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A German firm says it is hopeful it will be allowed to build up to two new nuclear power stations in Cumbria. RWE Npower is close to buying sites on the west Cumbrian coast at Egremont and Millom from private landowners. If government approval is forthcoming, the company says power for up to five million homes could be being produced by 2020.

An investigation team has found three times more highly radioactive plutonium in the disused nuclear waste depot in Asse than the inventory states, the German Environment Ministry announced Saturday. The waste depot, near the town of Wolfenbüttel in Lower Saxony, was taken over by the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) from the allegedly careless former proprietor Helmholtz Zentrum in January. The BfS is currently carrying out an investigation on the site and has begun medical tests on former workers. A new investigation has revealed that 28 kilogrammes of radioactive plutonium are stored in the underground shaft depot, three times as much as the environment ministry of Lower Saxony previously understood to be there.

Green party top candidate Jürgen Trittin told Sunday newspaper Bild am Sonntag that shutting down old nuclear power stations would be a condition of entering a government coalition following September's election. "The Green party will not sign any coalition contract that softens the withdrawal from nuclear power. On the contrary, we will insist that older nuclear power stations are shut down ahead of schedule," he said. In an interview spelling out the Green party's position ahead of the election campaign, Trittin also effectively ruled out any cooperation with the hard-line socialist Left party on a national level.

German voters gave Chancellor Angela Merkel a second term on Sunday and a mandate to partner with the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) in a government that will rein in the role of the state in Europe's largest economy. Merkel, 55, has ruled for the past four years in a "grand coalition" with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), an awkward partnership of traditional rivals.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is seeking re-election in a federal vote on Sunday and polls give her conservatives a solid lead over their coalition partners and rivals, the Social Democrats (SPD). Merkel hopes to form a coalition with the business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP), and voter surveys give her just enough support for such a centre-right alliance. However, other ruling partnerships are possible, including a second "grand coalition", grouping Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) and the SPD. Below are the most various coalition scenarios and how they would likely affect German energy policy:

LAST week Germany's nuclear waste storage site, which has so far cost nearly $2 billion, was pronounced 'dead' by the Environment Minister, and he was backed by the Federal Office for Radiation Protection. German newspapers had been reporting that the conservative government of the 1970s, led by Chancellor Kohl, had altered a scientists' report that came to the conclusion that the location in Lower Saxony was not suitable for long-term storage of nuclear waste, so that Gorleben could indeed be chosen.

Germany's economy minister on Friday ruled out building new nuclear power stations but said the life of some reactors might be extended and the development of alternative technologies stepped up. "We need limited extensions until we are able to work with sensible alternative technologies in an economical and environmentally friendly manner," Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily in an interview. "That includes the possibility of equipping existing nuclear power stations with state-of-the-art technology in order to make them even safer and more efficient," the conservative minister said. "But I see no need to build new nuclear reactors."

Swedish-based electricity group Vattenfall sacked the head of one of Germany's nuclear power stations on Tuesday, three days after a short circuit crippled the reactor he was in charge of. Although the fault did not involve the reactor itself, it has brought the controversial issue of nuclear power back into play just three months before the country's general election. The incident occured at the Kruemmel reactor east of Hamburg, one of Germany's 17 reactors. Vattenfall blamed the plant manager, whom it did not name, for failing to install discharge detectors on a transformer as promised to the German authorities. It added that the two electrical transformers supplying power to on-site machinery would not be repaired, but completely replaced after one of the units failed Saturday.

For 20 years, children from a small rural northern German region -- where Alfred Nobel invented dynamite -- have been contracting leukemia at a higher rate than anywhere else in the world and no one knows exactly why. Nineteen cases of leukemia among children under 15 have been recorded since 1989 in the region of Elbmarsch, some 30 kilometres (19 miles) from the city of Hamburg, three or four times the average rate. "Such a high rate of leukemia is unique in the world," according to Hayo Dieckmann, a health official in the nearby town of Lueneburg who is also a medical doctor. Authorities in this area, which bills itself as a center for energy and scientific research, have carried out various studies and tests but failed to come up with conclusive results accepted by all parties as to why it should be a leukemia hotspot. Campaigners, however, point out that within two kilometres of the region lie the Kruemmel nuclear power station and the GKSS scientific research centre, both of which they believe are to blame for the leukemia outbreaks.

