AREVA prides itself on being the leader in the nuclear energy cycle, and the company’s success has caught the attention of Time Magazine. In a piece posted to Time’s online section from August 7, AREVA was identified as “the first place that countries or power companies go when looking for all of their nuclear services─ supplying and enriching uranium, building and managing plants, disposing of their waste ─ under a single roof.”
The article attributes a large part of the company’s success to AREVA CEO Anne Lauvergeon. Ben Elias, a research analyst for Sterne, Agee & Leach, was quoted as saying “if you look at what she’s done since taking her job, you realize Anne Lauvergeon had the drive, creativity and vision to assemble all these parts into a single unit ready for a nuclear renaissance that she saw coming.”
While the Time piece focuses primarily on AREVA’s current profile, it also emphasizes growth in the global demand for nuclear energy. “As governments search for clean, renewable energy sources and consumers worry about volatile oil prices, nuclear power is hot again…over the next decade, the world is expected to build 180 nuclear power plants, up from just 39 between 1999 and today.” These figures include countries like Italy (who just reversed its moratorium on new plant builds), Britain, Japan, and China.
Of these new builds, the attention right now is on Finland where the construction of AREVA’s Generation III+ EPR™ reactor, Olkiluoto 3, is under way. As the article points out “AREVA’s EPR boasts innovations that led the U.S.-based Union of Concerned Scientists to call its design the only one with the ‘potential to be significantly safer and more secure against attack than today’s reactors.’”
While the article notes that the OL3 project is behind schedule and over-budget, AREVA spokesman Jacques-Emmanuel Saulnier responded, “You only see how it works once you’ve built it and proved it’s what you’d said it would be.”
Although there are a couple of points with which AREVA may take issue, the full article, “Areva’s Field of Dreams,” by Bruce Crumley, is definitely worth a read. Check it out on time.com.
Share TAGS: Anne Lauvergeon, AREVA EPR Reactor, AREVA Inc., AREVA North America, Ben Elias, Fuel Cycle, News, Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Fuel Recycling, Nuclear Power, Nuclear Renaissance, OL3, Olkiluoto, Time Magazine
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