PARIS, June 29 (Reuters) – EDF CEO Luc Remont told
managers on Thursday that the state-owned power group’s nuclear
activities would be reorganised to overcome recurring problems
that cut production last year.

An EDF spokesperson told Reuters a reorganisation of the
nuclear division had been announced with the aim of ushering in
“deep change” so that each activity’s responsibilities are
clearly defined, but did not give further details.

Two sources said the division would be restructured and five
executives charged with drawing up proposals, including nuclear
park head Cedric Lewandowski, head of new nuclear projects
Xavier Ursat and head of industrial quality Alain Tranzer.

EDF has faced a litany of problems over the past
year, with nuclear reactor outages deepening Europe’s energy
crisis as European countries scrambled to replace Russian gas.

France is the region’s largest exporter of power, but the
outages cut 2022 nuclear power output to the lowest level since
1988.

The French government, which delisted EDF this month after
18 years on the stock market, has tasked Remont with reviving
nuclear production as his top priority, along with better
managing construction projects currently under way.

The French state’s buyout of minority shareholders is part
of President Emmanuel Macron’s renewed bet on nuclear energy,
which includes building at least six new reactors in coming
years.

One of the sources said that Remont wanted to move forward
with building a new strategic plan without waiting for
government decisions about its future financing, which is key to
the construction of the new reactors and to maintain the
existing fleet.

Remont told the group’s top 300 managers that talks were
still underway with the state and EU competition regulators
about its existing and future nuclear activities, the source
said.

“Remont said that it was not going to stop us from
transforming and reorganising ourselves. There’s no need to wait
for a final decision from the president’s office,” the source
said after attending the meeting with managers.

(Reporting by Elizabeth Pineau and Benjamin Mallet in Paris;
Writing by Josephine Mason in London and Leigh Thomas in Paris;
Editing by Jan Harvey)