Nuclear power in Europe

Finland’s fifth nuclear power plant, which is currently under construction, has been put on ice pending new studies on the safety of its building methods. The suspension resulted from a report recently issued by Greenpeace that found irregularities in the welding.

Although Finland’s nuclear safety authority (STUK) rejected many of the claims made by Greenpeace, it will conduct intensive studies on the safety and quality of the welds, which are critical parts of the reactors’ structure. STUK’s Assistant Director Petteri Tiippana said, “The ministry will ask for a report from us on this issue very soon and we are planning to respond to that within the next week”.

Foreigners will be given key positions at the first of the two units of Belarus' future nuclear power plant, Uladzimir Petrushkevich, an engineer at the project management office, told reporters in Minsk on Tuesday.

Training personnel for a nuclear power plant is rather time-consuming and is impossible without trainees getting some hands-on experience, Mr. Petrushkevich said. Therefore it will be safer to employ foreigners with the necessary expertise to run the first unit of the plant, which is to be put into operation as early as 2016, Mr. Petrushkevich said.

HELSINKI (Thomson Financial) - The Finnish government said Thursday it wanted the country's Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK) to clarify its inspection principles, following criticism of its work at a nuclear reactor building site.

'The (economy) ministry wants further reports from STUK on its inspection principles and precision, and how these compare to practices in other countries,' the Finnish employment and economy ministry, in charge of energy industry issues, said in a statement.

As the nuclear industry enjoys a global revival, Kazatomprom is positioning itself to overtake Cameco as the world's largest producer of uranium. It said in July that it expects to achieve this as early as next year, rather than in 2010 as originally planned.

The progress of Kazakhstan's national atomic company is to a large degree due to the vision of its charismatic president Mukhtar Dzhakishev, helped by the country's substantial uranium reserves and the Soviet technical legacy.