See those numbers ticking away? That’s how many days, hours, minutes and seconds late is the European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) being built at Olkiluoto in Finland. The reactor’s builders, French nuclear joker’s Areva, say it will be ready by 2012 – three years late – but so numerous are the errors and failings surrounding the construction, only a fool would bet money on it going online that year.

Over three years late and more than 50 percent over budget, who will pay the cost for Areva’s failings? Why, the taxpayer and Finnish electricity consumers, of course. Don’t they always?

The French nuclear industry isn’t only in trouble in Finland. A new report - Areva and EDF:Business prospects and risks in nuclear energy - by Steve Thomas, Professor of Energy Policy at London’s Public Services International Research Unit (PSIRU), shows Areva and France’s other nuclear company, EDF, in financial dire straits.

Both companies are risking their credit ratings to by embarking on risky projects (like trying to sell the increasingly ridiculous EPR to the rest of the world) that can only increase their debts. We saw what a panic EDF is in when its UK CEO, Vincent de Rivaz, after boasting that new reactors in the UK would require no financial assistance from government, then performed a screeching u-turn and begged for subsidies.

Areva and EDF are looking to sell parts of their business in order to try and cover the gaping holes in their finances. Can they find buyers? Can they raise enough money? Can they erase long histories of incompetence, cover-up and financial mismanagement to launch a nuclear ‘renaissance’ that is clean, cheap, reliable, safe and delivered in a time frame to save us from catastrophic climate change?

All the evidence says a big fat ‘NO’. And the clock is ticking…

(More information at Greenpeace International and Greenpeace UK)