British Gas owner Centrica and France's state-owned EDF announced on Monday a long-awaited joint venture aimed at relaunching nuclear energy in Britain.
EDF, the world's biggest nuclear energy producer, also said it would buy 51 percent of the Belgian electricity company SPE from Centrica for 1.3 billion euros (1.16 billion pounds), the companies said in a joint statement.
The deal with Centrica will enable the leading British generator "to take part in the re-launch of nuclear energy in the United Kingdom," said Pierre Gadonneix, chairman and chief executive of EDF.
The tragic legacy of Britain's nuclear testing at Maralinga in the South Australian outback is now a well-documented chapter in the nation's history. But for the Aboriginal people whose land was used for the tests, there is a feeling that their voice has not been heard. Now a group of women from remote communities in South Australia's far west coast have written and illustrated their story for the first time.
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KERRY O'BRIEN, PRESENTER: Thanks to the efforts of a Royal Commission, the tragic legacy of Britain's nuclear testing at Maralinga in the South Australian outback is now a well documented chapter in the nation's history.
* Plant's permit expires on July 5
* 40-year lifespan expires in 2011
* Polls favour plant staying open, but no new nuclear plants
By Martin Roberts
MADRID, June 25 (Reuters) - As Spain's government faces the first test of an electoral pledge to phase out nuclear power, unions and environmentalists expect it will either close an ageing plant or keep it open for another two years.
The Garona plant's current operating permit expires on July 5 and the government has the final say on whether it stays open.
Suddenly, a flash of blinding light burst on the horizon, a deafening roar ripped across the steppe and a huge nuclear mushroom cloud slowly unfurled in the sky.
This image still haunts Zheyembek Abishev who was a child when the Soviet Union tested its first nuclear bomb near his village in northern Kazakhstan where generations of his ancestors grazed horses in the quiet wilderness of the steppes.
"I was born in 1947 and the explosions started in 1949. I remember it all very clearly," said Abishev, whose village is perched on the fringes of the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site.
Exposure to radiation in an incident like the 1986 Chernobyl disaster ruins the health of several generations of people, not just those who lived in the vicinity at the time.
"The effects of Chernobyl on human health will continue for many years to come in the form of anything from an abnormal limb to an extremely severe cancer," explained Dr Tony Nicholson, the vice-president of the Royal College of Radiologists and dean of its clinical radiology faculty.
Radiation damages men's sperm and women's eggs, meaning their children can be born with congenital defects such as a serious heart condition or brain abnormality. "Some of these defects will be fatal, others will require surgery to correct them and all will severely affect the child's quality of life," said Nicholson. Women exposed to radiation also have a much higher chance of miscarriage.
US President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev have reached an outline agreement to cut back their nations' stockpiles of nuclear weapons.
The "joint understanding" signed in Moscow would see reductions of deployed nuclear warheads to below 1,700 each within seven years of a new treaty.
The accord would replace the 1991 Start I treaty, which expires in December.
Mr Obama said the two countries were both "committed to leaving behind the suspicion and the rivalry of the past".
* Areva supervisory board to meet Tuesday morning
* Board set to vote on financing package
* Areva says to unveil plan after 1530 GMT
* Announcement on plan's main lines, no details - source
By Marie Maitre and Benjamin Mallet
PARIS, June 30 (Reuters) - French state-controlled nuclear group Areva's (CEPFi.PA) supervisory board is due to meet later on Tuesday to consider a long-awaited plan to bridge an 11 billion euro ($15.4 billion) funding gap.
The nuclear power industry has been accused of trying to muscle in on plans to establish a global body to represent the renewable energy industry at a key meeting in Egypt tomorrow.
France - a major user and exporter of nuclear technologies - is accused by critics of trying to win the top job inside the renewable organisation so it can move the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena) towards being a promoter of "low-carbon" technologies - including atomic power.
The talks in Sharm el-Sheikh are already threatening to become a major standoff between Germany and the United Arab Emirates over which country should win the right to have the headquarters of Irena based in its country.
Mortality and cancer incidence were studied in the National Registry for Radiation Workers in, relative to earlier analyses, an enlarged cohort of 174 541 persons, with longer follow-up (to 2001) and, for the first time, cancer registration data. SMRs for all causes and all malignant neoplasms were 81 and 84 respectively, demonstrating a 'healthy worker effect'. Within the cohort, mortality and incidence from both leukaemia excluding CLL and the grouping of all malignant neoplasms excluding leukaemia increased to a statistically significant extent with increasing radiation dose. Estimates of the trend in risk with dose were similar to those for the Japanese A-bomb survivors, with 90% confidence intervals that excluded both risks more than 2-3 times greater than the A-bomb values and no raised risk. Some evidence of an increasing trend with dose in mortality from all circulatory diseases may, at least partly, be due to confounding by smoking. This analysis provides the most precise estimates to date of mortality and cancer risks following occupational radiation exposure and strengthens the evidence for raised risks from these exposures. The cancer risk estimates are consistent with values used to set radiation protection standards.
Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Co's two-reactor expansion planned in Texas has dropped to "first alternate" in the heated competition for $18.5 billion in government-backed loans that developers say will be critical to advancing the first round of nuclear plant construction in three decades, a spokeswoman said on Thursday.
