Dec 11 (Reuters) - French nuclear reactor maker Areva will announce large losses on Tuesday when the group unveils its strategy, French Industry Minister Eric Besson said on Sunday.
"I can confirm that Areva will announce losses," Besson told Radio J. "In all likelihood, they will be big."
HELSINKI/PARIS, Oct 12 (Reuters) - Finnish utility firm Teollisuuden Voima (TVO) blamed supplier Areva for further delays to the construction of its Olkiluoto 3 nuclear power plant which may further push back operations to 2014.
The 1,600 megawatt plant Olkiluoto 3, Finland's fifth nuclear reactor, was originally scheduled to start operations in 2009 but delays and soaring costs meant TVO revised its start date to 2013.
Evidence has come to light suggesting that cheap labour is being employed at the construction site of the Olkiluoto 3 nuclear power plant on the Finnish west coast. At worst, some Polish workers are paid less than two euros an hour.
A Polish electrician who wishes to remain anonymous told YLE that the dearth of jobs in his home country drove him to seek work at Olkiluoto. The man says it took him some time to realise he was being short-changed.
The project director of the Olkiluoto 3 nuclear power plant, Posiva President Reijo Sundell, insists there is no space for waste from utilities other than TVO or Fortum in the Onkalo underground disposal site on Finland's west coast.
Onkalo (or ‘cave’) is being dug into the bedrock near the Olkiluoto power station by Posiva, which is 60 percent owned by TVO and 40 percent by Fortum. The latter utility owns two commercial reactors in Loviisa on the south-east coast, and has applied to build a third. TVO has two operating reactors on Olkiluoto, an island in the municipality of Eurajoki, on the west coast between Rauma and Pori.
The Decision-in-Principle (DiP) in 2002 to build a fifth nuclear power plant made Finland the center of attention when the nuclear power industry began to see its chances. Finland is the first country to have made a decision on final storage of nuclear waste. Finland is also the only Nordic country in which energy consumption is rising.
Russia is proposing to build a high-voltage electricity cable from Kaliningrad to Germany across the Baltic Sea to export power produced from a newly to be built nuclear power plant. The cable would be laid alongside the last part of the gas pipeline Nordstream that Gazprom is building together with western partners and that will be used to transport gas direct from Russia to Germany across the Baltic Sea. The electricity cable would similarly bypass third countries, in this case Poland. A representative from the German Ministry of Economic Affairs says he does not expect Germany to be willing to acquiesce to the plan. ‘I cannot imagine that the German public will want to import nuclear power (“Atomstrom”) from Russia’, he says.
A leaked European Commission draft report says Europe should solve the problem of handling nuclear waste by making industry pay to stash it deep underground, where it will be overseen by independent watchdogs.
"The current situation of spent fuel and radioactive waste management in EU member states is not satisfactory," says the draft, seen by Reuters Thursday.
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Radiography overexposure |
On September 16, 2010 the radiation safety officer of a licensed industrial radiography company notified the Regulatory Authority of an overexposure of a gammaradiography worker. The worker was exposed by a 0.4 TBq (11 Ci) cobalt-60 source, with the dose exceeding the annual dose limit 50 mSv for radiation workers. The incident occurred when the radiographer entered the bunker without retracting radiation source to its shielded position. The worker spent about 4 minutes in the bunker while replacing the radiography film.
Researcher Anna Kontula observed lives of Olkiluoto builders for a month
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.
