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Nuclear reactor turned off in Romania, 2nd time in a week

Friday, November 16, 2007

The Associated Press, November 14, 2007 - CONSTANTA, Romania: A nuclear reactor in Romania automatically switched off Wednesday for the second time in a week, officials said.

There was no danger to workers or to people living near the Cernavoda nuclear plant in eastern Romania, National Nuclear Electric Co. spokeswoman Mihaela Stiopol said.

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Greenpeace study warns cernavoda inhabitants of tritium dangers from nuclear power plant

Friday, November 2, 2007

Environmental group demands the Romanian Government to look at sustainable alternatives to nuclear power

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Bulgaria Doubles State Guarantees for Belene Nuke Construction

Monday, October 22, 2007

18 October 2007, Thursday

PM Stanishev (left) and Finance Minister Oresharski (right) have both backed the project to the hilt so far, and Bulgaria's low foreign debt allows the cabinet to underwrite the loans.

Bulgaria's cabinet decided on Monday to double the amount of debt it is willing to guarantee for the construction of the country's second nuclear power plant at Belene.

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Contaminated ground

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Oct 11th 2007 , rom The Economist print editio

The shadow of an old accident haunts Britain's nuclear revival
THIS is a big week in the government's attempt to rehabilitate nuclear energy. Eight months after a court ruled that its first public consultation on whether to build more reactors had been misleading and unfair, its second attempt finished on October 10th. For a government with (until recently) a reputation for slick public relations, that date looks ill-judged. For it also marks the 50th anniversary of a fire at the Windscale nuclear reactor in Cumbria that was, until Three Mile Island in 1979, the world's worst atomic accident (the Chernobyl explosion in 1986 dwarfs both).

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Cost of nuclear clean-up rises to £73bn

Thursday, October 11, 2007

The official cost of cleaning up 20 of Britain's nuclear facilities will be more than £73bn, 16% higher than estimated last year, according to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority yesterday. The latest rise in clean-up costs came as the government completed consultation on whether to proceed with a new generation of atomic plants, with one potential operator arguing there was a "moral imperative" to allow more to be built.

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Windscale: A nuclear disaster

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

By Paul Dwyer
Producer, Windscale: Britain's biggest nuclear disaster

Fifty years ago, on the night of 10 October 1957, Britain was on the brink of an unprecedented nuclear tragedy. A fire ripped through the radioactive materials in the core of Windscale, Britain's first nuclear reactor.

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EU not giving up on nuclear in quest for low-carbon future

Monday, September 24, 2007

With increasing energy-import dependency and the quest for climate-friendly energy production at the top of the EU's political agenda, the Commission last week (21 September) announced the creation of a new research platform to study 'sustainable' nuclear energy.

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EUR 3 billion price tag for construction delay on new reactor at Finland’s Olkiluoto NPP

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

ST. PETERSBURG - According to the Elfii consortium of large Finnish electricity users, a construction delay in an experimental new reactor design at Olkiluoto NPP will cost Nordic electricity users EUR 3 billion, the Finnish business daily Kauppalehti reported. Birthe Weijola, 12/09-2007 Elfi director Antti Koskelainen is quoted saying that the cost of the delay is comparable to the investment cost for the whole reactor.

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Finnish plant demonstrates nuclear power industry's perennial problems

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

By Alan Katz, Bloomberg News, September 6, 2007

Martin Landtman hunched forward in his shirtsleeves as a June storm on Finland's Baltic coast drenched the construction site of the world's most powerful nuclear reactor. As project manager for TVO, the joint venture buying the plant, Landtman has weathered far worse annoyances than rain.

Flawed welds for the reactor's steel liner, unusable coolant pipes and suspect concrete in the foundation already have pushed back the delivery date of the Olkiluoto-3 unit by at least two years.

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The UK’s Oldbury-2 reconnects to grid

Thursday, August 30, 2007

London (Platts)–24Aug2007The UK’s Oldbury-2 magnox reconnected to the grid August 23, operatorMagnox North said August 24. A fire and then turbine vibrations kept thereactor offline most of the time since May 30. Oldbury-2, one of the fourremaining operating magnox reactors, underwent a 23-month outage until May 27to determine the extent of graphite depletion in its core. It operated onlythree days before a May 30 fire on the non-nuclear side of the plant forcedits shutdown.

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