German energy companies are short of as much as 30 billion euros ($34 billion) of the money they need to set aside to build a safe disposal site for nuclear waste as part of the country's exit from nuclear power, Spiegel Online reported on Monday.
E.ON, RWE, EnBW and Vattenfall are due to switch off their nuclear plants by a 2022 deadline set by Chancellor Angela Merkel's government after the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011.
Energy group Delta, which is still in the hands of Zeeland local authorities, has hired merchant bank Morgan Stanley to investigate a potential merger or sale, the Financieele Dagblad says on Wednesday.
'We are taking a broad approach,' a spokesman told the paper. 'We can continue as an independent, merge or be sold off, and that could involve an international company.'
The Russian-developed and manufactured TVS Kvadrat (TVS-K) fuel will be destined for the Ringhals 3, pressurised water reactor (PWR) of Sweden. Russian nuclear fuel manufacturer- TVEL, a sister concern of Rosatom, for the first time in history to supply such fuel assembly for the western design reactors.
Under an agreement signed between TVEL and Swedish state-owned concern – Vattenfall, Russia to make the first shipment of TVS-Kvadrat in April for the Ringhals 3 NPP, Informed Valborg Bjorn, Head of the North-European subdivision of Vattenfall.
Swedish energy group Vattenfall is reportedly reclaiming losses resulting from the German government's decision last year to shut down older nuclear reactors. The claim is reportedly backed by the Swedish government.
The Swedish business daily Dagens Industri reported Friday that Vattenfall was seeking damages to the tune of about 3.5 billion euros ($4.6 billion).
Two nuclear-power plants majority-owned by Vattenfall AB, a state-owned Swedish power company, were targeted by Greenpeace activists, about 70 of whom broke into restricted areas.
The activists targeted the Ringhals plant on Sweden's west coast and the Forsmark facility on the east coast. Combined they produce about 36% of energy consumed in Sweden.
Vattenfall AB, the Nordic region’s biggest utility, applied to Swedish safety regulators to build one or two nuclear reactors to replace its older plants.
“There has been no investment decision,” Chief Financial Officer Ingrid Bonde said today. “It’s a very long process.”
The German government ill consider setting up a publicly administered fund to manage the disposal of nuclear waste from its power plants, environment minister Norbert Röttgen said following the publication of a Greenpeace report on Wednesday.
Greenpeace has called for a public fund because it fears German nuclear operators Eon, RWE, EnBW and Vattenfall may go bankrupt or try to wriggle out of their obligations after 2022, when the last of Germany’s reactors are due to close.
BERLIN (Dow Jones)--German utility Vattenfall Europe AG has again delayed the planned restart of its nuclear power plant Kruemmel by some six months, Chief Executive Tuomo Hatakka told Dow Jones Newswires Tuesday.
On the sidelines of the Handelsblatt energy conference in Berlin Hatakka also indicated that the company's second northern German reactor--Brunsbuettel--might not be restarted at all if a review of the two power plants shows that a recently introduced tax on nuclear fuel in Germany makes the reactor loss-making.
When Germany announced its plan to phase out nuclear power stations last month, shares in the big four German power companies rose. The agreement made with the German government would see Eon, RWE, EnBW and Vattenfall pay a nuclear-fuel rods tax of EUR2.3bn until 2016 - but the market had been expecting worse.
But today Moody's has warned that the impact of the tax might yet force a downgrade of the companies' credit ratings.
FRANKFURT, Oct. 4 (Reuters) - German utilities' gamble of sacrificing near-term profits in exchange for extending the lifespans of their 17 nuclear plants is pressuring shares and may misfire if the political situation changes.
Last month, the government agreed with the four operators of Germany's nuclear power plants to extend the plants' life by 12 years on average in exchange for at least 31 billions euros ($42.45 billion) of payments.
