At the end of October 2005, French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin announced that he had suspended the privatization process.

In 2003, Areva secured a contract for the Olkiluoto 3 project, which foresaw construction of the third generation EPR-type pressurised water reactor.

[9] On 15 September 2005, Areva and Constellation Energy of Baltimore announced a joint venture called UniStar Nuclear to market the commercial EPR in the United States.

[11] However these plans failed to come to fruition, and in February 2015 Areva suspended the EPR Design Certification Application Review process at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

The innovative M5000 wind turbine has a compact medium speed drive train and carbon rotor blades.

Work has also stopped on extensions to uranium mines in Bakouma in the Central African Republic, Trekkopje in Namibia, and Ryst Kuil in South Africa,[32] and caused a potential delay in construction until a capital solution is secured for the Eagle Rock Enrichment Facility in the United States.

[36] In 2014, Areva's energy storage and management system, the Greenergy Box, was added to the existing installation, in operation since early 2013.

[46] In December 2015 operations at Le Creusot Forge were stopped following a discovery at the Flamanville Nuclear Power Plant.

[49][50] In December 2016 international inspectors found evidence of recent doctored paperwork, which had not been detected by Areva's independent quality control checks.

[47][48] In August 2017 ASN published a draft decision requiring the examination of Le Creusot Forge manufacturing records of all components during scheduled reactor refuelling outages.

[71][72][73] Its subsidiary Areva Renewables Brazil built biomass power plants based on bagasse (organic waste from sugar cane).

[74] In the United States, Areva formed a partnership with Duke Energy to build and operate 55 MW biomass power plants based on wood waste.

[75] Areva acquired a bio-coal production technology called Thermya,[76] which produces a biofuel issued from biomass torrefaction that can replace coal to generate thermal energy and electricity.

[77][78] Areva also developed AdCub, a modular concept for compact power plants targeting small-scale biomass resources that addresses relatively untapped growth opportunities in Europe.

The objective is to combine innovative solutions which optimize customer costs for small-scale power plants (between 3 and 6 MW) and reduce construction time.

This new biomass plant concept also aims to improve upstream technologies for multi-fuel acceptance and higher availability.

[77] Areva designed, manufactured and industrialized turnkey energy storage solutions and products to generate electricity with fuel cells and produce hydrogen by electrolysis.

Areva supported research in the hydrogen field through partnerships with a number of industrial companies and national research organizations including Agence Nationale de la Recherche, the Horizon Hydrogen Energy (H2E) program, PAN-H (Plan d'Action National sur l'Hydrogène et les piles à combustible) and Pôle Capenergies, an innovation cluster dedicated to the development of renewable forms of energy without greenhouse gas emissions.

[79] Areva was involved in military technology, such as designing the nuclear reactor for the French Barracuda class submarine.

[86] According to the commission, "between 1988 and 2004, the companies rigged bids for procurement contracts, fixed prices, allocated projects to each other, shared markets and exchanged commercially important and confidential information.

"[88] EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes declared that "The commission has put an end to a cartel which has cheated public utility companies and consumers for more than 16 years".

[89] On 13 August 2007, the French newspaper Le Parisien alleged that the Franco-Libyan civil nuclear power agreement signed by President Nicolas Sarkozy did not concern desalinization of sea water, as claimed by the French government, but instead focused in particular on selling the EPR to Libya, a contract potentially worth $3 billion.

[25] On 24 June 2012, an armed group assaulted a uranium plant operated by Areva at Bakouma in the southeast of the Central African Republic.

A statement by the military described that "a violent clash on Sunday afternoon pitted" Central African troops against "an unidentified group of armed men attempting to launch an assault on the site of mining company Areva".

According to the report the army successfully repelled the attack, but "the enemy did some material damage and pulled back while taking a sizeable quantity mainly of food with them."

Central African military sources believe that the attack was organized by members of the Chadian rebel group Popular Front for Recovery (FPR) led by 'General' Baba Ladde, which has been active in the region since 2008.

[90][91] In May 2013, the company's uranium mine in Niger was damaged and one civilian was killed in an Al-Qaeda-linked suicide bomb attack.

[93][94] In November 2009, Greenpeace released a report indicating that two villages near Areva's mining operations in Niger had dangerously high levels of radiation.

[97] Al Jazeera also published Areva's response, in which the company said it submits regular reports on its environmental monitoring of water, air and soil to the Nigerien Office of Environmental Assessments and Impact Studies (BEEEI) which indicate that there is no pollution around the sites in question.

In 2002, during its first public appearance, in Lorient, France, the "Defi Areva" yacht collided with a dinghy carrying four Greenpeace protesters, and the impact knocked a hole in the side of the 80-foot boat.