FLAMANVILLE, France, Dec 11 (Reuters) - France's main electricity provider EDF, under pressure from cost overruns on a key project, said it was open to work with partners over building new EPR nuclear reactors.
EDF Chairman and Chief Executive Pierre Gadonneix told reporters on Thursday that EDF aimed to have control over the various nuclear energy projects in which it was involved.
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.
The ESB has told an Oireachtas committee that nuclear power is not needed in Ireland for the foreseeable future.
Fluctuating oil prices and climate change have led to calls for a debate on nuclear energy as a way to end Ireland's dependence on fossil fuels.
However, ESB chief executive Padraig McManus told the Oireachtas committee on energy and natural resources today that Ireland could comfortably meet its energy demands if clean-coal technology and inter-connection with other countries is implemented successfully.
Germany has adopted a seemingly contradictory set of policies in its effort to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and increase energy security. While it has greatly emphasized renewable energy, the government remains committed to a phase-out of nuclear power and to the construction of new gas pipelines from Russia.
Balkan states are gambling on the nuclear option as the best way to reduce the energy shortage but whether the risks pay off remains to be seen.
The three guards stand at the gate in the 40°C afternoon heat, ignoring the bustle around them. Grim-looking barbed wire coils round the top of the tall fence, as if designed to stop convicts escaping from prison.
No serious safety event occurred within Electricite de France's, or EDF's, reactor fleet in 2007, the Institute of Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety, or IRSN, said in a report made public December 9.
The report analyzed the operation of EDF's 58 PWRs last year and said there was "continuation of, if not an increase in, unanticipated events and operational difficulties caused essentially by human factor, organizational aspects and certain weakness in operating discipline."
A COMMUNITY watchdog group is calling for more information about a German study which suggests that there are clusters of childhood leukaemia cases near nuclear power station sites.
The Sizewell Stakeholder Group - set up to improve liaison between the nuclear site, the local community and regulators - wants to know if there is any UK implication.
Dec. 10 (Bloomberg) -- The lush green hills overlooking the dairy farms of Le Chefresne in Normandy have become a battleground in France’s efforts to boost power production.
In a corner of France known for Camembert cheese and apples, state-controlled Electricite de France SA plans to build 200 foot-tall steel pylons with high-voltage cables to carry electricity from a nuclear plant. The proposal would add to the 400,000 volts that pylons already carry from two existing reactors.
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.
BRUSSELS, Dec. 8 (Xinhua) -- European Union (EU) foreign ministers on Monday endorsed a plan for the UN nuclear watchdog agency to maintain an international nuclear fuel bank.
"The Council (of Ministers) decides to express its support for the establishment of a nuclear fuel bank placed under the control of the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency)," said the ministers in a statement.
