Nuclear power in Europe

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…)

WARSAW (IDN) – Backed by the U.S. and France, Poland is set to tread the nuclear path and hopes to start generating atomic power by 2021. Presently, coal accounts for over 93 percent of the eastern European country’s electricity, demand for which is expected to double by 2025.

A four-stage plan announced by Hanna Trojanowska, the government’s Plenipotentiary for Nuclear Energy, envisages appropriate legislation by the end of 2010; site, technology and construction arrangements between 2011 and 2013; technical plans and site works in 2014 and 2015; and construction from 2016 to 2020. (more…)

Construction of Electricite de France SA’s EPR nuclear reactor at Flamanville in Normandy is running about 24 months late, Le Figaro reported, citing an unidentified person.

EDF’s director in charge of the project, Herve Machenaud, responded that progress is still being evaluated, the newspaper said. (more…)

The decision of France’s AREVA to take a EUR400mn charge on its Finnish nuclear reactor project, combined with a planned French nuclear plant shutdown is hurting AREVA’s bottom line.

After state-owned AREVA, the world’s largest uranium miner, announced last week it would take a 400 million euros (US$491mn) charge due to cost overruns at its Finnish nuclear plant project, Standard & Poor’s Monday downgraded the company to a `BBB+’ rating, citing continued weakened profitability. (more…)

A £15bn international bid to harness the fusion process that powers the Sun is facing a major funding crisis. Scientists have revealed that the cost of the International Thermonuclear Experiment Reactor (Iter) has trebled from its original £5bn price tag in the past three years. At the same time, financial crises have beset all the nations involved in the project. (more…)

Nuclear safety authorities in four countries are assessing the significance of undocumented welding on primary circuit piping for the EPR reactor under construction at Olkiluoto-3, Petteri Tiippana, director of the nuclear reactor regulation department at the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority STUK, told Platts in an interview Thursday.

But Tiippana said that contrary to a statement made Wednesday by Marie-Pierre Comets, a commissioner of French nuclear safety authority ASN, regulators from Finland, France, the UK and the US are not preparing a joint statement on the piping quality issue.

A spokesman for the UK Health and Safety Executive said that the HSE and the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission had observed a joint inspection of the piping made by the French company Nordon for the Olkiluoto-3 EPR. He said, “any action relating to this is for ASN and STUK, but we are not currently planning to issue a joint statement.” HSE and the NRC are currently in the process of reviewing the “next-generation” EPR reactor design, but are not overseeing construction of EPR units, unlike STUK and ASN. The HSE spokesman said the piping quality is “not a design issue, it’s a quality issue.”

Olivier Gupta, ASN’s director for power reactor regulation, said through a spokeswoman Thursday that “there will be no joint statement” on the piping issue. He said Comets had meant to refer to the “joint inspection” of the Nordon facilities by STUK and ASN, which was observed by representatives of NRC and HSE. The spokeswoman said Comets had “made a mistake.”

The piping was manufactured by Nordon, a subcontractor to Areva, the French vendor which is supplying the nuclear part of the Olkiluoto-3 unit under a turnkey contract to utility Teollisuuden Voima Oy. Nordon, based in Nancy in eastern France, is a unit of the Fives group and has long been a major supplier of piping for nuclear power plants.

In October 2009, STUK found that small cracks in piping made for the main coolant lines of Olkiluoto-3 had been repaired with welding procedures that were not documented.

Tiippana said the piping is still in France and that analysis of the significance of the undocumented welding could be finished within several weeks. STUK will then do final inspections, probably before summer, he said. Until the piping is approved by STUK, it cannot be transported to Olkiluoto.

The main coolant lines for the EPR must be manufactured to very high quality standards and documentation must substantiate that quality, because the safety case for those high-pressure lines assumes they will not rupture suddenly.

In an unprecedented initiative, STUK, ASN and HSE issued a tripartite regulatory statement last November expressing concern about the instrumentation and control system architecture proposed for the EPR in their three countries.

Areva’s 1,600- to 1,700 MW-class EPR reactor is under construction at Olkiluoto-3 in Finland and Flamanville-3 in France, and the design is under regulatory review for construction in the UK and the US.

Brussels is against member states exporting their nuclear waste to countries outside the EU or to store it in joint sites, energy commissioner Gunther Oettinger said, as the commission is working on a set of common safety standards for this dangerous material.

“It is the duty of national politicians to do their homework,” Mr Oettinger told Financial Times Deutschland in an interview published on Wednesday (10 March). The German commissioner warned against common storage sites, as well as exporting the radioactive material outside the EU, for instance Russia. (more…)

The European Union is heading for a clash with other major economies over the timetable for building an experimental fusion reactor.

European governments want to slow down construction of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) because they are paying for the bulk of the construction costs and are concerned that the budget is spiralling out of control. Other countries involved in the ITER project are, however, strongly opposed to any kind of delay. (more…)

The French nuclear industry is in turmoil as uranium supplies have dried up and the treatment of spent fuel has been blocked amid an increasingly bitter row between the heads of its two main state operators.

EDF, the electricity group that runs 58 reactors in France, said that Areva, the nuclear energy group, had stopped uranium deliveries on January 4 and was refusing to take away spent fuel for reprocessing. (more…)