(FORTUNE Magazine) – 'An island of freshness in a stormy world" was how Francois Mitterrand once described Anne Lauvergeon, the civil servant he appointed in 1990 to help him prepare for international summits. A decade later, Lauvergeon is in the thick of one of the world's stormiest industries. As head of Cogema, she presides over a company with 20,000 employees, revenues last year of $5.61 billion, $166 million in net income, and a controversial business portfolio: nuclear reprocessing, uranium enrichment, and mining.

A physical sciences graduate of the elite Ecole Nationale Superieure des Mines, which prepares its pupils to be captains of industry, Lauvergeon held a series of planning and administrative jobs in France's state-dominated heavy-industry sector during the 1980s. After leaving the public sector in 1995, she spent two years as a partner in the Paris office of Lazard Freres before taking charge of international operations at Alcatel, the French telecom group. She was appointed to the Cogema post last year by the socialist government of Lionel Jospin to replace Jean Syrota, an old-time French nuclear functionary who never understood the need to make the case for nuclear power to an increasingly skeptical public.

Although France is considerably more comfortable with nuclear energy than most European countries, generating about three-quarters of its power from it, opposition is on the rise. (The country's Green Party won almost 10% of the votes in last year's European elections.) Still, Lauvergeon has earned the grudging respect of one of Cogema's main adversaries. "For her, the nuclear industry is not a religion, it's a business," observes Jean-Luc Thierry of Greenpeace. "She's a very good politician, and a very difficult opponent."

Nuclear reprocessing is not a high-growth business; Lauvergeon is unlikely to win raves for innovation from the business press. But if she doesn't do her job right, the lights could go out in the Continent's second-biggest economy: That is power in the most fundamental sense.

--R.T.