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European Union nations have agreed to make international nuclear safety standards mandatory across the 27-nation bloc. The executive European Commission says nuclear power plants in the EU will now be legally obliged to comply with safety rules set out by the UN' nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency. EU member governments approved a regulation that made the safety obligations binding. EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs says the law will provide better protection for nuclear power plant workers, citizens and the environment by requiring governments to improve their own nuclear safety regulations. The EU is the first region in the world to make the standards compulsory. It has the most nuclear power plants of any region.

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.

"An expert hearing was held at the European Parliament earlier this month regarding the forthcoming EU Directive on Nuclear Waste. Different approaches to nuclear waste management policies by EU member states were discussed in order to shed light on what a strong and comprehensive directive should contain. Veronica Webster, 15/06-2010 The attendees heard that an all-encompassing definition of nuclear waste must be included in the forthcoming directive, as well as some of the necessary characteristics of acceptable geological repositories for nuclear waste. The hearing was co-hosted by Anni Podimata, a Greek socialist and Rebecca Harms, a German green member of the European Parliament. The hearing was also held in cooperation with green NGO Friends of the Earth Europe. "

"The European Commission has been looking into whether Electrabel abused its dominant position after reaching a nuclear power plant deal with the Belgian government, a spokesman said on Saturday. The preliminary investigation has been underway "for several months," said Amelia Torres, spokeswoman for EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia, confirming reports in the Belgian newspapers De Tijd and L'Echo. Electrabel, a unit of French utility group GDF Suez, is the leading electricity provider in Belgium."

Brussels would not allow Bulgaria to switch on the NPP units in Kozloduy that were traded against the country's accession to the EU in 2007. The European Commission does not believe the re-start of units third and fourth could help Bulgaria solve the gas crisis problems in short terms, Ferran Tarradellas, Spokesman of the EU Energy Commissioner, Spiebalgs told the Bulgarian National Radio yesterday. He pointed out that the European Commission was doing the necessary for the real solution of the problem via immediate restoration of gas supplies. The spokesperson also said that by now no official demand had been received in Brussels for the restart of the nuclear units from Bulgaria. Sofia's stand on the reopening of the decommissioned units came in the words of Bulgaria's Prime Minister, Sergey Stanishev who said that the option was being considered closely but all sides of the issue should be taken into account.

Lithuania Thursday shut down its Soviet-era nuclear plant under an EU deal in a move set to drive up electricity prices amid an economic crisis and leave it counting on ex-master Moscow for power. "At 11:00 pm (2100 GMT) everything went offline. It all went according to plan," Viktor Sevaldin, director of the 26-year-old plant, told AFP by telephone. The plant, located in Visaginas in eastern Lithuania, provided 70 percent of the Baltic state's electricity. It gradually went offline from 8:00 pm (1800 GMT) Thursday, displaying its decreasing output on its website. It is similar to the one that exploded at Chernobyl in then-Soviet Ukraine in 1986, the world's worst nuclear accident.

Lithuania Thursday shut down its Soviet-era nuclear plant under an EU deal in a move set to drive up electricity prices amid an economic crisis and leave it counting on ex-master Moscow for power. "At 11:00 pm (2100 GMT) everything went offline. It all went according to plan," Viktor Sevaldin, director of the 26-year-old plant, told AFP by telephone. The plant, located in Visaginas in eastern Lithuania, provided 70 percent of the Baltic state's electricity. It gradually went offline from 8:00 pm (1800 GMT) Thursday, displaying its decreasing output on its website. It is similar to the one that exploded at Chernobyl in then-Soviet Ukraine in 1986, the world's worst nuclear accident.

"SNP Energy and Climate Change spokesperson Mike Weir MP has warned UK government plans to fix carbon prices amount to a hidden subsidy for new nuclear power stations - despite an explicit assurance by the coalition government that no public subsidy would be used. After an exchange at energy questions in the Commons Mr Weir said: "Fixing the carbon price would amount to a hidden subsidy for new nuclear stations and blows wide open the bogus coalition claim that there will be no public subsidy for nuclear power. "There are already problems within the EU emission trading scheme over free permits and it is ludicrous to pretend the EU will agree to a carbon floor price. This leaves the UK Government in the ridiculous position of attempting to impose a carbon floor price in the UK alone. This is simply unsustainable and legally dubious."

