Nuclear power in Europe

Bulgaria's power grid operator the National Electricity Company (NEC) launched the final round of talks with Germany's RWE and Belgium's Electrabel, who are bidding to become strategic investors in Belene nuclear power plant, sources close to the procedure said, as quoted by mediapool.bg on April 3.

NEC wants the two candidates to clarify their offers for a 49 per cent stake in the company that will build and run Belene. The two 1000MW reactors of the plant are scheduled to be connected to the power grid by 2014.

PRAGUE (Thomson Financial) - Czech President Vaclav Klaus reiterated support for the further use of nuclear energy in the Czech Republic after a meeting with the industry minister Wednesday, news agency CTK reported.

'If we want to have electric energy, we cannot get along without nuclear energy,' Klaus was quoted as saying.

The Thorp nuclear fuel reprocessing plant at Sellafield has restarted commercial operations three years after it was closed following a radioactive leak - a development that should ease the funding crisis at the government's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.

The Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant, or Thorp, at the nuclear complex in west Cumbria, is a large source of income for the owner NDA, which is responsible for cleaning up the UK's nuclear reactor sites and dealing with radioactive waste.

MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti commentator Tatyana Sinitsyna) - Ukrainian politicians have made one more move aimed at easing their dependence on Russia's nuclear fuel supplies.

In late March, Ukraine's nuclear power company Energoatom signed a five-year contract with U.S.-based Westinghouse Electric Company to provide nuclear fuel to three Ukrainian reactors at the Yuzhnoukrainsky nuclear power plant in 2011-2015.