It costs $3 million to have a nuclear reactor design reviewed by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. Compared with other nuclear expenditures that’s not a huge amount of money. So when Areva, the French nuclear giant, decided to halt its CNSC design review, you have to wonder if Areve just saw the writing on the […]

Quintus Fabius Maximus, the Roman dictator whose ex post facto victory over the original Hannibal has for centuries inspired both admiration and contempt, would applaud the strategies of the major players in the Ontario nuclear reactor competition. The major players are the governments of Ontario and Canada. The decision strategy of each is pure Fabius: […]

Think big or go home. That used to be the Ontario way: anybody who has looked at Ontario’s three nuclear power plants knows that the people who built them were big thinkers and big doers. No surprise then that the three bidders in the ongoing billion-dollar reactor competition are AECL, Westinghouse, and Areva. And on […]

On the federal government’s map of infrastructure projects, the area along Hwy 401 between Oshawa and Bowmanville shows two projects, each worth less than $1 million. Important though these are—the area is home to many laid-off manufacturing workers—there’s another project that would inject billions of dollars into the Ontario economy and create thousands of high-paid, high-skilled, and […]

Areva is still in the Ontario reactor competition, and remains open to playing a role in the future of Canadian nuclear research, a company executive said in a conference call on September 18. This follows the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission’s announcement on August 31 that it sees “no fundamental barriers” to licensing the new CANDU reactor in Canada. AECL, […]

Information leaked to the Toronto Star on July 14 provides fuel for interesting speculation on what we could call the political economy of the Ontario nuclear reactor competition. Two sources, one reported to be directly involved with one of the bids, are the basis for the Star’s claim that AECL’s bid was $26 billion and Areva’s $23.6 billion. Areva […]

Would Areva, the French nuclear company, buy the power reactor part of Atomic Energy Canada Limited if AECL wins the Ontario reactor competition? I put this question to Jacques Besnainou, president of Areva North America, in a conference call yesterday. The Canadian government decision to sell AECL came as a surprise, was his diplomatic reply. “So we’ll […]

When it comes to media play, French nuclear giant Areva is a juggernaut. The chart below shows how Areva’s media coverage in the past three months compares quantitatively with that of its two competitors in the Ontario reactor competition. As you can see, Areva out-pulled arch rival Westinghouse three to one, and Ontario incumbent AECL […]