PARIS (Reuters) - France's nuclear safety authority (ASN) said on Thursday it had provisionally classified a leak of liquid containing uranium on a site in southeastern France earlier this week at level one of the INES nuclear scale.
The International Nuclear Event Scale (INES), used to measure the potential danger of incidents at nuclear installation, has seven levels, the lowest of which is zero.
Debates about climate change at the G-8 meetings in Japan and this week's mishap at a French nuclear facility have Germans revisiting the benefits and dangers of nuclear energy. Deep national divisions on the issue are reflected on the editorial pages.
Germans are conflicted about nuclear energy, and amazingly so. In fact, according to a survey released Wednesday by the Forsa polling agency, exactly 46 percent of Germans are for -- and 46 percent of Germans are against -- extending the operating life of the country's nuclear reactors past the date 15 years from now when a nuclear phaseout is supposed to be completed.
PARIS, July 9 (Reuters) - French nuclear firm Areva said on Wednesday that a leak of liquid containing uranium from a site in southeastern France was smaller than initially thought.
Areva said late on Tuesday that 30 cubic metres of liquid containing uranium, which was not enriched, was accidentally poured on the ground and into a river at the Tricastin nuclear site.
MARSEILLE -- An accidental spillage of waste containing uranium occurred Tuesday at one of France's top nuclear plants but authorities said there was no immediate cause for concern, authorities said.
Some 30 cubic meters (over 1,000 cubic feet) of effluents containing 12 grams (easily less than half an ounce) of uranium per liter spilled out at the Tricastin Nuclear Power Centre in Bollene in southern France.
BERLIN, July 8 (IPS) - Confirmation that radioactive brine has been leaking for two decades from a German underground deposit for nuclear waste is yet another blow to the idea that nuclear power can safely increase electricity generation and simultaneously reduce emissions.
Radioactive leaks from the nuclear waste deposit Asse II near Braunschweig in Lower Saxony, some 225 km southwest of Berlin, were first discovered in 1988. The state-owned Helmholtz Institute for
Scientific Research, which operates the centre, officially admitted the leaks only Jun. 16, under pressure from the German press.
French energy major Suez and nuclear engineering company Areva have signed an agreement, giving Suez a 5% ownership interest in the company that holds the Georges Besse II uranium enrichment plant.
The facility, built by Areva at the Tricastin site in France's Drome department, is based on ultra centrifuge technology. Suez, through its energy services business line, is building the electrical installations, and supplying the fluid management systems and the HVAC and process cooling equipment of the new plant, which is scheduled for startup in 2009.
LE CREUSOT, July 3: President Nicolas Sarkozy announced on Thursday that France will build a second third-generation EPR nuclear plant, arguing that nuclear power was France’s best answer to soaring energy prices.
“We are going to build a new EPR nuclear reactor, separate from the one in Flamanville,” Sarkozy said in a speech on energy policy as he visited an ArcelorMittal steel factory in central France.
PARIS, July 4 (Reuters) - French alternative power supplier Poweo on Friday said it was interested in taking part in the construction of new-generation European Pressurised nuclear Reactors (EPR) in France.
"Poweo has long expressed its interest in co-investing in an EPR, and today confirms its interest in being associated either to the Flamanville site under construction, or to the new project along with other energy players involved," the company said in a statement.
Decades of investment in civilian nuclear power puts france in the energy catbird seat.
PARIS (Reuters) - Greenpeace France activists on Wednesday blocked for the second day the entrances of three of the four quarries used by EDF to build its new-generation nuclear reactor, the environmentalist group said.
But French power group EDF said the action was not preventing building of the 1,600-megawatts reactor.
