(BRUSSELS) - France, Britain, Poland and the Czech Republic rejected a report Friday that they want nuclear energy to receive subsidies similar to the ones enjoyed by renewable energies.
The German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported earlier that those four countries sent letters outlining their request to Brussels ahead of a meeting by European Union energy ministers next week.
MIELNO, Poland, Feb 13 (Reuters) - Residents of popular Baltic Sea resort Mielno, one of three sites shortlisted to host Poland's first nuclear plant early in the next decade, on Sunday voted overwhelmingly against the plan.
Some 94 percent of the 2,389 people who took part in the referendum opposed the plant, and only 5 percent supported it, Mielno Mayor Olga Roszak-Pezala told Reuters late on Sunday. Turnout was 57 percent.
The representatives of the 16 EU countries that have opted for nuclear energy have identified the four 'pillars' on which the EU's energy policy must be built: safety of sourcing, consumer purchasing power, industrial competitiveness and the fight against global warming.
Poland's largest power group Polska Grupa Energetyczna said Sunday it had started two tender procedures for its nascent nuclear power program.
PGE said an owner's engineer tender for technological advisory services and another for environmental and site surveying had been launched by its newly created subsidiary PGE EJ 1.
A governmental dispute over the costs of Poland's nuclear power program could delay the country's first nuclear plant, according to a report Monday.
The daily Rzeczpospolita said Poland's finance minister, Jacek Rostowski, has criticized the high cost of the economy ministry's estimated Zloty 840 million ($289 million) nuclear program.
 INES 1 |
Lost or stolen sources containing Co-60 |
During regulatory control carried out on in decommissioned old foundry facility located in LUBLIN (city located near the eastern border of Poland) regulatory inspectors of NAEA discovered lack of 7 lead containers (Type: PrJ20) with Co-60 (non-dangerous source, category 5). The lost or stolen sources contain Co-60 with following activity, on December 7 current year, as follow:
1. 9 MBq
2. 20 MBq
3. 20 MBq
4. 20 MBq
5. 13 MBq
6. 17 MBq
7. 17 MBq
The investigation is being conducted.
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.
Fresh from her controversial announcement that Germany aims to postpone abandoning nuclear energy, Chancellor Angela Merkel on Monday threw Berlin's weight behind a planned four-nation plant in Lithuania.
"We'll do everything we can to ensure that this construction gets backing," Merkel told reporters during a visit to the Baltic state, saying German authorities could help bring potential investors on board.
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.
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.
