Nuclear Energy

would lose key staff and the design would become obsolete. cclii (Areva is having to pay
heavy losses because of this. As mentioned above, the construction costs have zoomed to
double the contract price.)
� Areva is majority owned by the French state. ccliii So the French government went out of its
way to organise low cost finance and loan guarantees for the project. ccliv
� The buyer, the Finnish electricity company TVO, is not a normal electric utility, but is an
organisation unique to Finland. Its ownership structure is such that it will have a guaranteed
market and will be able to pass on the high cost of nuclear electricity to the consumers; it
will not therefore have to compete in the highly competitive Nordic electricity market. cclv
For all these reasons, Olkiluoto-3 is a special case, and it cannot be expected that other countries
in Europe are going to place orders for nuclear reactors very soon. (We discuss this in detail in
Chapter 6.)
Similarly, while the nuclear industry is expressing optimism that it will soon renew construction
of nuclear reactors in the USA, it is obvious from the above discussion that this is based on its hope
that the US government will give it sufficient amount of subsidies to make nuclear electricity
competitive.
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