Regulators warn against common EU standards.
The European Commission will scale down its ambitions for EU-wide nuclear-safety rules when it publishes a draft directive next week (27 November). (more…)
SOFIA, Nov 18 (Reuters) - Romania is due to sign a deal with selected foreign bidders to build two more reactors at its nuclear power plant in Cernavoda on Nov. 20, one of the investors, GDF Suez, said on Tuesday. Earlier this year, the Balkan country decided to retain a 51 percent stake in the planned reactors and leave the remaining 49 percent for the six bidders it chose last year as partners.
The partners are Belgian Electrabel, owned by French power giant GDF Suez, German power giant RWE, Czech utility CEZ, Italy’s Enel, Spain’s Iberdrola and a Romanian unit of steel giant ArcelorMittal. (more…)
Brussels (Platts) - 13 Nov 2008 - The European Commission has stopped just short of directly exhorting EU countries to develop nuclear power in its updated overview of the EU nuclear sector unveiled Thursday as part of its second strategic European energy review.
“The choice to include nuclear energy in the energy mix lies with [EU countries],” said the EC in its nuclear overview, known by its French acronym PINC. (more…)
Prime Minister Robert Fico said he was unpleasantly surprised by the European Commission’s (EC) lack of a response to the meeting of the European Nuclear Energy Forum (ENEF).
“I am sorry that, despite the renewed interest in nuclear energy, the European Commission did not nominate a single member to attend the forum,” he said at ENEF’s opening session. “Neither Slovakia nor the Czech Republic came to the ENEF. Nonetheless, I’d like to confirm that we are interested in its activities.”
MADRID, Nov 2 (Reuters) - European Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs will propose a new EU-wide energy regulator with equal powers to national regulators and will push for greater independence for those state watchdogs, he said on Sunday.
“I am going to propose a new regulation both for national regulators, to increase their real independence and their capacity to intervene, and a new Agency of European Regulators, which has to have powers comparable with national regulators,” Piebalgs told the Sunday edition of Spanish newspaper ABC. (more…)
Aleksandras Abisala, chief negotiator over the extension of the Ignalina nuclear power plant, who used to speak about the considerable growth of the possibility to reach an agreement on the extension of the operation of the Ignalina nuclear power plant, now claims that Lithuania has lost this fight.
After the last week”s European Council in Brussels, when the hopes concerning the extension of the operation of the Ignalina nuclear power plant diminished, Abisala admits that Lithuania has lost the fight, lrt.lt writes. (more…)
BRUSSELS, Oct. 15 (Xinhua) — The European Commission underlined on Wednesday the need for a higher level of nuclear safety as a high-level group on nuclear safety and waste management met.
“While we can see a potential rise in the use of nuclear energy around the globe as well as in the EU, European citizens call for a strong European role in the field of nuclear safety,” said European Union (EU) Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs, who opened the meeting. (more…)
The EU needs to invest more in research if it is to meet its climate-change targets.
The world will need to generate 50% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2050 to minimise climate-change impacts, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has said, an awesome challenge that once again underlines the importance of investing in the next generation of renewable energy. (more…)
VILNIUS, Oct 9 (Reuters) - Lithuania may have to defy the European Union and keep its Ignalina nuclear power plant open beyond 2009 if the EU cannot help it assure energy supplies, the prime minister and economy minister said on Thursday.
Lithuania agreed under its EU entry treaty to close Ignalina, which has the same kind of reactors as at Chernobyl in Ukraine, where the world’s worst nuclear disaster happened in 1986. (more…)
BRUSSELS, Sept 17 (Reuters) - Lithuania’s hopes of being allowed to extend the life of its Ignalina nuclear power plant were dashed on Wednesday by the European Commission.
In its treaty on joining the European Union in 2004, Lithuania promised to shut by the end of 2009 the second reactor at the plant, which is similar to Ukraine’s Chernobyl facility where the world’s worst nuclear disaster struck in 1986. (more…)
