Michele Kearney's Nuclear Wire: Poland

Showing posts with label Poland. Show all posts

Monday, November 22, 2010

South Korea bids for Lithuania nuclear project

http://www.nuclearpowerdaily.com/reports/South_Korea_bids_for_Lithuania_nuclear_project_999.html Seoul (AFP) Nov 17, 2010 South Korea's state energy firm said Wednesday it was seeking to build a nuclear reactor in Lithuania, in the country's latest move to export its atomic expertise. Korea Electric Power Corp (KEPCO) has submitted a bid for the project at Visaginas and expects the preferred bidder to be announced next month, a spokesman said.
He could not say how much the contract was worth or who else was in the running.
An international consortium led by KEPCO last December won a 20.4-billion-dollar deal to build four nuclear power plants in the United Arab Emirates.
South Korea, which generates 40 percent of its power needs from nuclear plants, is also actively seeking projects elsewhere.
Last month it signed a nuclear power cooperation agreement with South Africa and reached a similar deal with Poland last August. South Korean firms are to build a research reactor in Jordan.
But a deal to construct a nuclear plant in northern Turkey is being held up by disagreement over terms.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Diplomat Optimistic on U.S.-Russian Missile Shield Collaboration

The United States and Russia have a good chance of establishing plans to carry out joint missile defense work, Interfax yesterday quoted U.S. Undersecretary of State William Burns as saying (see GSN, June 25).

"The decisions that President [Barack] Obama took last autumn with regard to missile defense when he significantly adjusted American plans for missile defense have opened up new opportunities for cooperation with Russia. And we are certainly committed to explore those," Burns said.

The Obama administration announced last fall it plans over a period of years to deploy land- and sea-based variants of the U.S. Standard Missile 3 interceptor in and around Europe. The systems would be intended to provide a shield against short- and medium-range Iranian missiles (see GSN, Sept. 18, 2009).

The Kremlin had strenuously objected to a now-scrapped missile shield plan put forward by the Bush administration, which sought to deploy missile interceptors in Poland and a radar site in the Czech Republic. It has appeared wary of the Obama program.
"Obviously given the history of this issue, given the difficulties that we've had in the past it takes time to do that. But we believe there are real opportunities here in the interests of both of our countries to go forward," the diplomat said.
Washington and Moscow "have begun to explore some practical areas of cooperation," he said.

"In missile defense, for example, we are conducting a joint threat assessment of ballistic missiles," Burns said. "We've also begun to explore within the Russia-NATO Council ways in which we might resume cooperation in missile defense" (see GSN, July 26; Interfax, Sept. 13).