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India on Monday voiced deep concern over a drone attack targeting the Barakah nuclear facility in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as it marked a dangerous escalation in the West Asia conflict. New Delhi's reaction came a day after a drone struck a generator near the Gulf nation's sole nuclear power plant, sparking a fire on the complex's perimeter. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack. The UAE's Ministry of Defence said it is working to determine the source of the drone strike. The incident triggered fears of a sharp escalation in tensions across West Asia. "India is deeply concerned at the attack targeting the Barakah nuclear facility in the UAE," the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said. "Such actions are unacceptable and represent a dangerous escalation. We urgently call for restraint and a return to dialogue and diplomacy," it said.
A reactor at the world's largest nuclear power plant that restarted for the first time since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster is now being shut down again on Thursday due to a glitch that occurred hours after the unit's resumption, its operator said. The No. 6 reactor at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in north-central Japan was reactivated Wednesday night for the first time in 14 years, as plant workers started removing neutron-absorbing control rods from the core to start stable nuclear fission. But the process had to be suspended hours later due to a malfunction related to control rods, which are essential to safely starting up and shutting down reactors, the Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings said. TEPCO, which also manages the wrecked Fukushima plant, said there was no safety issue from the glitch. Kashiwazak-Kariwa plant chief Takeyuki Inagaki told a news conference that he has decided to shut down the reactor to ensure safety. The operation had to stop when an alarm went
The world's largest nuclear power plant is set to restart Wednesday in north-central Japan for the first time since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear meltdown, as resource-poor Japan accelerates atomic power use to meet soaring electricity needs. The first steps in energy production at the No. 6 reactor of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant are important because the operator is Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, the same utility that runs the ruined Fukushima Daiichi plant. TEPCO's past safety issues at Fukushima have led to public worries about operations at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, which also sits in an isolated, quake-prone region. All seven reactors at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa have been dormant since a year after the Fukushima Daiichi plant on Japan's northeastern coast was hit by a massive quake and tsunami in March 2011 and suffered meltdowns that contaminated the surrounding land with radioactive fallout so severe that some areas are still unlivable. TEPCO is still trying
Russia's state-run nuclear corporation on Thursday said it has delivered the first consignment of nuclear fuel for initial loading of the third reactor at the Kudankulam nuclear power plant in Tamil Nadu. The delivery of the nuclear fuel coincided with Russian President Vladimir Putin's arrival in New Delhi on a two-day visit. A cargo flight operated by the Nuclear Fuel Division of Rosatom delivered fuel assemblies manufactured by the Novosibirsk Chemical Concentrates Plant, the corporation said in a statement. A total of seven flights from Russia are planned to supply the entire reactor core and some reserve fuel. These shipments are provided under a contract signed in 2024, which includes fuel supply for the third and fourth VVER-1000 reactors of the Kudankulam plant for the entire service life, starting from initial loading. The Kudankulam plant will have six VVER-1000 reactors with a total installed capacity of 6,000 MW. The first two reactors at Kudankulam were connected to .
Ukraine's president and the UN nuclear agency head are sounding the alarm about increased safety risks at the Russia-occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in southern Ukraine, which lost its external power supply more than a week ago as the war raged around it. Emergency diesel generators are providing power for crucial cooling systems for the facility's six shutdown reactors and spent fuel, and there is no immediate danger to Europe's biggest nuclear plant, according to International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi. But it is clearly not a sustainable situation in terms of nuclear safety, he said. The backup generators have never needed to run for so long, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The generators and the plant were not designed for this, Zelenskyy said late Tuesday, describing the situation as critical. Zaporizhzhia is one of the 10 biggest nuclear plants in the world, and its fate amid the fighting has caused fears of a
An extendable robot on Tuesday resumed its entry into one of three damaged reactors at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to retrieve a fragment of melted fuel debris, nearly three weeks after its earlier attempt was suspended due to a technical issue. The collection of a tiny sample of the spent fuel debris from inside of the Unit 2 reactor marks the start of the most challenging part of the decadeslong decommissioning of the plant where three reactors were destroyed in the March 11, 2011, magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami disaster. The sample-return mission, initially scheduled to begin on Aug. 22, was suspended when workers noticed that a set of five 1.5-meter (5-foot) add-on pipes to push in and maneuver the robot were in the wrong order and could not be corrected within the time limit for their radiation exposure, the plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings said. The pipes were to be used to push the robot inside and pull it back out when it finished. Once ..
The nation's first two nuclear reactors at the Tarapur Atomic Power Station (TAPS) that have been closed for repairs since 2020 will take another five months to resume operation due to a delay in the delivery of an essential component, officials said on Friday. Officials said they were waiting for some special metal pipes from Italy but the tubes did not arrive in time. The manufacturer is finding it difficult to produce the pipes as the order is quite small, they said. Initially scheduled for reactivation on May 9, the reactors will remain offline until October, pending the awaited supplies, an official said. The two Boiling Water Reactors (BWRs), each with a capacity of 160 megawatts, were installed in 1969 at TAPS, about 100 km from Mumbai on the country's western coast. The BWRs boil water which is converted into steam to run the turbine for electricity production and then recycled back to water through a condenser to be re-used in the heat-generation process. The overhaul, ..