What is the real motive behind the push for nuclear power? Power and money.

[kristopher]

Energy: Cooling ambitions

...when Constellation Energy of the US pulled out of the project to build a French-designed new-generation reactor on a site in Maryland, the country’s industry was left in shock. “We don’t know what is happening,” said one executive from EDF, the state-owned utility that has spent three years and billions of euros planning and protecting its partnership with the US group. “They did not tell us they were going to do this.”

...While many of its neighbours have in recent decades slowed, or even ended, civilian programmes, France has remained a champion of the industry – hoping to be rewarded with a revival in interest as governments worldwide grapple with the challenges of increasing energy demand, security of supply and the need to reduce carbon emissions.

Since his election in 2007, the president has tirelessly promoted his country’s expertise, pledging to help countries such as Tunisia, Algeria and Libya to establish civil programmes. The aim was that they would turn to French companies such as Areva, developer of the EPR – the new so-called Generation III+ reactor formerly known as the European Pressurized Reactor – or EDF to make their dreams reality.

The EPR, child of a Franco-German research project aimed at creating a cleaner, safer and bigger generation of reactors, has been Mr Sarkozy’s ultimate diplomatic and economic weapon. Visiting the site of the EPR being built by EDF at Flamanville in Normandy on a cold, wet February day in 2009, he described it as “the most developed of third-generation reactors”. At Flamanville, he said, “these great national companies have not only the reputation and image of France in their hands, but also its economic and industrial future”....

ETA link: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fd5ee326-dbb9-11df-a1df-00144feabdc0.html

[ladjf]

1. Without a doubt. nt