ASTANA, May 29 (RIA Novosti) – Russia and Kazakhstan have signed a memorandum on the construction of a nuclear power plant in Kazakhstan during a Supreme Eurasian Economic Council session in Astana on Thursday.
The agreement was signed by nuclear corporations Rosatom and Kazatomprom in the presence of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Kazakh counterpart Nursultan Nazarbayev.
HELSINKI May 20 (Reuters) - Finnish utility Teollisuuden Voima on Tuesday asked for a five-year extension to submit a construction license application for Olkiluoto 4 nuclear unit.
The consortium was due to apply for the Olkiluoto 4 construction license by 2015, but problems at its current plant project make decision-making regarding the following project impossible by that, it said.
Economic Affairs Minister Jan Vapaavuori says government isn’t likely to make a decision on the construction of a nuclear power plant by the power consortium Fennovoima before August. Vapaavuori told Yle that the project is still important to the main government partner the National Coalition Party.
Speaking on Yle’s Aamu-tv breakfast programme Tuesday Vapaavuori confirmed that the government wouldn’t be making a decision on the proposed nuclear power plant in Pyhäjoki, northwest Finland until August.
Germany’s nuclear industry is fighting Berlin over a plan to transfer the risks of shutting down facilities to a publicly owned foundation that would act as a “bad bank”.
The power companies are engaged in a decommissioning exercise with an estimated cost of more than €30bn after Berlin announced an accelerated exit from nuclear energy following the Fukushima disaster in 2011. The work includes demolishing nuclear plants and disposing of radioactive waste.
The European Commission will almost certainly find that EDF Energy's funding mechanism for the construction of the Hinkley Point C nuclear unit in the UK is illegal state aid, an Austrian law professor told Platts.
Franz Leidenmuhler, who specializes in EU state aid cases and European competition law, said in an email that he believed "a rejection is nearly unavoidable. The Statement of the Commission in its first findings of December 18, 2013 is too clear. I do not think that some conditions could change that clear result."
PARIS, April 30 (Reuters) - France must decide in the next few years whether it wants to continue its nuclear-driven energy policy at a cost of up to 300 billion euros ($415 billion) or if it wants to embark on an equally costly route towards using other fuels.
Most of the country's 58 nuclear reactors were built during a short period in the 1980s, and about half will reach their designed age limits of 40 in the 2020s, pushing France towards what industry calls "the nuclear cliff."
More than five years of international intrigue ended with a whimper on April 10th as ČEZ, a Czech utility company, officially cancelled the planned expansion of the Temelín nuclear power plant, 120 km south of Prague in the South Bohemia region. The project was undone by a fall in electricity prices and the spectre of a botched state energy scheme in years past.
BRUSSELS, April 10 (Reuters) - FORATOM, which represents Europe's nuclear industry, said new atomic power generation will need financial support as long as carbon prices are low and hit back at EU regulators' criticism of funding for a plant to be built by EDF.
The European Commission, the EU regulator, has launched an in-depth investigation into Britain's plan to provide public funding for a 19 billion euro ($26.37 billion) nuclear plant to be built at Hinkley Point in Britain.
PRAGUE, April 9 (Reuters) - A tender for the $10-15 billion expansion of the Czech Republic's Temelin nuclear power plant should be wound down and replaced with a new contest with more bidders, President Milos Zeman said on Wednesday.
The plan to build two reactors at the site has been undermined by falling power prices and the government's unwillingness to provide price guarantees to Temelin's owner, CEZ, which is majority-owned by the state.
It's not just natural gas that keeps Ukraine under Russia's thumb. Almost all the fuel for Ukraine's 15 nuclear reactors comes from Russia, too.
But just as Ukraine is struggling to diversify away from Russian natural gas, it is also eager to break Moscow's virtual monopoly over its nuclear fuel.
Pennsylvania-based Westinghouse Electric Co. told various media outlets this week it will renew a contract with Ukraine's Energoatom that will extend and expand its flow of nuclear fuel to the struggling nation. The deal is valued at $100 million.
