Platts - Monday, December 01, 2003 http://www.platts.com ------------ Washington (Nuclear News Flashes)--01Dec2003 Westinghouse, Constellation form strategic alliance Westinghouse and Constellation announced a strategic alliance Dec. 1. Constellation Energy Group said that the alliance between its subsidiary, Constellation Generation Group, and Westinghouse Electric Co. would enhance nuclear power plant performance and achieve cost reductions "by aligning Constellation Energy and Westinghouse operational goals." Westinghouse spokesman Vaughn Gilbert said that under the deal, his company could provide nuclear steam supply components, nuclear fuel and fuel-related inspection services, safety- and non-safety-related control systems, spare parts, and original equipment manufacturer engineering. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. ------------ London (Nuclear News Flashes)--01Dec2003 With union strike suspended, Sellafield to restart Major plants at British Nuclear Fuels plc's (BNFL) Sellafield complex are to immediately restart following 22 days of stops and starts caused by selective strikes by shift workers, BNFL announced Dec. 1. "The next period of strike action--due 5 Dec.--has been suspended to allow talks (between Sellafield management and trade unions) on conciliation to take place," BNFL spokesman Nigel Monckton told Platts. He said that a suspension of the strike action by the General, Municipal & Boilermakers union and by Amicus, the U.K.'s biggest manufacturing union, had been agreed to at a meeting of the shift workers' union representatives Dec. 1. The unions and BNFL have been in a long-running dispute over a 2,000-pound per year (U.S.$3,340) wage gap compared with white collar staff. Monckton said all three Sellafield vitrification lines and the Thorp oxide reprocessing plant have been closed since Nov. 13. Line 2 of the vitrification operation has been shut since Oct. 30 for other reasons. The unions' shift worker shop stewards are scheduled to meet Dec. 8 to review progress on the conciliatory discussions. ------------ London (Platts)--28Nov2003 E.on, RWE confirm investment in more nuclear capacity German producer E.on confirmed to Platts on Friday that it would invest in additional capacity at two of its nuclear power plants, Grafenrheinfeld in Bavaria and Brokdorf in Schleswig-Holstein. However, contrary to media reports in Germany, E.on said that this would not lengthen the life-span of the plants, but in fact shorten them, even if only by a few months. The other generator mentioned in the media reports, RWE, also confirmed it would invest in added capacity, but said: "We are not producing more power than we are allowed." The generators said that the plants in question would simply take a shorter time, once the planned investments were approved, to reach the maximum power that they are allowed to generate. Neither said how much they would spend or how much capacity they would build. German laws governing the abandonment of nuclear power have given generators a set amount of power they would be allowed to generate before being switched off permanently. E.on and RWE said the additional capacity was within these parameters. This story was first published in European Power Alert. ------------