HELSINKI/PARIS, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Finnish utility firm Teollisuuden Voima (TVO) blamed supplier Areva for further delays to the construction of its Olkiluoto 3 nuclear power plant which may further push back operations to 2014.
The 1,600 megawatt plant Olkiluoto 3, Finland's fifth nuclear reactor, was originally scheduled to start operations in 2009 but delays and soaring costs meant TVO revised its start date to 2013.
German industrial and engineering conglomerate Siemens is to withdraw entirely from the nuclear industry.
The move is a response to the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in March, chief executive Peter Loescher said.
He told Spiegel magazine it was the firm's answer to "the clear positioning of German society and politics for a pullout from nuclear energy".
Qatar’s prime minister met French president Nicolas Sarkozy this week in an attempt to resolve the stalemate over a capital increase for Areva, the French state-owned nuclear group.
Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani was in Paris for a stopover to discuss the terms of Qatar’s proposed investment in Areva.
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 executives of electric utilities worldwide are dreaming of a renaissance in nuclear power. But problems with a new, state-of-the-art reactor in Finland suggest that this is unlikely to happen. The industry's alternative strategy is to modernize older plants to drastically extend reactor lifetimes.
The managers at Finnish electric utility TVO expressed one last wish before ordering what would be the world's largest nuclear power plant from Siemens and the French nuclear power conglomerate Areva. They wanted the reactor to be painted oxblood red and white, the traditional colors of the picturesque summer homes on Finland's western coast.
Anne Lauvergeon is used to fighting tough battles, but this time the chief executive of Areva, whose combative style has in the past earned her the soubriquet “Madame Non”, is in danger of facing her final round.
The French government is nearing a decision on the future of Areva, its state-owned nuclear champion, and with it the fate of one of France’s most internationally recognised business figures.
1&1 Internet - one of the world's largest web hosts - will build its next European data center inside an abandoned nuclear fuel facility.
Built in the late 1980s, Hanau, Germany's 'New MOX' plant was supposed to process fuel for nuclear reactors, making mixed oxide rods from enriched Uranium and Plutonium. But thanks to local protests, it was never turned on, and in 1995, it was abandoned by owner Siemens AG. Then, more than a decade later, after it escaped from nuclear control legislation, 1&1 came calling.
SOFIA, Nov 6 (Reuters) - Bulgaria urged German power utility RWE on Thursday to reject pressure from green activists and approve a deal to become a strategic investor in a planned 4.0 billion euro ($5.16 billion) nuclear power plant.
Deputy Energy Minister Yavor Kuyumdzhiev said Bulgaria will wait for RWE's supervisory board approval of the deal until the spring of 2009, when construction of the 2,000 megawatt Belene plant should start.
Bulgaria's planned nuclear power plant at Belene on the Danube River is amongst the most dangerous contemplated projects of its kind in the whole world, Greenpeace nuclear analyst Heinz Smital has said, as quoted by Deutsche Welle.
According to Smital's warning, Belene was massive and irresponsible gamble, which would only tarnish the reparation of RWE, the German company picked as the strategic investor in the nuclear power plant. Far worse, the German company was playing Russian roulette with people's lives in the entire region of South-Eastern Europe, he said.
Bulgaria's Cabinet plans to inject 300 million leva into the National Electric Company (NEK) to cover the costs of the transitional stage of building the nuclear power plant at Belene on the Danube River, the Government press service said in a statement.
The cash would be given as an equity hike in NEK, which is now part of the Bulgarian Energy Holding (BEH) that the Cabinet created in September 2009 by integrating Maritza Iztok mines, Maritza Iztok 2 thermal power plant and NEK into the holding structure of gas provider Bulgargaz.
