France et Chine

That was some trip to China by French president Nicolas Sarkozy — got a lot of good press, too. Better than that 60-minutes interview in October.

Big nuclear power plant deal for Areva and some airplanes for Airbus to deliver — and Eutelsat CEO Giuliano Beretta made the trip, scoring an interview with China Daily. Nice profile on Areva CEO Anne Lauvergeon. Incidently, Areva is now the parent company of Canberra Eurisys, developers of the titanium-encapsulated germanium detector on board NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter.

Are people concerned about all this technology transfer? We blogged about the Long March rocket launch of  Thales Alenia Space-built Chinasat 6B ("Zhongxing-6B") — which is a pretty advanced bird. Sarkozy’s not worried at all:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said yesterday that he did not fear technology transfers to China, speaking a day after Areva of France signed a landmark deal to deliver state-of-the-art nuclear reactors.

“In the nuclear field, we’re going to create a joint venture.  I’m not worried about technology transfer,” Sarkozy told students at Beijing’s elite Tsinghua University, referring to the Areva deal.

I’m all for cleaner energy and better satcom for all. Even the A380 is billing itself as "cleaner & greener." Here’s an A380 performing a cross-wind test in Iceland, as documented by Icelandic TV: