> We sorely need a safe, cost-effective and reproducible blueprint for manufacturing nuclear infrastructure at scale.
Well, that was part of Areva's branding circa 2009: nuclear's nespresso and selling combustible and reactor in the same package. Full vertical integration: uranium mining, enrichment, reactor building, recycling.
I don't have a comprehensive answer. All I know is Areva bought 3 uranium deposits in Africa for ~2.5 billions of € (plus ~1 billion of € for additional services Areva built later, like a desalination plant) but the deposits were ultimately not exploitable (costs of extraction were too high because concentration of uranium in the deposits was too small).
Areva used to be top in their field (mine prospecting, geological stuff) and then discredited. Ended up being bought back by EDF (which is to say, bought back by the French state).
The company (Uramin) that Areva bought (to get the uranium deposit fields) seem to have lie about their deposits' potential. It was before Fukushima sent the price of Uranium down, so they were expecting a lot of return on investments from this move.
The whole affair is riddled with corruption, insider knowledge, betrayal and incompetence at some key high level ranks at Areva. Too much easy money if you ask me, then someone (Uramin + insider ?) wanted a bigger part of the pie and the whole cake turned bad.
edit: also too much money (~10billions) invested in different fields ultimately led up Areva to bankruptcy.
They sold reactors for 3 billion a piece but it cost them 11 billion to build the first one because they didn't have and couldn't find the necessary competence.
Well, that was part of Areva's branding circa 2009: nuclear's nespresso and selling combustible and reactor in the same package. Full vertical integration: uranium mining, enrichment, reactor building, recycling.