Among the “Sensitive Affairs” in which the magazine adapted from France Inter is interested, very confidential negotiations between France and China around civil nuclear power. For more than forty years, the first has hoped to light up the second thanks to its power stations. In the 2000s, in parallel with its rise in power, China aimed to build the largest nuclear fleet in the world. A huge market that France dreams of conquering…
Could there be a link between these Franco-Chinese negotiations and the morning of December 17, 2012? That day, a trade unionist who was concerned about it was found tied up in her home. On his belly, engraved with a knife, the letter “A”. “A” like “Areva”, the company that sells and designs nuclear reactors, whose employees it defended? Was Maureen Kearney interested too closely in these secret contracts?
An agreement signed on the sly
This excerpt returns to a climate of tension which crystallized during the winter of 2011. At Areva, the unions were then concerned about a confidential memorandum of understanding between the Chinese electricity company CGNPC and EDF, the constructor of the power plants. The key, according to them, is a possible transfer of technologies and probable job losses for the company. CFDT manager Maureen Kearney demands answers that she does not get.
In 2012, his fears became clearer. She learns of the existence of a second contract which attacks the reserved domain of Areva: this one provides that EDF and CGNPC would design together the first Franco-Chinese reactor. When questioned, the new president of Areva, Luc Oursel, denies any signature. However, at the end of October, Maureen Kearney receives a surprising photo: we see Henri Proglio, Luc Oursel and the Chinese president of CGNPC… signing a contract.
“I say to myself: ‘But that’s not true! We were lied to… All the politicians lied to us.’ And we had just seen two or three fairly high-ranking politicians, whom we called, and who told us that they were not aware.
Maureen Kearney, former union official at Arevain “Sensitive Matters”
A photo “very interesting”, judge Caroline Michel-Aguirre, journalist specializing in this case. Because this signing of an industrial agreement, which moreover concerns nuclear power, did not take place in Paris with representatives of the State, but in Avignon… And “No one at Areva is aware…”
In order to obtain the communication of this agreement signed on the sly, the unions are threatening the management with legal action. The tension is at its height around Thursday, December 13, when Luc Oursel receives a formal notice. Maureen Kearney explains that she contacted Arnaud Montebourg and Bernard Cazeneuve with whom she was in contact during the weekend, “to tell them that it really farted at Areva”.
“An extraordinary context”, where “people are afraid”
It was on the following Monday, the 17th, that Maureen Kearney was attacked at her home. Caroline Michel-Aguirre explains that she immediately made the connection. “Why? You should know that in this industry, there are a lot of tricks. It’s true that every time I see a source, at that time, it always has to be in a place hidden, I’m being asked not only to turn off my phone, but to take out the battery… It’s in a context where people are afraid… All of this means that we’re in an extraordinary context, quite unusual when one is an economic journalist, accustomed to working, to investigating companies.”
A worrying climate confirmed by Anne Lauvergeon herself. “I no longer went to a place alone, for example, she confides. And I was very scared for my children.” The former boss of Areva, whom Nicolas Sarkozy dismissed in favor of Luc Oursel, is however deemed unimpressive… A few weeks before her attack, Maureen Kearney reportedly received anonymous telephone threats.
Excerpt from “A strange news item at the heart of nuclear power”, a document to be seen on April 11, 2022 in “Sensitive Affairs”, a magazine presented by Fabrice Drouelle and co-produced by France Télévisions, France Inter and INA according to original broadcast of France Inter.
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