Nuclear power in Europe

A nuclear leak, which could have caused a major disaster, was only averted by a chance decision to wash some dirty clothes, according to a newly obtained official report.

On the morning of Sunday 7 January 2007, one of the contractors working on decommissioning the Sizewell A nuclear power station on the Suffolk coast was in the laundry room when he noticed cooling water leaking on to the floor from the pond that holds the reactor’s highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel. (more…)

A COMMUNITY watchdog group is calling for more information about a German study which suggests that there are clusters of childhood leukaemia cases near nuclear power station sites.

The Sizewell Stakeholder Group – set up to improve liaison between the nuclear site, the local community and regulators – wants to know if there is any UK implication. (more…)

ENVIRONMENT Agency bosses have decided not to prosecute the operator of Sizewell A over an incident which saw thousands of gallons of water contaminated when radioactivity escaped into the North Sea.

The incident, in January 2007, involved the fracture of a plastic pipe in a cooling pond building where highly radioactive spent fuel rods are stored under water prior to their despatch to the Sellafield reprocessing works in Cumbria. (more…)

LONDON, Nov 10 (Reuters) – The B2 turbine at British Energy’s Sizewell nuclear power plant was offline on Monday morning, a website operated by the National Grid showed.

The unit in southeast England has capacity of 594 MW. (more…)

POLICE officers who are called to protests outside Suffolk’s nuclear power station will receive specialised training and equipment courtesy of those who own the reactor.

British Energy has given £10,000 to the county’s police force to help them remove campaigners from the site at Sizewell. (more…)

Vincent de Rivaz, the chief executive of France’s EDF Energy, which is now in control of the UK’s nuclear energy programme, doesn’t laugh when I ask if he has succeeded where Napoleon failed.

“It’s not a war,” he says, very seriously. “This is an amicable agreement between two companies which will bring good news to everyone involved. Will it bring stability to customers for electricity bills? Yes. Will it bring new jobs? Yes. Will it improve climate change? Yes.” (more…)

Nuclear power firm British Energy looks poised to fall into foreign hands after it was reported French power giant EDF has agreed a £12.4 billion takeover of the firm.

The deal is worth 774p a share, the Wall Street Journal said, 9p higher than a rebuffed offer made in July. (more…)

A VETERAN anti-nuclear weapons protester has chained herself to the gates of a nuclear power station.

Irene Willis, 62, from Buckland, Shoebury, was one of eight environmental activists protesting outside Sizewell nuclear power station in Suffolk.

They are protesting about the risks to health and safety from nuclear power stations and the nuclear fuel cycle. (more…)

The credibility of the nuclear industry was shaken last night after the estimated cost of cleaning up Britain’s atomic waste was raised by a further £10bn.

The latest clean-up estimate from the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) suggests the commonly accepted figure of £73bn should rise to £83bn. But the agency insisted that £10bn of income from generating and fuel reprocessing plants should also be taken into account. (more…)

The nuclear industry in Britain is killing billions of fish every year and taking a devastating toll of stocks, an Oxford University academic suggests.

The impact can be so severe in the worst-affected regions of the seas around Britain that death rates are equivalent to half the commercial catch for some species. (more…)