Nuclear power in Europe

Bulgaria’s sole nuclear power plant at Kozloduy on the Danube River said on November 14 that it paid back early a $52.5 million loan to Russia’s state-owned Roseximbank, which it took to upgrade its two working 1000MW reactors.

The reason for the early repayment of the loan, due in 2021, was avoiding currency risks, the plant said, as quoted by website mediapool.bg. The loan was denominated in US dollars, while its revenue was in leva and euro, the plant operator said. (more…)

Projected cost of Mochovce’s completion has ballooned

10 Nov 2008 Beata Balogová Business - JUST weeks after the government approved its strategy on energy security, which is intended to guide policy for the next 20 years or so and which defined nuclear energy as one of its key pillars, Slovakia’s dominant power generator started the construction phase of two further blocks at the Mochovce nuclear plant. (more…)

Sofia. Russian company Atomstroyexport, which was picked to build Bulgaria’s nuclear power plant in the Danube town of Belene, said it has signed an annex with national power utility NEK to supply the corpus, steam generator and the turbine for the plant’s first block, as the online English edition of Dnenvik Daily reported.

The Bulgarian party was tight-lipped on the matter. (more…)

Sofia. German company RWE will from now on decide whether to grant the investment promised.
The signing of the shareholding contract for Belene nuclear power plant through which German company RWE will gain 49% of the future plant’s stakes, was postponed. Instead of end-October 2008 when the last deadline expired, the paper will most likely be endorsed in December 2008, the project’s main investor National Electricity Company (NEC) said, The Banker Weekly reported. (more…)

PARIS, Nov 4 (Reuters) - The seven banks guaranteeing a loan to help French power company EDF finance the takeover of British Energy are struggling to find additional banks to share the risk, Les Echos reported on Tuesday.

EDF last month launched an 11 billion pound ($17.9 billion) loan backing the 12.5 billion pound acquisition with BNP Paribas, Societe Generale, Calyon, HSBC 005.HK, Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays Capital and Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi. The loan was conservatively structured with short-term maturities and generous pricing after EDF’s bid was recommended by British Energy’s board in September. (more…)

24 October 2008 Skopje _ In the following three months Skopje will decide whether to take part in the construction of the Bulgarian nuclear power plant at Belene that could solve Macedonia´s power shortages in the future.

Macedonia´s deputy prime minister Zoran Stavreski who recently visited Belene said this Friday in his column in the local daily Dnevnik that Macedonia “would participate by financing the project with a certain amount of money. In return, the country would receive part of the electricity produced”. (more…)

Platts - The US, France and Japan are working to put international mechanisms into place to help finance construction of nuclear power plants in the US and elsewhere, government officials and financial analysts said this month.

Two principal targets are international financial institutions, such as the World Bank, and national export credit agencies, the sources said. (more…)

SOFIA, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Bulgaria is close to choosing a winner between Belgian energy firm Electrabel and Germany’s RWE AG to make a strategic investment in a planned 4 billion euro ($5.6 billion) nuclear plant, Bulgarian utility NEK said on Thursday.

In August, state-owned NEK asked RWE and Electrabel, owned by France’s GDF Suez, to improve their offers for a 49 percent stake in the plant it is building to restore Bulgaria’s position as a leading power exporter in southeastern Europe. (more…)

PARIS (AP) — Growth in the construction of new nuclear plants worldwide is at risk because of the global financial crisis, U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said Wednesday, adding that short-term projects like oil drilling are more likely to go ahead.

During a visit to Paris, Bodman said the crisis could have an impact on the “nuclear renaissance” that is sweeping the industry as countries around the globe search for alternatives to fossil fuels. (more…)

Gordon Brown does not dither about nuclear power. His commitment to it is emphatic, advancing since the start of the year from a policy of simply replacing Britain’s existing nuclear capacity to one of doubling it, and now to there being no upper limit to its share of electricity generation. Brown has undertaken a radical reform of the nuclear regulatory and planning processes, aimed at clearing the path for new reactors. It is therefore particularly poignant that this is a policy doomed to fail. (more…)