Germany demanded Friday that France close down its oldest nuclear plant, Fessenheim, near the German and Swiss borders -- just one of several ageing atomic plants that are unsettling France's neighbours.
"This power plant is very old, too old to still be in operation," said a spokesman for Environment and Nuclear Safety Minister Barbara Hendricks.
"That's why the environment minister demands its closure at the earliest possible date," he said, reiterating Berlin's earlier demands.
France’s nuclear safety authority won’t decide until early next year whether a key piece of equipment on a nuclear reactor being built by Electricite de France SA in Normandy is safe or needs to be changed, the regulator said.
“I don’t see us making a decision or taking a position before the beginning of 2016,” Pierre-Franck Chevet, president of Autorite de Surete Nucleaire, told a hearing at the French Senate Tuesday. The finding could range from rejecting the equipment as unsafe to allowing its use under certain conditions, he said.
A “very serious” fault has been discovered in a French nuclear power station which is at the heart of David Cameron’s strategy to “keep the lights on” in Britain in the next decade.
The future of two nuclear reactors planned for Hinkley Point in Somerset has been thrown into doubt by the discovery of a potentially catastrophic mistake in the construction of an identical EPR power plant in Normandy.
Nov 12 (Reuters) - French state-controlled utility EDF will consider extending the depreciation period for its nuclear plants, its chief executive told a newspaper, potentially freeing up cash for the country's promised shift towards greener energy.
Sources close to the matter told Reuters in September that France could help finance a drive for more renewable energy by extending the depreciation period of EDF's nuclear plants, which would boost EDF's profit and the dividends it pays the government.
PARIS—France's nuclear-safety watchdog ordered immediate upgrades to nuclear reactors to guard against natural disasters, which Électricité de France SA said could require €10 billion, or roughly $13 billion, in additional costs.
In a review following last year's Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan, the Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire concluded that no plants needed to be shut down immediately but that steps should be taken as "soon as possible" to improve safety at France's 58 reactors.
Nuclear safety authorities in four countries are assessing the significance of undocumented welding on primary circuit piping for the EPR reactor under construction at Olkiluoto-3, Petteri Tiippana, director of the nuclear reactor regulation department at the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority STUK, told Platts in an interview Thursday.
But Tiippana said that contrary to a statement made Wednesday by Marie-Pierre Comets, a commissioner of French nuclear safety authority ASN, regulators from Finland, France, the UK and the US are not preparing a joint statement on the piping qual
