Nuclear power in Europe

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 Commission will table a legislative proposal on the treatment of radioactive waste before the end of the year, commission president José Manuel Barroso told a conference on nuclear energy in Paris on Monday.

Energy commissioner Günther Oettinger hinted at legislation on nuclear waste management at a European Parliament hearing in January. He said setting the “highest possible” safety standards for disposal would be a priority. “Further costs cannot be a consideration,” he warned. (more…)

Brussels – The European Commission intends to propose EU- wide rules on the disposal of nuclear waste by the end of 2010, an official said Thursday.

‘Nuclear waste management is an important area which needs to be addressed by both industry and national governments (…) the role of the EU is to set a common framework for the establishment of national waste management programs,’ said Marlene Holzner, spokeswoman for energy commissioner Gunther Oettinger, during a briefing in Brussels. (more…)

Collective nuclear waste dumps, called European Regional Repositories, are to crop up in Eastern Europe, also in Poland, in the near future.

This is a joint EU initiative, currently developed in the European Repository Development Organization, of which Poland is a member. Negotiations on the construction of the collective geological repositories and the transport routes for nuclear waste are to begin in May. The talks are expected to last two years. (more…)

High-level nuclear waste from across the European Union could be shipped to eastern Europe for burial in a central underground storage facility under plans being considered by EU member states.

The Times has learnt that the project, which comes amid a resurgence of interest in nuclear power, could be given the green light later this year by the European Commission. Ewoud Verhoef, deputy director of Covra, the agency responsible for the storage of the Netherlands´ nuclear waste, said: “The nuclear programme in Holland is small and the cost of building a geological repository is very high. We only have one nuclear reactor in the Netherlands so there would be big advantages to a shared solution.” (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 European Nuclear Energy Leadership Academy (ENELA) is going to open in Germany to attract university graduates to the nuclear energy sector and train future leaders in the field.

The founding treaty of ENELA was signed here on Thursday by six European nuclear energy companies, which are shareholders of the academy. (more…)

The Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute said yesterday that it will probably bid again for a nuclear research reactor project pursued by the Netherlands in the second half of this year.

Institute director Yang Myeong-seung said, “We are actively considering re-entering the bid for PALLAS, a project on the construction of a nuclear research reactor in the Netherlands.” (more…)

The European Commission decided to extend the period of financial support to Bulgaria for the decommissioning of units 1 to 4 of the Kozloduy nuclear power plant. On top of the EUR550 million already allocated, the Commission has pledged a sum of EUR300 million for the time period 2010-2013. (more…)

Back in 2003, it had seemed like such a good idea, at least to the European Commission (EC). Nuclear energy safety lapses can have transnational consequences and so surely the European Union (EU) should have an active role in making sure its member states’ nuclear power plants are safe? After all, there are EU agencies controlling the safety of food, chemicals, civil aviation, shipping and a host of other issues – so why not nuclear power? A directive was duly proposed detailing powers and responsibility for the EU in nuclear safety. Well, as it turned out, national governments just did not like this idea. Nuclear power proved just too strategic an industry for member states to want to hand over authority to Brussels, and the proposal ran into the sand, which is where it has stayed. (more…)