Peggy Hollinger of the Financial Times reports that Constellation Energy's withdrawal from the Calvert Cliffs 3 new reactor project in Maryland -- due to its unsuccessful attempt to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars of financial risk onto U.S. taxpayers -- has sent shock waves through the French government owned companies Areva and Electricite de France. She writes of the Areva Evolutionary Power Reactor's (EPR) global prospects "...the EPR has suffered a series of devastating blows, and even the [French] government today questions whether it has wasted years of research and billions of euros on a highly complex white elephant."