Nuclear power in Europe

PARIS, April 27 (Reuters) - The next generation of nuclear reactors being developed in countries such as France, Russia, China and Japan may not be safer than those being built today, French nuclear safety watchdog IRSN said on Monday.

In a study of six future reactor designs being worked on by the U.S.-led "Generation IV International Forum", the IRSN said only the sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR) model was far enough along in the development process to envisage building a prototype during the first half of this century.

Nuclearelectrica, the company that runs Romania’s sole nuclear power plant, located in Cernavoda, has chosen China General Nuclear Power Corporation (CGN) as its investor for the development of two new nuclear reactors.

The project is worth of some 6.5 billion euro, according to company sources.

The Chinese company was the only bidder in the tender procedure organised by Nuclearelectrica.

Russia’s nuclear agency Rosatom has said that negotiations are still underway on expanding Ukraine’s Khmelnitsky Nuclear Power Plant despite reports this week that Ukraine had cancelled the project.

As tensions mounted in Ukraine yesterday, with its government announcing the capture of nine Russian soldiers on Ukrainian territory, a Rosatom representative told Russian news agency RIA Novosti that it had not received any notice about Ukraine’s pulling out of the construction project to build the third and fourth power units at the plant, and that both sides are continuing negotiations.

Westinghouse, the Japanese-US atomic group, is pressing the EU to introduce competition rules that will break eastern Europe’s dependence on Russian nuclear fuel.

While the crisis in Ukraine has focused attention on Europe’s vulnerability to a cut in supplies of gas from Russia, Westinghouse argues that Brussels must also respond to similar security risks posed by Moscow’s control of nuclear fuel in the eastern EU.