GENEVA: A highly radioactive substance, emitting in some places radiation 100 times the permitted amount, has been discovered in Switzerland, local media reported on Sunday, adding that authorities had covered it up for 18 months.
Swiss weeklies Le Matin Dimanche and SonntagsZeitung reported that federal, regional and local officials decided not to reveal the fact that they had found radium deposits in an old dump in the town of Bienne so as not to scare the 50,000 local inhabitants.
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.
The controversial Mühleberg nuclear power plant will be forced to shut down in the first half of next year unless it can present an acceptable maintenance plan.
The Federal Administrative Court yesterday ruled in favor of residents around the plant, who challenged an unlimited permit granted to Mühleberg by federal environment officials in 2009.
The justification by federal officials was the fact the plant would be under constant observation of the Federal Nuclear Safety Inspectorate.
BRUSSELS, March 6 (Reuters) - European Union safety tests on nuclear plants should be completed by around the middle of the year as time is needed to ensure they are thorough enough, EU Energy Commissioner Guenther Oettinger said.
In comments ahead of the anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear disaster on March 11, Oettinger said stress tests would be completed "not later than summer".
BERN — The Swiss government on Wednesday recommended to parliament that the country's five nuclear power plants should not be replaced as they age, leaving them to be phased out by 2034.
The move, to be accompanied by a switch to more renewable energy, follows Switzerland's decision to suspend plans to replace its nuclear power stations in the wake of the Fukushima accident in Japan in April.
MOSCOW — The Russian nuclear industry has profited handsomely from building reactors in developing countries, including India, China and Iran. Now it is testing the prospect of becoming a major supplier to the European Union, too.
Constant hold-ups, skyrocketing costs, faulty construction…Finland’s new Olkiluoto reactor, touted as the great white hope for Europe’s nuclear sector, is looking more and more like a great white elephant – and casting a fat black shadow over the whole industry.
A study to investigate whether living close to a nuclear power plant increases the risk of childhood cancer is being co-financed by electricity companies.
The decision to allow the firms, Axpo and BKW Energy, to fund around a quarter of the SFr820,000 ($672,000) study raises questions about whether they will try to influence the results, due to be published in 2011.
Persuading local residents that they should nuclear waste in their backyard is not an easy job. But that’s exactly what officials from the Federal Energy Office are doing. They are touring the country, holding information sessions in the regions identified as possible storage sites. One of the candidates is Wellenberg. That particularly upsets voters in canton Nidwalden since they have twice turned down a proposal to build a nuclear waste repository in Wellenberg. Vincent Landon went to a public meeting in Stans and has this report.
Swiss electricity companies, Axpo and BKW Energy, are submitting plans to replace the country's oldest nuclear plants with two new facilities.
The firms confirmed on Thursday they would be filing an initial application with the Federal Energy Office for licences to replace two reactors at Beznau in canton Aargau and Mühleberg in canton Bern.
