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HOW do you manage a global boom in nuclear power while discouraging weapons proliferation? Uranium and plutonium are most likely to find their way into weapons via the enrichment and reprocessing of fuel for nuclear power plants. If all of the countries now planning to go nuclear also handle their own fuel cycles, the proliferation risk could skyrocket. The answer may be to put the fuel cycle entirely under international control. Many governments, international agencies and arms control experts are calling for the establishment of international fuel banks, and eventually fuel production plants, that would pledge to supply nuclear materials to any country so long as it meets non-proliferation rules. The US already supports the idea, at least for new nuclear powers, and last month the European Union (EU) pledged €25 million towards the first fuel bank. Yet this means countries with new nuclear programmes would have to place control of their fuel supply at least partly in foreign hands. Could it actually work?

Greenpeace has uncovered evidence that nuclear waste from the European Pressurised Reactor (EPR), the flagship of the nuclear industry, will be up to seven times more hazardous than waste produced by existing nuclear reactors, increasing costs and the danger to health and the environment. The revelation comes soon after President Sarkozy's decision to build a second EPR in France. The alarming evidence was buried in the environmental impact assessment report from Posiva, the company responsible for managing waste at the world's first EPR under construction at Olkiluoto in Finland, and in EU-funded research (1).

Austria lodged complaints with Slovakia and the European Commission to protest Slovakia's plans for restarting a reactor at the Bohunice nuclear power plant, Austrian Environment Minister Nikolaus Berlakovich said Monday. Austria would also stress its position in a meeting of EU energy ministers in Brussels on Monday that Slovakia's actions are "unacceptable," Berlakovich said, according to Austrian news agency APA. The reactor had been closed on December 31 in line with the agreement that allowed Slovakia to join the European Union. Prompted by the Russian-Ukrainian gas dispute that has left Slovakia with dwindling energy reserves, the government in Bratislava decided Saturday to restart the mothballed reactor.

Fears were raised yesterday over a decision to restart a potentially dangerous decommissioned nuclear power plant in the centre of Europe because of a shortage of gas caused by Russia's dispute with Ukraine. Slovakia, defying undertakings given when it joined the European Union, said that it would reactivate a Soviet-style nuclear generator that has a record of safety problems because it had received no Russian gas since last Thursday. Russia again found a reason to delay turning the taps back on yesterday, despite an agreement brokered by Mirek Topolanek, the Czech Prime Minister, on behalf of the EU, which was signed by Russian and Ukrainian leaders at the weekend.

The UK's renewable energy targets could prove both costly and risky, and nuclear energy is the most reliable viable low-carbon alternative, according to the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee. The committee's report - entitled The Economics of Renewable Energy - acknowledges government commitments to increase renewable energy use, but is sceptical as to whether the target of 15% renewables for the UK by 2020, proposed by the European Union (EU), can be met. It also warns that an over-reliance on intermittment power generation options, such as wind energy, could prove both costly and risky in terms of security of supply.

Estonia has completed the decade-long clean-up of one of Europe's most hazardous radioactive waste dumps on the Baltic coast, an official in charge of the operation said Monday. "EU experts considered the radioactive waste storage at Sillamae one of the four most dangerous sites of its kind in Europe," Tonis Kaasik, director of the OkoSil firm responsible for the clean-up of the Soviet-era dump told AFP.

On September 9 Bulgarian and international environmental organisations, including the local coalition BeleNE (No to Belene nuclear power plant) and Greenpeace, sent a letter to the European Union (EU) Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes asking him to investigate the tender procedures for subcontractors in the construction of Bulgaria's Belene nuclear power plant. Subcontracts worth more than one billion euro are to be granted without tender to Bulgarian companies. Under the agreement with Atomstroyexport, the Russian company chosen to construct the power station has to subcontract 30 per cent of the value of the Belene construction contract to Bulgarian companies, which means procurement contracts worth a total of 1.3 billion euro.

About 15 environmental activists climbed the Eiffel Tower on Sunday to unfurl a banner protesting against France's nuclear energy policies, on the day when it hosts a major summit of heads of state. Campaign group Greenpeace said the banner showing the nuclear logo was placed in the middle of a circle of stars representing the European Union displayed on the tower to mark France's six-month term as EU president.

BRUSSELS, June 5 (UPI) -- Two incidents at nuclear power stations in Slovenia and the Czech Republic were quickly handled but left nerves jangled, the European Union said. The EU said there was no environmental impact in either case but the scares had done little to help Brussels' campaign to restore public confidence in nuclear plant activity.

On Wednesday officials in Slovenia shocked the European Union with what seemed to be a rather serious accident in the country's only nuclear power plant, but a day later officials were backtracking. The European Commission on Wednesday evening through a special emergency alarm system, the European Community Urgent Radiological Information Exchange, issued an EU-wide warning to all 27 member states, after cooling water had leaked from a power plant in Krsko, Slovenia.

EDF, the French utility, could face a legal challenge over the technology it has decided to use in building Britain's latest generation of power stations. EDF announced last May that it planned to employ Areva, the French nuclear energy group, but its decision, which was made without giving rival reactor manufacturers an opportunity to bid for the contract, could be illegal under European law, according to Ros Kellaway, partner and head of EU competition law in Eversheds

Body-snatching, poisoning and infanticide, the nuclear industry does it all. Even if the mantra - "Nuclear is Carbon Free" were true - flying pigs are still flying pigs, not angels. If nuclear power led to freedom from oil then why is France's per capita consumption of oil higher than in non-nuclear Italy, nuclear phase-out Germany or the rest of the EU? Even if nuclear was everything the Government and industry claimed regarding CO2 - that would not justify new build.

The EU has set itself the goal that by the year 2020, 20% of Europe's final energy consumption in the areas of electricity, heating, and mobility should come from renewable sources. Nuclear energy jeopardises green energy revolution A major share of this energy will have to come from regenerative electricity. In order for this sector to achieve such a dynamic growth, a reliable political framework is key. In Germany for example, the Renewable Energy Sources Act provides such a framework. Another important step is to supplement the renewable electricity generators with flexible power stations and power storage systems. By contrast, the construction of new coal-fired power stations or even nuclear power plants only hampers the expansion of the renewables sector.

U.S. Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Ellen Tauscher in a written response to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said the EU, India and Japan reprocess nuclear fuel within their own territories at present, but she did not think the Obama administration must apply those cases of authorized reprocessing to other countries, including South Korea. She added there was no need for a revision in the Atomic Energy Agreement signed between South Korea and the United States. The comments effectively slap down calls within South Korea to start reprocessing its own spent nuclear fuel. The U.S. government seems wary of South Korea reprocessing spent nuclear fuel from the standpoint of "peaceful" use of nuclear energy, suspecting that the country over the long-term wants to make its own nuclear weapons. South Korea tried to develop nuclear weapons in the 1970s, but scrapped the plan. Now the issue has re-emerged after North Korea's second nuclear test.

The European Union's Germany, France and United Kingdom, in association with the United States, China and Russia, (the so-called E3+3) have reportedly recently offered Iran "a range of economic and political incentives" to "return to negotiations," this time without U.S. insistence on "preconditions." What negotiations? Well, way back in November, 2004, Germany, France and the United Kingdom, (E3) undertook to negotiate with Iran on behalf of the European Union a mutually acceptable long-term agreement which would provide the EU "objective guarantees" that Iran's nuclear program was exclusively for peaceful purposes.