BRUSSELS, March 12 (Reuters) - Belgian electricity company SPE said on Wednesday it had bought 635 megawatts of nuclear energy capacity from Suez's Electrabel, boosting its share of Belgium's nuclear market to some 15 percent.
SPE, partly owned by Gaz de France and Britain's Centrica, said it was a three-part deal.
(AP) SOFIA, Bulgaria — Bulgaria has shortlisted Germany's RWE Power and Belgian Electrabel SA as strategic investors in a second nuclear plant, the state-owned NEK power utility said Tuesday.
NEK is seeking investors for a stake of up to 49 percent stake in the Belene Power Company, which will own and operate the new nuclear power plant.
PARIS, March 10 (Reuters) - France, the world's second largest producer of atomic energy, must act fast to avoid a shortage of skilled staff to run its reactors and win a role at the heart of a global nuclear revival.
An ageing workforce, a lack of courses and low enthusiasm among young engineers, for a field that is often seen as secretive or unsafe, all threaten France's ambitions for nuclear power.
"The ageing workforce issue is keeping countless CEOs awake at night," consultancy firm Capgemini said in a report titled "Preparing for the nuclear power renaissance".
The completion of the third and fourth blocks at the Mochovce nuclear power plant in Slovakia can meet difficulties, reports Hospodarske Noviny daily. Apart from traditionally anti-nuclear oriented Austrian neighbour, objections are raised also by Green Fraction at the European Parliament. They say that Mochovce design and its equipment is not based on accident and earthquake safety considerations. In addition, they claim that Mochovce construction is far too advanced to be retrofitted to comply with international safety standards.
The recent war games in the Gulf with France, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are connected to French President Nicolas Sarkozy's nuclear diplomacy. Sarkozy has been leveraging France's leading civilian nuclear technology to gain diplomatic, commercial and military advantages with countries in the Middle East, as well parts of Africa and Asia.
Robin Pagnamenta in Oskarshamn, Sweden
Inside the cavernous hall of a nuclear storage plant in southern Sweden, an 18-tonne steel canister, bristling with tiny fins to draw out excess heat, is being hauled slowly through a hatch by a crane.
Packed with highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel from a reactor north of Stockholm, the canister is being made ready for 30 years of storage in pools sunk into the bedrock. Once it cools sufficiently, it will be placed permanently in a final repository deep underground.
By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor - Sunday, 9 March 2008 - From Sellafield, an ordinary, unarmed ferry is to transport weapons-ready plutonium – material that could easily be used to make a 'dirty bomb'
Weapons-ready plutonium that terrorists could easily make into a nuclear bomb is to be carried hundreds of miles down the west coast of Britain in an unarmed ship, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.
A row has blown up in the Netherlands over comments by the environment minister who said on Wednesday that she wants the construction of new nuclear power plants to meet extremely strict criteria.
Her high demands for security and radioactive waste means she would only accept the so-called fourth generation of nuclear reactors, according to various media reports. This would make it unlikely that new nuclear power plants could go online before 2030.
ANKARA, March 6 (Reuters) - Turkey's Constitutional Court rejected on Thursday a request by opposition parties to cancel a government plan to build the country's first nuclear power plant, paving the way for a tender process in the coming days.
The court's presiding judge, Hasim Kilic, told Reuters the court vetoed an article in the law that would have allowed foreign staff to be employed by the Turkish Atomic Institution, a move that may irk foreign companies planning to bid.
YEREVAN, March 6 (RIA Novosti) - The Armenian government authorized on Thursday the establishment of a joint venture with Russia for the additional prospecting of uranium deposits in the South Caucasus republic.
Russia's state nuclear corporation Rosatom and the Armenian environmental ministry agreed in February to set up a joint venture on a parity basis for the additional prospecting of Armenian uranium, which will be enriched in a specialized international center in Angarsk, East Siberia.
