PRAGUE (AFP) — European power companies called Friday for urgent EU-wide moves to clear the way for new nuclear plants, stressing the security and climate change dangers of a failure to act.
"We have a barrel of oil costing 135 dollars a barrel, it is urgent to act. Industry cannot wait for a gradual approach to lead to convergence (in harmonised safety rules)," Electricite de France board member Bruno Lescoeur warned on the second, final day of the European Nuclear Energy Forum.
If you listen to the rhetoric, nuclear power is back. Smashing atoms will replace burning carbon-based coal, gas and oil. In the face of a disaster movie-like future of runaway climate change--bringing drought, floods, famine and social breakdown--carbon-free nukes are cast as the deus ex machina to save us at the last minute.
Silvia Pavoni reports on the potential and pitfalls of private finance for the UK´s new nuclear power station building programme.
Politicians are famous for announcing grand policy initiatives that have not been properly thought through and that then prove unworkable in practice. The UK government´s new nuclear power programme might be seen as one such ill thought out venture. It wants to build 10 new nuclear plants, replacing existing ones that are due to close, and proposes that the financing should be fulfilled entirely by the private sector. The first plant is planned to become operational by 2017 and the government hopes that the scheme will increase nuclear energy supply from the current 19% of national consumption.
Paris: French nuclear experts on Tuesday said damage to nuclear facilities close to the epicentre of China's massive earthquake could not immediately be ruled out.
The Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN) said it was unlikely that China's four nuclear power plants -- Daya Bay and Lingao in the south, Qinshan in the east and Tianwan in the northeast -- had been badly damaged.
It turns out nuclear power’s biggest worry isn’t Yucca Mountain, Three Mile Island ghosts, or environmental protesters. It’s economics.
BRUSSELS, May 7 (Xinhua) -- The European Commission and the UN nuclear watchdog on Wednesday signed a joint statement on enhanced cooperation in nuclear energy.
The purpose of the joint statement is to highlight the mutual will to further strengthen cooperation, emphasize the specific priority areas and provide for regular high-level meetings to facilitate this reinforced cooperation, said the commission, the executive body of the European Union (EU).
Is nuclear power the answer to the energy crisis? Ian Sample explains how it works - and how we get the awful side-effects of bombs and waste.
The nuclear industry in Britain is killing billions of fish every year and taking a devastating toll of stocks, an Oxford University academic suggests.
The impact can be so severe in the worst-affected regions of the seas around Britain that death rates are equivalent to half the commercial catch for some species.
PARIS: As concern over global warming grows, the nuclear industry is stepping up efforts to portray itself as a viable source of clean energy. Governments are increasingly receptive, including the British government, which last year backed the construction of a new generation of nuclear power plants.
Antinuclear environmentalists say that approach is like avoiding an oncoming truck by driving off a precipice.
ScienceDaily (Mar. 5, 2008) — Nuclear energy production must increase by more than 10 percent each year from 2010 to 2050 to meet all future energy demands and replace fossil fuels, but this is an unsustainable prospect. According to a report published in Inderscience's International Journal of Nuclear Governance, Economy and Ecology such a large growth rate will require a major improvement in nuclear power efficiency otherwise each new power plant will simply cannibalize the energy produced by earlier nuclear power plants.
