French govt, EDF strike deal to close N-plant

PARIS: The French state has reached agreement on paying compensation to stateowned energy giant EDF to shut down the Fessenheim nuclear site, the Ministry of Energy said.

Paris announced in March that work would begin this year to shut down the country’s oldest nuclear power plant in eastern France, at the centre of a row with neighbouring Germany and Switzerland.

“An agreement has been reached with EDF providing for staggered compensation with a first stage of 100 million ($114 million) euros,” a ministry spokesman said.

The spokesman did not confirm a Bloomberg report citing informed sources that the overall compensation package could total at least 400 million euros.

He said several payments would follow the initial one, their schedule depending on several factors including the price of energy over a period of some years.

Atomic power currently accounts for some 70 per cent of electricity generation in France but the government is resolved to bring the share down to 50 per cent over the next decade. Fessenheim, located on a seismic fault line, has worried French, German and Swiss environmentalists for years.

France and Germany are close EU partners but have taken vastly different energy paths. Germany — where the public mood swung against nuclear power following the 1986 Chernobyl disaster — decided after Japan’s Fukushima meltdown in 2011 to phase out nuclear power. — AFP