Nuclear power in Europe

Catastrophic nuclear accidents, like Chernobyl in 1986 or Fukushima No. 1 in 2011, are very rare, we’re incessantly told, and their probability of occurring infinitesimal. But when they do occur, they get costly. So costly that the French government, when it came up with cost estimates, kept them secret.

But now the report was leaked to the French magazine, Le Journal de Dimanche. Turns out, the upper end of the cost spectrum of an accident at a single reactor at the plant chosen for the study, the plant at Dampierre in the Department of Loiret in north-central France, would amount to over three times the country’s GDP. Financially, France would cease to exist as we know it.

Proposed nuclear reactor in Somerset could be delayed by two years if competition directorate launches full-scale investigation

Britain's planned nuclear reactor programme could be delayed for years, and the nation's long-term energy policy thrown into turmoil, as European commission officials launch the first stage of a formal investigation into the use of taxpayer subsidies to support the development.

A catastrophic fire and explosion at a Total oil terminal could affect safety at the adjacent Gravelines nuclear power plant, an annual review of nuclear safety in France has revealed. Total and EDF will make changes to avoid effects on nuclear safety from a previously unconsidered scenario.

In the 1970s two major industrial developments began near the town of Gravelines in the Flanders region of northern France: An oil terminal began operation in 1974, followed one year later by construction of the first reactor at the adjacent Gravelines nuclear power plant. The terminal went on to expand through the 1970s and by 1985 the nuclear power plant was the largest in the world with six reactors in operation.

Wed 27/02/2013 - 16:13Workmen have unearthed a device that is believed to be a bomb dating from the Second World War on the grounds of the Belgian nuclear power plant at Tihange near the town of Huy (Wallonia).

The website L'Avenir reports that the Belgian army's bomb disposal unit, DOVO, attended the scene to make the device safe. The nuclear power plant's internal emergency plan was implemented as a precaution.