Nuclear energy in France: Fallout FANS of the cock-up theory of events got a boost this week when Areva, a French nuclear-energy one-stop shop, said there had been no fraud in its disastrous purchase of UraMin, a Canadian start-up firm with mining assets in Namibia, the Central African Republic and South Africa, in 2007 for $2.5 billion. The acquisition had simply been badly managed, it said, leading Areva to overpay. Last December the company took a €1.46 billion ($2 billion) charge against the acquisition, resulting in a huge operating loss for 2011. Areva had suspected a plot. It ordered an external study of the UraMin deal in 2010, which suggested dodgy goings-on. Then in 2011 it hired a Swiss private-detective agency, Alp Services, to investigate the circumstances of the transaction. Anne Lauvergeon, Areva's boss at the time and France's most prominent businesswoman, was not informed of the probe. Last month she announced that her husband had been spied on by Alp Services, and on February 8th began a legal complaint against unidentified people. Areva's head of mining, Sébastien de Montessus, confirmed that he had hired the Swiss investigator, but said that Areva never sanctioned the use of illegal methods. Ms Lauvergeon, who is nicknamed "Atomic Anne," has her own theory. She was fired as boss of Areva in June 2011 when Nicolas Sarkozy, France's president, decided not to renew her mandate as boss of the state-owned group. She claims that the spying scandal is part of a long-running plot against her, orchestrated by a small group of people who oversee France's nuclear-energy industry. Mr de Montessus, she says, would never have dared to order an investigation involving his boss without sanction from higher up. Writing in Le Monde, a French newspaper, on February 9th, she pointed the finger, though with no proof, at Claude Guéant, a former right-hand man to Mr Sarkozy who is now minister for the interior; at Henri Proglio, the boss of Electricité de France (EDF), France's utility; and at François Roussely, a former boss of EDF and an adviser to Mr Sarkozy on the nuclear industry. Mr Proglio, she said, has long wanted to break up Areva in order to strengthen EDF, and she was targeted for resisting. Ms Lauvergeon claims she was also attacked for insisting that nuclear reactors should be as safe as technologically possible. Before the 2011 accident at Fukushima in Japan, she says, some wanted France to export cheaper, less safe reactors to poorer countries. Many observers will take Ms Lauvergeon's statements as further evidence of shadowy networks at the top of French business and government. In "La Republique des Mallettes" ("Briefcase Republic," a reference to bags of cash), an investigative book published last year, the author, Pierre Péan, describes feuds against Ms Lauvergeon before her departure in 2011. The poor relationship between Ms Lauvergeon and Mr Proglio is well-known and is thought to have been one of the reasons why Mr Sarkozy replaced her. But the scariest element of the story remains the UraMin deal itself, for which Ms Lauvergeon is chiefly responsible. At the time, in 2007, expectations of a nuclear renaissance caused uranium prices to soar. Areva's rivals were snapping up uranium deposits. Amid the rush, says David Talbot, a mining analyst at Dundee Capital Markets in Toronto, Areva failed to do enough metallurgical due-diligence on UraMin's mines, which had not yet started production. The reserves in Namibia, where Areva had invested most, proved to be smaller and less easily extractable than hoped. After Fukushima, a plunging uranium price reduced the deposits" value. Ms Lauvergeon retorts that she did not do the deal alone, and that a barrage of committees discussed the purchase, which was approved by Areva's supervisory board. Will Areva now be able to move on from the UraMin affair? On February 22nd judges will rule on whether the company was right to suspend Ms Lauvergeon's severance bonus, of €1.5m, pending the outcome of its inquiry. Ms Lauvergeon's spying case could throw up further embarrassments for the firm. As the company struggles to sell nuclear energy to a nuclearphobic world, more intrigue is the last thing it needs.