PARIS (Reuters) – EDF CEO Luc Remont told managers on Thursday that the state-owned power group’s nuclear activities would be reorganised to overcome recurring problems that cut production last year.
An EDF spokesperson told Reuters a reorganisation of the nuclear division had been announced with the aim of ushering in “deep change” so that each activity’s responsibilities are clearly defined, but did not give further details.
Two sources said the division would be restructured and five executives charged with drawing up proposals, including nuclear park head Cedric Lewandowski, head of new nuclear projects Xavier Ursat and head of industrial quality Alain Tranzer.
EDF has faced a litany of problems over the past year, with nuclear reactor outages deepening Europe’s energy crisis as European countries scrambled to replace Russian gas.
France is the region’s largest exporter of power, but the outages cut 2022 nuclear power output to the lowest level since 1988.
The French government, which delisted EDF this month after 18 years on the stock market, has tasked Remont with reviving nuclear production as his top priority, along with better managing construction projects currently under way.
The French state’s buyout of minority shareholders is part of President Emmanuel Macron’s renewed bet on nuclear energy, which includes building at least six new reactors in coming years.
One of the sources said that Remont wanted to move forward with building a new strategic plan without waiting for government decisions about its future financing, which is key to the construction of the new reactors and to maintain the existing fleet.
Remont told the group’s top 300 managers that talks were still underway with the state and EU competition regulators about its existing and future nuclear activities, the source said.
“Remont said that it was not going to stop us from transforming and reorganising ourselves. There’s no need to wait for a final decision from the president’s office,” the source said after attending the meeting with managers.
(Reporting by Elizabeth Pineau and Benjamin Mallet in Paris; Writing by Josephine Mason in London and Leigh Thomas in Paris; Editing by Jan Harvey)
