inister of Economic Affairs Mauri Pekkarinen (Centre) warns that producing electricity for export in nuclear power plants could oblige Finland to accept imports of nuclear waste from abroad for storage in this country.
Last week, Minister of Finance Jyrki Katainen, who is also the chairman of the conservative National Coalition Party, called for a decision to authorise the construction of two new commercial nuclear reactors during the current Parliamentary term.
Serious shortcomings exist on the construction site of the new Olkiluoto nuclear reactor.
According to YLE current affairs programme, welding work has been carried out on the site without proper supervision. Neither has there been a qualified manager on site to direct the welding work for several months.
A qualified manager with responsibility for welding work must be on site at nuclear reactor construction site in order to meet with international standards.
The wild mushrooms tested in various parts of Finland still exhibit elevated levels of the radioactive caesium-137 that originates from the Chernobyl accident in 1986, while the caesium content of berries and animals has already become almost zero.
In addition to mushrooms, some hares and the predatory fish in small lakes still contain radioactive caesium.
Greenpeace has raised objections to the underground disposal of highly radioactive wastes from the new Olkiluoto 3 nuclear power unit.
In a statement issued on Wednesday, Greenpeace says that the nuclear power industry has plans to create a new underground disposal facility at the Olkiluoto site for the ""super waste" spent fuel that will be created by the Olkiluoto 3 nuclear power unit.
HELSINKI, July 30 (Reuters) - A small fire at the construction site for a new nuclear reactor in Olkiluoto, western Finland, spread to two floors of the reactor building, before it was put out, plant operator Teollisuuden Voima (TVO) said on Wednesday.
"A small amount of contruction materials had caught fire," TVO said in a statement, and added the fire was noticed at around 2:00 a.m (2300 GMT) and it was put out four hours later.
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”.
Bratislava, 16 July: Russian open joint-stock company TVEL has maintained its position in Slovakia, having won the tender for the supply of nuclear fuel for five power-generating units of the local Mochovce and Bohunice nuclear power plants until 2015, management company Slovenskie Elektrarne has reported.
These plants were built to Russian design and equipped with VVER-440 reactors.
Greenpeace Finland said in a statement Monday that Brussels-based lobby the European Renewable Energies Federation had brought an action before the European Court of Justice challenging the European commission's September 2007 declaration that a 570-million-euro guarantee granted by Coface, a privatised company that continues to act in its eponymous role as the French government's export guarantee agency, to Finnish utility Teollisuuden Voima (TVO) did not constitute illegal state aid.
Gordon Brown has committed Britain to a nuclear future, but can a new generation of reactors shed their murky, costly image in time to solve the looming energy crisis?
The newspaper Helsingin Sanomat reports that nuclear power companies in Finland are enjoying massive subsidies from emissions trading rights.
It reports that companies producing electricity with coal and other emission-causing fuels pass on the value of emission rights to their electricity prices, even though they receive the bulk of the rights free of charge. The paper calculates that of the 28 euro per tonne value of emissions rights, 22 euros are passed on to the price of each megawatt of electricity.
