Nuclear power in Europe

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. (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…)

The French nuclear industry is in turmoil as uranium supplies have dried up and the treatment of spent fuel has been blocked amid an increasingly bitter row between the heads of its two main state operators.

EDF, the electricity group that runs 58 reactors in France, said that Areva, the nuclear energy group, had stopped uranium deliveries on January 4 and was refusing to take away spent fuel for reprocessing. (more…)

Anne Lauvergeon is used to fighting tough battles, but this time the chief executive of Areva, whose combative style has in the past earned her the soubriquet “Madame Non”, is in danger of facing her final round.

The French government is nearing a decision on the future of Areva, its state-owned nuclear champion, and with it the fate of one of France’s most internationally recognised business figures. (more…)

The European Union and India are to co-operate more closely on civil nuclear research and development as a way of strengthening a partnership that has often been seen as falling short of its potential.

Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s president, and Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, announced the agreement on Monday at an EU­-India summit that also produced promises of closer co-ordination of climate change and energy security policies. (more…)

Paris, 17 September: Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico and French President Nicolas Sarkozy today signed an agreement on cooperation in nuclear energy and agreements on strategic partnership which is expected to enhance all-round relations between the two countries.

“France and Slovakia have clearly opted for nuclear energy. It covers 50 per cent of electric energy consumption in Slovakia,” the French presidential office said on the meeting. (more…)

Sylvie Eymard’s Provence farmhouse kitchen should be the picture of French rural calm. But the stockpiles of bottled water, disinfectant rinse and disposable paper plates hint at something strange.

For the past two weeks, Eymard, 41, and her children, 13 and seven, have had a phobia of taps. To wash up, they go out to the yard and fill a bowl from a specially delivered plastic tank of purified water on a fork-lift tractor. They carry the water up to the bathroom to wash. Even the dog drinks bottled water, and it is left out for the birds. (more…)

The French government on Thursday ordered an investigation into the water table around all of France’s 58 nuclear reactors in an effort to dispel fears raised by a leak from a treatment plant run by Areva in southern France.

Jean-Louis Borloo, ecology minister, has asked an independent committee to carry out the probe to stem mounting public concern over nuclear waste management after a low-grade leak at the Socatri treatment plant at Tricastin focused public attention on a still unexplained, older contamination of the water table. (more…)

Britain must build “at least” eight new nuclear power stations during the next 15 years to replace its ageing plants and contribute to a “post-oil economy” that is cleaner and much more efficient than in the era of “cheap energy and careless pollution”, Gordon Brown signalled last night. The first new reactors could feed electricity into the national grid by 2017.

Ministers want the private sector to make the running, but fear that the parallel contraction of the UK’s coal and oil-fired generating capacity, on environmental grounds, will trigger a serious energy gap unless the government moves decisively. (more…)

France’s two biggest energy groups, EDF and GDF Suez, are vying to build the country’s latest nuclear power plant, casting fresh doubt on their participation in Britain’s planned nuclear renaissance.

Last week President Nicolas Sarkozy gave the go-ahead for a second new-generation European pressurised reactor (EPR) on an existing site. It will be France’s 60th nuclear power plant. (more…)