Radioactive brine has been found at the controversial salt-mine nuclear waste storage facility in Asse, Lower Saxony, the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) confirmed on Tuesday. A routine check turned up the contaminated liquid at depths of 950 and 925-metres deep, the BfS said, adding that the level of contamination remains below levels allowed by the Radiation Protection Ordinance.

The controversial salt-mine nuclear waste storage facility in Asse, Lower Saxony is not only crumbling but also contains unknown amounts of explosive, it has emerged. Officials who confirmed the reports are now scrambling to get them removed. A spokesman for the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) confirmed a DDP report on Friday, saying, there was some there, but only a small amount of old stocks. He said the explosive was stored, "so that obviously there is no danger for the running of the store, or for the waste." The explosives would be rapidly removed, he added.

The weekend shutdown of Germany's Krümmel nuclear plant has prompted political calls to close the country's oldest nukes over safety concerns The Krümmel nuclear power station near Hamburg was shut down on Saturday after a fault in a transformer, blacking out most traffic lights in the German port city and interrupting the water supply to thousands of homes. Power company Vattenfall said there was no release of radioactivity and no danger to the public as a result of the incident, which occurred just two weeks after the plant was restarted following a two-year shutdown caused by a fire in a transformer.

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.

When government geologists found a salt deposit unsuitable for the planned German nuclear waste repository, top government officials ordered them to change their findings. This has been revealed by Professor Helmut Röthemeyer, pensioned former department head of the Federal Physics Technology Agency (PTB), which examined the salt deposit at the northern village Gorleben in the mid-80s. The PTB commissioned deep drilling of the salt dome and because of what they revealed it advised against using the salt as a final nuclear repository. Röthemeyer told the Berliner Tageszeitung newspaper that because of the risks in exploring the salt and because of public opposition the PTB suggested investigating other sites. The drillings hadn't delivered the hoped-for findings, he said. Röthemeyer and his colleagues had discovered that in the Ice Age a runnel was gouged through the stone covering the salt making the stone "unable to hold back contaminations from the biosphere over time".

Germany's Federal Administrative Court has ruled that utilities RWE (RWEG.DE) and Vattenfall [VATN.UL] may not extend the lifespan of their Biblis A and Brunsbuettel nuclear power plants as they had sought. The utilities had planned to transfer allowances to produce power at the Muelheim-Kaerlich nuclear power plant to Biblis A and Brunsbuettel and thus operate the power plants longer than initially planned.

The Castor Transport protests that took place in November 2008 were not only about the transport of nuclear waste to the Gorleben temporary disposal site - they were also meant to highlight the still unsolved problem regarding the final disposal of Germany's, and the world's, nuclear wastes. In Gorleben itself there are several nuclear facilities: a temporary disposal site for low- and medium-level radioactive waste, a temporary disposal site for high level radioactive waste, an experimental conditioning facility, and a salt mine currently referred to as a "research" final disposal site for radioactive waste - however this site is almost certainly going to become one of the German government's official final disposal sites.

"German plans to extend the running time of nuclear-power plants split Chancellor Angela Merkel's government after her environment minister suggested a 40-year limit on their operating life. "What the environment minister said isn't the view of the government," Guido Westerwelle, vice chancellor and head of Merkel's Free Democratic Party coalition partner, said on ZDF television. Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen's comments in a Feb. 6 newspaper interview come as Merkel seeks to negotiate the extension with utilities as part of a plan for Germany's future energy mix she wants to present by October. Merkel won Sept. 27 elections pledging to reverse a 2002 law mandating the closure of Germany's 17 nuclear plants by about 2021. She holds to the coalition agreement to extend nuclear plants as a "bridge" to renewable power, her spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm said today. "