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French nuclear companies are hoping to play a central role in the government's plan to build a new generation of reactors. At home, however, the industry has been buffeted by a series of mishaps.

The West's environmental movement got buffeted by strong late-winter winds, both good and ill. First, President Barack Obama has targeted the federal government's 22-year-old multibillion-dollar effort to bury nuclear waste in Nevada's Yucca Mountain. He vowed to devise "a new strategy" on dealing with nuclear waste, while seeking little money for Yucca Mountain in his 2010 budget proposal, released in late February. Congress will probably go along with that, since the Senate majority leader, Nevada's Harry Reid, also opposes the project. The bad news within that good news: There is still no place for long-term storage of the 57,700 tons of nuclear waste that are being held in dozens of "temporary" storage sites around the country, plus the 2,000 additional tons that nuclear reactors will produce this year, and the additional tons that'll be produced in 2010, and so on. Back to Square One on solving that problem.

* EDF offers $4.5 bln for half of CEG's nuclear assets * Option to buy $2 bln nonnuclear assets * EDF says offer values CEG at around $52/share * EDF shares down 0.5 percent, Constellation up 10 pct (Adds comment from analyst and investor, updates share prices) By Astrid Wendlandt and Michael Erman PARIS/NEW YORK, Dec 3 (Reuters) - French power company EDF (EDF.PA: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) unveiled a plan to pay as much as $6.5 billion for 50 percent of Constellation Energy Group Inc's (CEG.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) nuclear business and other assets in an attempt to torpedo a rival offer from investor Warren Buffett. If successful, the bid would give the world's largest nuclear utility a solid foothold in the United States, the world's biggest nuclear energy market, and represents a major plank of EDF's global expansion strategy.

It is said that all that glitters is not gold. Keep that in mind when considering the bidding war heating up the nuclear power business. France's EDF has offered $6.5 billion for half of Constellation Energy Group's nuclear business and some other assets, trumping Warren Buffett's bid of $4.7 billion for all of Constellation. If plummeting demand for everything from new cars to tin foil could fell BHP's monster bid for Rio Tinto, why wouldn't it weigh on demand for energy? While nuclear power has regained some favor as a cheap, relatively clean alternative to nasty fossil fuels, is it really safe to expect consumers to ramp up electric heat this winter, and air conditioning next summer, when they are worried about losing their jobs?