FLAMANVILLE, France, Dec 11 (Reuters) - France’s main electricity provider EDF, under pressure from cost overruns on a key project, said it was open to work with partners over building new EPR nuclear reactors.
EDF Chairman and Chief Executive Pierre Gadonneix told reporters on Thursday that EDF aimed to have control over the various nuclear energy projects in which it was involved. (more…)
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…)
RAUMA, Finland — The cafe where Paivi Alanko-Rehelma serves coffee and smoked fish stands practically in the shadow of a sprawling building site on the island of Olkiluoto where Finland is erecting a nuclear power plant, the island’s third, and Finland’s fifth in the last 30 years.
Rauma is about 10 miles from Olkiluoto, a nuclear plant site. (more…)
HELSINKI, Nov 6 (Reuters) - Finland set targets on Thursday to rein in power consumption and raise the share of renewable energy to meet European Union goals for 2020, and flagged the possible need for more nuclear power.
“The starting point for us is that Finland will on average produce enough electricity for domestic use,” Minister of Economic Affairs Mauri Pekkarinen said in a statement. (more…)
Finland’s Olkiluoto power station was meant to symbolise the resurrection of nuclear power after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and to act as a showcase for Areva of France’s new EPR reactor technology.
The first nuclear power station to be built in western Europe since Chernobyl, Olkiluoto 3 would demonstrate that nuclear energy was the obvious solution to growing concerns about CO2 emissions, high fossil fuel prices and dependence on imported energy sources. (more…)
The Finnish Construction Union said Tuesday it had withdrawn a strike notice affecting the entire Olkiluoto nuclear power station site after a day of talks with Rimec, one of the subcontractors at the site.
Kyösti Suokas, a chair of the union, said late on Tuesday that Rimec had convinced the union that the company had forwarded withheld wages to the state as tax and social security contributions. (more…)
Finland’s plans to build the world’s first next-generation pressurised water reactor has hit a rough patch as the initial estimated price tag has now doubled to nearly 4.5 billion euro. Areva, the French nuclear construction company building the power plant, announced that the final costs for the reactor will be 50 percent higher than originally estimated, according to Les Echos, a business newspaper. (more…)
The Finnish Construction Trade Union on Monday postponed the start of a strike affecting Teollisuuden Voima’s Olkiluoto nuclear power station site by a week to 17 September.
The union added that Rimec, a Cyprus-registered subcontractor at the site, had until 16 September to come up with an explanation of suspected wage and occupational healthcare irregularities. (more…)
Aug. 29 (Bloomberg) — Finland’s Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority said today the supervision and ‘’safety culture” of welding at the Olkiluoto-3 nuclear plant did not meet all of its standards and must be improved.
The agency, known as STUK, demanded changes after inspecting the site and interviewing workers this week, according to a statement posted on its Web site. The regulator said it found no quality problems that threaten the durability of the welds. (more…)
PARIS (AFP) — French nuclear group Areva is facing a 50 percent rise to the cost of building the world’s first next-generation pressurised water reactor in Finland, the business daily Les Echos reported Thursday.
The cost of constructing the plant at Olkiluoto has risen from three billion to 4.5 billion euros (6.7 billion dollars), the paper reported citing an unidentified source. (more…)
