WASHINGTON: Germany has returned more than 20 pounds (9 kilograms) of highly enriched uranium fuel to the U.S. for safeguarding from terrorists or potential misuse, the government said Tuesday.
The National Nuclear Security Administration said the spent fuel shipment was transported by ship and rail under secret and secure conditions. Spokeswoman Casey Ruberg said the material was secured at a site in the southern state of South Carolina on Sept. 23.
AMSTERDAM, Oct 6 (Reuters) - Belgium's proposals to charge the country's nuclear power generators a one-off tax of 250 million euros ($339.8 million) are in conflict with previous agreements, Belgian energy company Electrabel said.
The Belgian cabinet is set to present a bill to parliament to levy the charge against all nuclear players in the country for 2008 in return for keeping five out of seven of the country's nuclear reactors open.
MORE than half of Britain's nuclear power stations are either closed or working at reduced capacity, it emerged yesterday, prompting fears of power shortages next month.
Six of the UK's ten nuclear stations are not operating at full capacity. Three are completely closed, one is operating at half capacity and two have been reduced to 70 per cent because of safety fears.
Up to 10,000 tons of depleted uranium hexafluoride are expected to travel through St. Petersburg in the next six months, according to the local branch of the international environmental pressure group Bellona. The next cargo is expected to arrive in town in early October.
Arriving by sea, the radioactive material will then be sent by rail to the town of Novouralsk in Siberia for reprocessing and storage. Most of the cargo arrives in Russia from the Netherlands and Germany but Russia has signed contracts with India, Pakistan and China — states that are rapidly bolstering their nuclear programs — and looks set to receive even more spent nuclear fuel and uranium hexafluoride for reprocessing.
Nuclear waste from Italy won't be rolling into Utah anytime soon.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Monday it is postponing a decision on whether low-level radioactive waste from Italy can be buried in Tooele County. In order to grant a license, federal regulators must be sure that the waste has somewhere suitable to go, and they won't have that assurance unless a federal court ruling clears the way, the NRC said.
PARIS, Oct 7 (Reuters) - A 24-hour strike in the energy sector on Tuesday has cut 1,000 megawatts (MW) in nuclear power capacity, a CGT spokesman said.
"Today's strike will only have a limited impact on nuclear availability," the spokesman said, adding that the power capacity cuts were taking place at the 3,600-MW Cruas plant in Southeast France.
Russia intends to build 26 major nuclear power reactors over twelve years to come, chief of the state-run corporation Rosatom, Sergei Kiriyenko, said. Kiriyenko was speaking at the 52nd general conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on 29th september.
"The pace of commissioning new nuclear power reactors is pegged to our current plans, but it can be adjusted in terms of scale and deadlines," he said."Construction work is underway at five sites (Leningrad, Novovoronezh, Kalinin, Rostov and Beloyarsk NPPs)," he said, adding that design and exploration work was in progress on another 14 reactor projects.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) -- Armenian officials hoping to learn how best to respond to a nuclear plant accident watched a drill in Kansas on Thursday.
The Armenians said they will use what the learn when they test their own response capabilities in December, though they expressed confidence that their nuclear power plant was safe and reliable.
"The power plant survived the earthquake in 1988," said Maj. Gen. Aram Tananyan, deputy director of the Armenian Rescue Service, after watching the exercise. "What we have seen is very interesting to us."
Robots will soon begin dismantling the plant which gave Dounreay the title of being the world's nuclear dustbin.
Workers are currently drilling through the concrete that surrounds the uranium fuel reprocessing plant which was to receive spent nuclear fuel from reactors around the world, with the waste being stored at the Caithness facility for up to 25 years; a facility that outraged environmentalists.
SOFIA, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Bulgaria is close to choosing a winner between Belgian energy firm Electrabel and Germany's RWE AG to make a strategic investment in a planned 4 billion euro ($5.6 billion) nuclear plant, Bulgarian utility NEK said on Thursday.
In August, state-owned NEK asked RWE and Electrabel, owned by France's GDF Suez, to improve their offers for a 49 percent stake in the plant it is building to restore Bulgaria's position as a leading power exporter in southeastern Europe.
