A French parliamentary inquiry has flagged up "failings" in the defences of the country's nuclear power plants, days after activists crashed a drone into a facility to underscore safety concerns. Thelocal.fr Call it the world's slowest photo finish. After several decades of engineering, construction flaws and delays, and cost overruns—a troubled birth that cost their developers dearly—the most advanced commercial reactor designs from Europe and the United States just delivered their first megawatt-hours of electricity within one day of each other. But their benefits—including safety advances such as the AP1000's passive cooling and the EPR’s airplane-crash-proof shell—may offer too little, too late to secure future projects. Ieee.org French utility EDF has refuted the findings of a parliamentary commission into the safety and security of the country's nuclear energy facilities. The commission's report, published yesterday, contains "a number of factual errors" and "does not reveal any breach of the obligations incumbent on the operator", EDF noted. World-nuclear-news.org A memorandum of understanding (MoU) was recently signed between Nucleoeléctrica Argentina SA (NA-SA) and Belgium's Nuclear Research Centre (SCK-CEN) aimed at extending cooperation on nuclear safety between the two organisations that has existed for more than 15 years. World-nuclear-news.org
