[Solarisgood]

What I don't understand is France: they have a controlled energy price but their nuclear provider has a lot of debt.

And they need to start rebuilding new.ones.

So was it smart in France? Besides the obvious advantage regarding CO2

[dgellow]

They needed to build new ones decades ago but didn’t. It’s way too late now. Young people were pushed away from the industry, and now the country doesn’t have a skilled workforce anymore and mostly only has old reactors that cost more and more money every decade to maintain.

The whole history of nuclear in Europe is incredibly sad, we stopped developing and investing after some early success, and with almost no serious consideration of future problems. And all of this has been known and discussed openly for decades.

[frafra]

The amount of debt is not directly correlated to the health of a company: most companies have debts, and building nuclear reactors is very capital intensive. EDF net income for 2023 is 10B €, while for H1 2024 is 7B €. From 2007 to 2024 always had a positive net worth except for 2022. France is a net-exporter, with cheap, reliable and low emission electricity. Germany is almost the opposite of that.

[Solarisgood]

So it had debt. How will they finance the rebuilding?

[frafra]

Of course it has debt, as almost every company and state :)

EDF got loans from banks and money on the market, based on the fact that investors thinks it is a good investment. That is economics 101 and holds true for all publicly traded companies. The numbers are freely available on the internet, as prescribed by the law for all companies listed.

The debt also went down in 2023. It is worth to remember that EDF is forced by the French government to sell cheap energy, below market price, to protect consumers from rising energy prices (caused by the high reliance of other countries on natural gas from Russia - like Germany that phased-out nuclear in the meanwhile).

Nuclear is also treated differently from renewables when it comes down to low-emission investments by the various EU investment funds, and cannot compete in bidding rounds together with renewables (which drives the prices up, as there is way more demand than offer, so it makes no sense to compete). If the EU commission decides that there should be technological neutrality on low-emission power plants, EDF would be in a quite good position.

If you are so sure that EDF will not be able to finance its debt or build new reactors, you can bet against it by short it and, if your analysis is correct, make quite some money.

[cauch]

I think it is acknowledged in the energy sector that France drove itself in a dead-end (and I'm not sure how they are going to get out of it). There was a lot of reasons, including their botched electricity nationalization and the fact that electricity companies banked on short-term profit rather than longer-term stability (hoping that the state will save them and pay all their debt when it is needed).

It does not mean that a nuclear path would have always led where France is, the same way a renewable path is not always leading to where Germany is.

[miohtama]

Generally, French is becoming Italy II with its debt, and this has a lot do with its labour market.