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USA taxpayer liable for costs of French owned new reactor

Paris-based Areva would provide the reactor technology. Electricite de France and Areva are 85 percent owned by the French government…..“To build the plant with the loan guarantee in today’s power market would be an assurance the taxpayers would get stuck with part of the loan obligation,”

(USA) Maryland nuclear reactor raises foreign ownership concerns, Washington Examiner, By: Hayley PetersonExaminer StaffJuly 12, 2010 “……….. the project at Calvert Cliffs faces many hurdles.

Nuclear energy opponents are challenging the reactor’s licensing qualifications with charges that the amount of foreign ownership violates the Atomic Energy Act — which bars nuclear projects with “foreign ownership, control or domination.”

The Calvert Cliffs reactor would be built by UniStar Nuclear Energy — a joint venture between Maryland’s Constellation Energy Group and French company Electricite de France. Paris-based Areva would provide the reactor technology.

Electricite de France and Areva are 85 percent owned by the French government.

Foreign ownership and technology risks the safety and quality of nuclear plants, said Michael Mariotte, executive director of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, a nonprofit that works against nuclear energy.

“We have very strict quality control standards and it is much more difficult to establish that those standards are being met when so many parts are being built 10,000 miles away,” he said.

The reactor Areva designed for Calvert Cliffs — called an evolutionary pressurized reactor — would be the first of its kind in the United States. Areva is piloting the newly minted technology in Finland — where the reactor is now delayed three years and the cost has ballooned to 80 percent beyond contracted estimates…………

Critics say taxpayers could be left picking up the tab if the project exceeds its roughly $9 billion cost estimates and has difficulty competing in the power market.

“To build the plant with the loan guarantee in today’s power market would be an assurance the taxpayers would get stuck with part of the loan obligation,” said former Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner Peter Bradford. “There would be no way out of it.”

Md. nuclear reactor raises foreign ownership concerns | Washington Examiner

July 13, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, USA | antinuclear, AREVA, EDF, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear spin, nuclear technology, reactors, uranium