***************************************************************** 04/05/07 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 15.80 ***************************************************************** RADBULL IS PRODUCED BY THE ABALONE ALLIANCE CLEARINGHOUSE ***************************************************************** Send News Stories to news@energy-net.org with title on subject line and first line of body NUCLEAR POLICY 1 [NYTr] Talks on Iran's nuclear program resume 2 Guardian Unlimited: Analysis: Hope for More Iran Compromises 3 BBC NEWS: Navy crew reunited with families 4 BBC NEWS: 'No deal done with Iran' - Blair 5 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Ban Ki-Moon thanks Ahmadinejad 6 Reuters: U.S. could crack Iran air defense: Russian generals 7 Reuters: Iran sees Italy acting as bridge with West 8 Reuters: EU's Solana, Iran negotiator in nuclear contact 9 AFP: EU's Solana in fresh talks with Iran's nuclear negotiator - 10 AFP: Larijani: Iran's pragmatic man for all crises - 11 IRNA: US, British joint acts against Iran numerous - Ahmadinejad - 12 YONHAP NEWS: U.S. says again N.K. banking issue close to being settl 13 YONHAP NEWS: Bolton says U.S. should repudiate six-party nuclear dea 14 Korea Times: Richardson Not Tasked With 6-Party Issues 15 Korea Times: Between Scylla and Charybdis Over N. Korea 16 News Analysis: Doubts Rise on North Korea 's Uranium-Enrichment Prog 17 US: American Scientist Online: The Stuff of Bombs 18 Troubled Disposition: Next Steps in Dealing With Excess Plutonium 19 UPI: CIA bans book on Chinese nuclear weapons NUCLEAR REACTORS 20 US: Arizona Republic : Nuclear energy making a comeback 21 Guardian Unlimited: Javans fired up over reactor next to volcano 22 The Hindu: NTPC to foray into nuclear power generation 23 US: Platts: More work needed, but Palo Verde nuke can turn things ar 24 BBC NEWS: Plaid leader backs nuclear plant 25 US: POAC: NRC rejects Ocean County request for N-plant hearing 26 US: Bryan-College Station Eagle: Officials check A&M's reactor 27 US: JOURNAL NEWS: Indian Point 3 goes back to work after one-day shu 28 US: Journal News: Nuke plants' sirens test better today 29 US: NRC: NRC to Discuss 2006 Performance at Vogtle Nuclear Plant 30 US: York Dispatch: NRC praises Peach Bottom nuclear plant 31 US: St. Louis Business Journal: AmerenUE to seek nuclear plant permi 32 US: News10.net: Nuclear Power Making California Comeback? 33 People's Daily: Lithuanian nuclear plant must be closed by 2009 - Pr 34 Asia Times: Mushroom cloud over US-India nuclear talks 35 US: NRC: NRC to Discuss 2006 Performance at Oconee Nuclear Plant 36 UPI: Russia's pricing change may boost nuclear 37 US: UPI: AmerenUE, UniStar join nuclear forces 38 US: FR NRC: Tennessee Valley Authority Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant, U 39 Oilweek Magazine: Ontario deal for nuclear energy didn‘t cover all 40 Hindustan Times: India to allow private players in nuclear sector- 41 IHT: Japan: Nuclear scandal may juice power prices - 42 Whitehaven News: Canada given nuclear peek 43 IRNA: Nuclear energy a top national priority in Thailand NUCLEAR SECURITY NUCLEAR SAFETY 44 BBC NEWS: Polonium test continuing for 17 45 BBC NEWS: Cumbria | Beaches tested for radioactivity 46 US: recordonline.com: Potassium iodide tablets expire, new shipment 47 ITAR-TASS: Russia businessmen say suffered from polonium, want indem NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 48 The Australian: Nuclear waste is all in the wording 49 AdelaideNow...: Call for SA nuclear dump 50 US: Bradenton Herald: Adviser says Tallevast work is inadequate 51 ENS: License for Uranium Enrichment Plant Challenged in Court 52 WNA: Authority prepares to tackle waste 53 US: TCRE: Entergy to take over radioactive waste storage at Big Rock 54 SA: Creamer Media: Where to with the waste? 55 SA: Creamer Media: Competition bodies get tough, nuclear-waste chall 56 US: Times-Standard: Nuke fuel storage effort in motion 57 US: Carlsbad Current-Argus: Pearce has praise for GNEP project betwe 58 WA Business News: SA and WA outback best place for nuclear dump - Mo 59 RSC: Safer storage of nuclear waste 60 Whitehaven News: Underground N-waste site back on cards 61 SNA: Bulgaria: Radioactive Waste Spill in Bulgaria's N-Plant Poses " PEACE US DEPT. OF ENERGY 62 DOE: DOE to Provide up to $14 Million to Develop Advanced 63 Santa Fe New Mexican: State presses LANL on water monitoring 64 Hanford News: Hanford cleanup video wins award 65 NMBW: Environment Department issues monitoring requirements for LANL 66 KnoxNews: ORNL's 'Jaguar' purring perfectly ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 [NYTr] Talks on Iran's nuclear program resume Date: Thu, 5 Apr 2007 16:27:40 -0500 (CDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit AP via Yahoo - Apr 5, 2007 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070405/ap_on_re_eu/iran_nuclear Talks on Iran's nuclear program resume By RAF CASERT Associated Press Writer BRUSSELS, Belgium -Iran and the major powers seeking to halt its nuclear program resumed discussions almost immediately after Iran announced that it was releasing a British navy crew, an EU official said Thursday. Talks on the nuclear issue were put on hold during the standoff over the seized sailors and marines. But hours after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced the crew's release, top Iranian negotiator Ali Larijani spoke by telephone with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who negotiates on behalf of permanent U.N. Security Council members the United States, France, Britain, Russia and China, plus Germany, an EU official said. "We hope we can get back to the negotiating table," the official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, adding that the crew's release, "can only improve the context in which the nuclear file can be discussed." Solana and Larijani talked about both the seized crew members and the possibilities of progress on the international nuclear standoff, the official said. The United Nations last month toughened sanctions on Iran over its failure to comply with the demand that it freeze enrichment of uranium, which can be used to make nuclear weapons as well as generate energy. Tehran has steadfastly denied it wants to produce weapons. The 27 EU nations had planned to discuss Iran's nuclear program during a special meeting over the weekend but were sidetracked by the seizure of the British crew. The world powers insist that Tehran must freeze its enrichment work before any talks can begin on a package of economic and other incentives, including assistance for its nuclear power generation program. Iran has announced a partial suspension of cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog, by revoking a pledge to inform it of any plans to build new nuclear facilities. Copyright ) 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. * ================================================================ .NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems . Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us . .339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org .List Archives: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ .Subscribe: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================ ***************************************************************** 2 Guardian Unlimited: Analysis: Hope for More Iran Compromises From the Associated Press Thursday April 5, 2007 8:16 PM By SALLY BUZBEE Associated Press Writer Iran's abrupt release of 15 British sailors and marines is raising hopes the country might compromise on other disputes, most notably its nuclear program. The move points to the growing influence of pragmatic conservatives, a faction that backs Iran's Islamic clerical leadership but is still willing to deal with the West - at least to ensure that the country is not harmed in its confrontations with the U.S. and its allies. British media credited the breakthrough to Ali Larijani, Iran's top foreign policy negotiator who leads its diplomatic efforts in dealing with a demand by the West for a freeze in Iranian uranium enrichment. While a religious conservative, Larijani is seen as a pragmatist with close ties to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He and his allies, including former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, are less anti-Western than Iran's hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The pragmatists also worry about the populism of Ahmadinejad and his backers that includes calls to redistribute wealth within Iran. Rafsanjani is a multimillionaire, and much recent criticism of Ahmadinejad by Iranian conservatives has centered on fears his strident rhetoric could hurt Iran's economy and the status quo. Yet if Larijani and his allies led the way in ending the faceoff with Britain, Ahmadinejad's featured role during the release of the naval team seemed to indicate he was not completely brushed aside. It is the struggle between hard-liners and pragmatists in the Islamic Republic that could give optimism only a brief life: As Iran headed back into talks with Europe on its nuclear program Thursday, it already was warning of retaliation if the West pushed too hard. The mixed signals put the spotlight on a key conundrum about Iran - the question of who really calls the shots. Iran's supreme leader, Khamenei, is believed to play the key role of stepping in to forge a decision when various factions can't agree, but what is not understood is when, or in what disputes, he steps in. Ahmadinejad was the one to announce the Britons' release Wednesday, grinning for TV cameras as he later shook their hands. But British media quoted British officials as saying little headway was made in the dispute over the capture of the Royal Navy team by Iran's Revolutionary Guards until Larijani suggested in a TV interview this week that Tehran wanted a diplomatic solution. Larijani, a former Revolutionary Guards officer who speaks English, is considered a key rival to the president, whose comments questioning the Holocaust and calling for Israel to be ``wiped from the map'' have enraged the world - and even brought criticism from within Iran. All that points to Iran's pragmatists gaining strength over ultra-hardline radicals, said Jon Alterman, a Mideast specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. ``The release of the soldiers without a show trial or some dramatic retreat from the British suggests to me that the conservative voices triumphed'' over hard-liners, Alterman said. Still, even as Ahmadinejad released the Britons, he warned sharply that Iran would retaliate if the U.N. Security Council continued with sanctions targeted at curbing the Iranian nuclear program. A key factor is that all Iranian factions pledge strong support for the nuclear program. And none of Iran's current leaders can be called moderate. Ahmadinejad and his backers combine anti-Western ideology and strong Islamic conservatism. Larijani and his allies are also conservative, religious and strong supporters of the Revolutionary Guard, even if they are slightly less anti-Western. That means tough bargaining over the nuclear program, and Western charges that Iranians are helping some of the violent groups in neighboring Iraq and supporting Islamic extremists elsewhere in the Middle East. Iran clearly wants to engage the United States and the rest of the West, and it is likely to meet ``flexibility with pragmatism,'' said Vali Nasr and Ray Takeyh, two Iran experts with close ties to the country. But so far, fearing that Iran is trying to develop atomic weapons, the United States and other governments remain adamant that Tehran must curb the nuclear program before any talks can begin on broader issues. That seems to provide little room for diplomatic breakthroughs as along as the Iranians show a united front. --- Sally Buzbee is The Associated Press' chief of Middle East news, based in Cairo, Egypt. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 3 BBC NEWS: Navy crew reunited with families Last Updated: Thursday, 5 April 2007, 15:04 GMT 16:04 UK Leading Seaman Chris Coe was shown on Iranian television The 15 Royal Navy sailors and marines held in Iran for almost two weeks are being reunited with their families. The crew, freed by Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a "gift" to the British people on Wednesday, touched down at Heathrow Airport at 1200 BST. They were then flown to a Royal Marines base in Devon to see friends and relatives, and to be de-briefed. 'Dual strategy' In a press conference given outside Downing Street, the prime minister said he was "glad" the crew had been returned "safe and unharmed". He said "no deal" had been done with the Iranians to secure the crew's release. He contrasted the rejoicing at the return of the crew with the "sober and ugly reality" of the deaths of four British soldiers in Iraq in what he described as a "terrorist act". The crew were flown by helicopter to Devon And he repeated allegations that there were "elements of the Iranian regime" that were "financing, arming and supporting terrorism in Iraq". However, he said it was "too early to say" whether the UK troops had been killed by Iranian-backed insurgents. The prime minister said the government had pursued a "dual-track strategy" of remaining open to dialogue with Iran, while "mobilising international support and pressure". "In my view it would be utterly naive to believe that our personnel would have been released unless both elements of the strategy had been present." Defence Secretary Des Browne said the navy crew, most of whom are in their 20s, had "acted with immense courage and dignity". De-briefing The navy personnel arrived at Tehran Airport early on Thursday in a fleet of official cars after 13 days in Iranian custody. They had travelled first class on a British Airways flight. CAPTURED NAVY PERSONNEL Chris Air, 25, from Altrincham in Cheshire Mark Banks, 24, of Lowestoft, Suffolk Paul Barton, of Southport, Merseyside Arthur Batchelor, 20, of Plymouth Felix Carman, 26, of Swansea Gavin Cavendish Christopher Coe, 31, of Huddersfield Dean Harris, 24, of Carmarthen, west Wales Andrew Henderson Simon Massey Danny Masterton, 26, of Muirkirk, Ayrshire Adam Sperry, 22, of Wigston, near Leicester Nathan Summers, of Hayle, Cornwall Joe Tindell, 21, of south London Faye Turney, 26, originally from Shropshire Profiles of navy personnel Two versions of events At Heathrow Airport, the group briefly lined up in front of media before boarding helicopters. They were then flown to Royal Marines Barracks Chivenor, in Devon, where they are being reunited with their families. In emotional scenes, the sailors and marines dressed in military uniform, embraced relatives, friends and colleagues. A de-briefing will take place later and they will undergo health checks. BBC correspondents say military chiefs will be keen to assess the physical and psychological impact captivity has had on the crew. Royal Marine Adam Sperry's family watched his return to the UK on television at home in Leicester. His aunt, Theresa Fowler, told BBC News: "We are just longing to see him and put our arms around him and give him a kiss." And Margaret Sperry, his grandmother, said it had been an emotional and difficult time for the family. "I don't think I would have ever gone out of the door again if anything had happened to him," she said. Iranian television has broadcast pictures and statements from several members of the crew, including the only woman in the group, Leading Seaman Faye Turney. Before they left Tehran, she was shown saying: "Apologies for our actions, but many thanks for having it in your hearts to let us go free." Commentators are divided over whether the release represents a diplomatic triumph for the UK, or a public relations coup for the Iranian president. A senior government source said Iran realised it had made a "clumsy mistake" and had "not done itself any favours". The source added the UK thought the matter might be resolved peacefully but had had no idea President Ahmadinejad would announce their release on Wednesday. The 15 service personnel had disembarked from HMS Cornwall in the Gulf when they were detained by Iran's Revolutionary Guard on 23 March. The Iranians accused the crew of straying into its waters, although the British have insisted throughout that they were in Iraqi territory. * BBC Copyright Notice ***************************************************************** 4 BBC NEWS: 'No deal done with Iran' - Blair Last Updated: Thursday, 5 April 2007, 18:23 GMT 19:23 UK Mr Blair said celebrations had to be tempered with mourning Prime Minister Tony Blair has insisted no deal was done to free 15 Royal Navy crew members, as they arrived in the UK after being held in Iran for 13 days. They were released "without any deal, without any negotiation, without any side agreement of any nature", he said. British officials also denied that the UK had apologised over the incident. The diplomats insisted the only written communication was an exchange of diplomatic notes several days earlier. It is thought the British note included an offer to hold discussions to clarify the border line to avoid problems in future, says the BBC's Frances Harrison in Iran. Mr Blair said new lines of communication had opened with Iran that it would be "sensible to pursue". But he said the UK would not stand for attempts to get nuclear weapons or to support terrorism. 