ROME, Dec 16 2007 A first shipment of uranium bars left a disused nuclear plant in northern Italy on Sunday bound for France, where they will be reprocessed in Le Hague, Normandy, the ANSA news agency reported.
The 34 uranium bars -- the first 7.5 tonnes of 235 tonnes of waste to be sent to France for disposal -- were first loaded in two casks onto a truck under heavy guard, then placed on a special train for the journey across the Alps.
By Sami Torma
HELSINKI, Dec 10 (Reuters) - Finland is pressing ahead with construction of its fifth nuclear reactor but the plant has faced long delays and seems unlikely to herald a quick revival of Europe's atomic industry.
Construction of the reactor -- one of only two major atomic projects underway in largely nuclear-sceptical Western Europe -- was originally scheduled to start in 2009 but construction delays and rising costs have now pushed that back to 2011.
Fri Dec 7, 2007 2:13pm GMT
BRUSSELS, Dec 7 (Reuters) - The European Commission gave a green light o the construction of a new, 4-billion-euro ($5.82 billion) nuclear power plant in Bulgaria with capacity of 2,000 megawatts, it said on Friday.
"The Commission has decided today to give a favourable opinion to the initiative of Natsionalna Elektricheska Kompania (NETC) of Bulgaria to build a new nuclear power plant at the site of Belene," the EU executive said in a statement.
December 04, 2007: 05:55 AM EST
PARIS, Dec. 4, 2007 (Thomson Financial) -- French anti-nuclear group Sortir du Nucleaire said it has mounted a legal challenge to the construction of EDF's Flamanville nuclear reactor and hopes to get work stopped.
EDF said the construction of the 1,650 megawatts EPR European pressurised water reactor, to be supplied by Areva, has started following ground preparation at the site.
The French-owned company Areva Resources Finland Ltd has applied for a claim to mine uranium in the municipality of Ylitornio (and Rovaniemi) in south-western Lapland Province.
By Isabel Gorst in Almaty
Kazakhstan has agreed to share its uranium resources with China in exchange for equity in Chinese nuclear power facilities in a strategic deal that brings together the world's fastest growing uranium and nuclear electricity producers.
Moukhtar Dzhakishev, the president of Kazatomprom, Kazakhstan's state-owned nuclear power company, said: "We will swap shares in uranium production for shares in Chinese atomic facilities... This is the first time China has allowed any foreign company to become a shareholder in its atomic power industry enterprises."
PARIS: Six months into his term, President Nicolas Sarkozy is aggressively pursuing a new policy to give Muslim countries access to nuclear power - and win lucrative contracts for France's energy champions in the process.
After signing a memorandum of understanding with Libya in the summer, Sarkozy struck a preliminary cooperation accord with Morocco last month. Diplomats say he is planning to discuss nuclear power during trips to Algeria in December and Saudi Arabia in January.
MADRID: European energy executives urged governments yesterday to work on the attitudes of their citizens so they can reopen the door to nuclear as a carbon-free source of power for the continent over coming decades.
Areva, the French state nuclear engineering group, has won a €5bn ($7.1bn) contract to build two nuclear power stations in China and supply their fuel for 20 years, the FT’s French sister paper, Les Echos, has learned.
DAKAR, 10 October 2007 (IRIN) - As the global demand for nuclear energy rises, analysts say the large amount of uranium in Niger is not a benefit to the country’s people but adds to the serious problems facing the region.
Niger, an impoverished country on the southern fringe of the Sahara desert, has one of the world’s largest reserves of uranium, the main source of nuclear fuel - but virtually nothing to show for it.
