The wreckage of the old Russian cruiser “Murmansk” has been stranded outside to coast of Finnmark in northern Norway for 15 years. Recent investigation has revealed that there is radioactive substances inside the ship.
Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten printed the story about radioactive “Murmansk” last Friday, and it has led to a massive national media attention in Norway on the environmental hazard it seems to represent.
Russia and the European Union will embark on a new round of negotiations to lift hidden quotas on Russia's nuclear exports in September 2008 during the Russia-EU summit, the head of Russia's state nuclear corporation Rosatom, Sergei Kiriyenko, said today. He reiterated that the two sides were currently negotiating a new cooperation agreement. In addition, the EU presidency is currently held by France, Europe's largest nuclear power producer and consumer. It's time to step up talks on the matter, Kiriyenko noted.
ELEKTROSTAL, July 29 (Itar-Tass) -- Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has taken a look at technology of nuclear fuel production for nuclear power plants during his visit to the machine-building plant Elemash on Tuesday.
He was shown the whole technological chain – from production of “nuclear tablets” to heat clusters.
The plant’s director general Oleg Kryukov said “this is wholly our production - design, software and drawings; we buy parts abroad”.
A number of countries in central, eastern and southeastern Europe plan to build new nuclear power reactors or extend the life of existing ones to meet growing domestic demand and replace ageing power capacity.
The plans mirror a worldwide nuclear boom as part of the solution to climate change.
Flush with cash from energy exports, Azerbaijan is preparing to build its first nuclear reactor. Government scientists and officials tout the project as a sign that the country is now poised to flex its research muscles, but some ecologist warn of potential risks to the health and welfare of nearby population centers.
In June, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) issued a preliminary agreement for the construction of a 10-15 megawatt nuclear reactor outside of Baku for research purposes. The $119-million reactor will operate under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute for Radiation Problems, which specializes in nuclear energy research.
MOSCOW (Reuters) - The British ambassador to Moscow and two of his diplomats were refused entry to a UK-funded nuclear fuel storage facility in Russia when they turned up on a scheduled visit, an embassy spokesman said on Friday.
Ambassador Anthony Brenton was in the Arctic port of Murmansk on Thursday to visit a British navy ship that was there to take part in a Russian Naval Day celebration.
July 25 (Bloomberg) -- Hale Oguz blames the cancer deaths of six relatives on the Chernobyl disaster across the Black Sea more than 20 years ago. Now she's fighting plans for a nuclear plant near her home in Sinop on Turkey's northern coast.
''Chernobyl isn't history for us; it's very fresh,'' said Oguz, 54, as she walked her two dogs on a ridge overlooking the forested peninsula where the government plans a reactor. ''We are about to turn this paradise into a hell.''
300 tons of spent fuel in Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan's military forces this summer held a training exercise to thwart a fake terrorist assault on a Soviet-built nuclear facility near Almaty, the country's former capital located on its southeastern border.
In the exercise, a reactor was the simulated target of terrorists trying to steal some of the deadliest nuclear material ever made. It came, by no coincidence, as U.S. and Kazakh officials put the finishing touches on a plan to move 300 tons of used nuclear fuel from a decommissioned Soviet nuclear reactor near the port city of Aktau on the Caspian Sea not far from Iran.
The 35 year old reactor at the Kola Nuclear Power Plant last week got the authorities’ blessing for another ten years of service.
The reactor is the oldest of the four reactors at the Kola NPP, Russia’s northernmost nuclear power plant. According to Rosatom, the company which is running all of Russia's nine NPPs, the reactor will now produce power until year 2018.
WASHINGTON -- Bulgaria has sent its remaining highly enriched uranium to Russia for safeguarding from terrorist or other potential misuse.
Nearly 14 pounds of the spent fuel were received Thursday at a Russian nuclear facility, the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration announced. A first shipment of 37.3 pounds of fresh uranium fuel was sent to Russia in December 2003.
