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Second Romanian Reactor Loaded With Nuclear Fuel
Bucharest (AFP) Feb 15, 2007 A second reactor at the Cernavoda atomic power plant in southeastern Romania was being loaded with nuclear fuel in an operation expected to last 10 days, the plant operator Nuclearelectrica said Thursday. "With the introduction of the first nuclear fuel rod into the active zone of Cernavoda's second reactor, at 1:29 am on Thursday (2329 GMT on Wednesday), the latter became a nuclear plant," the company said. After loading the 4,560 nuclear fuel rods, containing a total of 100 tonnes of natural uranium, Nuclearelectrica will load the reactor with heavy water before conducting a long line of tests, the company said. According to Romanian Finance Minister Varujan Vosganian, the generating unit will be up and running on April 25 and will begin pumping out electricity in September. Cernavoda is a Canadian-designed plant, and the only one in eastern Europe to use Western technology. Its first nuclear reactor, out of five planned, began operating in 1996 and supplies around 10 percent of Romania's electricity. When the second reactor, which like the first was built by a consortium made up of Canadian EACL and Italian Ansaldo, comes on line, the plant will supply about 18 percent of the country's power. Bucharest has meanwhile invited tender offers to build the next two generating units at the plant, which are scheduled to kick in by 2013-2014. Sixteen companies, including the EACL-Ansaldo consortium as well as Italian Enel, German E.ON and RWE and Spanish Iberdrola, are in the running to build the reactors, which are expected to cost 2.2 billion euros (2.9 billion dollars). Romania has also said it will build a facility to store the nuclear waste from the plant, but due to procedural difficulties in obtaining the proper permits that site is not expected to become operational until 2014. Waste is currently being stored in stainless steel crates within the Cernavado facility. Environmental protection group Greenpeace has repeatedly called on Romania to halt the construction of the new reactors, pointing out that "no one knows what will become of (the waste) in the 100,000 years to come."
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Britain Forced To Rethink Nuclear Power Plans
London (AFP) Feb 15, 2007The British government's plans to build a new generation of nuclear power plants were dealt an embarrassing blow Thursday by a court ruling in favour of environmental group Greenpeace. The High Court in London ruled that a government decision last year to approve plans for new nuclear power plants was illegal because public consultations were flawed. |
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