PARIS (Reuters) - France's nuclear safety authority (ASN) said on Thursday it had provisionally classified a leak of liquid containing uranium on a site in southeastern France earlier this week at level one of the INES nuclear scale.
The International Nuclear Event Scale (INES), used to measure the potential danger of incidents at nuclear installation, has seven levels, the lowest of which is zero.
A group of young people from several European countries are taking a cycling tour from Bulgaria to Turkey to show the world that travelling and a good life are possible without much energy consumption.
Fifteen people -- from Bulgaria, Croatia, Bosnia, Spain, Portugal and a few other countries -- started the 2008 Ecotopia Biketour Jul. 4 in Bulgarian capital Sofia. After travelling for about 600 km in Bulgaria and another 1,000 km in Turkey, over more than one month, they will reach their final destination, the city of Sinop on the Black Sea Coast in northern Turkey. More people are expected to join on the way.
Debates about climate change at the G-8 meetings in Japan and this week's mishap at a French nuclear facility have Germans revisiting the benefits and dangers of nuclear energy. Deep national divisions on the issue are reflected on the editorial pages.
Germans are conflicted about nuclear energy, and amazingly so. In fact, according to a survey released Wednesday by the Forsa polling agency, exactly 46 percent of Germans are for -- and 46 percent of Germans are against -- extending the operating life of the country's nuclear reactors past the date 15 years from now when a nuclear phaseout is supposed to be completed.
Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi said the Group of Eight industrial nations favour the construction of more nuclear power plants to lessen dependence on fossil fuels blamed for global warming.
G8 leaders yesterday noted that "a growing number of countries" regard nuclear power as an "essential instrument" for cutting greenhouse gas pollution.
It has been revealed that it will take more than 100 years before the toxic nuclear site in Sellafield is safe.
A report from Westminster's Public Accounts Committee says the UK's largest atomic power station will not be completely clean until 2120.
The South Down SDLP MP, Eddie McGrady, described the nuclear waste as a time bomb waiting to happen. 'They are not only producing but importing the dirty stuff from the rest of the world, it is incredible,' he said.
Berlin - Germany's oldest nuclear power plant still in operation was to have been shut down for good in autumn next year. That date was determined not so much by the plant's age - Biblis A went onstream in 1974 - as by a political decision taken in 2000 to phase out nuclear power completely by around 2021.
In terms of the relevant legislation passed two years later, each of Germany's 17 nuclear plants was allocated a block of remaining operating time.
BUSINESS is being encouraged to capitalise on the demise of Wales’ nuclear power stations.
The Welsh Assembly Government is working with Magnox North to develop a local supply chain and identify a range of potential opportunities for local businesses.
It is hoped the measures will help businesses raise their game to ensure they have the capacity and capability to benefit from the decommissioning of nuclear power stations in the region.
The £73 billion cost of decommissioning nuclear power sites could be increased "significantly", the head of an influential committee of MPs have warned.
Edward Leigh, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee said the cost of work over the next five years had already risen "steeply."
BERLIN, July 10 (Reuters) - E.ON Chief Executive Wulf Bernotat said on Thursday he had sensed a shift in the mood for nuclear power in Germany but did not expect an imminent deal to repeal a law to shut the country's nuclear plants by 2021.
Bernotat told journalists in Berlin he believed it would be possible at some point to revoke the law as public opposition to nuclear power wanes.
FRANKFURT (Thomson Financial) - RWE AG. plans to shut down its Biblis A reactor for maintenance during the four months to September 2009, Mannheimer Morgen reported, citing the reactor's technical director Juergen Haag.
This would allow RWE to operate the reactor, which is Germany's oldest, until after the German parliamentary elections in autumn that year.