'Terrorist act' Speaking as the Royal Navy crew arrived back at Heathrow airport, Mr Blair said he rejoiced at their return. But it had to be tempered with the "ugly reality" of the deaths of four British soldiers in Iraq, killed by "a terrorist act" in Basra. The general picture... is there are elements at least of the Iranian regime that are backing, financing, arming, terrorism in Iraq Tony Blair The Ministry of Defence confirmed on Thursday that four soldiers had been killed in a roadside bomb blast and a fifth was seriously injured. A Kuwaiti interpreter was also killed. Mr Blair said it was "far too early" to point to any Iranian involvement in that particular attack. But he added: "The general picture, as I have said before, is there are elements at least of the Iranian regime that are backing, financing, arming terrorism in Iraq." Revolutionary Guard The Royal Navy crew members were on patrol boats launched from HMS Cornwall in the Gulf on 23 March when they were detained by Iran's Revolutionary Guard. The Iranians accused the crew of straying into its waters - the British say they were in Iraqi territory. Mr Blair was asked if the UK had promised not to stray into its waters, Mr Blair said British forces should not be in Iranian waters - but added "it is our contention that they weren't". The crew were flown by helicopter from Heathrow He also denied suggestions that an Iranian official held in Iraq had been released and that consular access had been granted to others. He said Britain had managed to secure the release of its personnel "more quickly than many people anticipated", and "without any deal, without any negotiation, without any side agreement of any nature whatever". "We made it clear at the outset we weren't going to do that and we held firm to that position throughout," he said. He also defended the government's "dual-track strategy" during the crisis - saying they had been open to talks with Iran, but it had also been important to mobilise international support - amid criticism that it had angered Iran. Arab support "In my view it would be utterly naive to believe that our personnel would have been released unless both elements of the strategy had been present," he said. A senior government source told the BBC there had been a lot of willingness from the governments in the region and Arab world to lobby Iran, and this had an impact - as did a swift UN Security Council statement. He added that while no deal was done by the UK over Iranians being held in Iraq, it was possible that the Iraqi government might have taken some sort of initiative. Shadow defence secretary Liam Fox told the BBC that the government was right not to have made any concessions, but he said Mr Blair still needed to answer some questions. "The main question is what can we do differently to prevent something like this happening in the future," he said. "There are a number of questions about how far HMS Cornwall was away from the vessel that was being boarded. About why there wasn't proper helicopter cover - why there wasn't any patrol boat cover?" * BBC Copyright Notice ***************************************************************** 5 IRIB PERSIAN NEWS: Ban Ki-Moon thanks Ahmadinejad 2007/04/05 09:02:53 Þ.Ù UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon Wednesday in a phone call thanked Islamic Republic of Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for pardoning 15 British naval troopers arrested for illegal entry to Iranian waters. President Ahmadinejad, too, congratulated the UN Sec Gen for his appointment at the post, pointing out that there are serious challenges at the international scene currently with which the nations are entangled. He added, "Your role, as the secretary general of the United Nations, is quite sensitive and decisive under the current world conditions and keeping in mind that you are from the vast ancient continent of Asia." Ahmadinejad also wished Ban Ki-Moon success at the sensitive post he shoulders in performing his tough missions. The Islamic Republic of Iran President considered observing the rules of justice and kindness towards human beings as the best way for crisis solving, arguing, "In the case of the British marines, if that country's officials had acted more wisely and properly the matter would have been solved much earlier and we hope through paying respect to international laws and treaties, we would not witness the occurrence of such matters in the future." The UN Secretary General thanked the President and expressed hope that such matters would not occur in the future, and reiterated, "In order to perform my duties and succeed in my missions I enthusiastically look for the assistance of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the UN permanent representative, and your support." SM Copyright 2004, All Rights Reserved By Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting News Network Sponsored By IRIB News Computer Center. E-Mail: Info@IRIBNEWS.ir ***************************************************************** 6 Reuters: U.S. could crack Iran air defense: Russian generals Thu Apr 5, 2007 12:08PM EDT MOSCOW (Reuters) - The United States would suffer losses if it attacked Iran but weight of numbers would ensure it eventually achieved air supremacy, Russian generals said on Thursday. "According to our estimates, Iran's air defense system is pretty strong," General Yuri Solovyov, head of Moscow's air defenses, told a news conference. "Iran's weapons, among others, include our anti-aircraft systems which allow them to fight all types of flying objects currently in service in the U.S. army ... Besides, we all remember our specialists have trained them since Soviet times." Russia said in January it had completed delivery of TOR-M1 anti-aircraft missile systems to Iran, provoking an outcry from Washington and its Middle East ally Israel who said the sale undermined regional security. Moscow said the missile systems were short-range and purely defensive. Russian media have quoted unnamed sources in Russian military intelligence as saying the United States could launch a strike on Iran as early as April 6. Washington and Tehran are at loggerheads over Iran's nuclear program which the West fears is aimed at building an atomic bomb. Iran says it wants only to produce electricity. The U.S. has also accused Iran of supporting militants in neighboring Iraq. "Today's situation is such that the attacking side (the U.S,) has more modern and powerful weapons and enjoys supremacy in quantity, compared to Iran's defenses," said General Sergei Razygrayev, chief of staff of Moscow's air defense system. Continued... © Reuters 2007. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 7 Reuters: Iran sees Italy acting as bridge with West Thu Apr 5, 2007 10:14AM EDT By Phil Stewart ROME (Reuters) - Iran believes Italy could act as a "bridge" in talks with the West, including those on Tehran's nuclear program, its envoy to Rome told Reuters. Ambassador Abolfazl Zohrehvand said political ties between Iran and Italy had strengthened since Prime Minister Romano Prodi was elected a year ago. "The European fanaticism that you see in other countries you don't see in Italy. That has allowed (Italy) to always have open negotiations with us, open dialogue with us," Zohrehvand said in an interview late on Wednesday. Prodi accelerated Italy's pullout of troops from Iraq and was a proponent of U.N. peacekeeping in Lebanon. Zohrehvand said he was certain Prodi and his foreign minister, Massimo D'Alema, were "heard and listened to better than other countries" in Tehran. Asked about the dispute over Iran's nuclear ambitions, Zohrehvand said Rome could serve as an important go-between. "Italy, on the one hand, is trustworthy to us and on the other hand is a trustworthy partner for other European countries. And therefore it can have a role as an effective bridge so that matters don't stall, reach an impasse," he said. Continued... © Reuters 2007. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 8 Reuters: EU's Solana, Iran negotiator in nuclear contact Thu Apr 5, 2007 5:47AM EDT BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana discussed prospects for negotiations on Iran's nuclear program with Iranian negotiator Ali Larijani in a telephone call shortly before Iran freed 15 captured British navy personnel, an EU official said on Thursday. He said Solana raised the detention of the British sailors, whose release on Wednesday had not yet been announced, as well as the standoff over Iran's uranium enrichment efforts, which the West believes are aimed at making nuclear weapons. "The contents are confidential, but I can say they discussed the nuclear file and the possibility of getting back to negotiations," the official said, adding that contacts remained open and another telephone call was likely soon. The official dismissed any idea of a trade-off between the release of the captives and a resumption of nuclear talks, which the United Nations has made conditional on Iran suspending sensitive nuclear work including enrichment. He said Solana's communication channel with Larijani, who is secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, had never been broken off after talks on a package of Western incentives failed to induce Tehran to halt enrichment last year. EU officials were watching the 13-day crisis closely to see whether it strengthened the hand of Larijani, regarded as a pragmatist more amenable to exploring a bargain with the West than hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadijenad. The German presidency of the European Union welcomed the release of the British sailors in a statement connecting it with other outstanding disputes between Tehran and the West. "The presidency hopes that Iran uses this opportunity to find solutions to other issues in cooperation with the international community and the European Union. "This applies in particular to the proposal by the foreign ministers of China, Germany, France, Great Britain, Russia and the United States to resolve the controversy over Iran's nuclear program through dialogue and negotiations," it said. © Reuters 2007. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 9 AFP: EU's Solana in fresh talks with Iran's nuclear negotiator - Thu Apr 5, 1:08 PM ET BRUSSELS (AFP) - EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana has held fresh talks with Iran's nuclear envoy aimed at reviving negotiations on the Islamic republic's atomic programme, an EU official said Thursday. Solana, who has been charged by the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany with trying to entice Tehran back to the table, held telephone talks with Ari Larijani on Wednesday, the official said. "There was a conversation yesterday," he said, on condition of anonymity. "They agreed to keep in contact, but only by telephone for now." The aim of the talks is to try to find common ground to resume the negotiations on the basis of a previous offer made by the international community, the official explained. The offer includes political, economic and trade incentives for Iran to give up uranium enrichment, which is necessary to produce nuclear energy but can be used to make an atomic bomb at highly refined levels. Western countries fear that Tehran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon covertly under the guise of a civilian energy programme. Iran says it simply wants to generate electricity and has refused to suspend enrichment as a precondition for the talks to begin. The EU official refused to provide further details about Wednesday's telephone conversation, except to say that it took place before the release of 15 British sailors, who were being held by Iran. Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 10 AFP: Larijani: Iran's pragmatic man for all crises - Thu Apr 5, 4:45 AM TEHRAN (AFP) - Top Iranian security official Ali Larijani, who leads contacts with the West over Iran's nuclear drive, again showed his relatively pragmatic streak as he emerged as one of the main protagonists in the crisis over the captured British sailors. Larijani, head of Iran's supreme national security council, is a natural conservative but his moderate and distinctly undramatic language contrasts starkly with the more volatile rhetoric of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. While it was Ahmadinejad who in typically theatrical style stunned the world with his sudden announcement that the sailors were to be released, much of the behind-the-scenes diplomacy has been carried out by the bearded Larijani. He started by taking what appeared to be a hardline stance, blaming Britain's "incorrect attitude" for preventing the intended release of the sole female sailor detained. But it was Larijani who then signalled the major turning point in the row, giving an unprecedented interview to a British television channel in which he said the crisis could easily be resolved and there was no need for any trial. And it was the tall 49-year-old former head of Iranian television who held the key diplomatic contact in the crisis late Tuesday, a telephone call with Prime Minister Tony Blair's chief foreign policy advisor Sir Nigel Sheinwald. After those talks, Downing Street issued a statement that struck an unequivocally upbeat tone for the first time in the crisis, saying Britain favoured talks and Blair believed Iran wanted to solve the issue swiftly. Hours later, Ahmadinejad made his dramatic announcement that the 15 sailors had been pardoned as a "gift" to the British people and would be freed immediately. While Larijani's change in tone in the interview with Britain's Channel 4 News was a major turnaround, there could be little surprise that it was the job of the ex-television chief to deliver the news. Larijani was a defeated candidate in the 2005 presidential election won by Ahmadinejad and was subsequently appointed to head the security council, a powerful body charged with all national security issues. While Ahmadinejad nominally is "president" of the security council, in reality Larijani receives his orders from supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei whose confidence he is believed to enjoy. Larijani was the official entrusted with carrying out months of sensitive talks with the EU's foreign policy chief Javier Solana which nevertheless failed to find a deal to end the nuclear standoff between Iran and the West. At a time of great tension between the two sides, it was Larijani who headed to the Munich security conference earlier this year to give a keynote and relatively moderate speech on Iran's nuclear programme. Yet while Larijani adopts a more pragmatic tone than Ahmadinejad, he remains a regime insider whose position remains hardline. Larijani is a the son of a grand Ayatollah and he married the daughter of Ayatollah Morteza Motahari, a close confidant of Iran's revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. His younger brother, Sadegh Larijani, is a cleric who is a member of the the Islamic republic's main vetting body, the Guardians Council. As head of state television between 1994 and 2004, Larijani used his powers to move against reformers with programmes that attacked intellectuals and people close to reformist President Mohammad Khatami. Copyright © 2007 Yahoo! Canada Co. All Rights Reserved. Privacy ***************************************************************** 11 IRNA: US, British joint acts against Iran numerous - Ahmadinejad - Tehran, April 5, IRNA Ahmadinejad-US-Britain IRI President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said here Wednesday, the list of US and British governments' antagonist moves against Iran is too long to be mentioned. He made the comment in response to a foreign reporter who had asked whether the US and British forces had made any move against Iran in the past, at his first press conference in Iranian New Year, 1386 in which the highlight was his announcement of the release of the 15 detained British marines on auspicious occasion of Prophet Muhammad's blessed birth anniversary. Upon British daily Independent's reporter who insisted for knowing the joint US-British governments' moves against Iran, President Ahmadinejad said, "The 1953 coup (against Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq's government), supporting the last Iranian dictator for 25 years, supporting the past tyrant regime's vast massacre of the Iranians in 1963 and and 1978, are a few of those antagonist moves." The president also referred to a coup plot before the victory of the Islamic revolution, the eight-year Iraqi imposed war that was backed by both those governments, and moves aimed at sowing the seeds of discord among the different Iranian ethnic groups as other cases of US-British plots hatched against the Iranian nation. He added, "Recently, too, the terrorists arrested in Khuzestan confessed to having ties with London and let us not forget that a number of our citizens in Ahvaz had got killed in bomb attacks committed by those terrorists." President Ahmadinejad added, "In nuclear issue, too, those two powers are acting against our nation jointly." ***************************************************************** 12 YONHAP NEWS: U.S. says again N.K. banking issue close to being settled Friday, April 06, 2007 WASHINGTON, April 5 (Yonhap) -- The U.S. State Department said Thursday the protracted talks on a North Korean banking issue were close to being concluded but declined to give specific dates. "I think they are getting close to their work being done," department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters. "They are working hard." Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary Daniel Glaser has been in Beijing since early last week trying to facilitate the transfer of some US$25 million of North Korea-related money out of Macau to a Chinese bank. But the transaction has been delayed due to problems negotiators have only vaguely described as technical. Macau's Banco Delta Asia (BDA) had frozen the money after its designation by the U.S. Treasury in September 2005 as a money launderer abetting Pyongyang's illicit financial activities. The U.S. agreed that the BDA will release the funds, but when the transfer was delayed, North Korea walked out of denuclearization talks last month, insisting it must have the money before returning. The BDA problem has also complicated North Korea's implementation of the denuclearization accord, which commits Pyongyang to shut down its key nuclear facility by April 13. South Korean and Chinese officials indicated it may now be impossible to meet that deadline. U.S. officials have said before that the BDA issue was close to being settled, but Glaser has stayed in Beijing throughout the process without visible signs of progress. ldm@yna.co.kr (END) ***************************************************************** 13 YONHAP NEWS: Bolton says U.S. should repudiate six-party nuclear deal Friday, April 06, 2007 By Lee Dong-min WASHINGTON, April 5 (Yonhap) -- A former senior U.S. envoy on Thursday criticized the George W. Bush administration's approach to the North Korean nuclear issue from start to finish and claimed the best way out is to repudiate the latest deal, which Pyongyang will not carry out anyway. John Bolton, former ambassador to the United Nations, flatly denied any doubts about North Korea's admission of a uranium-based nuclear weapons program and accused those who question it of ignoring what will be the critical issue in the coming days. He also criticized White House endorsement of Gov. Bill Richardson's trip to North Korea next week, saying it will send another confusing message to Pyongyang. "I don't think North Korea will give up nuclear weapons," Bolton said at a forum hosted by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank where he is a senior fellow. Pyongyang cannot give up the weapons in a way acceptable and verifiable by the international community because it would undermine the regime itself, he said. The former ambassador was one of the first to publicly denounce the Feb. 13 deal struck by members of the six-party talks -- South and North Korea, the U.S., China, Russia and Japan. The agreement commits Pyongyang to shut down its primary nuclear facility within 60 days of the agreement. The next phase involves disabling the facility in return for a wide range of political and economic incentives from other members of the talks. But negotiators now say North Korea most likely will not meet the 60-day deadline because of the delay in transfer of formerly frozen money from a Macau bank. Banco Delta Asia was to transfer some $US25 million of North Korea-related funds to the Bank of China, but the transaction has yet to be carried out due to what negotiators only describe as technical problems. North Koreans walked out of the last six-party round in March, saying they need to see the transfer complete before they can come back. Bolton said he is willing to bet North Korea will not meet the deadline, let alone implement other parts of the February deal. "I think there's every prospect that they will not comply, they will not seal the Yongbyon reactor and the reprocessing plant, that they won't have done much of anything to meet their obligation," said Bolton. "I hope the president repudiates this deal. That's the leverage we have." The ambassador was handling nonproliferation at the State Department when suspicions flared in early 2002 of Pyongyang building a highly enriched uranium (HEU) program, an alternative to plutonium in making nuclear weapons. Refuting recently raised doubts about the credibility of intelligence information and whether North Koreans ever admitted to having HEU, Bolton went into great detail about what went on at the time. He said then-U.S. envoy James Kelly presented evidence of HEU to the North Koreans, who on the second day of talks not only admitted to having it but gave the reason for it as having to defend itself against the U.S. The secretary of state at the time, Colin Powell, showed him the cable with a word-for-word recount of what took place, he said. "I will bet you dollars to donuts that neither that cable nor the transcript went out unless every member of the American delegation looked at it and considered every word, and there wasn't any doubt in anybody's mind at the time what the North Koreans said," Bolton said. People who question it now have a reason, he argued, "If there isn't an HEU program, you don't need much verification for it." Bolton was also critical of the White House approving Richardson's travel to North Korea. The New Mexico governor, one of Bolton's predecessors as U.N. ambassador, is supposed to receive the remains of American servicemen missing from the 1950-1953 Korean War, but has said he may discuss the six-party talks if the issue comes up in meetings with North Korean officials. "I think it's a mistake to endorse any part of governor's trip to Pyongyang," Bolton said. "I don't think we should be encouraging the governor's freelance diplomacy, which is not any more likely to be successful on the subject of North Korean nuclear weapons programs than our own." ldm@yna.co.kr (END) ***************************************************************** 14 Korea Times: Richardson Not Tasked With 6-Party Issues Hankooki.com > The Korea Times > Nation By Lee Jin-woo Staff Reporter The U.S. State Department on Wednesday downplayed the chances of a former U.N. ambassador delivering a message from U.S. President George W. Bush to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il during his scheduled trip to Pyongyang next week. The White House announced on Tuesday that Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico will travel to North Korea April 8-11 to receive the remains of some 10 American servicemen missing from the 1950-53 Korean War. He will be accompanied by Victor D. Cha, director for Asian Affairs at the National Security Council at the White House. The governor¡¯s trip coincides with the deadline for North Korea to carry out the shutdown of its nuclear facility, the first step of the Feb. 13 agreement made in the six-party talks in Beijing. ``The governor is not going there as an envoy of the United States. He is not going there as a representative of the United States in any aspect of the six-party talks,¡¯¡¯ State Department spokesman Sean McCormack was quoted as saying by the Yonhap News Agency at his daily briefing. ``I don¡¯t expect that he would bring those up,¡¯¡¯ McCormack answered when asked if the department anticipates the governor raising six-party issues in the North. Now a presidential candidate for 2008, the Democratic governor has connections with Pyongyang officials dating back to the Clinton administration, when he twice participated in the retrieval of Americans remains. Both the White House and the State Department drew clear lines on Richardson¡¯s mission as focused strictly on facilitating the return of the remains. But Richardson¡¯s office released a statement on Tuesday that said, ``Hopefully, this trip will advance the progress made by the Bush administration during the six-party talks to dismantle nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula.¡¯¡¯ things@koreatimes.co.kr 04-05-2007 19:47 ***************************************************************** 15 Korea Times: Between Scylla and Charybdis Over N. Korea Hankooki.com > The Korea Times > Opinion By Lee Byong-Chul Among the threats to U.S. security is the possible development or the possession of some nuclear weapons by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). The program for possible enrichment of uranium in North Korea has caused acute diplomatic confrontations between Washington and Pyongyang. The case of North Korea's highly enriched uranium (HEU) of which the United States is acutely aware lies at the center of the ongoing bilateral talks, because there are fears that the production of enriched uranium and plutonium may lead to the development of nuclear weapons. This concern is threatening the security of neighboring countries in Northeast Asia _ notably South Korea and Japan. Amid the fear of possible domino effects in the region, the DPRK has reportedly asked the United States to treat it the same as India, which America has officially endorsed as possessing nuclear weapons. The United States, it was reported, flatly rejected this. Yet, the prevailing consensus among South Korean conservatives today is the worry about the possibility that Washington may permit Pyongyang to possess some nuclear weapons over if these are completely controlled inside the regime, whereas the likelihood that North Korea will follow the Libyan model and completely dismantle its nuclear infrastructure is not tenable. Being tacked sharply to the ``half-baked¡¯¡¯ left, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun also diagnosed North Korea's development of nuclear weapons and missiles as self-dense. Over the five years since the Bush administration called North Korea a member of an axis of evil in 2002, the DPRK has not weakened politically or diplomatically. The American neo-cons' heavy-handed manner of executing foreign policy, the immoral right-wing trend of power politics in Japan _ such as the denial of the existence of forced comfort women for the Japanese soldiers during World War II _ and the ascendance of political groups against the sunshine policy in South Korea have all failed to make North Korea abandon its nuclear ambitions. Rather, North Korea's power is being steadily enhanced by its secret nuclear program, which seemingly progresses unhindered despite continued protests from the international community that. President Bush is invested in the Kim Jong-il regime as never before. It is the right direction for the Bush administration to alter its existing foreign policy in order to bring North Korea into the global community despite criticism that it appears a political gamble that could leave it weakened essentially because Kim¡¯s opaque style of negotiation leaves him with a few tricks up his sleeve. The poverty-stricken and outdated dynastic regime ruled by the ``Great Leader¡¯¡¯ Kim Jong-il is not going away anytime soon, and is possibly emerging to establish full diplomatic relations with the ``Yankee Imperialist.¡¯¡¯ To that end, Washington decided to offer the pragmatists in Pyongyang a chance to play a leading role in the course of resolving the nuclear weapons problem. Condoleezza Rice, the U.S. secretary of state, pointed out in April 3 at the National Conference of Editorial Writers that people shouldn¡¯t look at a snapshot of where the U.S. is in diplomacy, but need to look at the long effort that it takes to get the incentives and disincentives properly aligned. She also added that the six-party agreement of September 2005 would anticipate that there might be both some kind of peace mechanism _ instead of an armistice _ and a cooperative security mechanism that would bring all the countries of Northeast Asia into a conversation about their common security concerns. With that brilliant diagnosis, she did her level best to answer the questions that South and North Korea had in mind. The normalization of relations should not be viewed as the end result of a long process of negotiations, but should be seen as the starting point of virtual talks for denuclearization on the Korean peninsula. Touching on the North Korean nuclear program, President George W. Bush maintained that ``all options are on the table¡¯¡¯ _ a reminder that Washington might launch a surgical strike on some suspected sites including the Yongbyon nuclear complex if all else fails. This threat, however, is neither new nor effective at all. To protect its nuclear facilities from possible U.S. strikes, which had been clandestinely planned under the Clinton Administration in 1994, North Korea might have dispersed them throughout the country and placed them deep underground. The negatives of the military option are clear; it could motivate aggressive acts by the North Koreans, while risking international condemnation. Instead, Washington should embrace a policy of a more aggressive engagement with carrots rather than sticks. It is a smarter policy. Broadly speaking, the North Korean regime is in the process of transforming itself, under the influence of a rising group of young new technocrats in their 30-40s, most of whom have been relatively well accustomed to the external world, unlike their predecessors. These new technocrats are likely to grope for symbolic changes to improve their international relations, even though Kim Jong-il will remain steadfast in his position that any sudden weakening of army control could, in the short term, render ``amicable¡¯¡¯ talks with the United States less certain. Over five decades, high emotions and irresponsible rhetoric have hindered the development of a rational relationship between the United States and the DPRK. Pyongyang now seeks not only security assurances against U.S. military strikes but an acknowledgment of its status and influence as well. Should Washington reciprocate by devising a comprehensive strategy of rapprochement between the two countries, it might be possible for the United States and North Korea to finally terminate their mutual hostility. Bush is no longer a president who is worried about keeping his seat. He should deal with Kim in light of what's best for the country as a whole, regardless of what his loyalists demand. While constituting a predawn light in the darkness, a new paradigm could lead Pyongyang to believe that its interests would be best served if it restrained its unpredictable tendencies. The DPRK will remain a thorn in the side of the United States for the foreseeable future; the question is how best to manage its complexities and contradictions. An offer by the United States to normalize relations and start talks on all outstanding issues between the two states would give North Korea a chance to choose whether it wants to be a normal country on the global stage or one guided by self-defeating delusions. And for the first time in the U.S.-DPRK history, there is an indication that North Korea once regarded as a long shot may opt for the former. It is the best that can be hoped for. The writer is a senior fellow at the Institute for Peace and Cooperation - a nonpartisan policy advisory body - based in Seoul. 04-05-2007 18:02 ***************************************************************** 16 News Analysis: Doubts Rise on North Korea 's Uranium-Enrichment Program Arms Control Association: Arms Control Today: Arms Control Today April 2007 Paul Kerr As diplomats from six countries continue to hammer out the details of a Feb. 13 agreement to resolve the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula, questions relating to Pyongyang 's suspected uranium-enrichment program will likely play a pivotal role. U.S. officials insist that North Korea come clean about the alleged program. Verifying North Korea 's declarations, however, will be a challenge: U.S. officials recently acknowledged that their confidence in intelligence judgments about Pyongyang 's uranium capabilities has declined. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Christopher Hill told National Public Radio March 7 that resolving questions about the program will be essential to the talks' success, explaining that “we're going to have to know precisely what they've done on this before we can give them a clean bill of health.” U.S. concerns that North Korea has been secretly pursuing such a program have played a central role in the recent nuclear crisis. Indeed, the crisis was precipitated by a U.S. decision to confront Pyongyang about those suspicions in early October 2002. North Korea has denied that it has such a program but has said it is willing to discuss the matter. (See ACT, March 2007.) Pyongyang is known to have a plutonium-based nuclear weapons program, but a uranium-enrichment program could provide the country with a second path to such a weapon. Gas centrifuges enrich uranium hexafluoride by spinning it at very high speeds to increase the concentration of the relevant fissile isotope. Highly enriched uranium can be used as fissile material in nuclear weapons. According to Hill, the United States believes that “ North Korea has attempted and succeeded in buying a number of parts to put together a uranium-enrichment program.” But he added that Washington does not know how “far they got and whether they were successful in actually manufacturing highly enriched uranium.” Similarly, a senior U.S. intelligence official confirmed in early March that Washington has become less confident than it was in October 2002 that Pyongyang is continuing to pursue an enrichment program. Ambassador Joseph DeTrani, North Korea mission manager for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said in a March 4 statement that all U.S. intelligence agencies “have at least moderate confidence that North Korea 's past efforts to acquire a uranium-enrichment capability continue today.” By contrast, the U.S. intelligence community had “high confidence” in 2002 that North Korea was attempting to acquire a uranium-enrichment capability, DeTrani said, adding that the U.S. intelligence community “continues to have high confidence” that Pyongyang has pursued such a program in the past. State of the Program By the time the United States confronted North Korea in 2002, it had suspected for several years that Pyongyang might be pursing an enrichment program. Former Assistant Secretary of State for Nonproliferation Robert Einhorn told Arms Control Today March 21 that the United States “obtained information” at the end of the 1990s that North Korea was attempting to “obtain certain pieces of equipment that could be used in an enrichment program.” He added, however, that the “information was sketchy” as to whether Pyongyang was “actively pursuing” such a program. However, a June 2002 National Intelligence Estimate contained “a few comments about a growing belief that North Korea had engaged in at least” a research and development enrichment project, then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in February 2003. The next month, the United States obtained intelligence that North Korea had dramatically increased its acquisition of centrifuge components, he said, adding that this information resulted in a September 2002 intelligence assessment that Pyongyang had “embarked on a production [enrichment] program.” During a September 2006 Arms Control Association event, former Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs James Kelly described the intelligence as “conclusive” and “retroactive in nature.” He also indicated that North Korea had possessed since about 1998 “centrifuges in very substantial numbers—way over a thousand—with associated equipment that would be necessary to run a covert centrifuge facility.” But the administration's confidence in its knowledge of the program's scale appears to have been decreasing for some time. For example, the CIA reported in November 2002 that North Korea was “constructing a centrifuge facility” capable of producing enough fissile material for “two or more nuclear weapons per year” as soon as “mid-decade.” However, subsequent agency reports to Congress covering Pyongyang 's nuclear programs have become increasingly vague. The most recent such reports have said nothing about the program. Likewise, a South Korean diplomat told Arms Control Today March 2 that Seoul has seen “elements” of a North Korean enrichment program, such as the importation of relevant materials, but there are “many gaps” in the government's knowledge, he added. Most observers agree that Pyongyang has imported a significant number of centrifuge components and other enrichment-related materials. But there appears to be considerable doubt as to whether the country has an operating enrichment facility. North Korea 's centrifuges are believed to be based on a Pakistani design, another former Department of State official told Arms Control Today March 21. Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf acknowledged last fall that a proliferation network run by former Pakistani nuclear official Abdul Qadeer Khan had provided Pyongyang with 12 to 20 complete centrifuges, as well as centrifuge designs and components. The Khan network provided two types of centrifuges, including a more-advanced centrifuge known as a P-2. (See ACT, May 2006.) State Department officials told Arms Control Today in the fall of 2005 that North Korea likely has enough components sufficient for a “pilot” enrichment facility. A former State Department official previously told Arms Control Today that North Korea has probably imported enough components for 3,000 to 5,000 centrifuges and may have acquired enough for 6,000 to 7,000. (See ACT, October 2005.) North Korea , however, may not possess all the necessary components for an operational facility. A State Department official told Arms Control Today last November that North Korea 's efforts to obtain materials for the program had largely stopped but pointed out that Pyongyang may have learned to produce its own components. Acknowledging that there is a “spectrum” of possibilities regarding the current state of the program, the official explained that North Korea could have an advanced enrichment program but may have halted work on it. Whether North Korea has a facility capable of producing uranium hexafluoride is unclear. A former State Department official told Arms Control Today last October that the U.S. intelligence community does not have “evidence” that Pyongyang has such a facility. North Korea is known to have a production line for uranium tetrafluoride, a precursor for uranium hexafluoriude, at its Yongbyon nuclear facilities. Gary Samore, who served as senior director for nonproliferation at the National Security Council during the Clinton administration, acknowledged in a March 21 interview that producing uranium hexafluoriude is relatively easy if a country is capable of producing the precursor. But he cautioned that Pyongyang 's production line may no longer be operational. U.S. officials disclosed in 2005 an intelligence assessment that North Korea supplied Libya with uranium hexafluoride via the Khan network. (See ACT, May 2005.) But U.S. and International Atomic Energy Agency sources expressed skepticism that Pyongyang supplied the material. Policy Decisions Even as U.S. confidence about the suspected program has decreased, policy decisions based on those judgments have continued to reverberate. Kelly told North Korean officials during an early October 2002 meeting that the United States had evidence that the country was pursuing a uranium-enrichment program in violation of the 1994 Agreed Framework. At the time, the United States asserted that the North Korean officials admitted to having such a program. (See ACT, December 2002.) Under the Agreed Framework, Pyongyang froze its nuclear reactor and related facilities in exchange for the delivery of 500,000 metric tons of heavy fuel oil annually and the construction of two light-water-moderated nuclear reactors. An international consortium, the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO), was charged with implementing these components of the agreement. Although North Korea indicated it wanted to negotiate, the United States persuaded KEDO's executive board to suspend the heavy fuel oil deliveries. Pyongyang subsequently ejected international inspectors charged with monitoring the freeze, announced its withdrawal from the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, restarted the reactor, and claimed to have reprocessed the spent fuel to obtain plutonium. (See ACT, November 2006.) The belief that North Korea may have constructed an enrichment plant also apparently influenced at least some Bush administration policy decisions. A former State Department official said in a March 21 interview that some U.S. officials were “intent on making policy” based on the worst-case assumption that Pyongyang had an enrichment facility. For example, some State Department officials forcefully advocated an extremely intrusive verification scheme that would allow the United States to search for a possible North Korean enrichment facility. Several former U.S. officials have told Arms Control Today that such a plan would have been unacceptable to Pyongyang . Former State Department Korea director David Straub, however, argued in a March 25 interview that some Bush administration officials were “intent on making policy toward North Korea based on worst-case scenarios about everything,” regardless of the enrichment issue. The entire department supported a “very intrusive inspection system, although some even more so,” he added. A working group established by the six-party February agreement is tasked with devising a suitable scheme to verify that North Korea has complied with all of its denuclearization commitments. The Arms Control Association is a non-profit, membership-based organization. If you find our resources useful, please consider joining or making a contribution. Arms Control Today encourages reprint of its articles with permission of the Editor. © 1997-2007 Arms Control Association, 1313 L Street, NW, Suite 130 Washington, DC 20005 Tel: (202) 463-8270 | Fax: (202) 463-8273 ***************************************************************** 17 American Scientist Online: The Stuff of Bombs Frank N. von Hippel Plutonium: A History of the World's Most Dangerous Element. Jeremy Bernstein. xii + 216 pp. Joseph Henry Press, 2007. $27.95. Our solar system was originally endowed with plutonium as well as uranium, but that plutonium is long gone. The half-life of the element's most important isotope, plutonium239, is just 24,000 years—a very long time by any human measure, but short compared with the age of the solar system. So almost all of the 2,000 metric tons or so of plutonium that exists on Earth today was made in nuclear reactors; about 250 tons of it was created for use in weapons, and the rest came into being as a by-product of the operation of civilian nuclear-power reactors. After an atom of uranium-238 absorbs a neutron, it decays within a few days into plutonium-239. The plutonium can then be separated chemically from the uranium to make bombs. The bomb dropped at Nagasaki contained 6 kilograms of plutonium, of which 1 kilogram fissioned. The International Atomic Energy Agency assumes that, including the amount that would be lost during production, about 8 kilograms would be required to make a bomb. At that rate, 2,000 tons of plutonium would be sufficient to make a quarter of a million Nagasaki bombs! Preventing additional states or terrorist groups from gaining the ability to use plutonium in this way is the central challenge of nuclear nonproliferation. Disposing of plutonium is very important in this regard; it also helps to make arms reductions on the part of existing nuclear powers largely irreversible. In his short new book Plutonium, Jeremy Bernstein, a physicist and veteran science journalist, tells the story of the discovery of the element and its properties. He also sketches in the larger background of the development of atomic and nuclear physics during the first half of the 20th century and includes capsule biographies of the atomic and nuclear physicists who made the big discoveries—Henri Becquerel, Ernest Rutherford, Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, Lise Meitner, Leo Szilard, Glenn Seaborg and others. Their names are already familiar to physicists interested in nuclear matters, but Bernstein's anecdotes reveal their human sides. He also brings to life such lesser-known figures as William Zachariasen, who determined the crystal phases of plutonium and its various compounds. Plutonium was first made for nuclear bombs during the Manhattan Project. Until late in the weapons program, the Los Alamos scientists were convinced that they were in a nuclear-arms race with their counterparts in Nazi Germany. It turned out, however, that although the Germans understood the physics, they never got very far either in making plutonium or in enriching uranium in the chain-reacting isotope U-235, which is present in natural uranium at a concentration of only 0.7 percent. Bernstein raises—not for the first time—some interesting questions about this one-sided nuclear arms race: What if Fermi had realized that he was causing uranium fission in his neutron experiments in 1934, four years before Lise Meitner and her nephew Otto Frisch used fission to explain the puzzling chemical properties of the products of German experiments with neutron irradiation of uranium? Might World War II have been nuclear from the beginning? Or what if the Nazis had penetrated the Manhattan Project (as the Soviets did) and learned that it had been a mistake to reject the use of graphite to slow fission neutrons? Then might Germany too have built graphite-"moderated" plutonium-production reactors instead of failing in its effort to acquire enough heavy water from Norway to make possible a chain reaction in natural uranium? If the Germans had succeeded in making plutonium, they would still have had a large obstacle to overcome, however, in the actual design of a nuclear weapon. Spontaneous fission of the small amount of plutonium-240 contained in 6 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium emits a stream of neutrons at an average rate of one per 10 microseconds. As Bernstein points out, these neutrons make it infeasible to adapt for plutonium the simple gun-type design that brought together a supercritical mass of highly enriched uranium in the Hiroshima bomb. During the hundreds of microseconds that this assembly would be ramping up to full super-criticality, the neutrons would start the plutonium chain reaction prematurely and the device would blow itself apart with a very low explosive yield. Designing a faster method of assembly for a plutonium explosive became the central challenge for the weapons designers at Los Alamos. Ultimately they had to turn to the implausible idea of imploding an initially subcritical mass of plutonium to a supercritical density. This was facilitated by the fact that weapons plutonium is stabilized in the delta phase with a density of about 16 grams per cubic centimeter but is converted under pressure into alpha phase, which has a density of about 20 grams per cubic centimeter. Bernstein summarizes what happened after Nagasaki only briefly in a final chapter, titled "Now What?" This is disappointing, because "Now what?" is, of course, the question of primary concern to those who worry about how to deal with all of the plutonium that has been created. In the year 2000, after several years of negotiations, Russia and the United States sought to make their nuclear reductions more assuredly permanent by agreeing that each would make at least 34 tons of their excess weapons plutonium largely inaccessible—primarily by making it into fuel for power reactors. Only a fraction of the plutonium would be fissioned; but inside spent fuel, plutonium is protected from easy recovery by the presence of fission products that release lethal gamma radiation. (Plutonium itself only gives off alpha particles, which are not energetic enough even to penetrate skin; hence, pure plutonium is easy to transport and manipulate inside a glove box, which provides protection against inhalation or ingestion of plutonium particles.) The costs of the U.S. plutonium-disposition program have been escalating rapidly, and Russia has made it clear that its own program will go forward only if fully financed by the United States and other interested countries. The future of both efforts is currently in question. An alternative and potentially less costly approach that has been considered from time to time in the United States would be to mix the plutonium back into the fission-product waste from which it had earlier been separated, and then encapsulate the waste in glass for disposal. In addition to the 250 tons of weapons plutonium that exists, another 250 tons of plutonium has been separated from irradiated civilian reactor fuel. Civilian plutonium separation began in the 1960s and 1970s in support of the huge but failed effort by the industrialized world to commercialize plutonium "breeder" reactors, so named because they make more fuel than they consume. The separated civilian plutonium was to provide start-up fuel for these reactors, which transform the abundant non-chain-reacting isotope of uranium (uranium-238) into more plutonium reactor fuel. Civilian spent-fuel reprocessing was abandoned in the United States, however, after India conducted a "peaceful" nuclear explosion in 1974 using the first plutonium it had separated in a U.S.-supported reprocessing program. Attempts to commercialize breeder reactors have failed in Europe and Japan, but the French and Japanese nuclear establishments continue to reprocess and to talk of a second effort to build breeders some decades hence. Reprocessing is being abandoned in some countries more slowly than are breeder reactors, in large part because nuclear utilities are being pressed to show that they know what to do with their spent fuel while not-in-my-backyard forces are blocking the establishment of centralized storage sites. Reprocessing spent fuel is much more costly than storing it but looks better than letting it accumulate indefinitely at the nuclear-power plants. A similar impasse over the licensing of a geological repository for U.S. spent fuel under Yucca Mountain in Nevada has inspired the Bush administration's Department of Energy to propose building a huge, federally funded reprocessing plant to which U.S. utilities could ship their spent fuel. After separation, however, most of the plutonium would simply be stored until the uncertain day when reactors are commercialized that can dispose of it more efficiently than can current-generation reactors. But it is absurd that one group in the Department of Energy is proposing to spend tens of billions of dollars to separate plutonium from spent civilian reactor fuel while another group in the same agency is proposing to spend many billions to do the opposite: dispose of excess separated plutonium in spent civilian reactor fuel! Bernstein's book should play a useful role by helping to demystify plutonium and by encouraging interested members of the public and Congress to start constructing a more rational policy to deal with the dangers posed by this man-made element. Reviewer Information Frank N. von Hippel, a nuclear physicist by training, is a professor of public and international affairs at Princeton University, where he and his colleagues in the Program on Science and Global Security analyze the technical bases for nuclear-arms control and nonproliferation initiatives. He is cochair of the International Panel on Fissile Materials, whose publications may be found at www.fissilematerials.org. He is also the author of, among other books, Citizen Scientist (American Institute of Physics, 1991). © Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society ***************************************************************** 18 Troubled Disposition: Next Steps in Dealing With Excess Plutonium Arms Control Association: Arms Control Today: Arms Control Today April 2007 Matthew Bunn What should the United States and Russia do with the tons of plutonium they no longer need for nuclear weapons? The two countries have been struggling to answer this question since the end of the Cold War. Unfortunately, however, despite the signature in 2000 of the U.S.-Russian Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement (PMDA), projected schedules for getting rid of these dangerous stockpiles have slipped by more than seven years, and the estimated costs of the effort have increased dramatically. A pitched battle over the future of plutonium disposition is now being waged in Congress. Disposition of excess plutonium can still offer security benefits worth its mounting costs, but only if disposition is ultimately applied to far larger stocks of plutonium than committed so far, as part of a broader pursuit of deep and irreversible nuclear arms reductions, and if stringent standards of security are maintained throughout. Whether it will make more sense to use the bulk of the excess plutonium as reactor fuel or immobilize it for disposal with high-level wastes depends in part on the answers to questions of cost, practicality, and Russian attitudes that should be answered as quickly as possible. Massive Stockpiles The United States and Russia still possess massive stockpiles of plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU) built up over decades of Cold War arms racing. Today, the United States has a stockpile of about 92 metric tons of plutonium separated from spent fuel. The United States has declared that 45 tons of that material is excess to its military needs, leaving 47 tons in reserve, enough to support a stockpile of some 10,000 warheads. Russia is thought to have a stockpile of some 145 tons of separated weapons-grade plutonium, although the uncertainty in that estimate is about 25 tons, along with some 40 tons of civilian separated plutonium, which also is weapons usable. Russia has declared that “up to” 50 tons of its weapons-grade plutonium is excess to its military needs, but the only plutonium it has definitely committed to get rid of is the 34 tons covered by the PMDA. This represents one-quarter of Russia 's estimated stock of weapons-grade plutonium and one-fifth of its total stock of separated plutonium, leaving enough remaining for tens of thousands of nuclear weapons. The U.S. and Russian stockpiles of HEU are even larger.