EDF buys British Energy

The French electricty company EDF has taken over the British nuclear energy producer British Energy. The conservative newspaper The Times welcomes the purchase but also sees problems in the deal: "When a deal with EDF was first rumoured in July, it fell through. To have revived the deal, by persuading EDF to raise its bid for British Energy by nine per cent, is a considerable achievement - hence Mr Hutton's insistence yesterday that there was simply no bad news to report along with the good. Would that this were true. In fact, the structure of this deal says much about the limits of nuclear power's appeal to the private sector. EDF has agreed to meet all nuclear waste management and decommissioning costs associated with any new plants it builds in Britain. But it will not have to pay for inherited waste and decommissioning work at the sites that it is buying. That cost will fall to the taxpayer. Nor will it confront many planning hurdles: the single most valuable asset that EDF is buying is the right to build new reactors on existing nuclear sites."

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