Slovenské Elektráne cooperating with police

24 July 2014

Slovenské Elektráne's management and staff are "engaged in providing their full support" to police in an investigation into the privatization of the Slovak utility, its majority owner told World Nuclear News.

Media reports claimed police yesterday "raided" Bratislava-based Slovenské Elektráne, searching for documents dating from the period when the country sold the company to Enel. But a spokesman for the Italian utility said today that, rather than a raid, it was "an action to collect archive documentation from the privatization period." Slovak economy minister Miriam Ziakova confirmed this to Slovak news agency SITA herself, the spokesman added.

"As disclosed by [Slovak] public authorities, the focus of the investigation relates to the facts occurring in the period prior to completion of the privatization of Slovenské Elektráne, namely, April 2006," the Enel spokesman, who asked not to be named, told WNN.

New strategy for Fukushima trench water

24 July 2014

New approaches to removing the contaminated water from trenches around units 2 and 3 at the damaged Fukushima Daiichi plant are being explored after attempts to freeze it failed.

First criticality for Chinese reactor

24 July 2014

Fuqing 1 first criticality 48Unit 1 of the Fuqing plant in China's Fujian province has moved closer to commissioning by achieving a sustained chain reaction.

Iberdrola joins GE-Hitachi for Prism

23 July 2014

Prism (GE-Hitachi) 47x48Spanish utility Iberdrola will work with GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy to develop a proposal to build a Prism integral fast reactor in the UK, but is yet to decide the scope of its involvement either as an engineer or operator of the potential plant.

Ignalina 2 decommissioning work starts

24 July 2014

Work has started at the second unit of the Ignalina nuclear power plant in Lithuania to dismantle its emergency core cooling system (ECCS) and to remove contaminated components from its turbine hall. The two projects are to be completed in June 2015 and by 2029, respectively.

Construction licence for ESS

23 July 2014

ESS facility 48The Swedish nuclear regulator has issued a conditional licence for construction of the European Spallation Source (ESS) facility in Lund. The research facility will feature the world's most powerful neutron source.

Entergy opposes Indian Point outage proposal

23 July 2014

Indian Point 48Entergy has criticized a Department of Environmental Conservation proposal to require simultaneous annual outages at both of its Indian Point nuclear power units aimed at protecting fish in the Hudson River.

Industry Talk

Man has been sifting through trash for millennia, but the extraction of americium-241 waste from the UK's stockpile of civilian plutonium takes the exercise to a whole new dimension. Am-241 - a decay product of plutonium-241 - is the most prevalent isotope of americium in long-term stored plutonium and is currently considered to be waste.

The National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) in north-west England is just two years away from producing the first developmental pellets of Am-241 for radioisotope power sources in its contract with the European Space Agency. Sourcing plutonium for the project from the nearby Sellafield nuclear complex, NNL chemists hope the Am-241 they are producing could one day be used in thermoelectric generators to power deep space programs. Read more..

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Symposium 2014