Some women are born leaders and adding to the small list of top-notch women leaders is Anne Lauvergeon, Chairman of the Executive Board of Areva. Infact, Forbes ranks Lauvergeon as one of the most powerful women in business. Smart, charming, and candid, Lauvergeon breaks the mold of stodgy male bureaucrats and engineers who have traditionally run nuclear power companies. The daughter of a History Professor, she graduated from France's elite Ecole des Mines, and holds a degree of Physics. She also went on to do the French “Ecole Normale Supérieure”. She then made her name in the early 1990s as a highflying civil servant in President Francois Mitterrand's office. She started her professional career in 1983, in the iron and steel industry and moved afterwards to Usinor. In 1984, she directed the European safety studies for the chemical industry of CEA (Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique, the public technological research organization in France). From 1985 to 1988, she supervised the underground utilities activities in and around Paris and was appointed, in 1988, Deputy Director of the General Mining Council. In 1990, she was named Advisor for Economic International Affairs at the French Presidency and Deputy Chief of its Staff in 1991. At the same time she became "Sherpa" to the President, in charge of the G7 Summits' preparation. In 1995, she became a Partner of Lazard Frères & Cie in Paris, spending several months in their New York offices. In March 1997, she joined Alcatel Telecom as Senior Executive Vice President and was appointed Member of the Executive Committee in July 1998. She was in charge of international organization and the Group's interests overseas in energy and nuclear fields. Since June 1999, she is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of COGEMA and since July 2001, she is Chairman of the Executive Board of Areva. Lauvergeon is the power behind Areva Group that brings vertical integration into the nuclear age. The company is involved in every step of nuclear power production. Areva mines uranium and enriches it. It builds nuclear reactors and services them (through Framatome ANP, a joint venture with Siemens). Areva also treats and recycles used fuel. Areva T&D (for Transmission & Distribution) is the company's electricity transmission and distribution equipment business and its largest unit. Framatome also manufactures electrical connectors, and subsidiary Canberra makes radiation detection equipment. Heading Areva, world’s largest nuclear power organization and a world energy expert, she ensures the customers get technological solutions for highly reliable nuclear power generation and electricity transmission and distribution. She is committed to continuous improvement on a daily basis, making sustainable development the focal point of the group’s industrial strategy. She heads the organization that is 58,000 employees strong with the mission to innovate to contribute to CO2-free power generation and electricity transport that are cleaner, safer and more economic. A strong visionary, her strategy at present, is to develop the offering of products and services and continue to strengthen Areva’s international presence. The Areva group is organized around a Supervisory Board, an Executive Board and an Executive Committee assisted by the Corporate Departments. These bodies supervise and pilot the group operations, divided into four divisions organized as business units. Under Lauvergeon’s exemplary leadership, the "nuclear pole" of Areva, grouping COGEMA and Framatome-ANP, is the world leader in comprehensive services to power companies, from uranium mining to reactor construction and then to spent fuel management. She undertook stringent and successful programs for cost reduction, set up a company culture of sustainable development and developed an active policy of communication with the public. Hence, it comes as no big mystery that Areva is considering new acquisitions before opening their equity to the public. Like every reactor vendor, AREVA too has a model ready for commercialisation and complying with the most modern user requirements: competitiveness with the best fossil-fuelled plant, reliability and flexibility (in terms of cycle length), Extremely low probability of severe accident occurrence, and full mitigation of their eventual consequences (no massive radioactivity release in the environment, even in case of core meltdown). Areva’s two models are called: Framatome-ANP's European EPR and SWR 1000. They offer probably the best that can be expected from the light water reactor family, which constitutes over 85% of the operating nuclear reactors worldwide. Talking about the future, she says, “Looking further ahead, if there is, indeed, a "Generation 4", then nuclear fission will be used at least till the end of the century, and we shall need some kind of breeder reactor to make full use of the uranium and thorium resources of this planet. Breeding fuel implies spent fuel reprocessing and recycling. That is why it is important to keep maintaining and improving these technologies, as COGEMA is doing. Besides, spent fuel reprocessing allows for an optimal management of the high level wastes issued from the nuclear power