Dominion's four Virginia nuclear units have reactor pressure vessels made by the same manufacturer that supplied a Belgian reactor shut down because of possible vessel cracking, a Dominion spokesman said Friday.
Dominion is following developments in Belgium, but has not been notified by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission of any information related to the incident, Richard Zuercher said.
The discovery of possible cracks in a Belgian nuclear reactor should trigger urgent testing around the EU, but such decisions are for national governments to take, a European Commission spokeswoman said on Thursday.
"National authorities will conduct tests, that seems obvious," said Marlene Holzner, spokeswoman for EU energy commissioner Guenther Oettinger. "The European Commission can make recommendations, but it can't make them binding," she stressed.
German utility EnBW will not file a legal complaint at the Constitutional Court [Bundesverfassungsgericht] against the German government's nuclear exit bill, the company said Monday.
Following intensive legal consultation, the company has been advised that due to its ownership structure it may lack the right to file such a complaint, it said.
(BRUSSELS) - France, Britain, Poland and the Czech Republic rejected a report Friday that they want nuclear energy to receive subsidies similar to the ones enjoyed by renewable energies.
The German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported earlier that those four countries sent letters outlining their request to Brussels ahead of a meeting by European Union energy ministers next week.
The German government ill consider setting up a publicly administered fund to manage the disposal of nuclear waste from its power plants, environment minister Norbert Röttgen said following the publication of a Greenpeace report on Wednesday.
Greenpeace has called for a public fund because it fears German nuclear operators Eon, RWE, EnBW and Vattenfall may go bankrupt or try to wriggle out of their obligations after 2022, when the last of Germany’s reactors are due to close.
At a time when Germany's solar industry is suffering from weakened political support, the Technical Inspection Association, TÜV, has uncovered rusted radioactive waste barrels in the already inoperative Brunsbüttel nuclear plant in northern Germany.
The nuclear power plant, which was shut down last year has an underground storage of approximately 500 barrels of low and intermediate levels of radioactive waste from the reactors. In order to move the waste to end-disposal point, Schacht Konrad repository in Lower Saxony, the material has to be transferred to cast iron containers. Amidst this process, TÜV North made the discovery of rusted barrels.
PARIS, Feb 10 (Reuters) - French weekend prices jumped early on Friday as a second unplanned nuclear outage within 12 hours caused panic in the market about a supply shortage, but prices for next week were steady as warmer weather was expected to ease demand pressure.
French baseload power for Saturday delivery traded nearly twice as high as in the neighbouring German market at 100.00 euros, after EDF's 1,300 Cattenom 2 nuclear reactor went offline unexpectedly overnight, tightening supply margins already under strain from high winter demand.
The government's energy policy took another blow on Friday as major energy provider RWE reviewed whether to scale down or abandon its UK nuclear programme.
The German-owned utility, which owns the npower supply business, has started an internal probe of its plans to construct two possible atomic power stations at Wylfa in Wales and Oldbury in Gloucestershire.
German industrial and engineering conglomerate Siemens is to withdraw entirely from the nuclear industry.
The move is a response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in March, chief executive Peter Loescher said.
He told Spiegel magazine it was the firm's answer to "the clear positioning of German society and politics for a pullout from nuclear energy".
Some 800m below the town of Gorleben, northern Germany, salt glistens like ice underfoot.
The man in charge of the nation’s nuclear waste is walking through caverns carved into a huge salt formation that could one day entomb 17,000 tonnes of highly radioactive detritus.
