Is the cost per MWh generated by existing French nuclear power plants €32 or €49? Does building a next-generation EPR reactor represent an investment of about €2,000 per kW, or twice that amount?

The controversy about the cost price borne by EDF resurfaced when a new law on electricity was passed in 2010, requiring France's largest operator to sell part of the output from its nuclear power plants to downstream competitors. Under this law the sale price is set by the authorities and must reflect the production costs of existing facilities. GDF Suez, EDF's main competitor, put these costs at about €32 per MWh, whereas the operator reckoned its costs were almost €20 higher. How can such a large difference be justified? Is it just a matter of a buyer and a seller tossing numbers in the air, their sole concern being to influence the government in order to obtain the most favourable terms? Or is one of the figures right, the other wrong?

The figures for investments in new nuclear power plants are just as contradictory. Take for example the European Pressurized Reactor, the third-generation reactor built by the French company Areva. It was sold in Finland on the basis of a construction cost of €3 billion, equivalent to about €2,000 per kW of installed capacity. Ultimately the real cost is likely to be twice that amount. At Taishan, in China, where two EPRs are being built, the bill should amount to about €4 billion, or roughly €2,400 per kW of installed capacity. How can the cost of building the same plant vary so much, simply due to a change in its geographical location or timeframe?