PARIS, July 21 (Reuters) - French power company EDF said it might allocate half of its Reseau de Transport d'Electricite (RTE) power grid to a portfolio of assets set up to fund the dismantling of nuclear reactors.
Under a 2006 law on financing nuclear expenses, EDF must build up a portfolio of dedicated assets to meet the future costs of decommissioning nuclear power plants and storing radioactive waste.
WARSAW (IDN) - Backed by the U.S. and France, Poland is set to tread the nuclear path and hopes to start generating atomic power by 2021. Presently, coal accounts for over 93 percent of the eastern European country's electricity, demand for which is expected to double by 2025.
A four-stage plan announced by Hanna Trojanowska, the government's Plenipotentiary for Nuclear Energy, envisages appropriate legislation by the end of 2010; site, technology and construction arrangements between 2011 and 2013; technical plans and site works in 2014 and 2015; and construction from 2016 to 2020.
Construction of Electricite de France SA’s EPR nuclear reactor at Flamanville in Normandy is running about 24 months late, Le Figaro reported, citing an unidentified person.
EDF’s director in charge of the project, Herve Machenaud, responded that progress is still being evaluated, the newspaper said.
The decision of France's AREVA to take a EUR400mn charge on its Finnish nuclear reactor project, combined with a planned French nuclear plant shutdown is hurting AREVA's bottom line.
After state-owned AREVA, the world's largest uranium miner, announced last week it would take a 400 million euros (US$491mn) charge due to cost overruns at its Finnish nuclear plant project, Standard & Poor's Monday downgraded the company to a `BBB+' rating, citing continued weakened profitability.
A £15bn international bid to harness the fusion process that powers the Sun is facing a major funding crisis. Scientists have revealed that the cost of the International Thermonuclear Experiment Reactor (Iter) has trebled from its original £5bn price tag in the past three years. At the same time, financial crises have beset all the nations involved in the project.
Nuclear safety authorities in four countries are assessing the significance of undocumented welding on primary circuit piping for the EPR reactor under construction at Olkiluoto-3, Petteri Tiippana, director of the nuclear reactor regulation department at the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority STUK, told Platts in an interview Thursday.
But Tiippana said that contrary to a statement made Wednesday by Marie-Pierre Comets, a commissioner of French nuclear safety authority ASN, regulators from Finland, France, the UK and the US are not preparing a joint statement on the piping qual
Brussels is against member states exporting their nuclear waste to countries outside the EU or to store it in joint sites, energy commissioner Gunther Oettinger said, as the commission is working on a set of common safety standards for this dangerous material.
"It is the duty of national politicians to do their homework," Mr Oettinger told Financial Times Deutschland in an interview published on Wednesday (10 March). The German commissioner warned against common storage sites, as well as exporting the radioactive material outside the EU, for instance Russia.
Member states want a change in timetable but other investors oppose any delay to project.
The French nuclear industry is in turmoil as uranium supplies have dried up and the treatment of spent fuel has been blocked amid an increasingly bitter row between the heads of its two main state operators.
EDF, the electricity group that runs 58 reactors in France, said that Areva, the nuclear energy group, had stopped uranium deliveries on January 4 and was refusing to take away spent fuel for reprocessing.
Areva is weighing whether to bring out cheaper, less sophisticated nuclear reactors after its flagship EPR lost out to a low-cost South Korean rival in one of the biggest civil tenders last year.
Top management at the French group last week launched a review of its product range to determine whether Areva should reintroduce the simpler second-generation CPR1,000 reactors - which it stopped building 20 years ago - for client countries that are new to nuclear power.
