• Aussies inaugurate carbon capture institute

    Australia is the world’s fourth largest producer of hard coal, and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says that Australia has a national and shared global responsibility to establish the workability of carbon capture and storage technology at a commercial scale

  • Eleven sites on final list for new U.K. nuclear power station sit

    The government published the list of eleven sites which could be potential hosts to new nuclear power stations in the United Kingdom

  • Luvata to supply oxygen-free copper to nuclear fusion project

    Finnish company awarded a contract to provide 13,000 km oxygen-free copper (Cu-OFE) strand to the ITER project; the superconducting cables must withstand heat treatment of at least 100 hours at 650 degrees centigrade

  • Texas electrical grid's operator says he is on watch for hackers

    Bob Kahn, CEO of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas: “We are constantly modifying and upgrading our protections as technology advances, business requirements change and new threats emerge”

  • Hackers of U.S. electrical grid left behind "sleeper" software programs

    The U.S. electrical grid has been penetrated by sophisticated hackers who left behind “sleeper” software programs which could be remotely activated to disrupt the system; the intelligence community says it is the work of Russian and Chinese government operatives

  • U.K. consortium to build nuclear fusion reactor

    U.K. companies have formed a consortium to bid for construction of the main reactor vacuum vessel of the €5 billion (£4.6 billion) International Tokamak Experimental Reactor (ITER) nuclear fusion reactor

  • Smart Grid vulnerable to hackers

    Smart Grid may be more efficient and economical as a power distribution system, but how safe is it? Security experts say it is not safe, and that until vulnerabilities are addressed, implementation should proceed slowly

  • U.S. searching for a nuclear waste graveyard

    Congress has killed the Yucca Mountain nuclear repository project, so the United States has no central location for storing nuclear waste; 50,000 metric tons of toxic nuclear waste that has already been produced by the U.S. nuclear plants; 30,000 metric tons more of nuclear waste is expected to be generated in the coming decades

  • Handling nuclear materials for less

    During this century, nuclear plant decommissioning in the United Kingdom will likely produce thousands of waste packages that will be retrieved, conditioned, and stored for no less than £40 billion; BNS develops new way to reduce storage and handling costs of radioactive material

  • BNS wins £13 million Dounreay decommissioning contract

    Dounreay was the site of a brave, new idea — a fast breeder nuclear reactor which would convert an unusable form of uranium to plutonium which could be recycled and turned into new reactor fuel; it would, that is, breed its own fuel, offering the prospect of electricity in abundance; it has not worked out that way; now it is the site of a big decommissioning effort

  • New reactor design solves waste, weapon proliferation problems

    A new nuclear reactor design — called Traveling-Wave reactor — is noteworthy for three things: it comes from a privately funded research company, not the government; it would run on what is now waste, thus reducing dramatically the nuclear waste and weapon proliferation problems; and it could theoretically run for a couple of hundred years without refueling

  • France will help Italy revive nuclear power industry

    Nicolas Sarkozy and Silvio Berlusconi sign an agreement which will see the Italian power company, ENEL, and its French counterpart, EDF, study the feasibility of building four power stations in Italy

  • Sweden: Mid-course correction on nuclear power

    Sweden had planned to phase out its nuclear energy capacity, ending it in about twenty to thirty years’ time or when the installations came to the end of their lives; government announced that “The phase-out law will be abolished. The ban in the nuclear technology law on new construction will also be abolished”

  • Decision on U.K. site for next generation nuclear reactor nears

    The U.K. government has given the nuclear industry two months to choose a site for the next generation nuclear reactor; from 2010, developers will be able to apply for development permits for the sites chosen

  • Breakthrough: New nuclear fusion-fission hybrid reactor

    High power Compact Fusion Neutron Source (CFNS) would provide abundant neutrons through fusion to a surrounding fission blanket that uses transuranic waste as nuclear fuel; the fusion-produced neutrons augment the fission reaction, imparting efficiency and stability to the waste incineration process