go from napkin sketch to pumping electrons in 18 months. Residential PV can be completely installed in 2 weeks. Arranging financing for these projects is akin to arranging a car loan. The $30 billion needed for 5 years for a reactor? Not so easy.

Re:I have said it before

[Mr D from 63]

AREVA's losses have more to do with poor investments in African mining operations than to do with the Olkiluoto setbacks, as well as other poor investment decisions they appear to have made over the last 10 years.Olkiluoto is a big chunk as well, but its not the majority of their debt problems.

And as far as Olkiluoto, they were simply unprepared to pull off that first of a kind project by themselves, and the Finish supply and regulatory elements faltered as well, a perfect storm of problems. But this is more poor execution than a technology issue. Other plants, including the EPR plants in China, are being completed on a reasonable schedule, more driven by money than anything else.

Re:I have said it before

[mrchaotica]

You say that as if the downstream costs of coal-fired plants aren't externalized too. Nuclear waste cleanup costs are dwarfed by the costs of global warming!

Re: I have said it before

[Shakrai]

Then learn to live without technology

I agree! Modern medicine and agriculture is sooooo overrated.

Re:I have said it before

[ultranova]

Which other energy sources?

Ones that will keep my computer running even if it happens to be cloudy and calm and my neighbour decides to use a vacuum cleaner.

Wind, solar PV,

Bit players unless there's a near-miraculous breakthrough in battery technology. At which point solar will require lots of land area and wind will likely have unintended side effects - it's removing energy from the weather system, after all - which means endless rounds of complaints.

solar thermal,

Workable, but requires massive plants. Those are not going to happen - someone will always complain.

wave, tidal,

Lots of promises, few deliveries. And again, these will have massive ecological implications even when working properly.

geothermal,

Unworkable at current drilling technology.

biofuel?

Basically solar power with lots of added inefficiencies. Bonus points for having potential to cause famines if it comes down to feeding the poor or feeding your car.

the problem with nuclear power

[Gravis Zero]

once you have reactors, you're stuck with them for the better part of a century and when shit goes wrong, it goes really wrong.

can we start switching over to solar panels and batteries yet? seriously, we are bombarded by free power every single day!

Nuclear ain't cheap any more.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear used to be cheap when directly connected to military money (and thus to tax money). Now it has to stand more and more on its own feet. I think it just ain't worth the hassle.

Makes me sad for the great French people who have been enticed to over-invest in this dud

Re:Nuclear ain't cheap any more.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The tricky question(and the one that I've been bombarded with vehement and competing answers on, which has left me confused) is whether nuclear isn't cheap; but military procurement slush used to make it look that way; or whether nuclear could have become cheap; but military procurement slush made that unnecessary and potentially even directly inhibited it.

It's definitely the case that military purposes kept the money rolling in for R&D, pesky questions about safety and storage largely under wraps, purchases of a lot of equipment that could also make plutonium, and some PR-piece "Look at how fuzzy and peaceful nuclear energy can be!" reactor installs at home and in selected friendly-and-not-too-likely-to-change locations abroad.

It's likely that, at the same time, this left the industry largely in the hands of companies that are very, very, good at government contracting; but perhaps a bit shaky on less lucrative and parasitic forms of economic activity.

Where the optimists and the pessimists part ways is the question of whether nuclear energy is in fact just not terribly economic; and so achieved certain unique capabilities for cost insensitive customers, while largely floundering without them; or whether nuclear energy as an industry was wildly distorted by catering exclusively to select cost insensitive customers with substantially different needs than energy production, and simply needs to develop product lines that reflect current requirements.

Re:87%, not 29%

[Anonymous Coward]

As opposed to US companies, which are completely transparent?

Re:cutting corners

[Anonymous Coward]

This. France, as anyone who has actually lived it in will experience, holds some of the most duplicitous hypocrites I've ever had the displeasure of working with. Outwardly they're all culture and meritocracy and honour, but behind closed doors it's all the same bullshit as everywhere else, except with no sense that they're doing anything untoward. It's like they've never left their Revolutionary attitude of Righteous Harm - new Great Terror, same as the old Terror.

(I'm still pissed off at their bullshit freedom-of-speech marches following the Hebro massacre. CH have had more run-ins with the French government than with Islamic nutjobs. Of course the latter are worse in that they use summary execution rather than lawsuits and theats of imprisonment, but they're cut from the same cloth.)

Compare the alternatives

[Dr. Evil]

Death per kilowatt, etc.

Many of these nuclear costs are because of irrational fear. If no amount of safety is enough, no amount of spending will be enough.

Nuclear is already far safer than other power generation, including numbers from Fukishima.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/print/

Re:Compare the alternatives

[Runaway1956]

Are people living in the Chernobyl area? No? THAT is my point.

Yes, the wildlife is stronger and healthier. That is a tangential subject for discussion, but one that I am interested in. There are no crazy mutations of wolf, fox, wolverine, deer, or anything else. I've watched several videos now regarding wildlife around Chernobyl, most recently about the wolverine. Pretty awesome, IMHO.

All the same, the entire area is basically off-limits to humans, and ground zero is still dangerous as all hell. No one knows what has happened, or might happen, at the center of things. Is it even remotely possible that the radioactive materials MIGHT collect into a pool, deep in the ground, and reach critical mass? Face it - mankind lost control, and anything might happen now. Is any of that crap leaking into the water system, and simply hasn't been discovered (or acknowledged) yet? Are distant cities pumping any of it into their water systems?

As I suggested above - I grew up in coal country. The concerns you bring up are serious, but they are manageable. Chernobyl - not so manageable, huh? Fukishima? That has polluted cubic miles of ocean already, much of it headed toward America's west coast.

Nuclear power may be a good thing - but I don't trust any corporation or any government to manage it safely.

Re:Whatabout Guarantees for Solar Cells And Windmi

[cheesybagel]

Renewable costs don't go down with time. Windmills break down and solar panels lose efficiency as they get nearer to their end of life.

Just go ask California or anywhere else which has had these for 20 years.