PARIS/MADRID, March 14 (Reuters) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy has persuaded his Spanish counterpart to let EDF take a 15 to 18 percent stake in Spain's Iberdrola in exchange for control of some nuclear power plants in France, ABC newspaper reported.
Citing no sources, ABC said this solution would allow state-controlled EDF to gain a foot in Spain, and let Iberdrola add more nuclear power to its portfolio while Spain keeps the lid on building more nuclear plants at home.
PARIS, March 10 (Reuters) - France, the world's second largest producer of atomic energy, must act fast to avoid a shortage of skilled staff to run its reactors and win a role at the heart of a global nuclear revival.
An ageing workforce, a lack of courses and low enthusiasm among young engineers, for a field that is often seen as secretive or unsafe, all threaten France's ambitions for nuclear power.
"The ageing workforce issue is keeping countless CEOs awake at night," consultancy firm Capgemini said in a report titled "Preparing for the nuclear power renaissance".
As the government makes ever more enthusiastic pronouncements about new nuclear reactors for the UK, the outlook is brightening for British Energy, which owns the bulk of the country’s nuclear plants.
On Thursday, John Hutton, the business secretary, revealed in the Financial Times that the government would pull out all the stops to maximise expansion of nuclear power and would drop its previous commitment to holding a minimum 29.9 per cent stake in British Energy.
The UK is committed to a dramatic and rapid expansion of nuclear power, ensuring new stations generate "significantly" more of the country's electricity than the existing stock, according to John Hutton, the business secretary.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Hutton also dropped the UK government's previous commitment to maintaining a minimum 29.9 per cent stake in British Energy, the nuclear generator.
POWER companies are to be offered a new range of potential sites to construct nuclear power stations in Britain.
The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), a government agency in charge of the £70 billion-plus clean-up of the UK atomic legacy, is expected to open talks shortly.
The public will get the chance to hear the outline proposals for new nuclear power stations at Sizewell and Bradwell next month.
British Energy is arranging public meetings “to keep people informed on the decision-making process and to hear views on the impact this may have on the area”.
Companies building nuclear reactors in the UK will have to meet the full cost of their future closure and clean-up, setting money aside from day one, the government will say on Friday.
Following on from last month’s white paper on nuclear power, the government will on Friday set out the draft framework for how the decommissioning of new nuclear reactors would be paid for.
Several companies, including British Energy, EDF, Eon, RWE and Centrica, are looking at building reactors but have said they want more certainty on a range of issues before they are ready to invest, including decommissioning costs and the disposal of radioactive waste.
The Government is concerned that a lack of competition in the UK nuclear industry threatens to distort decision-making in the race to build a new generation of nuclear power plants.
In an interview with The Times, Malcolm Wicks, the Energy Minister, said the Government would look critically at British Energy’s ownership of eight of the most attractive UK sites for new reactors. “We want to see proper competition here,” he said. “We don’t want to see some sort of cagey deal between one company and another company . . . We have got to facilitate proper competition.”
LONDON, Feb 21 (Reuters) - British Energy's Torness-2 nuclear power reactor stopped just after midnight on Thursday and the shutdown was unplanned, a spokeswoman for the company said.
"We are working on the restart plan," she said on Thursday. "But we will do some additional maintenance work while the unit is off."
She would not say what had caused the 625-MW reactor, one of two at the power plant in Scotland, to stop. (Reporting by Daniel Fineren)
PARIS, Feb 20 (Reuters) - EDF said on Wednesday its nuclear output availability rate dropped by 3.4 percentage points to 80.2 percent in 2007 due to heavy works on its steam generators and low production levels at its Paluel plant.