generation.” She is also happy that Electricite de France has recently renewed its global recycle contract with COGEMA, for the next 15 years. This would guarantee a significant longer-term workload for the reprocessing plant in La Hague and MELOX fabrication plant for mixed oxide fuel. The excellent and safe operation of both those plants are really setting world standards in their field. While the international consensus is spreading that deep geological repositories are the proper way to dispose of conditioned long-lived radioactive wastes, she is convinced that geologic storage, combined with reprocessing of the spent fuels to recycle the plutonium and properly condition high-level and long-lived wastes is the best solution now. She also says that R&D should nevertheless be pursued internationally on advanced methods, notably partitioning & transmutation of minor actinides. This is because it is quite possible that in a few decades, those methods will allow reduced volume and long term toxicity of the wastes to be sent to final storage, and, therefore, use this valuable repository more efficiently. Lauvergeon considers it her duty to achieve and maintain high returns for the shareholders, employees and stakeholders. She infact attempts to instill similar spirit through out the organization. She believes that as a major player in the energy market, she and her group have a special responsibility not only to their direct stakeholders, but to the public at large, who will ultimately benefit from their products and services. She believes that the very nature of their businesses demands excellence. This means superior expertise and constant diligence in matters of health, safety, environmental protection and quality assurance. Lauvergeon fosters professional excellence by promoting teamwork and creating working conditions that are conducive to professional development. She also encourages sincere communications and openness to dialogue through her communication programs. Her goal is to provide reliable, pertinent information enabling an objective assessment of the environmental, financial and social performance. Inspite of great success in the past quarter century, the fantastic sales pitch has failed to quell the fears of most people about nuclear power. The partial nuclear meltdown at the Three Mile Island power plant in Pennsylvania in 1979 drastically curtailed reactor building in the U.S. Seven years later the Chernobyl disaster turned public opinion in Western European countries outside France against nuclear power. As a result, nuclear power's share of global electricity production, which shot up from 2% in 1970 to 16% in 1988, has been stuck at that level ever since. But Areva believes that nuclear power is poised to make a comeback. "You can't have a solution to growing global energy demands without nuclear power," says Lauvergeon. France--a country with no major petroleum reserves--has made the world's biggest bet on nuclear power. In 1974, in response to the oil crisis, the government concluded that France's scientific and engineering expertise meant nuclear power was the best route to energy self-sufficiency. In true Gaullist fashion, the government launched a reactor-building program with little consultation. Today France derives over 75% of its energy from nuclear power, far more than any country other than Lithuania. France's nuclear gamble paid off. Supporters of nuclear power say that France, the world's largest net exporter of electricity, also has Western Europe's cheapest retail electricity prices.  Lauvergeon  also has a riposte to the environmentalists. Nuclear power, she says, is also a "green" energy source because it does not release the carbon dioxide that contributes to global warming. That view even has a small constituency in the environmental movement. Says Lauvergeon, dubbed "Atomic Anne" by the French press: "It's very difficult for the green movement to be against climate change and also against nuclear energy." Amid all the sniping, one fact is clear. As the West's only one-stop nuclear energy shop, Areva is in pole position to reap the rewards from the nuclear comeback. It claims 22% of the world's uranium-mining market, 35% of its fuel-production market, 20% of all reactor construction and service sales, and almost two-thirds of the nuclear reprocessing and waste business. While Areva counts rivals in all its business sectors, such as General Electric in reactors and British Nuclear Fuels in reprocessing, only Russia's Minatom covers the nuclear waterfront. But as the folks responsible for Chernobyl, Minatom has a serious image problem in the West. So a bet on Areva is essentially a bet on the nuclear industry's future. And it is a gamble that investors believe is worth making. Since September 2001 about 4% of Areva's stock has been traded on the Paris stock exchange in the form of nonvoting investment certificates, with the government holding almost all the rest. In the past year the price of the certificates has risen 37%. Investors on both sides of the Atlantic are waiting for the government to sell up to 50% of Areva in an initial public offering. In theory, there is nothing to stop the government from selling the entire holding. "It's not a problem for