Nuclear power in Europe

Energy firms will refuse to pass on all of the savings they make on cheaper wholesale gas and electricity to consumers, one of the UK’s top energy bosses admitted this weekend.

The warning, issued by Paul Golby, chief executive of Eon UK, came after a week in which the price of oil tumbled to just above $40 a barrel. As the government demands that the banks give borrowers the benefit of the latest cut in interest rates, energy companies are also coming under increasing pressure to cut customers’ bills. (more…)

MADRID, Nov 2 (Reuters) - European Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs will propose a new EU-wide energy regulator with equal powers to national regulators and will push for greater independence for those state watchdogs, he said on Sunday.

“I am going to propose a new regulation both for national regulators, to increase their real independence and their capacity to intervene, and a new Agency of European Regulators, which has to have powers comparable with national regulators,” Piebalgs told the Sunday edition of Spanish newspaper ABC. (more…)

29 October 2008 - E.ON and the research institute Commissariat à L’Energie Atomique (CEA) located in Cadarache in southern France have agreed cooperation in the field of nuclear energy research.

Cooperation will mainly focus on material research, innovation in reactor technology and safety as well as the development of the next power station generation. The research results will thus contribute to both safe operation of existing plants and the planning and implementation of new power station projects. (more…)

Stockholm - Two of Sweden’s 10 nuclear reactors were to be offline for at least a month as checks continued on the control rods used to control the nuclear fission process, officials said Monday. The Swedish Radiation Safety Authority last week ordered operators to check the control rods after cracks were detected in the control rods at one of the three reactors at the Oskarhamn nuclear plant, south-eastern Sweden. (more…)

THE argument that nuclear should be part of any low- carbon solution to the UK’s power requirements has been put forcefully by Westminster and, unsurprisingly, by the nuclear lobby. The counter argument – that it is, at best, a diversion from renewable energy – has been put equally forcefully by the likes of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. (more…)

FRANKFURT, Sept 22 (Reuters) - E.ON’s Unterweser nuclear plant in northern Germany was given the green light for a restart after its annaul maintenance outage, the environment ministry of the state of Lower Saxony said in a statement on Monday.

The ministry oversees nuclear safety in the state.

Wholesale power traders had expected a gradual restart of the 1,344 MW unit from Monday and for the plant to run at half load until the end of October. (more…)

Stockholm - The Swedish nuclear watchdog on Wednesday filed charges against the operators of a Swedish nuclear plant over failing to uphold security checks at the plant. The Swedish Radiation Safety Authority said the Oskarshamn nuclear plant operators had failed to ensure 24-hour checks of people entering and leaving the site.

The security lapse was detected in connection with an inspection at the end of May, the nuclear watchdog said. (more…)

Sept 11 (Reuters) - RWE AG, Germany’s largest producer of power, said on Thursday it was prepared to invest profits from its nuclear power stations in renewable energy if it was allowed to operate the atomic plants longer.

German utilities, including RWE, E.ON AG, Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg and Vattenfall’s German unit, are seeking to convince the German government to allow them to operate their nuclear power stations longer. (more…)

E.ON UK has entered into a transmission connection agreement with National Grid for up to 1600MWe of new capacity at Oldbury.

The Oldbury-on-Severn site named in the agreement is owned by National Grid and is the location of a substation. The site is adjacent to the Oldbury nuclear power station, which is owned by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) and has two 225MWe Magnox units that are due to cease operation at the end of this year. (more…)

“Wind power could put another half million people into fuel poverty” – shock, horror! That was how BBC Radio 4 promoted last week’s The Investigation into the future of wind power in the UK.

Who can blame them? It got me listening. But do their figures stack up? And what exactly was Sir David King, former government chief scientific advisor, up to when he uttered his dire warning? In case you missed it, here’s that warning in full (more…)