A Department of Energy official confirmed that the agency has cut to four the number of new nuclear projects being considered for the first round of federal loan guarantees.
Britain's nuclear submarine fleet has been hit by a series of serious safety breaches involving repeated leaks of radioactive waste, broken pipes and waste tanks at its home base in Scotland, according to a confidential report.
The 400-page internal report, released under the Freedom of Information Act, admits a catalogue of safety failures at Faslane naval base, the home of Britain's Trident nuclear deterrent, saying they were a "recurring theme" and ingrained in the base's culture.
The worst breaches include three leaks of radioactive coolant from nuclear submarines in 2004, 2007 and 2008 into the Firth of Clyde on the west coast of Scotland. Two radioactive waste tanks were found to be a "significant" and "growing" radiation hazard and needed to be taken out of service.
The revelations in the report, obtained by Channel Four News, are so serious that it has led to the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (Sepa) warning that it would consider closing the base down if it had the legal powers to do so.
Britain's Ministry of Defence is legally exempt from the civil radioactive safety regulations, but Sepa said it was pressing for powers to inspect and control Faslane's nuclear operations.
Nuclear power is seen by some European countries as an effective way to keep up electricity supplies while cutting emissions of climate warming gases produced when fossil fuels are burnt.
Lingering concerns over nuclear safety, waste disposal and costs have limited the sector's growth in western Europe but several central and eastern European countries are keen to build them as a way of reducing their reliance on imported fuels.
Below are the nuclear plants being built or planned across Europe:
New research on the ill health of veterans of Britain's nuclear weapons tests has been promised by the MoD.
Under secretary of state for defence Kevan Jones is expected to tell the Commons this week that a study on the health affects resulting from exposure to the nuclear test blasts will commence.
Only around 3,000 of the 20,000 or so veterans who took part in the tests during the 1950s are still alive today. Many of the survivors suffer from rare cancers, skin problems and blood disorders as do their children.
China will face safety issues and environmental hazards involving nuclear waste disposal if the nuclear power sector is expanded too fast, the country's nuclear safety chief said on Monday.
China, the world's second-largest user of fuel and electricity after the United States, plans to quadruple its nuclear power capacity in the next decade to about 40 gigawatts, fast-tracking from an embryonic stage in the last three decades when a total of less than 10 GW was built.
* Opposition party says Sofia holds talks on Russian loans
* Wants parliament interference to stop the talks
* Another party says crisis means project should be delayed
By Anna Mudeva
SOFIA, April 21 (Reuters) - Bulgaria's rightist opposition urged the government on Tuesday to freeze a multi-billion project to build a new nuclear power plant due to problems with funding in times of a global economic crisis.
The Socialist-led government and German utility RWE (RWEG.DE) have signed a deal to build Bulgaria's second nuclear power plant of Belene by 2014-2015 as part of Sofia's efforts to recover its position as a major power exporter in the Balkans.
But sources close to the project say the state-owned utility NEK, which has a 51 percent stake in the project, has problems raising funding and Belene faces a delay.
China will have 100 gigawatts of wind-power capacity by 2020, a senior energy official said on Monday, more than three times the 30 GW target the government laid down in an energy strategy drawn up just 18 months ago.
"Installed wind-power capacity is expected to reach 100 million kilowatts in 2020. That will be eight times more than in 2008," Fang Junshi, head of the coal department of the National Energy Administration, told a Coaltrans conference in Beijing. "The annual growth rate will be about 20 percent."
EDF (EDF.PA) said on Monday it had stopped its 900-megawatt nuclear reactor 3 at the Blayais facility in southwestern France on March 29 due to plant debris in the nearby Gironde river.
"We stopped the reactor 3 as a precautionary measure because the water quality was not good enough to be used," an EDF spokeswoman said.
It is only logical that safety, security and the management of radioactive waste would concern local residents as we learn of Bruce Power's plans for our region. These are issues which are of concern to people around the world, particularly those living in close proximity to nuclear facilities.
With regard to potential terrorist attacks, Monte Sonnenberg noted in Friday's article, "Bruce Power takes the occasion of these meetings to boast of its readiness in the face of all threats." Bruce Power's informational literature includes a photo of a security team and vehicle deployed at their Tiverton plant.
While the swat team and armoured vehicle may inspire confidence today, let's remember that these paramilitary commandos must keep this radioactive material secure for thousands of years. Bruce Power's own Fact Sheet #5 informs us that "The required isolation period may be for tens, hundreds or even thousands of years depending upon the radioisotopes present in the waste and their concentration."
Last week, Britain's Oxford Research Group think tank released a paper for the Institute for Public Policy Research warning that the new generation reactors, like the three models short-listed for Nanticoke, risk proliferation that could lead to "nuclear anarchy." The report notes that the new type of reactor produces large amounts of plutonium as a by-product. Plutonium is used to make the most efficient nuclear weapons.
PLANS BY the British government to press ahead with a new generation of nuclear power stations, including two proposed sites near Sellafield, have been criticised by Irish environmental groups and anti-nuclear campaigners.
A list of 11 potential sites earmarked by companies interested in building the power plants was published yesterday. Nine have previously been home to nuclear reactors - including Dungeness in Kent and Sizewell in Suffolk - while two others are near Sellafield.
