French nuclear giant Areva's boss has blamed Finnish electric firm TVO for delays in building a nuclear reactor in Finland, Finnish media reported Friday.
Finnish broadcaster MTV3 said it had obtained a copy of the letter sent by Areva's president Luc Oursel to TVO's board chairman Timo Rajala in which Oursel said the two companies had "no normal business relationship."
Areva, together with Germany's Siemens, is building the plant for TVO in Olkiluoto, western Finland, but the project has fallen more than three years behind its original schedule and the parties are blaming each other for delays and ballooning costs.
Last month Areva reported its January-June net profit fell 79 percent to 161 million euros (235 million dollars) due to a charge of 550 million euros it had to take for more delays in Olkiluoto.
Oursel said TVO complained about irrelevant things when reviewing Areva's documents related to construction permissions.
"Some 97.5 percent of the comments made by TVO on documents have nothing to do with technical matters, but they are about formalities that are irrelevant to the project and therefore only make the work of our teams more difficult," Oursel was quoted as writing.
In late September Rajala was reported as saying that Areva's Chief Executive Anne Lauvergeon was not a good listener.
The nuclear reactor at Olkiluoto is now scheduled to start producing energy in the second half of 2012.
A judgement on a dispute between Areva, Siemens and TVO over compensation for the delays is pending at the Paris-based International Chamber of Commerce.
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