areva rushes to hire workers...

They're going to need a stack of Uranium, and who better to provide it than FTE!

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/engineering/article6851514.ece


From The Times September 28, 2009

Areva rushes to hire workers as demand for nuclear reactors explodes


Inside a cavernous factory in the French steel town of Chalon-sur-Saône, technicians are welding a giant drum that will one day form the heart of a Chinese nuclear reactor.

Once complete, the 500-tonne steam-generating unit being built by Areva, the French nuclear energy group, will be loaded on to a barge and floated down the river to Marseilles for export.

For local people, it is a sight that is becoming increasingly familiar. A resurgence of global interest in nuclear power is driving a boom in orders from this area, the centre of the French nuclear industry. To cope with demand, Areva is hiring up to 1,000 people per month to prepare for a surge in orders from around the world.

Luc Oursel, chief executive of Areva Nuclear Plants, the core nuclear reactor manufacturing division, said: “We are convinced about the nuclear renaissance.”

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Despite the recession, Areva, which is 91 per cent-owned by the French State, has more than doubled in size in three years as France seeks to cement its position as a supplier of nuclear equipment and capitalise on a renewed focus on the technology as countries try to reduce dependency on fossil fuels.

Over the next decade, the world is expected to build 180 nuclear power plants, up from only 39 since 1999, and Areva, the world's largest builder of reactors, has ambitions to build one third of them.

It intends to recruit 10,000-12,000 staff globally this year and a similar number in 2010. “Financial crisis or not, this action plan is going ahead,” Mr Oursel said. “We see more and more countries coming to us.”

The bulk of recruits will join Areva’s workforce of 75,000 in France, China, the Middle East and the United States.

The build-up represents a transformation in the fortunes of the French nuclear industry. Eight years ago, Areva’s Saint-Marcel factory in Chalon faced closure, sustained only by a trickle of orders for replacement parts for France’s domestic fleet of 58 reactors, which generate 80 per cent of the country’s electricity. Now Areva has 23 provisional orders for reactors.

Hervé Hottelart, the plant’s director, said that the Chalon workforce had swelled from 500 in 2004 to 1,140 today. Areva plans to expand it further to 1,300. “We used to be just a supplier to the French nuclear industry, but now we are exporting globally,” he said, adding that the plant was producing components for reactors in Finland, China and France.

The heavy equipment for four reactors that EDF, another French state-controlled company, planned to build in Britain at Hinkley Point, in Somerset, and Sizewell, in Suffolk, would be built at Saint-Marcel, he said.

Yet Areva’s rapid expansion plans will not come cheap. Mr Oursel said that Areva planned to invest €2.3 billion (£2.2 billion) this year on factories, uranium mines, fuel-processing plants and research and development, a figure that would increase to €2.6 billion for each of the following three years to 2012.

Areva has embarked on a capital-raising drive to fund these plans, including the sale of its electricity transmission and distribution division and a further sale of 15 per cent of its shares to strategic partners.

More than 60 suppliers in the Burgundy region are set to benefit from the boom in nuclear sales.

Mr Oursel said that the United Nations’ December meeting on climate change in Copenhagen could stimulate orders if it succeeded in setting a robust world price for carbon emissions. About 440 reactors are in use globally, producing about 6 per cent of the world’s primary energy.