nuclear-news

French company GDF Suez moving away from nuclear industry

Ambitions to own and operate new nuclear plants by 2020 and play a role in countries like Brazil and the United States have so far come to nothing. Challenges on GDF Suez’s two home fronts, France and Belgium, are making it even harder.

GDF Suez’s nuclear business seen moving backstage by Caroline Jacobs and Benjamin Mallet PARIS, June 26 (Reuters) – GDF Suez is expected to significantly trim its 47-year old nuclear business now that its only showroom, Belgium, is gradually wrapping up its reliance on the energy form and with nuclear prospects in the French utility’s home market dimming. GDF
Suez will reveal its new nuclear strategy this summer after the new
Belgian government says in July the pace at which it will cut its
reliance on nuclear energy, a source that secured 57 percent of the
country’s electricity supply in 2011.

Meanwhile, sector specialists say the group is not best-placed to make
its mark in the costly and highly regulated sector given limited
activity in an industry that suffered a blow when the U.S. shale gas
boom and Japan’s nuclear disaster led governments worldwide to review
energy policies. “My view is that GDF Suez will continue to manage its
power stations in Belgium (until 2025), but that it will choose other
energy forms (elsewhere),” said Jean-Marie Chevalier, economics
professor, specialised in energy, at the Paris-Dauphine university.
“If I were GDF Suez, I would not bet on nuclear.”….

Ambitions to own and operate new nuclear plants by 2020 and play a role in countries like Brazil and the United States have so far come to nothing. Challenges on GDF Suez’s two home fronts, France and Belgium, are making it even harder.

“If you are being challenged on your operating nuclear base, like the
German utilities have been, you will try to keep as long as possible
your existing nuclear plants and possibly build abroad but if you
can’t do that, than you give up on nuclear like E.ON and RWE have
done,” said one sector specialist who declined to be named….. GDF
Suez has provisioned 2.9 billion euros in its accounts to cover the
costs of dismantling the seven reactors, assuming that one part of the
dismantling begins in 2015 and then gradually takes place until 2025.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/28/gdfsuez-nuclear-idUSL6E8HSEOL20120628

June 29, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | business and costs, France