LONDON (Reuters) - A shortage of energy and water will cap future uranium mine expansion in Namibia, but the country hopes to ease the bottlenecks through desalination and a new coal-fired power plant, an industry body said on Wednesday.
The government has issued some 50 exclusive prospecting licenses for more uranium mining firms, but output of uranium is dependent on the availability of water.
LONDON, Sept 4 (Reuters) - Uranium enrichment companies in the United States and Europe have seen an increase in customer interest after the recent conflict involving Russia and Georgia, industry sources said on Thursday.
Nuclear reactors are dependent on reliable supplies of fuel, made from uranium ore that has been converted into a gas which in turn is enriched into nuclear fuel.
Expert accuses US Nuclear Regulatory Commission of shunning safe practice and hushing-up his independent guidance
THE accusation: "They refused to forward my questions to the applicant. They want[ed] me to water things down [and didn't] want me to criticise. I was not allowed to provide independent review." In this case 'they' is the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the 'applicant' is Shaw Areva Mox Services (SAMS), and the disgruntled tce quotee is Daniel Tedder, professor emeritus of chemical engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, US.
HELSINKI, Sept 1 (Reuters) - France's Areva submitted a claim to the Finnish government on Monday to search for uranium in northern Finland, the company said.
Areva Resources Finland said in a statement the exclusive, 5-year exploration claim was for a 108 sq km (41.7 square miles) parcel of land lying mostly in the municipality of Ranua in Lapland, 750 km north of Helsinki.
Aug. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Finland's Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority said today the supervision and ''safety culture'' of welding at the Olkiluoto-3 nuclear plant did not meet all of its standards and must be improved.
The agency, known as STUK, demanded changes after inspecting the site and interviewing workers this week, according to a statement posted on its Web site. The regulator said it found no quality problems that threaten the durability of the welds.
PARIS (AFP) — French nuclear group Areva is facing a 50 percent rise to the cost of building the world's first next-generation pressurised water reactor in Finland, the business daily Les Echos reported Thursday.
The cost of constructing the plant at Olkiluoto has risen from three billion to 4.5 billion euros (6.7 billion dollars), the paper reported citing an unidentified source.
PARIS: French nuclear engineering giant Areva said Wednesday it will invest €20 million (US$29.2 million) to improve health and environmental monitoring at a reactor complex that has been the site of a series of recent safety incidents.
The investment will also be used to find a new storage place for nuclear waste held at a site near the Tricastin complex that Areva acquired from France's Atomic Energy Commission in 2006, Areva said.
HELSINKI (Thomson Financial) - The Finnish government said Thursday it wanted the country's Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK) to clarify its inspection principles, following criticism of its work at a nuclear reactor building site.
'The (economy) ministry wants further reports from STUK on its inspection principles and precision, and how these compare to practices in other countries,' the Finnish employment and economy ministry, in charge of energy industry issues, said in a statement.
As the nuclear industry enjoys a global revival, Kazatomprom is positioning itself to overtake Cameco as the world's largest producer of uranium. It said in July that it expects to achieve this as early as next year, rather than in 2010 as originally planned.
The progress of Kazakhstan's national atomic company is to a large degree due to the vision of its charismatic president Mukhtar Dzhakishev, helped by the country's substantial uranium reserves and the Soviet technical legacy.
Electricity ratepayers' dollars in Tennessee as well as federal tax money are increasingly going to a company owned largely by the French government: the nuclear power conglomerate AREVA.
The company holds U.S. Department of Energy contracts for nuclear-related projects at major facilities such as Hanford, Wash., and Yucca Mountain, Nev., and others, including in Erwin, Tenn., and Aiken, S.C.
