Nuclear Energy Not Affected by French Election

We’ve followed the French election here a bit because we were interested to see whether challenger Francois Hollande would hold to his stand to close 30 nuclear plants – a promise he made to the Green party when it appeared he might need its help against incumbent Nicholas Sarkozy. He’d already broken away from his pledge, but let’s see how things are going.

In the round one voting, Sarkozy (conservative) won about 25% of the vote, Hollande (liberal) about 28% and Marine Le Pen (reactionary) about 20%. Le Pen and the other minor party candidates now drop out and it’s Sarkozy vs. Hollande on May 6.

Anyway, Hollande has backed away from his earlier negative view of nuclear energy (but see below – he’s basically returned to his original view):

He wants to reduce the share of nuclear energy in the power supply to 50% from 75% by 2025, and promises to close the ageing Fessenheim nuclear plant but complete work on the advanced Flamanville European pressurized reactor power station.

But by increasing renewable energy sources, not a wholesale reduction of the nuclear fleet.

And Sarkozy? From the same rundown:

Backs nuclear power but says renewable energy will make up 23% of power supply by 2020.

Guess we’ll have to wait a few years to see where the percentages land. Increasing energy diversity would be an advisable move – if France goes forward with renewable energy sources, as seems likely, it’s all good. For baseload energy, after all, it’s covered. All clear, all clean.

If you want a broader view of French politics and nuclear energy, check out this article from last year – dated but very good.

While François Hollande sees nuclear power as an important part of the future of France’s energy landscape, Martine Aubry has declared that “France’s energy change should be characterized by phasing out nuclear in 20 or 30 years’ time”. France’s future energy supply would mainly come from renewable energy sources and the respective domestic industry would be subsidized through eco-taxes.

This is from before the Socialist party primary, obviously, and Hollande and Aubry mark out different views that remain consistent with the socialist ideology. We may say that the primary answered the question of the article: “Will the nuclear debate determine the French presidential election?” The answer: Non.

Fessenheim.

Fluor Invests in NuScale

You know, it’s kind of sad that no one is willing to invest in nuclear energy anymore. Wait, what? NuScale Power celebrated the news of its company-saving $30 million investment from Fluor Corp. Thursday morning with a press conference in Washington, D.C. Fluor is a design, engineering and construction company involved with some 20 plants in the 70s and 80s, but it has not held interest in a nuclear energy company until now. Fluor, which has deep roots in the nuclear industry, is betting big on small-scale nuclear energy with its NuScale investment. "It's become a serious contender in the last decade or so," John Hopkins, [Fluor’s group president in charge of new ventures], said. And that brings us to NuScale, which had run into some dark days – maybe not as dark as, say, Solyndra, but dire enough : Earlier this year, the Securities Exchange Commission filed an action against NuScale's lead investor, The Michael Kenwood Group. The firm "misap...

Wednesday Update

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Nuclear Utility Moves Up in Credit Ratings, Bank is "Comfortable with Nuclear Strategy"

Some positive signs that nuclear utilities can continue to receive positive ratings even while they finance new nuclear plants for the first time in decades: Wells Fargo upgrades SCANA to Outperform from Market Perform Wells analyst says, "YTD, SCG shares have underperformed the Regulated Electrics (total return +2% vs. +9%). Shares trade at 11.3X our 10E EPS, a modest discount to the peer group median of 11.8X. We view the valuation as attractive given a comparatively constructive regulatory environment and potential for above-average long-term EPS growth prospects ... Comfortable with Nuclear Strategy. SCG plans to participate in the development of two regulated nuclear units at a cost of $6.3B, raising legitimate concerns regarding financing and construction. We have carefully considered the risks and are comfortable with SCG’s strategy based on a highly constructive political & regulatory environment, manageable financing needs stretched out over 10 years, strong partners...

NEI Nuclear Notes

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