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Radioactive water is leaking from an old salt and potash mine in Germany that had been converted to a storage facility for nuclear waste. The discovery of the leak has reopened debate about nuclear power, theerman magazine Der Spiegel reports. German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel described the mine as "the most problematic nuclear facility in Europe." The Asse II mine in Lower Saxony shut down in 1964. Three years later it reopened as an "experimental" nuclear facility.

There has been a plutonium leak at a site run by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Austria. UN nuclear monitors said pressure had built up and plutonium had contaminated a storage-room at the Seibersdorf laboratory, south of Vienna.

A GROUP of the most eminent experts in highly radioactive work from around the world are flying in to Cumbria for a two-day conference at Sellafield. The conference will be held at the newly-created National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL). More than 50 delegates are expected from around Europe, the US, Japan and South Africa for the event - being staged on September 22 and 23 - which also includes a tour of the world-class facilities at the new NNL.

A French nuclear monitoring body has expressed concern at the number of leaks from French nuclear power stations in recent weeks. The director of Criirad, an independent body, said the organisation was worried by the numbers of people contaminated by four separate incidents.

Waste containing unenriched uranium has leaked into two rivers from a nuclear plant in southern France. Officials banned people in three nearby towns from fishing, using water from wells, swimming in the rivers or using river water on their crops.

The United States and the Czech Republic will sign a pact on Tuesday for the central European country to host a radar system, part of U.S. plans to create a missile defense shield in Europe.

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.

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About 30 members of St. Petersburg's ecological organizations protested on Thursday the transportation of nuclear waste from other countries to Russia. "No to the Import of Nuclear Waste!" read the slogan held by a group of ecologists in front of Avtovo metro station - the area of the city through which trains transporting nuclear waste from Europe usually pass. "We are protesting nuclear transportation through St. Petersburg," said Rashid Alimov, co-chairman of the ECOperestroika ecological organization at a press conference on Thursday. "We also declare the start of a public campaign against the construction of a terminal for receiving radioactive waste cargo in the port of Ust-Luga," he said. The protest was prompted by the arrival of the ship MV Schouwenbank loaded with 1,250 tons of depleted uranium hexafluoride from Germany to St. Petersburg on Thursday. It was the biggest transfer of German radioactive waste to Russia in history, ECOperestroika said.

A Romanian officer has been killed in a blast at a military laboratory dealing with nuclear, biological and chemical research, Romanian officials say. The defence ministry says the man, aged 37, died of his injuries after the explosion in Bucharest. The cause of the blast was not immediately known, but the ministry says it "does not pose any threat to the population" and there was no fire.

A year after the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, amid panic worldwide about the safety of nuclear energy, Sweden voted to ban construction of new nuclear power plants and phase out its existing ones. Now, like many countries across Europe, it is changing its mind. Last month, the government proposed allowing the construction of new reactors to replace the country's aging ones, which provide nearly half the nation's electricity. Swedes have made their peace with nuclear plants, not only because memories have faded and safety records improved after 30 years, but also because reactors are seen as one of the few options available to nations wanting to rapidly slash greenhouse gas emissions.

FEARS that radioactive material taken from France's old uranium mines has been used in construction have been raised by a TV documentary. According to investigators for the programme Pièces à Conviction (Incriminating evidence), there are many sites where radioactive material is a potential health risk including schools, playgrounds, buildings and car parks. Very little uranium is now mined in Europe, but France carried out mining from 1945 - 2001 at 210 sites which have now been revealed by IRSN, the Institute of Radioprotection and Nuclear Safety on its website - click here.

A number of countries in central, eastern and southeastern Europe plan to build new nuclear power reactors or extend the life of existing ones to meet growing domestic demand and replace ageing power capacity. Following are key facts on major projects:

After the disasters at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, years passed before anyone took seriously the idea of a nuclear revival. Then our friend the atom started making a comeback. Rising demand for energy provided a boost. And the outpouring of concern about climate change put fossil fuels and their carbon emissions at center stage as environmental enemy No. 1. Utilities across the country began laying the groundwork for new reactors, following the lead of Europe and Asia. Yet talk of a "nuclear renaissance" has run into a financial meltdown.

After the disasters at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, years passed before anyone took seriously the idea of a nuclear revival. Then our friend the atom started making a comeback. Rising demand for energy provided a boost. And the outpouring of concern about climate change put fossil fuels and their carbon emissions at center stage as environmental enemy No. 1. Utilities across the country began laying the groundwork for new reactors, following the lead of Europe and Asia. Yet talk of a "nuclear renaissance" has run into a financial meltdown.

MOSCOW, September 21 (RIA Novosti) - A missile defense system developed jointly by the world's leading powers could eliminate the global threat of nuclear strikes, a former top Russian military official said on Monday. The U.S. last week announced the cancellation of plans to deploy an anti-missile system in central Europe, which had been fiercely contested by Moscow. NATO has since said it is willing to consider a joint missile defense project with Russia. "If we return to the issue of a European missile defense system, which was abandoned a few years ago and included the U.S., we could organize mutual controls, and use the means available to all participants, in order to control the mutual nuclear potential," said Col. Gen. Viktor Yesin, who led the Strategic Missile Forces in 1991-1993. If a global missile defense system was to be built in cooperation with Russia, France, Italy, Israel and Britain, on equal terms, then China would also need to be included, he said.

Most nuclear power plants have a nominal design lifetime of up to 40 years but many have been approved to operate for longer. The possibility of component replacement and extending the lifetimes of existing plants are very attractive to utilities, especially given lingering public opposition to constructing new nuclear plants, while some governments see them as a way of limiting carbon emissions and power price rises. But economic, regulatory and political considerations have led to the premature closure of some power reactors. Below are details of those plants that have been granted life extensions in Europe:

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has said his country could give up nuclear weapons if everyone else that had them did the same. The remarks came as Russian and US officials negotiate a successor to the 1991 Start treaty on arms reduction, which expires in December. US President Barack Obama will discuss the issue in Moscow next month with his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned the United States Friday that if it did not reach agreement with Russia on plans for missile defense systems, Moscow would deploy rockets in an enclave near Poland. In sharp contrast to his positive words during President Barack Obama's visit to Moscow earlier this week when the two reached broad agreement on nuclear arms cuts, Medvedev used a news conference at the G8 summit to return to Russia's earlier tough rhetoric on arms control. Referring to an order he gave earlier this year to prepare deployment of short-range Russian missiles in the western enclave of Kaliningrad to answer to any U.S. deployment of a missile shield in central Europe, Medvedev said:

With nuclear power on many Albertans' minds these days, those seeking insight before picking sides may find it instructive to look to Europe, where France and Germany have adopted opposing philosophies on the issue. Germany has legislation in place that calls for the shutdown of all of the country's nuclear reactors by 2022. France, which is slightly smaller than Alberta, is building its 59th reactor. How did the two countries arrive at such divergent views? Matthias Eickhoff remembers April 26, 1986, as the day he became one of Germany's many anti-nuclear activists.

Spring is in the air down in the beautiful Cotswolds. Bluebells carpet the woods while lambs are agambolling in the lush fields. Sadly I know this only from telephone calls home as I'm on a weekend break in Chernobyl. Only 5,000 visitors a year leave Kiev, the handsome capital of the Ukraine, to take a minibus to the "exclusion zone". This is an area 30km around reactor No 4 of the V I Lenin nuclear power station that blew up on 26 April 1986, covering Europe in a radioactive cloud. I was at school at the time, and I remember newscasters pointing to frightening maps of the Continent showing wind patterns and the advance of "the cloud". Some teachers at school started wearing masks and doom-laden predictions were everywhere in the press.