Electricite de France (EDF) nuclear corporation is headed for bankruptcy – that’s why France’s government is nationalising it.
Is EDF running out of money? The French government is to spend £20
billion buying back the final 16% of Electricité de France (EDF) shares
still privately owned, bringing the company back under public ownership.
Why are they renationalising this company? The answer is simple. It is to
avoid EDF going bankrupt. Right now, over half (29 out of 56) of EDF’s
French nuclear reactors are currently offline. The company is already
hugely indebted and faces a massive bill of up to 100 billion euros (£85
billion) to keep its ageing nuclear fleet going.
And EDF’s flagship EPR reactor is over-cost and over-time everywhere it is being attempted to be
built. Aside from its debts, EDF has faced issues with ageing reactors,
after experts warned President Macron of significant corrosion safety
problems in EDF nuclear power plants in France as cracks were detected in
the cooling systems of some nuclear reactors.
Meanwhile there is delay after delay in bringing online every one of the EDF flagship nuclear
reactors, in Finland, in France, even here in Somerset. In desperation to
help fund its latest lossmaker at Sizewell, Suffolk, EDF is reaching out to
fellow utility giant Centrica for help. Could this be the same Centrica,
which in 2016 abandoned plans to invest in EDF’s Hinkley C partly because
of ‘the lengthening time frame for a return on the capital invested in a
project of this scale’?
Electrical Review 9th Aug 2022
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
business and costs, France, politics
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