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France joined Russia in condemning the Pentagon's plans to install missile defence bases in central Europe yesterday and backed President Dmitri Medvedev's previously ignored calls for a new pan-European security pact. Both presidents concluded a Russia-EU summit, in Nice in the south of France, with an agreement to convene a major international conference next summer at which the Americans, Russians and the 27 countries of the EU should come up with a blueprint for new post-cold war "security architecture" in Europe.

In a resolution adopted on depleted uranium (DU) weapons, the House calls for a moratorium on their use, increased pressure for an international treaty to ban them, and more research on these weapons. The resolution "strongly reiterates its call on all EU Member States and NATO countries to impose a moratorium on the use of depleted uranium weapons and to redouble efforts towards a global ban." The resolution was adopted with 491 votes in favour, 18 against and 12 abstentions.

On the heels of the Russian- Ukrainian gas crisis, which left many EU citizens without heat this winter, European Parliament members in Strasbourg on February 3 adopted a report that calls for strengthening the security of supplies to the 27-country bloc and puts the focus back on nuclear energy and coal. The report by French MEP Anne Laperrouze on the Second Strategic Energy Review, which will be on the agenda for the European Council debate on the EU's future energy strategy on March 19-20, was adopted by 406 votes in favour, with 168 votes against and 87 abstentions. Members of the EPP-ED Group voted overwhelmingly in favour of the report. MEPs asked the Commission and the Czech Presidency to present "a new ambitious and far-sighted diversification plan" to the next meeting of the EU's heads of state.

Germany's planned phase-out of nuclear power generation will raise the country's natural gas demand between 12.6% and 23% by about 2023, according to a statement on energy security policy submitted to the EU summit in Prague on Friday by the co-ruling Christian Democrats. The statement, which the party said is based on government projections, also will be submitted to the EU Energy Summit scheduled for this weekend in Sofia, Bulgaria.

"Are highly radioactive materials from western EU countries going to be deposited in Poland? asks POLSKA THE TIMES. Nuclear power plants from EU countries want to dump their radioactive waste in Centeral East European countries, including Poland. A project of such an initiative is underway at the European Repository Development Organization and is reportedly supported by the European Commission. Negotiation as to the exact dumping place are to begin in May and should take an estimated 2 years. Reportedly, building one dumping site for nuclear materials is economical. A community which accepts nuclear waste on their territory can count on subsidies from the European Union, not to mention the work places that will be created in the area, claim enthusiasts of the project in the newspaper. We already have silver, now it's time for gold! This headline is from RZECZPOSPOLITA which praises Polish cross country ski champion Justyna Kowalczyk for the second place she took in the Individual Sprint Classics at the Vancouver Winter Olympics. Kowalczyk lost only to Marit Bjoergen from Norway. "

Ahead of a two-day European Nuclear Energy Forum meeting, DW-WORLD.DE spoke to both sides of the debate over whether Germany should stick to its total phase-out of nuclear power. The European Nuclear Energy Forum was established in 2007 as a platform for discussing issues related to nuclear power -- with an eye toward arriving at common EU policy. It's starting its two-day second session on Thursday, May 22, in Prague.

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia (AFP) - Slovenia was caught in a nuclear controversy Thursday after admitting that it wrongly told other countries that a water leak that forced it to shut down a nuclear reactor was only an exercise. The shutdown on Wednesday led to the EU raising a Europe-wide radiation alert for the first time since the system was put in place in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster 22 years ago.

"A hearing on the risk of a nuclear renaissance in the EU was held at the European Parliament on April 7th. It discussed three projects for new units at existing nuclear power plants that are under planning or construction in Europe. While one project was withdrawn, one was caught in legal entanglements and a third was facing massive cost overruns and delays. Veronica Webster, 15/04-2010 The hearing was co-sponsored by German Member of the European Parliament Rebecca Harms from the Greens, and Finnish Member of the European Parliament Sirpa Pietikainen from the centre-right group EPP, in co-operation with green NGO Friends of the Earth Europe. Three case studies were examined. The nuclear power plant units Mochovce 3 and 4 in Slovakia were permitted in the 1980s under the socialist regime and were partly built before the project was stopped after the economic changes of the early 1990s. The project has recently been revived, but it is still based on a reactor-design from the early 1970s, and offers, for instance, insufficient protection against plane crashes."

