Russia must close 12 nukes to boost power exports to EU: EC
Brussels (Platts)--27Apr2005
Russia will have to close 12 nuclear reactors before the European Union will allow it to sell power to more EU members, the European Commission's director general for energy, Francois Lamoureux, said Tuesday. "Russia is fascinated by selling power to the EU," Lamoureux told the European Parliament's energy committee. Russia already sells power to Finland, which joined the EU in the mid-1990s. But the EU is insisting that Russia improves its nuclear safety up to EU levels first--which would include closing 12 reactors--before it can sell into the lucrative wider EU market. "The Russian authorities are not being tremendously helpful on this point," said Lamoureux. "But we don't sincerely believe that the network would be able to distinguish between nuclear and other sources of power." The EU made improving nuclear safety a condition of the accession treaties of the former Soviet bloc countries which joined the EU in May 2004--and both Lithuania and Slovakia had to agree to close nuclear reactors which the EU considered unsafe in the long term. This story was originally published in Platts European Power Alert http://www.europeanpoweralert.platts.com
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