me," says Lauvergeon, who is equally untroubled by the thought that Areva might one day be controlled by foreign shareholders. All this is a tribute to Lauvergeon's efforts to give Areva the ethos and corporate structure of what she calls a "normal" company. Far harder is the task she has set herself: To win over not just Areva's clients and investment bankers but also fearful consumers who see nuclear power as at best a necessary evil and at worst an apocalyptic disaster in the making. "To develop nuclear energy, we need to have the public's acceptance," says Lauvergeon. That may be an impossible assignment, given the memory of Chernobyl. But if anyone can persuade the public to give nuclear power a second chance, it is Lauvergeon. When she turned up for her first day at Cogema's dismal headquarters outside Paris, the urbane Lauvergeon was shocked by what she found. "It was a bunker," recalls Lauvergeon of the company's introverted, defensive culture. "Some people behaved like little children who say, 'I'm closing my eyes so you can't see me.' " Lauvergeon takes the opposite view of how to conduct a nuclear business. "If we have nothing to hide, we have to explain everything," she remarks. "We have to tell the truth, even if it is sometimes not easy."  To that end, Lauvergeon installed web-linked cameras at La Hague so the public could monitor operations on Cogema's Internet site. (The webcasts were shut down after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.) She commissioned a series of TV ads inviting the public to visit La Hague. And she hammered away at the message that France's nuclear business was safe. "I can say that our security systems are much more elaborate and organized than you find in the chemical industry," she declares. To bring Cogema's benighted executives out of their bunker, Lauvergeon moved the head office to a gleaming new building in Paris, a few blocks from the Bourse. Behind the scenes, she was also working fast. In 2001 she persuaded the government to merge Cogema with Framatome, France's state-controlled uranium mining and nuclear-engineering firm, and then appoint her to run the new entity, called Areva. It is an impressive start, but what Lauvergeon has not won yet, even in France, is the case for nuclear power as an acceptably safe energy source. But so far, Lauvergeon’s faith, like France, in nuclear technology coming through remains unshakable. Earlier, the French were paralyzed about what to do with their nuclear waste. However, after much deliberation, the solution was arrived. The result can be seen at La Hague, where the accumulated nuclear waste is temporarily stored in 5,500 canisters. "I am confident it's a solvable problem," says Lauvergeon, confidently. In the meanwhile, Areva is still researching better ways to reduce and contain the radioactivity.  At the same time, Lauvergeon says that there is not much that Areva can do much about the spread of nuclear technology, except to refuse to do business with countries not bound by the nonproliferation treaty. Lauvergeon, displaying a French technocrat's faith in bureaucrats and legal documents, maintains that the rules put in place by China's nuclear regulatory authority are stricter than those governing the U.S. industry. As for the Chinese regulator's credentials, she says, "We only sell nuclear plants to countries with a real nuclear safety authority with an adequate degree of independence from the political power." In China, that would be the Communist Party, which has held a monopoly on political power since 1949. Lauvergeon says that if Western countries closed down their nuclear industries, "it would not change the situation in places like Iran and North Korea." Lauvergeon also argues that nuclear power is going to be with us for decades, even if no new plants are built. "Areva can easily exist for a long time to come with the business we get from existing nuclear plants," she says. And since nuclear power can't be wished away, Areva maintains it is preferable for well-run, responsible companies in the developed world to keep standards as high as possible and nurture a new generation of competent technicians. The force of that point is apparent at Areva's manufacturing plant for reactor replacement parts in Chalon-sur-Saone. At the front entrance, the Stars and Stripes flies proudly next to the French flag--proof that despite the war in Iraq, Americans are the most valued customers here. Since 2000, when U.S. operating licenses began to be extended, a steady stream of American utilities have bought replacement parts worth $420 million. It's important to recruit talented young people to maintain the sector's competitiveness in the future." There are many who say the world doesn't need a nuclear energy industry at all. Yet if the industry is here to stay for at least the next few decades--and it is, short of an overnight conversion by the West to a green lifestyle--Lauvergeon is surely right that the world needs more well-run nuclear companies like Areva. The very essence of her leadership is her vision of how she wants the future to be and she never blows an uncertain trumpet. These are just some of the factors that have created one of the best leaders of either gender, in the world.