To judge from the bounce in German energy companies' share prices, you might think Sunday's centre-right election victory means it's springtime for nuclear power in Germany. The reality is more likely to be a longer atomic autumn before ageing reactors are laid to rest. Both the conservatives and the liberal Free Democrats want to prolong the lifetime of Germany's 17 existing nuclear plants, but not build new ones. That will still be lucrative for utilities such as RWE (RWEG.DE), E.ON (EONGn.DE>, Vattenfall [VATN.UL] and EnBW (EBKG.DE), which face an uncertain future as Europe switches to a greener energy mix and EU regulators force them to divest their grids and pipelines.

To judge from the bounce in German energy companies' share prices, you might think Sunday's centre-right election victory means it's springtime for nuclear power in Germany. The reality is more likely to be a longer atomic autumn before ageing reactors are laid to rest. Both the conservatives and the liberal Free Democrats want to prolong the lifetime of Germany's 17 existing nuclear plants, but not build new ones. That will still be lucrative for utilities such as RWE (RWEG.DE), E.ON (EONGn.DE>, Vattenfall [VATN.UL] and EnBW (EBKG.DE), which face an uncertain future as Europe switches to a greener energy mix and EU regulators force them to divest their grids and pipelines.

Environmental activists yesterday took David Miliband to task over Britain's renewable energy resources and his support for nuclear power. The Foreign Secretary faced searching questions from the British Council's Scottish young climate change champions at the organisation's office in Edinburgh, as well as from their Japanese equivalents, who joined the debate via a video link. Ahead of the Copenhagen talks, they questioned Mr Miliband over energy mixes, the viability of a profitable low carbon economy and the ability of the EU member states to work together on the issue.

Environmental activists yesterday took David Miliband to task over Britain's renewable energy resources and his support for nuclear power. The Foreign Secretary faced searching questions from the British Council's Scottish young climate change champions at the organisation's office in Edinburgh, as well as from their Japanese equivalents, who joined the debate via a video link. Ahead of the Copenhagen talks, they questioned Mr Miliband over energy mixes, the viability of a profitable low carbon economy and the ability of the EU member states to work together on the issue.

"European states are still using African coasts as a dumping ground of toxic waste, even after enactment of legislation aimed at ending the practice by the European Union. The worst examples of such dumping in the recent past, according to a report by the international environmental campaign group Greenpeace, is at the Somali port of Eel Ma'aan, north of Mogadishu. Greenpeace is now calling on the United Nations to investigate the dumping of toxic and radioactive materials in Somalia. In a 36-page document titled "Toxic Ships," the UK-based group claims that it has photographic evidence from an inconclusive investigation by the Italian authorities into the suspected burying of shipping containers filled with toxic waste inside the foundations of the port at Eel Ma'aan, in the 1990s."

"European Union regulators said Wednesday that they are investigating nuclear power non-compete deals between France's Areva SA and Germany's Siemens AG after Areva took over their joint venture. This adds another twist to a row between the two companies after Siemens pulled out of the Areva NP unit, the world's largest builder of atomic power plants, and struck a deal with Russia's Rosatom to develop nuclear reactors. Areva complained last year that Siemens' new deal broke the terms of a 2001 non-competition clause."

Designs for new nuclear power stations that could be built in this country will be under public scrutiny from today. EU law requires that before any new nuclear power station is built, their designs must be 'Justified'. This involves a generic assessment to determine whether the overall benefit of the practice of ionising radiation outweighs any associated health detriment. Minister of State for Energy and Climate Change Mike O'Brien said: "This Justification process is yet another example of the facilitative actions the government is taking to support new nuclear power in the UK. At the same time it gives people the opportunity to have their say on the benefits and detriments of the practices involved."