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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