PARIS (Reuters) - Tests on water tables under French nuclear sites, after a major uranium leak in the south earlier this year, showed there were no significant environmental or health dangers, a government committee said on Friday.
Plant operator Areva said in July that 30 cubic meters of liquid containing non-enriched uranium was accidentally poured onto the ground and into a river at the Tricastin nuclear site in southeastern France.
Sofia. German company RWE will from now on decide whether to grant the investment promised.
The signing of the shareholding contract for Belene nuclear power plant through which German company RWE will gain 49% of the future plant's stakes, was postponed. Instead of end-October 2008 when the last deadline expired, the paper will most likely be endorsed in December 2008, the project's main investor National Electricity Company (NEC) said, The Banker Weekly reported.
A new generation of nuclear plants requires a new generation of nuclear physicists
MUCH more than worries about safety, the biggest obstacle to the revival of nuclear power in Britain is cost. Atom-splitting is expensive, with brochure prices for reactors starting around £3 billion, and dizzying lurches in oil prices make it hard to evaluate the industry’s competitiveness. “Nuclear power works for oil prices above $60 a barrel,” said a government adviser confidently in early October, when it was still near $100. As The Economist went to press, the price of oil was hovering around $64, barely above that margin of safety.
SOFIA, Nov 6 (Reuters) - Bulgaria urged German power utility RWE on Thursday to reject pressure from green activists and approve a deal to become a strategic investor in a planned 4.0 billion euro ($5.16 billion) nuclear power plant.
Deputy Energy Minister Yavor Kuyumdzhiev said Bulgaria will wait for RWE's supervisory board approval of the deal until the spring of 2009, when construction of the 2,000 megawatt Belene plant should start.
HELSINKI, Nov 6 (Reuters) - Finland set targets on Thursday to rein in power consumption and raise the share of renewable energy to meet European Union goals for 2020, and flagged the possible need for more nuclear power.
"The starting point for us is that Finland will on average produce enough electricity for domestic use," Minister of Economic Affairs Mauri Pekkarinen said in a statement.
ALMATY. Nov 6 (Interfax) - Kazakhstan's national nuclear corporation, Kazatomprom, will be involved in the construction of new nuclear power plants in China, Kazatomprom chief Mukhtar Dzhakishev told a press conference.
"Kazatomprom is embarking on a new line of business, which is helping to build nuclear power plants - in this case in China," Dzhakishev said.
Agreements on cooperation to revive Italy's nuclear sector and give LUKoil a foothold in the European refining sector topped a slew of deals signed Thursday, overseen by President Dmitry Medvedev and visiting Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
But Berlusconi, renowned for impolitic and controversial statements, grabbed the most attention with comments about Barack Obama, describing the U.S. president-elect as "young, attractive and even suntanned."
A government bill overturning Italy's moratorium on nuclear power has been approved by the lower chamber of the country's government and has been passed for approval to the country's Senate.
The bill, approved by the Camera dei Deputati on 4 November, was amended several times after much debate between the right-wing majority and the minority and also within the government itself. The amendments include a new deadline of 30 June 2009 for the government to find sites for new nuclear power plants, revised from the original deadline of December 2008 (the sites of Italy's shut down nuclear plants are no longer considered suitable); the establishment of a Nuclear Regulatory Agency, whose board will be named by the country's president in consultation with the prime minister and the government; and provision for the sites of the new plants to be subjected to military control if necessary.
POLICE officers who are called to protests outside Suffolk's nuclear power station will receive specialised training and equipment courtesy of those who own the reactor.
British Energy has given £10,000 to the county's police force to help them remove campaigners from the site at Sizewell.
The UK's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority has formally advised the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate - the country's nuclear safety regulator - that it plans to extend the operating life at Oldbury nuclear power station, the NDA said Wednesday.
