Subject: headlines 15 - 17 march
 
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 1996 09:59:18 -0500
 

     March 17, 1996 (Reuter) - Sweden's ruling Social
Democratic Party (SDP) voted on Sunday to begin phasing out
nuclear energy before the next general election in 1998.
Swedish business leaders have opposed closing down the nuclear
plants, which supply about half the country's electricity,
saying it will cause major increases in industrial fuel bills.
Sweden decided in a 1980 referendum that nuclear power should
be phased out. 

     March 16, 1996 (Reuter) - French authorities on Mururoa
Atoll presented Greenpeace activists with food and wine before
escorting them out to sea on three yachts seized during
anti-nuclear protests last year. The yachts Vega, Manutea and
La Ribaude were towed out to sea by the French military to
begin a voyage of three or four days to Tahiti, where they
will call in for repairs.

     March 15, 1996 (Reuter) - The Independent Committee for
Research and Information on Radioactivity (CRII-RAD) said it
had found traces of radioactive tritium have been found in the
water near the Valduc nuclear centre in France's Burgundy
region where nuclear weapons are produced. The French Atomic
Energy Commission (CEA) did not dispute the laboratory's
finding but said the contamination was at extremely low levels
that posed no danger whatever to human health.  

     March 14, 1996 (Reuter) - Greenpeace vessels seized
during anti-nuclear protests in the South Pacific are free to
visit French Polynesia now that they have been released,
officials said.

     March 15, 1996 (Reuter) - China could solve arch-rival
Taiwan's nuclear waste storage problems -- but only if the
island accepts Beijing rule. According to Yang Jike, vice
chairman of the Environmental and Resources Protection
Committee of the National People's Congress. "Since Taiwan is
part of China, the spent fuel of its nuclear power plants is
allowed to be transferred to the mainland for
after-treatment," 

     March 15, 1996 (Reuter) - Russia plans to bring three new
reactors on stream in the next two years. Nuclear energy
ministry spokesman Vitaly Nasonov said two of the reactors
were already half-finished, but had been mothballed. A third,
near the city of Tver would be new. The money -- 400 billion
roubles ($80 million) for research and 800 billion roubles
($160 million) for equipment and construction -- would come
from income from the sale of nuclear equipment and nuclear
technology.