British Energy said Wednesday that output from its 15 nuclear reactors reached 3.5 TWh in August, up 3% from July, following the restart of the UK generator’s Dungeness B-21 reactor on August 19.
The 550 MW Dungeness B-21 unit in Kent generated power for the first time in a year in August, following an extended outage to repair a pipe adjacent to a boiler reheater. (more…)
The construction of Olkiluoto 3, Finland’s fifth commercial nuclear reactor, involves 1,200 workers from different countries, who live in barracks far away from the rest of society.
The workers come from around Europe: Poland, Portugal, Kosovo, Albania, and Germany.
The barracks are about 20 kilometres away from any services or local people, and the workers’ contacts with the rest of Finnish society do not function very well in general. (more…)
(Reuters) – Two key German ministers took different positions on Monday on the length of time that nuclear power plants should be extended after Chancellor Angela Merkel reduced expectations for a long extension. (more…)
LINGEN, Germany – (Dow Jones)- German Chancellor Angela Merkel Thursday said she is in favor of the country’s nuclear power plant operators making further financial contributions in return for longer reactor operating lives, which would come on top of a tax on nuclear fuel her government has proposed to help reduce the public budget deficit. (more…)
Germany’s nuclear power plants operators have threatened to pull out of nuclear power generation in protest of a proposed tax. The general debate over the future of German nuclear power has heated up again.
Controversial negotiations are underway in Germany between the government and energy providers as companies threaten to shut down their nuclear power plants over a proposed tax on fuel rods and Germany’s debate over its nuclear energy future reignites. (more…)
Poland will commission its first nuclear power plant in 2022, two years after the original schedule, Hanna Trojanowska, the government’s nuclear energy adviser, said Thursday.
“In effect, in the verified schedule 2022 appears as the date for the start-up of the first unit,” Trojanowska told the state news agency PAP. (more…)
Russia is mounting extra patrols to fight wildfires in a region hit by nuclear fallout from Chernobyl, amid fears that radiation could spread.
Crews put out several fires in Bryansk, the emergencies ministry said, amid concern that wind or fire could whip up radioactive particles in the soil. (more…)
Prague – The Greens did not manage to pass the 5 percent threshold in the late May legislative elections, which means there is virtually no opposition in the Lower Chamber of the Czech Parliament against plans on nuclear energy build-ups in the Czech Republic.
This means that the center-right coalition can easily implement its nuclear energy program, which includes building new reactors in the Temelín nuclear plant and modernizing the Dukovany nuclear plant. (more…)
BRUSSELS, July 20 (Reuters) – Cash-strapped European Union governments will not have to provide fresh money in order to fill a 1.4 billion euro ($1.81 billion) funding gap in a project to commercialise nuclear fusion — the process that powers the sun.
Increased complexity and rising construction costs have seen the price tag for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project rise to 16 billion euros ($20.76 billion), while the EU’s share has more than doubled. (more…)
PARIS, July 21 (Reuters) – French power company EDF said it might allocate half of its Reseau de Transport d’Electricite (RTE) power grid to a portfolio of assets set up to fund the dismantling of nuclear reactors.
Under a 2006 law on financing nuclear expenses, EDF must build up a portfolio of dedicated assets to meet the future costs of decommissioning nuclear power plants and storing radioactive waste. (more…)
