French construction group Eiffage and British peer Carillion have signed a partnership agreement under which they will jointly bid to build nuclear power plants in Britain, Eiffage said Monday.
The two groups have worked together in the past, notably on the cross-Channel tunnel and the Copenhagen metro system.
The British government last year made clear its intention to renovate the country's nuclear power sector, which currently comprises 10 plants that accounted for less than 15 percent of the electricity produced in Britain in 2008.
In France, nuclear power meets 80 percent of the country's electricity needs.
Several groups have already expressed an interest in the British project, notably French utility EDF, which wants to join with Centrica of Britain to build four plants.
Other candidates are EON and RWE of Germany and another duo, GDF Suez of France and Spain's Iberdrola.
Eiffage has annual sales of 13 billion euros (19.5 billion dollars), while turnover at Carillion, active in Britian, the Middle East, Canada and the Caribbean, comes to about 5.0 billion pounds (5.43 billion euros).
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