There’s a nice little attempt at saving face on French nuclear company AREVA’s North American blog in response to an article in the New York Times.

The NYT piece expresses scepticism about AREVA’s ability to spearhead a nuclear ‘renaissance’ in the light of the farcical attempts to build prototype third-generation EPR nuclear reactors in Olkiluoto, Finland and Flamanville, France.

AREVA downplay the massive cost and schedule overruns, the safety and construction violations, and design shortcomings as ‘a learning curve’. If only Areva’s ability to build nuclear reactors was as powerful as its amazing skills of understatement and spin.

‘Before construction begins in earnest on the first EPR™ reactors in the United States,’ says the company’s blog, ‘AREVA will have completed several others internationally.’ In other words: don’t worry American investors, it’s the poor Europeans who are carrying the burden of our multiple botched attempts at getting EPR right.

The company’s optimism doesn’t stand up to a moment’s scrutiny. It’s boast that ‘today more than 30 new reactors are under consideration in the United States’ falls over when you see that the Japan Steel Works (JSW), the company that produces ‘around 80% of the world market for large forged components for nuclear plants, notably the largest reactor pressure vessel sections, steam generators and turbine shafts’, is capable of producing ‘only four reactor pressure vessels and associated components per year’. It’s hoping to triple its capacity by 2012 but it’s clear that JSW - which has a four-year backlog - represents a significant bottleneck for the nuclear ‘renaissance’ (the heavy-manufacturing facility at Châlon-St Marcel in France has a five-year backlog). The United States can consider 30 nuclear reactors all it likes but whether they can be built any time soon – in competition with nuclear ‘renaissances’ elsewhere - remains extremely doubtful.

The AREVA blog accuses the New York Times of ‘several inaccuracies and mischaracterizations’ without saying what they are or addressing them directly. Maybe they should attempt deal with concerns honestly and in detail if they want to avoid the suspicion that they are merely a propaganda machine.