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.
French nuclear companies are hoping to play a central role in the government's plan to build a new generation of reactors. At home, however, the industry has been buffeted by a series of mishaps. Angelique Chrisafis reports from Bollène
PARIS (Reuters) - Around 100 staff at a nuclear power plant in southern France were contaminated with a low dose of radiation on Wednesday, power firm EDF said, the latest incident there after a case of uranium spillage two weeks ago.
EDF said in a statement that sensors detected a rise in the level of radiation while maintenance work was being carried out at the Tricastin site's reactor number four, which had been shut since July 12.
PARIS (AP) — Electricite de France says 15 workers were exposed to radioactive contamination while carrying out maintenance at a nuclear plant in the French Alps.
France's nuclear industry is under increased scrutiny following uranium leaks earlier this month. France depends on nuclear power for the majority of its electricity.
The credibility of the nuclear industry was shaken last night after the estimated cost of cleaning up Britain's atomic waste was raised by a further £10bn.
The latest clean-up estimate from the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) suggests the commonly accepted figure of £73bn should rise to £83bn. But the agency insisted that £10bn of income from generating and fuel reprocessing plants should also be taken into account.
PARIS (AFP) — Newly formed global energy giant GDF Suez of France is interested in nuclear power operator British Energy but only if the company is split up and sold off site by site.
"If the plan remains to sell British Energy in one go, then it will be sold without us," said GDF Suez head Gerard Mestrallet in an interview with Les Echos daily to appear Thursday.
July 10 (Bloomberg) -- Christian Kunze pays French farmers to install camouflaged, shoebox-sized "power stalkers'' in fields near nuclear stations owned by Electricite de France SA, collecting data the world's biggest utility says is a secret.
His company, Powermonitor, plans to sell information about reactor starts and stops in France less than three years after Kunze fended off spying charges from EDF's German affiliate. Banks, hedge funds and traders will pay for such data to gain an edge in continental Europe's $565 billion power market.
MARSEILLE -- An accidental spillage of waste containing uranium occurred Tuesday at one of France's top nuclear plants but authorities said there was no immediate cause for concern, authorities said.
Some 30 cubic meters (over 1,000 cubic feet) of effluents containing 12 grams (easily less than half an ounce) of uranium per liter spilled out at the Tricastin Nuclear Power Centre in Bollene in southern France.
France's two biggest energy groups, EDF and GDF Suez, are vying to build the country's latest nuclear power plant, casting fresh doubt on their participation in Britain's planned nuclear renaissance.
Last week President Nicolas Sarkozy gave the go-ahead for a second new-generation European pressurised reactor (EPR) on an existing site. It will be France's 60th nuclear power plant.
LE CREUSOT, July 3: President Nicolas Sarkozy announced on Thursday that France will build a second third-generation EPR nuclear plant, arguing that nuclear power was France’s best answer to soaring energy prices.
“We are going to build a new EPR nuclear reactor, separate from the one in Flamanville,” Sarkozy said in a speech on energy policy as he visited an ArcelorMittal steel factory in central France.
