Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. and Areva SA of France signed a $22 billion agreement today to build a nuclear power plant in Turkey, the first major order for Japan since the Fukushima disaster in 2011.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan met in Ankara to oversee the signing of the accord for the building of Turkey’s second nuclear plant in Sinop province on the Black Sea coast.
A nuclear reactor was shut down at Heysham Power Station after smoke was seen coming from the plant.
The Heysham 1 reactor was shut down at 6pm on Thursday as a precaution after smoke within some lagging on a turbine was spotted.
EDF, who run the station, said a dry powder extinguisher was used to deal with the smoke.
A prominent clean energy campaigner has been banned from the European Energy Forum after tweeting remarks made by the EU’s energy commissioner describing the UK’s plan to hand out long-term contracts to nuclear companies as “Soviet”.
Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger’s putdown of the €16.5-billion British plan will likely be met with furrowed brows in London, where the 35-40-year contracts have proved controversial to some because of their length, nature and the scale of the subsidy involved.
Britain is set to tackle a 60-year-old problem that has dogged successive governments: how to resolve the deadly legacy from the country's first generation of nuclear power plants.
The UK is home to the world's largest stockpile of plutonium, with more than 100 tonnes of the highly radioactive material.
The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, whose job it is to look after the plutonium, is preparing to give its recommendation on how the government should deal with the problem, with an announcement expected as early as next month.
EDF energy is cutting scores of jobs to control costs at the site of its proposed new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in Somerset. The company is in the middle of difficult negotiations with ministers over the level of public subsidy the new reactors will receive over the next 40 years but insisted the project is not being mothballed and that it is not "holding a gun to the government's head".
The company has already spent £800m on developing the £14bn project and lost its junior partner when Centrica pulled out in February. "As part of good project management, and to control costs, EDF Energy has taken steps to refocus its activities at its Hinkley Point C project," said a spokeswoman. "This reflects its priorities ahead of securing the financing necessary for the project."
SOFIA, Bulgaria — Officials say a turbo generator at Bulgaria’s only nuclear power station has been shut down due to a hydrogen leak in its cooling system but insist there is no danger to the public.
A statement Monday from the Kozloduy power plant said the component that was shut down was part of its conventional, non-nuclear unit. It said “there were no changes in the radioactivity level at the plant.”
Britain's energy security will be put at risk and future generations left to suffer with higher bills if ministers fail to agree a deal with EDF Energy to build Britain’s first new nuclear plant in a generation, the industry’s main representative body has claimed.
In the starkest warning yet over the £14bn Hinkley Point project, Lord Hutton, chairman of the Nuclear Industry Association, argues that failure would undermine Britain’s credibility with investors and threaten other projects across the energy sector.
WARSAW, April 2 (Reuters) - Poland will need to provide some form of state support for its long-awaited nuclear plant that is expected to cost $15 billion, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Tuesday.
Poland, the European Union's largest eastern member, originally planned to launch a 3 gigawatt nuclear plant by 2023 and to double that capacity by 2030 to reduce its dependence on highly polluting coal.
Why is it proving so difficult to close the deal on new nuclear in Britain? In part, of course, there is the normal arm wrestling negotiation. This is focused on the so called "strike price" - an energy price below which the suppliers will get compensation from the state - and on the allocation of risk around a £14bn construction contract.
The UK government wants a strike price of around £65 to £70 per MWh which is high but probably politically defensible. They well remember that in 2008 EDF talked about a price of £45 per MWh. EDF now wants something between £95 and £100, but they can probably afford to accept the Government's figure and still make a reasonable profit.
TOKYO, April 4 - Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and France's Areva have won an order to build Turkey's second nuclear power plant - a project that is expected to cost some $22bn, the Nikkei business daily said on Thursday, citing Japanese and Turkish sources.
Turkey's Energy and Natural Resources Ministry has informed the Japanese government and corporate officials of the decision to award the deal to build four pressurized water nuclear reactors with a combined capacity of about 4.5GW at Sinop on the Black Sea, the report said.
