TechnicAtome, a specialist in small compact reactors, announced, Wednesday April 24, an 11% increase in its turnover in 2023 (551 million euros) and a net profit of 81 million euros driven by the renewal of the fleet of nuclear attack submarines (SNA). The same day that the general management of armaments indicated the start-up (called “divergence”) of the boiler room of the Tourvillepaving the way for sea trials of the third of six SNAs in the class Suffren delivered between 2020 and 2030 to the French Navy.
The company is “in a buoyant dynamic” with “perspectives over several decades”welcomes the CEO of TechnicAtome, Loïc Rocard, whose physicist grandfather, Yves Rocard, was one of the architects of the French atomic bomb (and father, Michel Rocard, prime minister between 1988 and 1991). “We only know how to reason over the long term”he adds, that of major naval programs.
Its teams are participating in several key projects: the third generation of class SNA Barracuda, the last of which will be delivered at the end of the decade; the aircraft carrier intended to replace the Charles de Gaulle by 2038 with its two boiler rooms finally, the new nuclear ballistic missile submarines (SNLE) − the cutting of the first sheet of number 1 was carried out in March − delivered between 2035 and 2050 to replace the four SNLE of the generation of Triumphant.
Jean Merveilleux du Vignaux, financial director of TechnicAtome, predicts that this “sustained growth rate” for several years will continue in 2024 and 2025, with a “strong profitability” and numerous recruitments in a company where people have long careers. It has increased its workforce (2,000 people) by 30% and its activity by 50% since 2017. Without debt, it has cash to invest, as it does in the extension of Aix-en-Provence and of Cadarache (Bouches-du-Rhône), which hosts its strategic nuclear propulsion installations.
Back to basics
It was only in 1974 that this technological nugget, as strategic as it was discreet, became involved in naval nuclear propulsion (85% of its turnover). It is essential as part of the deterrence operated by the Strategic Oceanic Force based in Brest, recalls Mr. Rocard: “TechnicAtome enables nuclear ballistic missile submarines [missiles armés de têtes nucléaires] to remain very discreet and for a very long time,” unlike diesel-electric powered submarines.
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