Nuclear power in Europe

The EU needs to invest more in research if it is to meet its climate-change targets.

The world will need to generate 50% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2050 to minimise climate-change impacts, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has said, an awesome challenge that once again underlines the importance of investing in the next generation of renewable energy.

VILNIUS, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Lithuania may have to defy the European Union and keep its Ignalina nuclear power plant open beyond 2009 if the EU cannot help it assure energy supplies, the prime minister and economy minister said on Thursday.

Lithuania agreed under its EU entry treaty to close Ignalina, which has the same kind of reactors as at Chernobyl in Ukraine, where the world's worst nuclear disaster happened in 1986.

Finnish municipalities are to be given the right to refuse permission for the establishment of uranium mines in their territory. A working group preparing changes to Finnish mining legislation proposes that prospecting for uranium would remain legal, but that actually setting up a mine would require the consent of the municipality where it is located.

Finland's current mining law is about 50 years old. The law needs updating, because the present version was drafted at a time when mining was practised mainly by state-run companies. Now most mining companies are foreign, global players.

KIEV, Oct. 7 – The general contractor to build reactors three and four at the Khmelnytsky nuclear power plant will be Russia's ZAO Atomstroiexport, a source in the Fuel and Energy Ministry told Interfax-Ukraine.

"The interagency tender commission on the selection of the type of generating units for reactors three and four at the Khmelnytsky NPP has finished its work. After studying proposals from Atomstroiexport, South Koera's ÊÅÐÑÎ and U.S. company Westinghouse, the commission said that the Russian project was the best," the source said.