[1] Why Disposition? Because these huge stockpiles could readily be turned back into nuclear weapons, eliminating them would mark a key step toward deeper and less-reversible nuclear arms reductions. Such reductions, in turn, could strengthen international political support for measures to repair the global nonproliferation regime. But plutonium disposition will not achieve this security objective unless the United States and Russia are pursuing deeper and irreversible arms reductions. Disposition must also be applied to most of the total stockpiles on each side so that the remainder is only enough to support low, agree-on numbers of nuclear weapons. If Russia and the United States agreed to reduce their nuclear weapon stockpiles to 1,000 total warheads, for example, they would only require four to five tons each of military plutonium. That would almost triple the amount of weapons-grade plutonium viewed as excess in Russia and nearly double the amount of excess material in the United States . In principle, disposition of these large stocks—physically transforming them into forms that would be difficult and costly to recover for use in nuclear weapons—could also decrease the risk that some portion of them could be stolen and fall into the hands of terrorists or proliferating states. The British Royal Society warned in 1998 that even in an advanced industrial state such as the United Kingdom , the possibility that plutonium stocks might be “accessed for illicit weapons production is of extreme concern.”[2] This risk, however, is not closely related to the total size of the nuclear material stockpiles, as a building containing one ton of weapons-usable nuclear material poses effectively the same theft risk as a building containing ten tons of such material. If the goal is to reduce the risk of nuclear theft, the first priority should be to remove the nuclear material entirely from as many small, vulnerable facilities as possible and then to beef up security at the remainder. A disposition program that removed the material from a substantial number of potentially vulnerable buildings could reduce the risk of nuclear theft, but a program that only removed one-quarter of Russia 's excess plutonium stock and only removed some of the plutonium at each location would do little to reduce the risk of nuclear theft and terrorism. Indeed, unless very high standards of security and accounting are maintained throughout the disposition process, removing this material from secure stores, processing it, and transporting it from place to place could increase rather than decrease theft risks. For this reason, and because getting plutonium or HEU is the most difficult part of making a nuclear bomb, a 1994 study from a committee of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) recommended that, to the extent practicable, HEU and separated plutonium should be as well secured and accounted for as nuclear weapons themselves, the so-called “stored weapons standard.”[3] Fissile material disposition may also serve a “good housekeeping” purpose, avoiding the costs and hazards of storing this material indefinitely. If that is the principal purpose, however, it is important to focus the effort on those stocks that are in fact expensive and dangerous to store. Ironically, these tend to be the heavily contaminated stockpiles that are less likely to be used for nuclear weapons. Plans, Delays, Costs, and Obstacles When the PMDA was drafted, both sides laid out tentative plans for their disposition efforts. Russia planned to use all of the 34 tons of weapons-grade plutonium covered by the agreement as uranium-plutonium mixed oxide (MOX) fuel in operating nuclear reactors—a few tons in the BN-600 fast-neutron reactor at Beloyarsk and the rest in Russia's VVER-1000 light-water reactors (LWRs).[4] The United States planned to use 25.6 tons of uncontaminated plutonium as MOX fuel in LWRs and immobilize the other 8.4 tons covered by the agreement, along with nearly eight tons of other material not covered by the agreement. The immobilization approach on which the Department of Energy has focused, known as “can-in-canister,” involves making small cans of either glass or ceramic mixed with plutonium. These cans are then arranged inside huge metal canisters. Molten glass containing intensely radioactive high-level waste from ongoing waste disposal programs would then be poured into these canisters. (The process of mixing plutonium or high-level waste with glass is known as “vitrification.”) Hence, as with plutonium in spent fuel (the result of the MOX approach), the plutonium ends up as a small percentage of the total weight of a large, intensely radioactive object slated for storage and eventual disposal in a geologic repository. Both sides projected that they would have full-scale MOX plants operational in 2007; the U.S. immobilization plant was to be built and operating a year later. Cost estimates around the time of the agreement suggested that disposition of the Russian material covered by the agreement would cost $1.8 billion ($2.1 billion in 2007 dollars), after subtracting $350 million for the expected value of the fuel produced.[5] The U.S. disposition program, which covered more material than just the 34 tons covered by the agreement, was expected to cost $4.1 billion ($4.8 billion in 2007 dollars), after similarly subtracting $565 million for the expected value of the MOX fuel to be produced.[6] Today, the projected costs of these efforts are far higher and the expected schedules are much slower. The latest estimates suggest that a full-scale MOX plant will not start operations in Russia until 2018 and that the Russian program will have a total cost of $4.1 billion, from which the value of the MOX fuel produced might subtract $500 million or so, although this was not estimated in the most recent study.[7] Although the original agreement called for each side to start off at a rate of two tons of plutonium a year and seek to move to four tons a year, the four-ton objective appears to have been largely abandoned, and the planned Russian program now stretches to 2040. Similarly, the Energy Department does not expect its MOX plant to open until 2016, although it hopes that an immobilization plant might open as soon as 2012. The capital and operating costs for disposition of U.S. excess plutonium using these facilities are now estimated at more than $10 billion in 2006 dollars, more than twice the earlier estimate.[8] The Energy Department argues that the earlier cost estimates were unrealistic and did not adequately include contingencies to hedge against cost overruns; payment for the costs of providing site services such as water, electricity, and fire protection; and the like. Nevertheless, the capital and operating costs projected for both the U.S. and Russian MOX plants are far higher than the costs for comparable European plants that have already been built and operated, and the reasons for that difference have not been publicly explained. One part of the answer is that the Office of Management and Budget has constrained the effort to flat annual funding, stretching out construction and driving up costs. A wide range of other obstacles have contributed to these slowing schedules and escalating costs. After delays resulting from a year-long Bush administration policy review, the Bush team delayed matters further by demanding that Russia accept liability provisions that would make Russia liable even for damage caused by intentional sabotage by U.S. personnel, a provision Russian negotiators predictably rejected. Because construction of the U.S. and Russian MOX plants had been linked, this dispute resulted in years of delay in both countries. A liability protocol for plutonium disposition, in which the Bush administration effectively abandoned its earlier demands, was finally signed in September 2006, ironically not long after the linkage between U.S. and Russian construction was dropped. Most U.S. officials believe that the U.S. excess plutonium stockpile poses few security issues and see getting rid of Russia 's excess plutonium stockpile as the main reason to bother with getting rid of the U.S. excess stockpile. The other major driver for the U.S. disposition effort is South Carolina , which would only allow the Energy Department to consolidate many of its plutonium stockpiles at Savannah River if there was a clear plan to do something with these stocks that would provide jobs and ultimately take them back out of the state. Congress has passed legislation that requires the Energy Department to pay substantial fines to the state if it does not meet plutonium disposition deadlines. Disposition of Russia 's excess plutonium has been problematic, as the Russian government does not see excess plutonium stockpiles as a major security problem. Russia 's view has long been that its plutonium stockpiles should be used to produce energy as part of its long-term plan for a closed nuclear fuel cycle, and if the international community wants Russia to begin using this plutonium as fuel sooner than would otherwise be economic, the international community should pay the costs of doing so. In response, rather than agreeing to pay the full cost of Russian plutonium disposition itself, the United States has sought to put together a multilateral financing plan. So far, the total pledges only come to about $850 million, including $400 million from the United States , far less than needed to finance Russia 's plutonium disposition. Some U.S. officials hope that, with earlier disputes resolved, further pledges will be forthcoming and that Russia may ultimately agree to pay to run the disposition facilities if the international community pays to build them, cutting the needed pledges roughly in half. Indeed, U.S. negotiators report that Russian negotiators in recent months have begun to acknowledge that Russia might pay a significant part of the costs of options that support Russia 's plans for nuclear energy growth. Nevertheless, for now, it appears more likely than not that Russian plutonium disposition will only move forward if the United States is prepared to make major additional investments in the effort. With Russia 's newfound oil wealth and huge planned expenditures on new reactor construction, it may be difficult to convince Congress to put in more U.S. funds. In addition to the financing problem, the low priority Russia assigns to this problem has meant that each bureaucratic issue has taken longer to resolve. Moreover, different factions in the Russian and U.S. nuclear establishments have had very different ideas about what technical options for plutonium disposition should be pursued, leading to prolonged uncertainties over which projects would finally move forward. Congress, observing these delays and mounting costs, has become increasingly skeptical, and congressional constraints have themselves added to delays. During 2006, these concerns came to a head when House appropriators, led by Rep. David Hobson (R-Ohio), then chairman of the energy and water appropriations subcommittee, attempted to terminate funding for the U.S. MOX plant, shifting the United States toward an all-immobilization strategy. Earlier this year, Hobson and other MOX opponents sought to get the MOX plant zeroed out in the continuing resolution that is funding most U.S. government operations for the remainder of fiscal year 2007, which ends September 30. Senate appropriators, by contrast, sought to keep the U.S. MOX plant going. The final resolution provided a substantial budget for the MOX effort but prohibited the secretary of energy from beginning construction until August 1. That gives opponents an opportunity to try again to kill the funding before construction begins. Rep. Peter Visclosky (D-Ind.), the new chairman of the subcommittee, joined with Hobson in a February 2007 letter to the Energy Department questioning the MOX plant and demanding a wide range of data about MOX and possible alternatives, clearly signaling a bipartisan challenge to the Energy Department's current plans. Alternatives All of this raises the question of what the best disposition options would be. The NAS study recommended options that would convert the excess weapons plutonium into forms “roughly as inaccessible for weapons use as the much larger and growing quantity of plutonium in spent fuel from commercial nuclear-power reactors,” known as the “spent fuel standard.” After examining approaches ranging from shooting the plutonium into space to dissolving it in the oceans, the committee concluded that the two least problematic options were the use of plutonium as fuel in existing reactors and immobilization of the plutonium with high-level wastes. Later Energy Department studies reached the same conclusions, and I believe they remain valid today. U.S. Plutonium Disposition In the United States , the biggest immediate fight is between advocates of an all-immobilization approach and the Energy Department's mixed MOX-plus-immobilization plan in which 34 tons of the excess are currently slated for MOX and the rest, which is too contaminated to use as MOX, for immobilization. Advocates of the Energy Department's MOX-focused approach make several points: • An all-immobilization approach in the United States might lead to no disposition in Russia . Russian negotiators have long argued that immobilization is just another form of storage because the plutonium could in principle be recovered in weapons-grade form, albeit at great cost, and have objected to the idea of the United States immobilizing its plutonium while Russia uses its plutonium in reactor fuel, transforming it to reactor-grade material. • Immobilization is not as technically mature. A variety of reactors in Europe have been using MOX fuel commercially for years, but immobilization of plutonium has never been accomplished on a large scale. • There may not be enough high-level wastes at Savannah River with which to immobilize the plutonium. Energy Department officials have argued that the Savannah River plant could finish the high-level waste vitrification process before immobilization of all the excess plutonium could be completed. That could potentially leave the plutonium cans with no high-level waste canisters to be put into and therefore no radiation barrier to increase the difficulty of using the plutonium in weapons. • Immobilization may not save much if the costs of disposition and of storage until disposition could be completed are taken into account. An Energy Department study prepared last year concluded that its preferred mixture of MOX and immobilization would cost $15 billion and an all-immobilization approach would cost only slightly less.[9] • MOX fuel poses few additional security risks. The risks from transporting MOX fuel to reactors and storing it at reactors can be reduced to a low level by sufficient investment in security for this material. Immobilization advocates, by contrast, argue that the MOX option raises serious risks that plutonium in MOX form might be stolen, because it is more difficult to protect MOX fuel in transit or in storage at civilian reactors than plutonium secured in vaults or immobilized at a major nuclear weapons complex site. They also warn that MOX fuel carries additional safety risks; since the core of a plutonium-fueled reactor contains more long-lived actinides, there might be more deaths in the event of a catastrophic radiation release. They also argue that immobilization would be cheaper and faster than MOX fuel.[10] Although the Energy Department considered an all-immobilization option based on building a new greenfield facility, which would be expensive and time-consuming, it does not appear to have given detailed consideration to the idea of making the immobilization plant it plans to build in existing facilities at Savannah River slightly bigger and running it longer in order to handle all of the excess plutonium and not just the contaminated material. The Energy Department projects that this facility could be operational in 2012, well before the planned MOX plant, and would process roughly two tons of plutonium a year. If it could be expanded to three tons per year, which is not certain given the space constraints in the facility where it is to be built, the 45 tons of separated plutonium currently considered excess could be processed by 2027, a year before the high-level waste vitrification plant is now scheduled to shut down.[11] The cost of operating this plant for a longer period and making it slightly larger would likely be substantially less than the costs of building and operating the MOX plant, currently estimated at more than $6 billion. Congress should direct the Energy Department to provide an immediate assessment of the feasibility, costs, and safety and security risks of this all-immobilization option compared to the MOX-plus-immobilization option and should require an independent review of this assessment, perhaps by the NAS. The administration and Congress should also explore an all-immobilization option with Russia . Given the Russian focus on its own plutonium as an energy asset rather than a security issue, I believe there is at least a reasonable chance that a high-level U.S. approach to the Russian government combining a willingness to cooperate in developing nuclear energy (already being pursued) with a desire for Russia to accept an all-immobilization U.S. approach could be successful. It is in any case worth trying. On the other hand, Russia may be more reluctant to accept an all-immobilization U.S. approach if the two sides really were going to apply disposition to all but a small remaining stockpile of plutonium. Disposition of Russian Excess Weapons Plutonium In Russia , the entire nuclear establishment rejects the immobilization idea, so the main argument over technical options is over which reactors would use excess weapons plutonium as their fuel. This argument has seesawed back and forth between two camps. One group argues for using the plutonium in fast-neutron breeder reactors that create more plutonium than they consume, which can then be recycled as additional fuel—Russia's long-term nuclear-energy vision. The other group contends that fast-neutron reactors will not be commercialized for some time and it would make sense to use MOX fuel in the near term in LWRs, as has been done in Europe . The early 2006 announcement of the U.S. Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, with its focus on fast-neutron reactors, which is designed to consume plutonium and other actinides rather than breeding more, briefly brought the fast-neutron advocates in Russia to the fore again. Russia has restarted major construction on the BN-800 fast-neutron reactor, using its own funds. By December 2006, however, when the two sides completed a joint schedule and cost estimate for a Russian-proposed “base case” scenario, this Russian plan was back to the same one described in the PMDA, using a small amount of plutonium in the BN-600 and the bulk of it in the VVER-1000 LWRs. But the joint report explicitly held open the possibility that Russia might later switch to fast-neutron reactors or that the gas-turbine modular helium reactor (GT-MHR), being developed with funding from both sides might provide a supplement to other disposition approaches in the later phases of the project.[12] Several key issues would have to be resolved before the United States gives its financial support to Russian fast-neutron reactors. First, as originally designed, the BN-800 is a plutonium breeder reactor, producing more weapon-grade plutonium than it consumes. Russian officials have expressed some willingness to remove some of the uranium “blankets” where the new plutonium production takes place, converting the reactor into a net plutonium burner. Moreover, under the PMDA, Russia is obligated not to reprocess irradiated fuel from plutonium disposition reactors until after disposition of the plutonium covered by the agreement is complete. What happens after the disposition program? Should the possibility that Russia might add breeder blankets preclude U.S. financing for construction of such reactors? Would Russia be willing to commit not to put on such blankets and not to process the fuel from this reactor in a way that would separate weapons-usable plutonium? In addition, the spent fuel from such a reactor would be in smaller fuel assemblies with lower radiation fields, higher plutonium concentrations, and better isotopics than if it had been used as MOX fuel in an LWR, making it potentially easier to recover for use in nuclear weapons. By contrast, high-temperature gas reactors such as the GT-MHR, with their high-burn-up, difficult-to-reprocess fuel, do not pose similar policy issues. For them, the main issues are the cost of building such reactors and the time needed to do so. If Russia built such reactors for their nuclear energy value and they became available while there was still excess plutonium to burn, their use for that purpose should certainly be considered. Reactors outside of Russia provide another option. Europe 's reactors licensed to burn plutonium fuel already have more civilian plutonium than they can handle. Nonetheless, there are at least a few possibilities that deserve exploration. Some German utilities, for example, might be willing to invest substantial sums in Russian plutonium disposition if, by contributing to disarmament, they could get a reprieve from government orders to shut their reactors down within a few years. In any international option, extremely stringent standards of security would have to be maintained during transportation, the point in nuclear material's life cycle when it is most vulnerable to forcible theft. The only way Russia 's plutonium might be immobilized is if the United States (or some other donor) actually bought Russia 's plutonium and then paid for it to be immobilized. Although many Russian officials have rejected such ideas in the past, purchasing Russia's plutonium would allow Russia to realize the commercial value it sees in this plutonium immediately, and although this option would amount to paying for it twice, it might turn out to be cheaper than the surging costs of the MOX approach.[13] In any case, the United States should restart a joint plutonium-immobilization research and development program with Russia. Plutonium Swaps As a backup and complement to other approaches, the United States should also consider the possibility of swapping some portion of U.S. or Russian plutonium for European plutonium. Today, some 10 tons of reactor-grade civilian plutonium is already being burned as fuel for European power reactors each year. By far the fastest and cheapest approach to reducing stockpiles of excess weapons plutonium, if agreement could be reached on it, would be to substitute excess weapons plutonium for this civilian plutonium, thereby burning some 10 tons a year of excess weapons plutonium while using existing fuel fabrication facilities and contract arrangements.[14] Ten tons a year of civilian plutonium would be displaced and would build up in storage, effectively transforming a problem of excess weapon-grade plutonium in Russia and the United States under no international safeguards to a growth in the existing problem of excess reactor-grade plutonium stored in secure facilities in Europe under international safeguards. The Way Forward An immense amount of work and some major policy changes will be needed if this sad saga is to have a happy ending. First, the United States and Russia should do everything in their power to ensure that all their stockpiles of nuclear weapons and weapons-usable materials and all other such stockpiles worldwide are secure and accounted for, to standards sufficient to defeat the threats that terrorists and thieves have shown they can pose. The Energy Department should move aggressively to consolidate its plutonium and HEU in a smaller number of highly secure locations, achieving higher security at lower cost, and should work with Russia to do the same. Next, because all plutonium disposition options will take from years to decades to implement, the United States and Russia should move rapidly to commit their excess material never to be used in weapons and open this material to international monitoring. Years ago, both countries were pursuing such an approach in a trilateral initiative with the International Atomic Energy Agency, under which they were also developing special procedures for monitoring classified material without revealing sensitive information. Neither government was enthusiastic, however, and the initiative has effectively been abandoned. Rapid U.S. and Russian action to put all of their excess plutonium and HEU under international monitoring would be a substantial step toward convincing the international community that the two countries were serious about fulfilling their arms reduction obligations, which would strengthen international support for the measures that are now needed to strengthen the nonproliferation regime. The United States should adopt a policy of seeking deep, transparent, and irreversible nuclear arms reductions. Among other things, this should include reducing stockpiles of separated plutonium and HEU to the minimum required to support whatever reduced warhead stockpiles are agreed on. In that context, the United States should maintain both a domestic plutonium-disposition program and a program to support disposition of Russian excess plutonium and should seek to begin disposition under the PMDA. Once talks on deep nuclear arms reductions are underway, the United States should begin discussions with Russia about disposition of material far in excess of the 34 tons on each side covered in the PMDA and designed to make those reductions more difficult to reverse. Facilities and programs for disposition should be designed to be expandable to handle much more material when more is declared excess. The goal should not be getting rid of only one-quarter of Russia 's weapons-grade plutonium by 33 years from now. There need not be an ironclad commitment to go beyond 34 tons to justify moving forward with construction of disposition facilities, but there should at least be a policy that clearly identifies going well beyond 34 tons as a goal, and discussions of going further should not be left for the indefinite future. Otherwise, there is too great a risk that political leaders in the United States , Russia , and elsewhere will put in place measures to address the 34 tons covered in the PMDA and then walk away, wrongly thinking that they have solved the plutonium problem. The Energy Department should quickly provide Congress with an in-depth assessment of the relative merits of all-immobilization and MOX-plus-immobilization options, which should be subject to independent review. The U.S. government should then pick an option and stick with it. Whether Russia implements the same option is not important, but it is important that Russia also pick an option and move forward to implement it. In short, the United States should adopt policies that will make it possible for plutonium disposition to make a substantial contribution to U.S. national security and then move forward with disposition of a substantial fraction of the U.S. and Russian plutonium stockpiles. Matthew Bunn is a senior research associate in the Managing the Atom project at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Previously, he served in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy where, among other responsibilities, he staffed the interagency working group on plutonium disposition. He was the study director for the two-volume National Academy of Sciences study Management and Disposition of Excess Weapons Plutonium, published in 1994 and 1995. ENDNOTES 1. For updated estimates of the total stockpiles and the amounts declared excess, see David Albright and Kimberly Kramer, eds., Global Fissile Material Inventories (Washington, D.C.: Institute for Science and International Security, 2004); and International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM), “Global Fissile Material 2006: Report of the International Panel on Fissile Materials,” Program on Science and Global Security, 2006. The total U.S. declared stockpile is 99.5 tons, and the amount declared excess is 52.5 tons, but 7.5 tons of this amount is plutonium in spent fuel slated for disposal. Unclassified estimates suggest that modern nuclear weapons might contain an average of roughly four kilograms of plutonium. See David Albright, Frans Berkhout, and William B. Walker, Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium, 1996: World Inventories, Capabilities, and Policies (Solna, Sweden, Oxford, and New York: Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 34, 49; and IPFM, “Global Fissile Material 2006,” p. 16. Supporting a stockpile would require some additional material that was in various stages of the warhead and material life-cycle outside of operational warheads. 2. Royal Society, Management of Separated Plutonium (London: Royal Society, 1998). 3. Committee on International Security and Arms Control , U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Management and Disposition of Excess Weapons Plutonium (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1994). 4. “Agreement Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Russian Federation Concerning the Management and Disposition of Plutonium Designated as No Longer Required for Defense Purposes and Related Cooperation,” 2000. Actually, on the Russian side, the agreement will likely end up covering some 38 tons of total plutonium because it permits Russia to blend the 34 tons of weapons-grade plutonium with up to four tons of reactor-grade material, in order to keep the isotopics of its weapons-grade stockpiles secret. 5. Joint U.S.-Russian Working Group on Cost Analysis and Economics in Plutonium Disposition, “Cost Estimates for the Disposition of Weapon-Grade Plutonium Withdrawn from Russia's Nuclear Military Programs,” 2001. 6. Office of Fissile Materials Disposition, U.S. Department of Energy, “Plutonium Disposition Life Cycle Costs and Cost-Related Comment Resolution Document,” DOE/MD-0013, 1999. This was already a dramatic increase from the $2.2 billion estimate (in 1996 dollars) that formed part of the basis for the Energy Department's Record of Decision on plutonium disposition in 1997. 7. Joint U.S.-Russian Working Group on Cost Analysis and Economics in Plutonium Disposition, “Analysis of Russian-Proposed Unified Scenario for Disposition of 34 Metric Tons of Weapon-Grade Plutonium,” 2006 (hereinafter “Analysis of Russian-Proposed Unified Scenario.”) 8. For the MOX schedule, see U.S. Department of Energy, “FY 2008 Congressional Budget Request: National Nuclear Security Administration,” 2007, p. 501. For the immobilization schedule, see U.S. Department of Energy, “FY 2008 Congressional Budget Request: Environmental Management,” 2007, p. 333. Officially, the start of operations is not yet determined, but all construction costs are projected as being completed in 2011. The planned 2012 start date is also confirmed in internal Energy Department documents. For the total cost estimate, see U.S. Department of Energy, “Disposition of Surplus U.S. Fissile Materials: Comparative Analysis of Alternative Approaches,” November 2006. This study estimates the costs, including storage pending disposition, for an alternative including both MOX and immobilization as $15 billion (in constant 2006 dollars) through 2050. Without storage, the costs for MOX and immobilization were just under $10 billion. These are going-forward costs, however, neglecting the hundreds of millions of dollars already spent. The total costs for these efforts, including funds already spent, would be well more than $10 billion. 9. U.S. Department of Energy, “Disposition of Surplus U.S. Fissile Materials.” An earlier version of this study indicated that the all-immobilization option would be more expensive than the MOX option. Why this changed has not been publicly explained. 10. These arguments are summed up, with a large number of references, at the Nuclear Control Institute's “Plutonium Disposal” page, available at http://www.nci.org/nci-wpu.htm. See also Edwin S. Lyman, “The Future of Immobilization Under the U.S.-Russian Plutonium Disposition Agreement,” in Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Meeting of the Institute for Nuclear Materials Management (Indian Wells, California, July 15-19, 2001); and Allison Macfarlane and Adam Bernstein, “Canning Plutonium: Cheaper and Faster,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May/June 1999, pp. 66-69. 11. The several-year delay in vitrifying high-level waste at Savannah River , now not scheduled to be completed until 2028, leaves more time and more waste canisters available for immobilizing plutonium once an immobilization facility comes on-line. Moreover, the canisters produced so far at Savannah River contain only a small fraction of the radioactivity per canister that would be necessary to vitrify all the waste in the Savannah River tanks in the planned number of canisters, suggesting that more canisters will have to be made over a longer time, again offering more opportunities for plutonium immobilization. If the U.S. government declared more plutonium excess in the future, as it should, it is at least possible that canisters containing immobilized plutonium but without high-level waste could be shipped from Savannah River to Hanford , where vitrification of the high-level waste has not yet begun and will last longer. Whether sufficient waste canisters would likely be available for this option is one key factor that Congress should ask the Energy Department to address in detail and which should be reviewed independently. 12. “Analysis of Russian-Proposed Unified Scenario.” 13. In the ongoing HEU Purchase agreement, for example, in which Russia is taking HEU from dismantled nuclear warheads and blending it to low-enriched uranium, which the United States purchases for use in commercial reactors, the total price the United States would pay was originally set at about $12 billion for 500 tons of HEU. If the United States or another purchaser offered the same price per ton for excess weapons plutonium, which would be exceedingly generous because plutonium is so expensive to make into fuel that it actually is a net liability at present, 50 tons of excess plutonium would cost $1.2 billion. 