Balkan states are gambling on the nuclear option as the best way to reduce the energy shortage but whether the risks pay off remains to be seen.
The three guards stand at the gate in the 40°C afternoon heat, ignoring the bustle around them. Grim-looking barbed wire coils round the top of the tall fence, as if designed to stop convicts escaping from prison. (more…)
ISTANBUL, Nov 11 (Reuters) - Turkey will make changes to a nuclear energy tender law nearly two months after it received just one bid in a tender to build the country’s first nuclear power plant, an Energy Ministry source told Reuters on Tuesday.
A consortium comprised of Russian Atomstroyexport and Inter Rao along with Turkey’s Park Teknik Group was the sole bidder in a tender to build and operate Turkey’s first nuclear power plant in Mersin on the Mediterranean coast. (more…)
Bulgaria’s sole nuclear power plant at Kozloduy on the Danube River said on November 14 that it paid back early a $52.5 million loan to Russia’s state-owned Roseximbank, which it took to upgrade its two working 1000MW reactors.
The reason for the early repayment of the loan, due in 2021, was avoiding currency risks, the plant said, as quoted by website mediapool.bg. The loan was denominated in US dollars, while its revenue was in leva and euro, the plant operator said. (more…)
Sofia. Russian company Atomstroyexport, which was picked to build Bulgaria’s nuclear power plant in the Danube town of Belene, said it has signed an annex with national power utility NEK to supply the corpus, steam generator and the turbine for the plant’s first block, as the online English edition of Dnenvik Daily reported.
The Bulgarian party was tight-lipped on the matter. (more…)
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. (more…)
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. (more…)
BANDIRMA, Turkey, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Energy import-dependent Turkey is pressing ahead with large energy investments despite global financial woes and ongoing private sector projects will raise capacity to 62,600 megawatts from 40,000 MW.
Turkey, a major energy importer, is under pressure to increase power capacity and liberalise the sector in the face of sharply rising demand, fuelled by economic growth and a rapidly growing population.
However, the shrinking global liquidity and lessening risk appetite generated by the financial crisis has raised concerns about companies’ ability to raise the necessary funding and uncertainty surrounds some projects. (more…)
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. (more…)
KIEV, Oct. 7 – The general contractor to build reactors three and four at the Khmelnytsky nuclear power plant will be Russia’s ZAO Atomstroiexport, a source in the Fuel and Energy Ministry told Interfax-Ukraine.
“The interagency tender commission on the selection of the type of generating units for reactors three and four at the Khmelnytsky NPP has finished its work. After studying proposals from Atomstroiexport, South Koera’s ÊÅÐÑÎ and U.S. company Westinghouse, the commission said that the Russian project was the best,” the source said.
Turkey faces the risk of becoming heavily dependent on Russia uranium if the recent tender for Turkey’s first nuclear power plant, won by a Russian firm led consortium, is not canceled, analysts say.
Turkey’s energy dependency on Russia to rise after nuclear plant
“The tender for the nuclear plant was held in order to lessen the Turkey’s energy dependency to Russia, but if it is approved Turkey’s dependency to Russia will be even greater,” Necdet Pamir, an energy expert, told HotNewsTurkey. (more…)
