French state deliberately didn't want to pay much so the utility actually sold bonds in the US.
Actually most of the cost ended up on the books of the utility and was paid off with the money gathered from rate payers of the last 50 years.

The idea that the French nuclear reactors are aging out is nonsense. The French government for the last 30 years has taken nuclear for granted and have not done any maintenance and they are treating their reactor pretty badly. In 2015 they literally wanted to force the whole fleet down and basically prevented maintenance on reactors.

Worse then that, the French government literally forced the utility to invest large amounts of money in solar, that introduced grid instability that then again the French nuclear fleet had to manage.

Next the French also forced the utility to sell huge amounts of nuclear capacity to fossil fuel power so they could use it for stability. Then when the energy crisis hit, the utility was forced to buy it back at absurd prices. This cost them billions, all on the back of the nuclear fleet.

The French treat their nuclear reactor fleet like the giving tree. They were spoiled from what was done in the 70-90s and then basically turned anti-nuclear, failing to make any progress.

They completely stopped building new plants, and lost all that knowlage. The french energy and British minister even both lied to their own governments to get both governments to not support nuclear and they were proud of it (they should go to prison for that).

And of course instead of building next generation reactors that had the potential to be cheaper, the French left killed that reactor and now they are back building PWRs.

The French fleet suffers from 30 years of mismanagement but the reality of the situation is that France is in a much better place then anybody. Nuclear has given them 50 years of low energy prices. Even if you assume that the government spend some money in the 70s, the idea that this was not worth it is absurd. 50 years without coal dust in the air, 50 years of stable electricity, 50 years of low prices. Nuclear paid of for France in a big way.

The French fleet still has huge potential, its not aging out. PWR can run 80-100 years just fine. Some US plants are being certified for 80 years now and there is no indication that extension to 100 years is not possible. If they just did some basic steps that have been done in most other countries, they could increase capacity to 95+% and they could increase output by 15%. Even Germany did those things (ironically the Germans were actually much better at running nuclear plants). That is 30 years of neglect by French government and their idiotic anti-nuclear policies.

Instead of building intermittent solar, an utterly idiotic idea that will just hurt the reactor fleet. They should simply upgrade their existing fleet and start a program to build 10 extra reactor. If they actually did that, like the did in the 70s, starting many reactors in a short timespan it would be fine. As the example (that you conveniently ignore) in UEA shows. The first one is painful, after that you finish them faster and faster.

In fact, with Poland, the Baltics, and Sweden and potentially other nations turning pro nuclear now, they could likely make a European agreement to build a whole bunch of new reactors. Poland alone need like 30 reactors and nuclear is the only way forward for Poland, and the Polish government has started to realize that.

You point out the French problems, but you ignore the many 100s of billions that Germany is now paying to shield its economy. And you still trying to tell me nuclear is a bad deal, that laughable. Being one of the states with nuclear in Europe is vastly better then being without, France, Switzerland, Sweden, Finland.