[largolagrande]

[A sidenote about investing in nuclear plants, with the example of the UK]

The United Kingdom is an interesting example of a country which is very interested in having nuclear power and which has less and less of it at the moment because of a lack of investment.

As you probably know, the UK is fairly liberal country, which means that it relies heavily on private companies to get things achieved. Nuclear power, as opposed to coal and gas, has the particularity of having an economic structure in which you have to pay for almost everything before starting up the plant.

You have a huge share of initial investment, and then the relative share of operating costs is very small. And when you are in a context where you have to pay for just about everything before you start the plant, it's a context in which, in the world of private capital, it's hard to to do. In other words, private companies like not to wait too long to see the ROI.

So when you have to put in a lot of money, build for 8 years, possibly 10, possibly even 12 years, before you start to have a €1 turnover, this is stuff that the private sector doesn't like at all. So in the UK, the fact that the electricity production system was placed in the private domain (as in many other places in Europe, but it has been done even earlier in the UK than in the other places) led to a lack of investment in nuclear plants.

(Exactly the same process happened with the railways in the UK)