A narrow majority of the Greenlandic parliament passed a measure to overturn the country's ban on uranium mining.
By the slimmest of margins, Greenland’s parliament has passed a measure to overturn the country’s ban on uranium mining. Coalition partners Siumut and Atassut secured 15 votes in favour of the measure to end the ban, implemented in 1988. Fourteen voted against. Speaking in favour of overturning the ban, Greenland’s premier, Aleqa Hammond, said it was a matter of economic priorities.
A senior director at Areva, France’s state-owned nuclear champion, has confirmed that he did hire a Swiss intelligence firm to examine its disastrous €1.8bn purchase of a uranium miner but denied that it was part of a plot against Anne Lauvergeon, the company’s former chief executive.
Ms Lauvergeon, known as “Atomic Anne” after 10 years at the helm of one of the world’s leading nuclear manufacturers, shocked the French business and political elite this week when she accused her former employers of spying on her and claimed that she had been victim to a long-running “plot” to destabilise her, directed from the “highest levels of the state”.
The Decision-in-Principle (DiP) in 2002 to build a fifth nuclear power plant made Finland the center of attention when the nuclear power industry began to see its chances. Finland is the first country to have made a decision on final storage of nuclear waste. Finland is also the only Nordic country in which energy consumption is rising.
For the past 40 years, the French state-owned company Areva has been mining uranium for Europe's nuclear power needs in Niger, one of the poorest countries on Earth. One local activist is taking on the company, claiming that water and dust have been contaminated and workers are dying as a result of its activities.
MOSCOW — The Russian nuclear industry has profited handsomely from building reactors in developing countries, including India, China and Iran. Now it is testing the prospect of becoming a major supplier to the European Union, too.
The increased sourcing of raw uranium that will arise from nuclear new build is an ethical and environmental nightmare currently being ignored by the government.
The World Nuclear Association (WNA), the trade body for companies that make up 90% of the industry, admits that in "emerging uranium producing countries" there is frequently no adequate environmental health and safety legislation, let alone monitoring. It is considerately proposing a Charter of Ethics containing principles of uranium stewardship for its members to follow. But this is a self-policing voluntary arrangement. Similarly, the International Atomic Energy Agency's safety guide to the Management of Radioactive Waste from the Mining and Milling of Ores (pdf) are not legally binding on operators.
MOSCOW, Nov. 18 (UPI) -- Russia's state-run uranium mining concern Atomredmetzoloto said it would increase uranium production to 3,841 tons this year.
Proven uranium reserves in Russia have reached 545,000 metric tons, a 275 percent increase from 2006, Natural Resources Minister Yury Trutnev said Tuesday, RIA Novosti reported.
MOSCOW, October 21 (RIA Novosti) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will discuss trade, energy and conflict in the South Caucasus with his Armenian counterpart, Serzh Sargisyan, at talks in Armenia on October 21, a Kremlin official said.
Bilateral trade grew 13%, year-on-year, in the first eight months of 2008 to reach $536.5 million, the Kremlin said earlier. Russia is a leading trade partner of Armenia and is one of the biggest investors in the country's economy, with accrued investment from Russia topping $1.6 billion from 1991 to July 1, 2008.
Estonia has completed the decade-long clean-up of one of Europe's most hazardous radioactive waste dumps on the Baltic coast, an official in charge of the operation said Monday.
"EU experts considered the radioactive waste storage at Sillamae one of the four most dangerous sites of its kind in Europe," Tonis Kaasik, director of the OkoSil firm responsible for the clean-up of the Soviet-era dump told AFP.
For decades nuclear power has been slated as being environmentally harmful. But with climate change emerging as the world's top environmental problem, the nuclear industry is now starting to enjoy a reputation as a green power provider, capable of producing huge amounts of energy with little or no carbon emissions. As a result, the industry is gaining renewed support. In the United States, both presidential candidates view nuclear power as part of the future energy mix. The US government isn't alone in its support for an expansion of nuclear facilities. Japan announced in August that it would spend $4 billion on green technology, including nuclear plants.
