France's Framatome has signed an asset purchase agreement with Schneider Electric to acquire its nuclear instrumentation and control (I&C) business. The asset purchase agreement outlines the terms of the sale, which is expected to close by the end of March.

The French regulator, Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire, has issued a positive opinion on the safety options for country's planned deep geological repository for the disposal of high- and intermediate-level radioactive waste. However, it has reservations about the storage of bituminous waste within the facility.

France's Framatome and China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) have signed a protocol for the development of global strategic cooperation. They have also renewed a contract under which Framatome will supply nuclear fuel components to CNNC.

Cooperation on nuclear power technology is to be expanded between China General Nuclear and the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission under an agreement signed yesterday in Beijing. New Areva and China National Nuclear Corporation have also agreed to work towards signing a contract for the construction of a used fuel processing and recycling facility in China.

EDF has completed cold functional tests at the EPR reactor under construction at its Flamanville site in northern France. Flamanville unit 3 is scheduled to begin operating by the end of this year.

The Atmea joint venture between France's Areva and Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) is to be reorganised following the sale of Areva's reactor business to EDF, MHI and Assystem. Atmea was created in 2007 to develop, market, license and sell the 1100 MWe Atmea-1 pressurised water reactor combining both companies' technologies.

New NP - the Areva NP subsidiary holding the Areva Group's nuclear reactor operations - has been renamed Framatome following its sale to EDF, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Assystem. Framatome is the name of a former French reactor vendor from which Areva was originally created.

Areva SA and EDF have signed definitive binding agreements setting the terms of the sale of New NP, Areva NP's nuclear reactor operations. The transaction is scheduled to close by the end of this year. The sale price for 100% of New NP's equity has been confirmed at €2.5 billion.

Construction of the Iter fusion reactor, being built at Cadarache in the south of France, is now 50% complete, the Iter Organisation has announced. The reactor - construction of which began in 2010 - is scheduled to achieve first plasma in 2025.

EDF has received permission from France's Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire to restart three reactors at the Tricastin power plant after carrying out repairs to a canal embankment. The regulator ordered the temporary shutdown of Tricastin's reactors on 27 September because of the risks of failure of a 400 metre long portion of the embankment of the Donzére-Mondragon canalin the event of an earthquake. 

A small number of fuel rods supplied to reactors in France and Switzerland have been affected by quality control issues. EDF Group said today that Areva had notified it of quality control deviations on certain rods, which meant the supplier was unable to demonstrate that quality control to substantiate that the leak tightness of those rods had been properly performed.

The French government will come up with a more "realistic" target to reduce the share of nuclear energy in the country's electricity generation, Environment Minister Nicolas Hulot told a news conference in Paris today.