EDF confirms deal to take over French nuclear turbine unit from GE

PARIS (Reuters) -EDF confirmed it would buy a France-based nuclear turbine unit from General Electric as the state-owned utility seeks to bundle nuclear activities deemed as strategic in France’s new push for multi-billion investments into new reactors.

The announcement, confirming earlier remarks by French ministers, came hours before French President Emmanuel Macron is due to give a speech that is keenly awaited by France’s nuclear industry, setting out France’s nuclear ambitions for the next decades.

EDF said it had an exclusive agreement with GE to acquire part of GE’s Steam Power’s nuclear power activities, bringing together nuclear steam turbine technology and service expertise.

EDF’s move to buy the unit, given an estimated value of around $1 billion by media reports and which had been owned by Alstom until 2015, has been described as “logical” by French government officials as France seeks to gear up its domestic nuclear capacities.

Macron is expected to announce an ambitious new government strategy to build several, new next-generation EPR reactors.

(Reporting by Tassilo Hummel;Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta)