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PARIS - To the concerns of other countries and the angry protests of greens, President Nicolas Sarkozy has become a whirlwind salesman for French nuclear technology, seeing in it a chance to combine commercial gain and political profit in one move.
Since becoming head of state last May, Sarkozy has overseen the biggest deal in the 60-year history of the world's civilian nuclear industry - an €8 billion ($16 billion) order from China - and set his eyes on fat nuclear contracts with half a dozen other countries.
In a tour of the Middle East this week, Sarkozy signed a protocol of understanding on nuclear co-operation with gas-rich Qatar and a nuclear co-operation agreement with oil exporter the United Arab Emirates.
He has also signed similar deals with Algeria and Libya, made pitches to Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Egypt and hopes to sign an agreement with India when he visits New Delhi later this month. These accords are typically the first step to a long process, lasting a dozen years or more, before a reactor is completed.
France is also lobbying Argentina, Britain, Chile, Indonesia, South Africa, the United States and Vietnam to buy its reactors. The result of all this could be rewards worth tens of billions of euros for France's sagging economy.
But specialists say Sarkozy's nuclear diplomacy also has a political windfall. By offering sweeteners to the Arab world, he gains petrodollars in exchange and also strengthens the isolation of Iran, suspected of wanting to build a nuclear bomb.
"The key to France's strategy is the Iranian business," says Francois Heisbourg of London-based think-tank the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).
Sarkozy last year made no bones about wanting to "help any country which wants to acquire civilian nuclear power," provided that these deals were in line with tough international safeguards.
In contrast, Iran has defied the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) over its suspected drive to enrich uranium to weapons grade.
Sarkozy argues that Western countries, by showing good faith with Arab countries, demonstrate that compliance with international obligations brings its rewards.
"Sharing civilian nuclear technology will be one of the foundations of a pact of trust that the West must forge with the Islamic world," he has said.
"If you tell Arab countries that they are not allowed civilian nuclear power because they are Arab, you are giving an extraordinary boost to Iran, which has made that its entire argument."
Sarkozy is able to wield clout in his salesmanship because France's nuclear industry, the world's most advanced, is in state hands.
Its champion is Areva SA, the only company in the world to operate across the entire nuclear fuel cycle and design and build reactors. Areva's star product is the European Pressurised Water Reactor (EPR), a Franco-German design launched in 1992 that has been in the wilderness for years.
The EPR has needed the surge in oil costs in the new millennium - and the dilemma of how to meet energy needs without stoking global warming through fossil fuels - to gain political support and public acceptance.
The first EPR is to start operations in Finland in 2011, and construction of the first reactor of this type in France began last month. China has bought two EPRs plus fuel supplies. The same design is being pushed to the UAE.
Areva says the light-water design of EPR is ill-suited for making weapons-grade uranium. But this argument is rejected elsewhere in Europe by those who see a proliferation threat, including a "dirty" bomb of radiological material, among countries that are chronically unstable.
"The risk of proliferation rises with every country that uses nuclear energy," German Deputy Foreign Minister Gernot Erler said last July after Sarkozy agreed to revive a mothballed Libyan atomic reactor that would be used to power a desalination plant.
"[Libyan leader Muammar] Gaddafi doesn't care about desalinating water, his goal is to acquire nuclear technology with the aim of sooner or later building an atomic bomb or providing nuclear material to terrorist groups," says a French group, Sortir du Nucleaire [Get Out Nuclear].
Washington is unfazed by Sarkozy's nuclear campaign.
Last September, President George W. Bush described "secure, cost-effective and proliferation-resistant nuclear power" as the answer to global warming. And he and Sarkozy are aligned in wanting to strengthen Gulf Arab countries against Iran.
