Archive
International News Services archives articles supplied to clients one year or more after initial publication. These articles are protected by a password and not made available to readers without permission from clients. They are used as a background resource by agency journalists. Upon client requests, International News Services will remove such articles from the archive or not upload them in the first place. They are included to demonstrate the breadth of topics undertaken by the agency and also to help promote clients’ coverage.
EURATOM LOANS
BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has proposed that the EU’s nuclear arm Euratom should be authorised to lend an additional Euro 2 billion to projects improving the safety or efficiency of non-EU nuclear power stations. An expected approval by ministers would raise Euratom’s lending ceiling for these schemes and the financing of EU nuclear power plants from Euro 4 to 6 billion.…
RUSSIAN ARRESTS
BY MARK ROWE
TWO Russian geologists who prepared maps of radioactive pollution in Siberia are to be charged with revealing state secrets. The environmentalists wanted to use the maps and a 107-page report they had compiled to attract attention to increasing radioactivity around a chemical plant involved in the production of nuclear fuel near Angarsk, a town of 300,000 people close to Lake Baikal, south-central Siberia.…
FRANCE - NUCLEAR POLL
BY KEITH NUTHALL
A SURVEY conducted for the French Union for Electricity by France’s “Centre d’études et de connaissances sur l’opinion publique” has indicated that 61 per cent of French citizens would prefer not to use nuclear energy in the future, and 62 per cent said that they would be prepared to pay up to 10 per cent higher electricity bills if that meant France abandoning nuclear energy.…
UK ENERGY EFFICIENCY
KEITH NUTHALL
THE BRITISH government has been given permission by the European Commission to extend its Energy Efficiency Best Practice Programme, which supplies GBPounds 17 million a year in grants to encourage the development and take-up of energy efficient and low carbon technologies.…
EIB GRANTS
KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Investment Bank (EIB) has lent Euro 30 million to Frantschach Swiecie SA, Poland’s second largest pulp and paper producer, so it can modernise its combined heat and power plant, supplying steam and electricity. The money will help it construct a new fluidised bed boiler, which will use biomass and coal as a fuel, overhaul existing coal-fired boilers and upgrade other electricity generating equipment.…
RENEWABLE MASTERS
KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN masters degree in renewable energy has been launched. Coordinated by renewables research group EUREC, the one-year course aims at teaching technically qualified students about a variety of renewable energy methods.
Professor Arthuros Zervos, EUREC vice president said that the course was unique in obliging students to study in at least two different countries.…
MOTOR SYSTEMS
KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has launched a pilot project designed to show industrial companies how they can reduce the amount of energy they draw from their own on-site power plants and from the grid by examining how they run motorised equipment such as pumps, fans or compressors.…
ROMANIA CO-GEN
KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has drawn up plans to lend Romanian Industrial Energy Efficiency Company Euro 11 million, so it can help around 15 creditworthy industrial companies develop “more efficient and reliable sources of energy,” especially by using co-generation.…
BALKANS POWER
BY ALAN OSBORN
OPPORTUNITIES for British and other European Union (EU) electricity power companies to participate in the reconstruction and development of war-damaged electricity systems in the Balkans have been opened up by the signing of an agreement to bring the systems into the EU’s regulatory orbit.…
BATHING WATER DIRECTIVE
BY DEIRDRE MASON
SIMPLIFIED rules for ensuring that clean bathing water set out in the final proposal for a revised European Union (EU) bathing water directive will need to stand up to cost benefit analysis, water utility representatives have stressed.
The European Commission has now tabled proposed revision for agreement by EU ministers and MEPs, after years of argument that stalled previous attempts to update the 1976 directive.…