14. For an outline of this approach, see Thomas L. Neff, “Perspectives on Actions Necessary to Move the Plutonium Disposition Program Forward,” paper presented at “International Policy Forum: Management and Disposition of Nuclear Weapons Materials,” Bethesda, Maryland, March 23-26, 1998. If appropriately presented and packaged with reasonable incentives for all concerned, this approach could be designed so that it would not interfere with European fuel-cycle choices, but indeed would effectively lock in use of plutonium fuel for a decade or more as part of a nuclear arms reduction initiative. The Arms Control Association is a non-profit, membership-based organization. If you find our resources useful, please consider joining or making a contribution. Arms Control Today encourages reprint of its articles with permission of the Editor. © 1997-2007 Arms Control Association, 1313 L Street, NW, Suite 130 Washington, DC 20005 Tel: (202) 463-8270 | Fax: (202) 463-8273 ***************************************************************** 19 UPI: CIA bans book on Chinese nuclear weapons United Press International - Security & Terrorism - 4/5/2007 2:45:00 PM -0400 WASHINGTON, April 5 (UPI) -- A federal court sided with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency to block a former employee from publishing a book about China's nuclear weapons. The CIA alleges that a 500-page manuscript written by Danny B. Stillman, a former intelligence specialist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, contains classified information. Sullivan brought the lawsuit against the CIA, claiming that it was his First Amendment right to publish the book titled "Inside China's Nuclear Weapons Program." In a judgment filed last week, a federal court in Washington, DC, found that the CIA was within its right to block disclosure of 23 sections of the manuscript. Since those portions amount to 15 percent of the total manuscript and contain the most interesting and valuable information, Stillman said he would not publish the book, according to the FAS Project on Government Secrecy. While a government employee and after his retirement in 1993, Stillman traveled to China nine times and "engaged in extensive discussions with Chinese scientists, government officials, and nuclear weapons designers," according to the court decision. Stillman submitted the manuscript for review by relevant government agencies, as required by the non-disclosure agreement signed by government employees with security clearance. He maintains that it does not contain classified information. The U.S. Department of Energy, which has primary classification authority over nuclear weapons design data, gave the manuscript full approval. The CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Department of Defense demurred. Stillman claimed that the information collected during trips to China after his retirement as a full-time government employee did not fall within the scope of the non-disclosure he signed. However, according to the judge's decision, the court did not read Stillman's secrecy agreements so narrowly. "The agreements that Stillman signed while still employed at LANL contain incredibly broad language requiring Stillman to protect classified information both during and after employment with the United States government," the court found. © Copyright 2007 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 20 Arizona Republic : Nuclear energy making a comeback April 5, 2007 Bill Post's future vision for new nuclear plants at Palo Verde is part of a national and international trend ("Projects, A-plant keep Post busy," Business, Sunday). In the United States alone electric utilities have announced interest in starting construction on 33 nuclear units in the next few years, with a site permit already granted for the first one. Around the world, and particularly along the Pacific Rim, with its rapidly growing economies, many more plants are planned, with some already being built. This renaissance in nuclear energy is the result of several critical factors. In the United States, these include a demand for electricity that is now starting to outpace reliable supply, which is a particular problem for Arizona with its strong population growth. A second factor is the growing concern about global climate change from burning fossil fuels. Finally, there is the excellent safety practice, moderate cost and high reliability of existing nuclear plants. New units at Palo Verde will be an important investment in both our economy and our environment and deserve serious consideration. -B.D. Ganapol,Tucson The writer is professor, Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, University of Arizona. Copyright © 2007, azcentral.com. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 21 Guardian Unlimited: Javans fired up over reactor next to volcano Ian MacKinnon in Mount Muria, Indonesia Thursday April 5, 2007 Lava and smoke spew from Mount Merapi in Indonesia - a country on the Pacific 'ring of fire' which makes it vulnerable to earthquakes and eruptions. Photograph: EPA Indonesia is forging ahead with plans to build its first nuclear power plant in the shadow of a dormant volcano, despite mounting opposition from environmental groups who fear a catastrophe in a country beset by earthquakes and natural disasters. The favoured site on the north coast of Java is overlooked by the brooding presence of 5,250ft (1,600-metre) Mount Muria. Critics are concerned that the slightest tremor could trigger a fresh eruption and spell disaster for any nuclear reactor in its path. The consequences of a radioactive leak, through earthquake or eruption, could prove disastrous for Java - home to 100 million Indonesians. "A nuclear plant on that site could become a genocide for the people of Java," said Chalid Muhammad, director of Walhi, the Indonesian Forum for the Environment. "It's a highly risky proposition: 83% of Indonesia is very dangerous - prone to earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods and landslides." But the Jakarta government and the National Nuclear Energy Agency (Batan) brushed aside the concerns, citing the growing population that will double electricity demand by 2025. Companies in Japan, Russia and France are vying for the contract to build four proposed 1,500 megawatt reactors on a site near the village of Ujung Lemahabang 280 miles east of Jakarta. Construction of the first is set to start in two years and it will be commissioned by 2016. Indonesia already has the International Atomic Energy Authority's blessing. Its head, Mohamed ElBaradei, visited Jakarta in December and said the predominantly Muslim nation should face no obstacle developing its nuclear programme as it had met its nuclear non-proliferation treaty obligations. Studies highlighted by Indonesia's nuclear agency also show the site is safe geologically despite the country's precarious location on the unstable Pacific "ring of fire" volcano and earthquake belt. The agency maintains the reactor will be earthquake proof. "We're completely happy about safety," said Taswando Taryo, of Batan. "Seismic activity is one of our key concerns. But the reactor will withstand earthquakes. We also assessed Mount Muria. It's a small volcano and couldn't affect the reactor." To ensure the plan does not suffer the same fate as an earlier project that foundered in the teeth of vitriolic opposition, Batan has embarked on a campaign to win over wavering farmers who will live in the shadow of the plant. Handouts of irradiated rice seed - matched by gifts of cows and job-creating construction projects - are crude efforts to convince doubters that nuclear is not dangerous since the crops have been treated with radiation. "It's like comparing apples and oranges, the two things are totally different," said Nur Hidayati, a Greenpeace worker. "They're saying this is 'nuclear rice'. That's their communication strategy." A new geological study has unearthed minor faults in the area that suggest the government is playing with fire, she said. "Nuclear power plants are dangerous technology at the best of times, but when put in an unstable geological location like Indonesia the risk is even higher," she said. "They say Muria volcano died a long time ago, but no one can predict the future." Campaigners maintain alternatives were not seriously examined. They are at a loss to explain the government's renewed enthusiasm after it backed away from the nuclear power option in 1997. Some Indonesians even doubt their own ability to build and run a nuclear power plant safely. "In every accident in Indonesia - planes, trains and ships - the government always blames human error," said Walhi's Mr Chalid. "If that's so, can we build a nuclear reactor in Java and operate it safely with such weakness in our human resources?" In the coastal town of Jepara, near the planned reactor site on a government rubber plantation, apprehensive inhabitants fear they are being put in jeopardy and caught up in geopolitics. "If there's an accident or an explosion then the whole community will be the victim," said Ahmad Cholil, a religious and community leader. "This is just a showcase project to give the government a bargaining chip at the nuclear table. But we'll pay if it goes wrong." Useful links Interactive guides Indonesia: troubled archipelago The Bali bombings Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 22 The Hindu: NTPC to foray into nuclear power generation Friday, Apr 06, 2007 The outcome of Indo-U.S. nuclear deal crucial Keen to acquire LNG terminal of Ratnagiri Gas and Power MULTI-PRONGED STRATEGY: T. Sankaralingam (left), Chairman and Managing Director, NTPC, and Chandan Roy, Director (Operations), addressing a press conference in New Delhi on Thursday. ? PHOTO: SHANKER CHAKRAVARTY NEW DELHI: National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) is ready to make foray into nuclear energy generation and hopes to put in place a nuclear plant of 2,000 MW capacity by 2010-11. The company is targeting to increase power generation capacity to 50,000 MW by 2012 and 75,000 MW by 2017 from the present 26,000 MW, Chairman-cum-Managing Director, T. Sankaralingam, said here on Thursday. Addressing the company's annual press conference here, Mr. Sankaralingam said NTPC was in talks with nuclear power equipment manufacturers for acquiring the necessary technology and knowhow. A lot would depend on the outcome of the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal that was now under negotiations, he added. No threat to BHEL The NTPC Chairman said the company had adopted a multi-pronged strategy to increase capacity. This included expansion of existing plants, setting up of greenfield units and acquiring power plants of State electricity boards. Mr. Sankaralingam said the company's foray into manufacture of power equipment would not pose a direct threat to Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL), stating that the demand for equipment was huge. Enters hydel power The company, which now generates all of its electricity from coal, was also foraying into hydropower generation. Mr. Sankaralingam said NTPC had recorded a 15.57 per cent jump in net profit at Rs. 6,726.40 crore in 2006-07 as against Rs. 5,820.20 crore in the previous fiscal. Net sales rose by 17.20 per cent to Rs. 30,638.7 crore from Rs. 26, 142.9 crore. Gross revenue increased by 15.81 per cent to Rs. 33,299.70 crore from Rs. 28,753 crore. The Chairman said NTPC, which is one of the promoters of Ratnagiri Gas and Power Private Limited (RGPPL), was keen to acquire the LNG terminal associated with the project. The company was ready to infuse Rs. 500 crore into the cash-starved RGPPL for the purpose. "The board has cleared the infusion of Rs. 500 crore into RGPPL. We will do so as and when the government expects us to do that,'' NTPC Director (Operations), Chandan Roy, told newsmen on the sidelines of the press conference. Mr. Roy said NTPC was keen to acquire the five-million tonne liquefied natural gas terminal linked with the 2,150 MW Dabhol power plant. NTPC's statement comes close on the heels of another RGPPL promoter Gas Authority of India Limited (GAIL) stating recently that it was willing to infuse Rs. 500 crore into RGPPL, provided it was given the LNG terminal. NTPC and GAIL had put in Rs. 500 crore into RGPPL to acquire 28.33 per cent each at the time of taking over Dabhol assets. The Empowered Group of Ministers on Dabhol was likely to meet on April 11 to take a decision on the issue, he added. Copyright © 2007, The Hindu ***************************************************************** 23 Platts: More work needed, but Palo Verde nuke can turn things around - NRC Washington (Platts)--4Apr2007 Improvements are being made at the Palo Verde nuclear power plant in Arizona, but there still are instances where crews address symptoms, not the root cause, of problems and where incomplete answers are accepted, US Nuclear Regulatory Commission Region IV Administrator Bruce Mallett said Wednesday. But Mallett told members of the Arizona Corporation Commission that he believed the Arizona Public Service plant would be able to turnaround its performance. Arizona regulators called the meeting to hear NRC's perspective on problems that earlier in 2007 saw Palo Verde-3 slip a notch in NRC's performance assessment, subjecting the station to a higher level of NRC oversight. Responding to a question from the ACC, Mallett said that neither NRC nor APS would allow the situation at Palo Verde to deteriorate to the point where the three-reactor station was moved into NRC's lowest ranking -- unacceptable performance -- which could require a shutdown until issues are addressed. There is a wide margin between where Palo Verde is now and column 5, he said. The plant, roughly 50 miles outside Phoenix, now has three NRC resident inspectors. Mallett said he anticipates a fourth inspector will be assigned to the station for at least a year. --Elaine Hiruo, elaine_hiruo@platts.com Copyright © 2007 - Platts, All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 24 BBC NEWS: Plaid leader backs nuclear plant Last Updated: Thursday, 5 April 2007, 19:37 GMT 20:37 UK The Wylfa nuclear power station opened in 1971 Plaid Cymru leader Ieuan Wyn Jones has backed building a new nuclear power station in the area he has represented for the past 20 years if certain conditions are met. The decision to support in principle replacing Wylfa on Anglesey with a new station in the next decade is at odds with many Plaid members' views. Plaid's assembly election pre-manifesto also opposes nuclear power. The Plaid leader has been either MP or AM since 1987 for Anglesey, where the Wylfa nuclear plant is due to close by the end of the decade. Although the manifesto itself does not mention nuclear power, it commits the party to bringing "clean secure energy to communities across Wales by supporting a range of alternatives". The alternatives, the document suggests, are marine power, micro generation and fuel cell technology. Speaking at an election launch at Menai Bridge on Thursday, Mr Jones set out three conditions for a new power station on Anglesey. I have a responsibility to my electors Ieuan Wyn Jones Mr Jones defended his right to take the position. "I want to see the kind of investment it would bring, the number of jobs that would be created and how any potential companies would deal with the waste" he said. He said: "I have a responsibility to my electors, the people who elected me. "I have a responsibility to defend jobs on Anglesey". Mr Jones' opponents on the island criticised his comments. Conservative candidate James Roach accused him of lacking commitment. "Wylfa already has the necessary skills base and they have already fought through the issues of technology and waste disposal," he said. Mr Roach added: "It is astonishing that the present Assembly Member for Anglesey, knowing the importance of this issue, is still only prepared to sit on the fence." 'Full confidence' Labour's Jonathan Austin said Mr Jones was guilty of "fudging". He said: "People want to know whether their next Assembly Member will support Wylfa B, so important is it to the local economy. "I will support a new Wylfa power station." Liberal Democrat candidate Mandi Abrahams expressed some sympathy for Ieuan Wyn Jones' position, but said she opposed new nuclear power stations, wherever they were built. "He is in a difficult position being leader of his party and it will undermine him both as a leader and as an AM," she said. Ms Abrahams added: "Our policy is completely clear, with no equivocation at all." Independent candidate Peter Rogers said Plaid Cymru did not know the importance of the nuclear industry to the island. "It's time that Plaid Cymru understood that the economy of Anglesey depends on Wylfa B," he said. "People here need to have full confidence in the commitment of the assembly candidates on this issue and this is no time to question the importance of nuclear power to the island," Mr Rogers added. CONSTITUENCY POLL Labour 36% Conservatives 23% Plaid Cymru 20% Liberal Democrats 15% Others 6% Source: ITV Wales/NOP voting intention phone poll Meanwhile, all the parties were studying the results of an ITV Wales/NOP poll of voting intentions on 3 May. Across the 40 constituencies it indicated Labour would get 36% of the vote, down 4% on the 2003 assembly election result. The Conservatives were in second place in the survey on 23%, up 3% and Plaid Cymru third on 20%, down 1% on four years ago. The Liberal Democrats were up 1% on 15%, with 6% of respondents saying they would vote for other parties. The poll findings were broadly similar for the 20 regional 'top up' seats, elected by proportional representation. REGIONAL POLL Labour 35% Conservatives 24% Plaid Cymru 20% Liberal Democrats 15% Others 5% Source: ITV Wales/NOP voting intention phone poll 35% said they would vote Labour and 24% opted for the Conservatives. The support for the other two main parties was the same as in the constituencies. The poll predicted that there would be a 45% turnout, 7% higher than in 2003. 1,500 people were interviewed across Wales by telephone between 23 March and 2 April. * BBC Copyright Notice ***************************************************************** 25 POAC: NRC rejects Ocean County request for N-plant hearing Press of Atlantic City By DAVID BENSON Staff Writer, (609) 272-7206 Published: Thursday, April 5, 2007 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has rejected a request by Ocean County freeholders to hold a public hearing on the Oyster Creek nuclear generating station, a spokeswoman for the NRC said Wednesday. John P. Kelly, director of the Board of Chosen Freeholders said Wednesday that the public in Ocean County needs the chance to express its viewpoints on what the NRC should consider in the relicensing of the Oyster Creek facility. “We especially think the public should get the chance to express its views on terrorist attacks,†Kelly said. The Oyster Creek facility is the nation's longest operating nuclear plant. AmerGen, owner of the generating station, is seeking a license extension for the plant. If it is successful, the station would be the nation's first to operate beyond an initial 40-year licensing period. “A public hearing is in the best interest of the public,†Kelly said. “I don't understand the arrogance of saying they won't listen to the public.†The resolution containing the request was passed by the freeholders on March 7. It was released Wednesday by the NRC into its public Web server at www.nrc.gov The resolution urges the NRC to hold a hearing on whether the consequences of a terrorist attack on the nuclear plant be made part of the plant's relicensing process. Diane Screnci, a spokeswoman for the NRC, said the agency has already listened to the public. Screnci said the state of New Jersey filed a contention with the NRC asking that commission consider terrorist attack in AmerGen's quest for a license renewal. “The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board initially determined that the state's contention was not admissible," Screnci said. “The commission confirmed it. That's the final agency action.