A likely political coalition between the Netherland's pro-nuclear VVD party and the antinuclear PvdA party after Wednesday's inconclusive election result will almost certainly put plans for a new nuclear power station at Borssele on hold.
The center-right VVD party led the polls Wednesday with 26.5%. The center-left Labour PvdA party came a close second with 24.8%.
Bulgarian Finance Minister Simeon Djankov has reacted strongly to Russia's increased claim against Bulgaria's National Electric Company over the country abandoning the Belene NPP project.
On Tuesday, Rosatom subsidiary Atomstroyexport increased its claim to EUR 1 B. The case of Bulgaria having to reimburse Atomstroyexport for scrapping plans to build a second Nuclear Power Plant in the Danube town of Belene is tried by the International Court of Arbitration in Paris.
AP - A steam blast at France’s oldest nuclear plant Wednesday left two workers with slight hand burns and revived calls to reduce the country’s heavy reliance on nuclear power.
Nuclear safety authorities said there was no threat of radioactive leaks and that the incident at the Fessenheim plant in eastern France appeared minor. It touched a nerve, however, because anti-nuclear activists have long urged the closure of the plant. Those calls have mounted since the disaster at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant last year.
London, 29 August (Argus) — The restart of the 1,006MW Doel nuclear power unit 3 in Belgium has been pushed back by a further two months, according to French utility GDF Suez, which operates the unit through its Belgian subsidiary Electrabel.
The unit is now forecast to go back on line on 1 December, two months later than the previous forecast.
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.
BRUSSELS—Belgium has halted one of its seven nuclear reactors on suspicion that one of its components might be cracked, the country's atomic power regulator said Wednesday.
"We have found anomalies," said Karina De Beule, spokesman for the ACFN, the federal agency for nuclear control. The agency is "evaluating these anomalies, if they can cause cracks," Ms. De Beule said, adding that the 1,006-megawatt Doel 3 reactor will remain shut at least until the end of August.
It is one thing for a green pressure group to claim nuclear power is too expensive, but quite another when the charge comes from the head of an atomic industry pioneer such as General Electric.
GE built some of the world's first commercial atomic reactors in the 1950s and has remained an industry leader since its nuclear joint venture with Japan's Hitachi in 2007.
WARSAW, July 31 (Reuters) - Poland estimates that 60-70 percent of the work involved in building its first nuclear power station will be awarded to domestic suppliers, an Economy Ministry official said in a report on Tuesday.
The European Union member is planning to launch operations of a three-gigawatt nuclear plant by 2023 and hopes to double the capacity by 2030 in a bid to reduce its reliance on highly polluting coal and provide energy for its expanding economy.
Vattenfall AB, the Nordic region’s biggest utility, applied to Swedish safety regulators to build one or two nuclear reactors to replace its older plants.
“There has been no investment decision,” Chief Financial Officer Ingrid Bonde said today. “It’s a very long process.”
