An in-depth report yesterday from Business Week profiled AREVA CEO Anne Lauvergeon and what she has been doing to build the world leader in nuclear energy, and importantly, what her plans are for the future as the prospects for new nuclear improve.
Anne Lauvergeon (photo credit: BusinessWeek)
Business Week’s Carol Matlack writes:
“Anne Lauvergeon, chief executive of the French nuclear giant AREVA, is getting close to the payoff on a colossal decade-long bet. In 2001, when she engineered the three-way merger that turned AREVA into a one-stop shop selling nuclear technology to the world, many found the idea far-fetched. The U.S hadn’t ordered a nuclear plant since the 1979 Three Mile Island accident. And after Chernobyl in 1986, business dried up just about everywhere outside pro-nuclear France…
Undeterred by the nuclear drought, Lauvergeon put AREVA’s engineers to work on a bold new technology called the Evolutionary Pressurized Reactor. The EPR is super-powerful, fuel-efficient, and loaded with safety features such as a reinforced concrete shell designed, post-September 11, to withstand a direct hit by a jumbo jet. Now the 50-year-old CEO is rolling out the EPR just as the nuclear industry awakens from its slumber.”
But AREVA is not just building an industry in France, Matlack reports on AREVA’s development, support, and expansion of the nuclear industry in the United States.
“Lauvergeon has used keen political and marketing instincts to keep AREVA’s U.S. growth on track. Fluent in English, she regularly meets with U.S. industry groups and politicians in states where AREVA operates. Last July she joined then-Virginia Governor Tim Kaine to break ground on a joint-venture, with Northrop Gurmman, to supply components for U.S. plants build by AREVA and others.”
Continue the piece, “AREVA’s High-End Bet on Nuclear Power,” here.
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