Tag: nuclear

Jason Anderson, the head of WWF's EU climate and energy policy, explains why binding targets and a backloading of carbon credits are needed to decarbonise Europe's economy by 2050.

China is poised to make a dramatic intervention in Britain's energy future by offering to invest billions of pounds in building a series of new nuclear power stations.

The biggest reforms to the UK energy sector in two decades were set out yesterday (22 May), prompting warnings from consumer groups and green campaigners that they would raise bills and penalise renewable energy while boosting nuclear power.

European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton wrote to Iran's chief nuclear negotiator yesterday (6 March), accepting an offer to meet to discuss Tehran's nuclear program.

The stress tests carried out on Europe's nuclear power plants in the wake of the Fukushima disaster last year have already brought "important wins", especially in terms of transparency, says Greenpeace nuclear expert Jan Haverkamp. Speaking to EurActiv.sk in an interview, he also said the tests had exposed some "black holes" in the emergency responses that need to be addressed.

As the EU banned oil imports from Iran and imposed biting new sanctions yesterday (23 January), Europe’s foreign affairs chief called on Teheran to "return to the table" for more talks.

Italians decidedly rejected the use of existing nuclear power plants, but that does not mean abandoning the study and research on atomic energy, said Environment Minister Corrado Clini. Speaking to EurActiv Italy in an exclusive interview, Clini also addressed other issues related to EU environmental policy and cooperation with Brazil in advance of the Rio+20 Earth Summit.

European Union nations must nearly double investment in power grid construction in the decade after 2020 if they are to get on the path to carbon-free electricity by mid-century, the European Climate Foundation (ECF) think-tank said yesterday (7 November).

Eberhard Rhein argues the benefits of rapidly removing Germany's nuclear plants far outstrip the economic costs.

EU nuclear fusion project ITER should be abandoned because it is set to be built in an earthquake zone, like the stricken Fukushima plant in Japan, MEPs will argue today (20 April) as last-chance proposals for the project to pay off a €1.3 billion funding shortfall are tabled for discussion.

Public unease about nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster is prompting renewed scrutiny of renewable power options by governments across the world.

Two women were injured in a letter bomb explosion at the offices of the Swiss nuclear lobby group in the northern Swiss city of Olten yesteday (31 March), a few days after the government suspended its approval process for three new nuclear power stations in response to the disaster in Japan.

The future of nuclear reactors which fail the European Commission's promised stress tests is up in the air, after EU energy ministers confirmed yesterday (21 March) that participation in the EU-mandated tests would not be binding, and ultimate responsibility for nuclear policy would remain at national level.

The European commissioner in charge of climate action, Connie Hedegaard, has signalled that EU decisions on commissioning new energy capacity are "very much likely to be influenced" by the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.

The EU is putting in place an ambitious energy policy in a bid to improve security of supplies and achieve bold CO2 reduction targets. But how does the EU decision-making process function on energy-related issues? And what is the role of the industry sector and interest groups?

The European Commission will promote underground storage as the safest option for storing nuclear waste, according to a leaked proposal which has already irked environmentalists.

A dozen centre-right MEPs tried to prevent Iranian Foreign Minister Manoucher Mottaki from entering the European Parliament in Brussels yesterday (1 June), with some of them getting into a scuffle with security guards. Mottaki addressed the Parliament's foreign affairs committee and held talks with Socialists & Democrats group leader Martin Schulz.

A Turkish-Brazilian deal to help Iran swap nuclear fuel cannot be considered a breakthrough unless it is fundamentally based on a fuel-swap proposal made by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last year, a senior EU diplomat said today (17 May).

The European Commission will table legislative proposals on the treatment of nuclear waste by the year's end, its president José Manuel Barroso announced yesterday (8 March) during a major OECD-hosted conference on civil nuclear power in Paris.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, has said on several occasions that "the production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons are forbidden under Islam," observes European Policy Centre (EPC) founding chair Stanley Crossick in a recent post on Blogactiv.

Italy yesterday (24 February) became the latest EU country to embark on a new wave of nuclear energy development, as Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and French President Nicolas Sarkozy signed a deal to build new plants in Italy.

Despite recent nuclear scares in Slovenia and France, the European Commission this week gave the go-ahead for the two remaining reactors to be completed at the controversial Mochovce nuclear plant in Slovakia. The decision was widely condemned by environmental group Greenpeace. EurActiv Slovakia reports.

With increasing energy-import dependency and the quest for climate-friendly energy production at the top of the EU's political agenda, the Commission last week (21 September) announced the creation of a new research platform to study 'sustainable' nuclear energy.

Plans to shut down all nuclear plants in the next 15 years will have an adverse impact on the country's energy security, economic efficiency and efforts to curb greenhouse-gas emissions, warned the IEA in a country review, published on 4 June.