Nuclear power in Europe

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. (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…)

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…)

SOFIA, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Bulgaria is close to choosing a winner between Belgian energy firm Electrabel and Germany’s RWE AG to make a strategic investment in a planned 4 billion euro ($5.6 billion) nuclear plant, Bulgarian utility NEK said on Thursday.

In August, state-owned NEK asked RWE and Electrabel, owned by France’s GDF Suez, to improve their offers for a 49 percent stake in the plant it is building to restore Bulgaria’s position as a leading power exporter in southeastern Europe. (more…)

MADRID, Aug 25 (Reuters) - Spain’s nuclear watchdog on Monday called for a meeting of plant operators following the second unscheduled disconnection of a reactor in as many days.
The Nuclear Safety Council (CSN) confirmed earlier reports by industry sources that the 500-megawatt Garona plant was off line, due to an error in work on high-voltage installations which automatically halted the plant. (more…)

HELSINKI, July 30 (Reuters) - A small fire at the construction site for a new nuclear reactor in Olkiluoto, western Finland, spread to two floors of the reactor building, before it was put out, plant operator Teollisuuden Voima (TVO) said on Wednesday.

“A small amount of contruction materials had caught fire,” TVO said in a statement, and added the fire was noticed at around 2:00 a.m (2300 GMT) and it was put out four hours later. (more…)

Greenpeace Finland said in a statement Monday that Brussels-based lobby the European Renewable Energies Federation had brought an action before the European Court of Justice challenging the European commission’s September 2007 declaration that a 570-million-euro guarantee granted by Coface, a privatised company that continues to act in its eponymous role as the French government’s export guarantee agency, to Finnish utility Teollisuuden Voima (TVO) did not constitute illegal state aid. (more…)

FRANKFURT, March 31 (Reuters) - German engineering group Siemens expects a “not insignificant” financial impact from delays in completing a nuclear power plant in Finland, a German daily reported on Monday.

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung quoted a Siemens spokesman as saying: “That is certainly aggravating.” (more…)

(FT) Siemens, Europe’s largest engineering group, shed €12.5bn ($19.7bn) in market capitalisation Monday after a shock €900m profit warning led to fears that the crisis in financial markets could be creeping into industrial companies.

The German conglomerate blamed a contract cancellation, project delays and capacity issues for the warning – all issues that investors are nervously eyeing. But Siemens said the subprime crisis was having no impact on its business, a line backed up by other industrial groups such as Linde, the world’s largest industrial gases group. (more…)