France signed a co-operation accord with Morocco Friday to help the north African country advance its plans to build a nuclear power plant.
France
signed a co-operation accord with
Morocco
Friday to help the north African country advance its plans to build a nuclear
power plant.
French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said the agreement was "not a
commercial deal to build a nuclear reactor" but rather a "framework
accord that will help
Morocco
prepare its entry into the field of nuclear energy."
The agreement was signed during a visit to France of Moroccan Prime Minister
Abbas El Fassi.
Unlike its neighbor
Algeria
,
Morocco
doesn't have oil and gas reserves that it could use to meet its energy needs,
but it does have phosphates that contain uranium.
Morocco
plans
to open negotiations next year on building its first nuclear power plant, which
is scheduled to be up and running between 2022 and 2024.
"We have already opened up venues for renewable energy, solar and wind
power. We had one step left--that was nuclear," said the Moroccan prime
minister who was due to meet with President Nicolas Sarkozy later Friday.
Fillon made clear that
France
will
be making a bid to build the Moroccan reactor.
"During the second stage,
France
will
naturally make proposals given the excellence of its technology and its
firms," he said.
France
has
the world's second-largest network of nuclear reactors and generates a greater
proportion of its own electricity through nuclear power than any other
economy--around 75% of its needs.
Sarkozy has made the export of nuclear technology a priority of its trade
policy although delays in the construction of a reactor in
Finland
have
harmed
France
's
nuclear giant Areva SA(CEI.FR).
Standard & Poor's said this week it had lowered its rating on Areva by two notches
over the delays.
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