The credibility of the nuclear industry was shaken last night after the estimated cost of cleaning up Britain's atomic waste was raised by a further £10bn.
The latest clean-up estimate from the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) suggests the commonly accepted figure of £73bn should rise to £83bn. But the agency insisted that £10bn of income from generating and fuel reprocessing plants should also be taken into account.
The French government on Thursday ordered an investigation into the water table around all of France’s 58 nuclear reactors in an effort to dispel fears raised by a leak from a treatment plant run by Areva in southern France.
Jean-Louis Borloo, ecology minister, has asked an independent committee to carry out the probe to stem mounting public concern over nuclear waste management after a low-grade leak at the Socatri treatment plant at Tricastin focused public attention on a still unexplained, older contamination of the water table.
Two reactors for CZK 80 billion or for 353 billion?
Temelín - Czech energy giant ČEZ wants to expand the Temelín nuclear power plant with building two new reactors by 2013 but has not published the costs of the project yet.
"The costs of the Temelín expansion may be published only after the contract is signed," explains ČEZ´s web site. Ministry of Environment has already received a study on the impact the two new reactors will have on the environment. The ministry was asked by ČEZ to evaluate this question. "Expanding the Temelín power plant will meet the growing demand for energy in the Czech Republic and will create a sufficient reserve," claims ČEZ. Now, a public discussion on the issue is expected to emerge.
PARIS (AFP) — Newly formed global energy giant GDF Suez of France is interested in nuclear power operator British Energy but only if the company is split up and sold off site by site.
"If the plan remains to sell British Energy in one go, then it will be sold without us," said GDF Suez head Gerard Mestrallet in an interview with Les Echos daily to appear Thursday.
PARIS (Reuters) - Authorities will hold tests at all French nuclear power plants to ensure leaks like the one this month at Tricastin in southern France have not occurred, Environment Minister Jean-Louis Borloo told a newspaper.
Plant operator Areva said earlier this month that 30 cubic meters of liquid containing non-enriched uranium was accidentally poured on to the ground and into a river at the Tricastin site.
Staff at Dounreay nuclear plant can transfer their skills to a renewable energy "revolution" in Scotland, it has been claimed.
Scotland's environment secretary Richard Lochhead is expected to visit the Caithness site to see how the decommissioning process could be harnessed to create jobs in alternative energy production.
Skyrocketing fuel prices are leading more and more Germans -- including one prominent member of the Green Party -- to challenge the country's cherished plan of mothballing its 17 nuclear power plants.
A few years ago, it would have been unthinkable for a Green party member to resign over the party's inflexibility about decommissioning atomic power plants.
The United States and Armenia have agreed to cooperate against the smuggling of nuclear and radioactive materials.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian signed the agreement in what is called a "joint action plan" that makes the cooperation activities official.
Bratislava, 16 July: Russian open joint-stock company TVEL has maintained its position in Slovakia, having won the tender for the supply of nuclear fuel for five power-generating units of the local Mochovce and Bohunice nuclear power plants until 2015, management company Slovenskie Elektrarne has reported.
These plants were built to Russian design and equipped with VVER-440 reactors.
BRUSSELS, July 15 (Reuters) - The European Commission recommended on Tuesday that Slovakia improve the safety of two planned new units at its Mochovce nuclear power plant.
"Even though the project shows compliance with current national regulations as well as international recommendations ... the Commission recommended a set of additional measures," Commission spokesman Ferran Tarradellas Espuny told a briefing.
