Nuclear power in Europe

Brussels is against member states exporting their nuclear waste to countries outside the EU or to store it in joint sites, energy commissioner Gunther Oettinger said, as the commission is working on a set of common safety standards for this dangerous material.
“It is the duty of national politicians to do their homework,” Mr Oettinger told [...]

The European Commission will table a legislative proposal on the treatment of radioactive waste before the end of the year, commission president José Manuel Barroso told a conference on nuclear energy in Paris on Monday.
Energy commissioner Günther Oettinger hinted at legislation on nuclear waste management at a European Parliament hearing in January. He said setting [...]

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Germany’s nuclear power industry is no closer to knowing how long its plants may operate than five months ago when Chancellor Angela Merkel’s new government assumed power and promised to extend their lives.
Rifts inside her center-right cabinet over the merit of rivalling renewables energies and a local election potentially threatening her party’s [...]

Cernavoda nuclear plant´s unit two was briefly stopped yesterday morning, because of a leak of primary agent within the reactor´s protective building. “No problems were registered in connection with protection of employees, equipment and environment, as the entire security system functioned in line with regulations,” Nuclearelectrica, the company which operates the plant, said in [...]

German utility RWE has indicated its interest in building a nuclear power plant in the Netherlands should a new government revoke the ban on such projects, RWE CEO Juergen Grossmann said at the company’s annual earnings press conference Thursday in Essen.
“We are interested and we are competent,” Grossmann said, when asked about the issue by [...]

Brussels – The European Commission intends to propose EU- wide rules on the disposal of nuclear waste by the end of 2010, an official said Thursday.
‘Nuclear waste management is an important area which needs to be addressed by both industry and national governments (…) the role of the EU is to set a common [...]

Collective nuclear waste dumps, called European Regional Repositories, are to crop up in Eastern Europe, also in Poland, in the near future.
This is a joint EU initiative, currently developed in the European Repository Development Organization, of which Poland is a member. Negotiations on the construction of the collective geological repositories and the transport routes for [...]

High-level nuclear waste from across the European Union could be shipped to eastern Europe for burial in a central underground storage facility under plans being considered by EU member states.
The Times has learnt that the project, which comes amid a resurgence of interest in nuclear power, could be given the green light later this year [...]