German environmentalists won a battle in the fight against nuclear power, when a court ruled energy giant RWE couldn't extend the operating life of one nuclear plant by transferring unused capacity from another.
Amid an ongoing struggle over the future of nuclear power in Germany, a German court ruled that RWE could not extend production at its Biblis A nuclear reactor longer than originally foreseen by German law.
A malfunctioning transformer led to an unintentional shutdown of the emergency power system of an offline nuclear plant in northern Germany which had been the scene of numerous glitches in the past, press reports said Thursday.
The cause of the breakdown was a defect electronic card but it did not have any impact on the operations of the plant, said the operator of the Brunsbuettel nuclear reactor which has been deactivated since the summer of 2007.
Belarus counts on foreign loans in order to build the first nuclear power plant, Belarus Partisan quotes Viktar Marakhin, the deputy chairman of the Budget, Finances and Tax Policy Committee at the House of Representatives, as saying.
ESSEN, Germany (Thomson Financial) - RWE AG said it is restarting block A of its Biblis nuclear plant after being shut down for one and a half years due to technical faults.
STOCKHOLM, Feb 7 (Reuters) - Utility Vattenfall is putting a string of nuclear mishaps behind it and sees a bright future for atomic power in Europe, although it cannot yet say when its hobbled German plants will be back online.
"You should be a little humble and not overconfident but we have taken a lot of measures and we are definitely on the right track to be the benchmark of our industry," Lars Josefsson, chief executive of the Swedish state-owned firm, told Reuters.
STOCKHOLM, Feb 7 (Reuters) - Vattenfall Chief Executive Lars Josefsson said on Thursday he was not prepared to estimate when the Brunsbuettel and Kruemmel nuclear plants in Germany would come back on line.
Josefsson told a conference call on Vattenfall's 2007 results he was "not prepared to give any estimation" on when the plants, jointly owned with E.ON, would come back on line.
FRANKFURT, Feb 4 (Reuters) - A fire started at Vattenfall Europe's currently closed Kruemmel nuclear plant in northern German but was quickly put out by the plant's own fire brigade on Monday, the operator and local government said.
No radioactive substances had been released and all relevant authorities had been informed, Vattenfall said in a statement.
Germany's energy sector is in turmoil -- under pressure from foreign producers and facing tough choices as the government cracks down on dirty coal-fired plants and takes nuclear plants Off-line. But profits are still up -- for now.
Jan. 28 (Bloomberg) -- RWE AG, Germany's second-largest utility, said its Biblis A nuclear reactor will remain stopped longer than previously planned.
The 1,167-megawatt plant is now expected to start between Feb. 6 and Feb. 8, the Essen-based utility said today on its Web site. The facility had been scheduled to come on line between Jan. 29 and Jan. 31.
By Galina Stolyarova, the St. Petersburg Times
As 2,000 tons of radioactive cargo arrived at St. Petersburg’s port from Germany on Thursday, environmental groups took to the streets to inform city residents about the growing imports of nuclear materials and the dangers the trade imposes.
The MV Schouwenbank cargo ship, carrying containers with a total of 2,000 tons of depleted uranium hexafluoride, came from the Gronau uranium enrichment facility that belongs to Urenco Deutschland. The radioactive load on board the ship is due to be sent by rail to the town of Novouralsk in Siberia for reprocessing and storage.