†While the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said that the NRC has to consider the environmental consequences of such an attack, the NRC has said that ruling is limited to California. Late in February, the NRC rejected the New Jersey's contention that the commission must consider the environmental consequences of a terrorist attack on the Oyster Creek nuclear generating station as part of that station's license renewal. Wednesday, Screnci said the NRC will not hold a hearing involving the consequences of an accident caused by terrorists, despite the freeholders' resolution. Currently, the Oyster Creek facility is scheduled to close in April 2009. But if the 20-year license renewal is approved, the plant could generate electricity through 2029. The nuclear facility now produces about 630 megawatts of electricity per hour. In 2003, the plant produced 5 billion kilowatt hours of electricity, or about 9 percent of New Jersey's electricity consumption. To e-mail Dave Benson at The Press: DBenson@pressofac.com ***************************************************************** 26 Bryan-College Station Eagle: Officials check A&M's reactor Eagle Staff Report Texas A&M University's Nuclear Science Center - home to the campus' research reactor - is undergoing its standard inspection by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, university and federal officials said Wednesday. Five inspectors from the Washington D.C.-based commission began reviewing the facility Tuesday, Nuclear Science Center Director Dan Reece said. The two-day review is routine, according to Reece and Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Scott Burnell. Generally, a mid-range research reactor - such as the one on the Texas A&M campus - undergoes a standard review every couple of years, Burnell said. Reece said the visits sometimes happen more frequently because new inspectors are brought to the well-run facility for training. While in College Station, the team looked at all aspects of the facility, including reactor operations, maintenance and surveillance, Reece said. The group was expected to conclude its inspection Wednesday. Reece said inspectors likely will provide A&M officials with a verbal report before departing. A formal, written report on the facility will be completed in about four weeks, he said. Reece likened the review to the Federal Aviation Administration's standard inspection process for airplanes. "It's just to make sure everything is up to snuff and we're doing our job well," Reece said. ***************************************************************** 27 JOURNAL NEWS: Indian Point 3 goes back to work after one-day shutdown Thursday, April 5, 2007 By GREG CLARY BUCHANAN - Indian Point 3 was restarted about 1 a.m. yesterday, less than 24 hours after a steam generator problem prompted workers to manually shut down the nuclear plant. There was no release of radiation during the shutdown, Indian Point and federal regulatory officials said, and no threat to workers or the public. A problem with one of the two main boiler feed pumps that send water to the plant's steam generators malfunctioned and left water levels too low in the generators. The generators create steam that turns electricity-producing turbines. Tuesday's shutdown took place about 4:15 a.m. It was the first unplanned shutdown this year for Indian Point 3. The plant had two such shutdowns in 2006, according to Nuclear Regulatory Commission records. The plant had just returned to service Saturday, following a 24-day refueling outage when workers replaced 96 of the 193 fuel assemblies used during operation. The plant, which went online 31 years ago today, had operated continuously for 288 days before the refueling stoppage. Indian Point 3 produced nearly 9 billion kilowatt hours of electricity in 2006 - more than in any year since it began operating in 1976, company officials said. NRC officials said the shutdown and restart went according to procedure. "We didn't identify any problems there," said Neil Sheehan of the NRC. "We will do a follow-up inspection. They did an operability analysis to make sure they could go back online and that came out fine." Sheehan said the plant's latest event puts it at the limit for shutdowns per 7,000 hours of critical operation. One more shutdown before the end of June would likely push its operating rating from green to white, the second-best safety rating. Entergy officials said after the shutdown that they were confident the nuclear reactor would work well for an extended period of time now, pointing to its nine-plus straight months of continuous operation before the refueling outage. "We can easily do 250 or 300 consecutive days," Indian Point spokesman Jim Steets said after the shutdown Tuesday. "We did that with IP3 before we shut down for the outage." Steets said, regardless of the number of unplanned shutdowns at a plant, workers are trained to follow procedures without considering whether it affects a plant's safety rating. "This is about operating the plant safely," Steets said. "That culture is what ultimately leads to the best performance." David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a longtime nuclear industry watchdog, said coming out of a refueling outage increased the likelihood of unplanned shutdowns. "The equipment has not been used for awhile," Lochbaum said. "Plants run best either at 100 percent or zero. It's the changes that cause problems." The plant, which had been operating at about 60 percent power at the time of the shutdown, is expected to return to full service within a few days, Indian Point officials said. Reach Greg Clary at 914-696-8566 or gclary@lohud.com. Copyright © 2006 The Journal News, a Gannett Co. Inc. newspaper serving Westchester, Rockland and Putnam Counties in New York. ***************************************************************** 28 Journal News: Nuke plants' sirens test better today Thursday, April 5, 2007 Greg Clary BUCHANAN - This morning's three separate tests of Indian Point's new emergency siren test showed marked improvement over similar tests on Tuesday, county and nuclear plant officials said. "They went better," said Anthony Sutton, Westchester County's commissioner of emergency services. "Just look at the numbers." There were some discrepancies in the reporting of the number of failures in the 150-siren test, with emergency officials finding 17 problem sirens, while Indian Point officials noted seven. Both of those counts were the worst totals of the three tests. The two earlier tests turned up four and five malfunctions in all four counties, according to Sutton. The nuclear plants ran into what Indian Point officials said was an anomaly when 123 of the new sirens failed to successfully complete an operational test on Tuesday. County emergency officials were concerned about the number because it increased from early tests three-fold and came less than two weeks before the April 15 deadline to install the new system. Indian Point officials said after yesterday they would be sorting out today's reporting disparity, but were pleased with th overall improvement. They reiterated that they expected to meet the deadline. The company will hold two more tests before the system goes online, on April 11 and April 12. Until the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and federal emergency officials sign off on replacement system, the old system will remain in place. Read more about the sirens in Earth Watch, the weekly environmental column that publishes on Fridays. Reach Greg Clary at 914-696-8566 or gclary@lohud.com. Copyright © 2006 The Journal News, a Gannett Co. Inc. newspaper serving Westchester, Rockland and Putnam Counties in New York. ***************************************************************** 29 NRC: NRC to Discuss 2006 Performance at Vogtle Nuclear Plant News Release - Region II - 2007-010 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, Region II 61 Forsyth Street SW, Atlanta, GA 30303 www.nrc.gov CONTACT: Ken Clark (404) 562-4416 Roger D. Hannah (404) 562-4417 E-mail: opa2@nrc.gov The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff is scheduled to meet with Southern Nuclear Operating Company officials on Wednesday, April 11, to discuss the NRC’s annual assessment of safety performance for 2006 at the Vogtle nuclear power plant, located near Waynesboro, Ga. The meeting, which is open to the public, is scheduled to begin at 1:00 p.m. in the Burke County Commission Meeting Room in the Burke County Courthouse in Waynesboro. The NRC staff will present the results of the assessment and be available to respond to questions or comments from the public before the close of the meeting. “The NRC continually reviews the performance of the Vogtle plant and the nation’s other commercial nuclear power facilities,” NRC Region II Administrator William Travers said. “This meeting is a chance for us to discuss that safety performance with the company, with local officials and with people living near the plant.” A letter sent from the NRC Region II Office to plant officials addresses the performance of the plant during the period and will serve as the basis for the meeting discussion. It is available on the NRC web site at www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/LETTERS/vog_2006q4.pdf. The NRC uses color-coded inspection findings and performance indicators to assess nuclear plant performance. The colors start with “green” and then increase to “white,” “yellow” or “red,” depending on the safety significance of the issues involved. The NRC said the Vogtle plant operated safely during 2006, but performance during the most recent quarter was in the NRC’s regulatory response column based on a “white” inspection finding in emergency preparedness and the Unit 2 Mitigating Systems Performance Indicator for Cooling Water crossing the white threshold during the third quarter of 2006. Both issues are of low to moderate safety significance and the NRC will conduct supplemental inspections in those areas this year. In addition to those inspections and the NRC’s routine baseline inspections, NRC inspectors will also be looking at the reactor vessel head and head penetrations, Unit 2 containment emergency sump modifications and license renewal activities. The NRC staff will also conduct initial reactor operator licensing exams at the Vogtle plant this year. Routine inspections are performed by NRC Resident Inspectors assigned to the plant and by specialists from the Region II Office in Atlanta, and the agency’s headquarters in Rockville, Md. Current information for the Vogtle plant is available on the NRC web site at: www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/VOG1/vog1_chart.html and www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/VOG2/vog2_chart.html NRC news releases are available through a free list server subscription at the following Web address: http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/listserver.html. The NRC Home Page at www.nrc.gov also offers a Subscribe to News link in the News & Information menu. E-mail notifications are sent to subscribers when news releases are posted to NRC's Web Site. April 05, 2007 ***************************************************************** 30 York Dispatch: NRC praises Peach Bottom nuclear plant CHARLES SCHILLINGER The York Dispatch Article Launched: 04/05/2007 10:46:33 AM EDT The agency that regulates nuclear power plants said yesterday Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station performed better than the average compared to other plants across the nation. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission recorded a total of seven inspection findings with "very low" safety issues at the two reactors at the Exelon Corp.-owned power plant in Peach Bottom Township. That is half the national average of about seven findings of "very low" significance for each one reactor across the nation. The commission held a public meeting about the plant's operation as part of its annual assessment. Few residents were in attendance at the meeting. The low number of safety issues, and the low level of significance of those findings, means the federal regulatory body will not increase its amount of time monitoring the power plant, the action taken had the findings been more notable. Valve issues: The inspection findings ranged from a clogged valve to a separate incident in which a worker not following procedure simply touched a valve improperly, said Fred Bower, the senior resident inspector for the federal agency at Peach Bottom. In the latter incident, had the valve been used by the worker, it could have led to a shutdown of the reactor, Bower said. "Should an automatic shutdown happen, there's some level of risk added to the operation of the plant," Bower said, explaining why touching a valve could be a safety issue. "And that risk is not a good thing for safety." The goal of the company is always to reduce the number of safety issues to zero, said Joe Grimes, the power plant's site vice president. He said to improve overall performance, the company plans to focus specifically on the reliability of its equipment at the plant this year. "Our operators want to be assured equipment is always functioning the way it's supposed to be when they need it," Grimes said. Paul Krohn of the regional Nuclear Regulatory Commission office in King of Prussia said the NRC agrees with Exelon's focus on equipment reliability, even if there aren't any known issues right now. "If there is an automatic shutdown, we expect 100 percent reliability," Krohn said. "That equipment is expected to do exactly what they say it will do." Krohn said the plant is operating safely. And if it weren't, "we would've made that clear to the management here (yesterday)," he said. -- Reach Charles Schillinger at 505-5431 or cschillinger@yorkdispatch.com. © 2005-2007 Copyright The York Dispatch ***************************************************************** 31 St. Louis Business Journal: AmerenUE to seek nuclear plant permit - St. Louis Business Journal - 1:43 PM CDT Thursday, April 5, 2007 AmerenUE agreed to work with UniStar Nuclear to take the first step to apply for a license to build and operate a new nuclear plant, the Ameren Corp. unit said Thursday. Under the agreement, the two companies will work together in preparing a combined construction and operating license application (COLA) for filing with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), according to a release. A COLA application describes how a nuclear plant would be designed, constructed and operated. Ameren officials said in a release that preparing a COLA, the first step in the regulatory licensing process, does not mean a decision has been made to build a nuclear plant. AmerenUE and UniStar Nuclear need to submit the COLA to the NRC in 2008 to be eligible for incentives available under provisions of the 2005 Energy Policy Act. UniStar Nuclear selected the U.S. Evolutionary Power Reactor (U.S. EPR) design as its technology of choice and is working with nuclear utility licensees across the nation to explore suitable sites for U.S. EPR nuclear plants, including Ameren's nuclear plant in Callaway County, Mo. AmerenUE has operated the single-unit nuclear plant in Callaway County since 1984. UniStar Nuclear is a new joint venture, headquartered in Annapolis, Md., equally owned by Baltimore-based Constellation Energy Group (NYSE: CEG) and Bethesda, Md.-based AREVA Inc. UniStar Nuclear helps develop, license, construct and operate new, standardized nuclear units. St. Louis-based Ameren Corp. (NYSE: AEE) provides electricity and natural gas to customers in eastern Missouri and Illinois. © 2007 American City Business Journals, Inc. and its licensors. All ***************************************************************** 32 News10.net: Nuclear Power Making California Comeback? Written by Marcey Brightwell, Reporter Marcey Brightwell's Report Nearly two decades after Sacramento area residents voted to close the Rancho Seco nuclear power plant, the nuclear power industry is trying to make a California comeback. An organization called the Fresno Nuclear Energy Group is pushing to build a new nuclear power plant near the Fresno water treatment facility. "We think the public is going to benefit by having a nuclear power plant here," said John Hutson, president and chief executive of the Fresno Nuclear Energy Group. Nuclear power advocates say rising energy prices and global warming concerns may cause Californians to reconsider the issue of nuclear energy. They say nuclear power is a clean alternative to fossil fuels. "We frankly are going to have to find other alternatives for producing energy," said Sen. Dave Cox, R-Fair Oaks, who is also a former SMUD board member. "Certainly nuclear power is one of those things that we ought to probably be looking to." But some environmental groups are skeptical. "The nuclear industry is shamelessly trying to manipulate public concern over global warming to revive the nuclear power industry," said Bill Magavern, senior representative with the Sierra Club. "Nuclear power is the wrong solution." Attempts to revive nuclear power in California face a number of roadblocks. State law currently prohibits construction of new nuclear power facilities until the federal government builds a permanent facility to store spent fuel rods. Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, R-Irvine, is pushing new legislation that would repeal that prohibition, potentially helping pave the way for new construction. DeVore's bill, AB 719, is scheduled to be heard before the Assembly Natural Resources Committee April 17. Copyright 2007 News10/KXTV . All Rights Reserved. Created: 4/4/2007 5:39:40 PM Updated: 4/5/2007 7:48:24 AM News10 is a Gannett Company ***************************************************************** 33 People's Daily: Lithuanian nuclear plant must be closed by 2009 - President UPDATED: 10:43, April 05, 2007 Lithuania's Ignalina nuclear power station must be closed by the 2009 deadline, the country's President Valdas Adamkus said in a statement on Wednesday. Adamkus appealed to the parliament in the statement, asking the lawmakers to forsake their effort of extending the service life of Ignalina, which is due to be shut down by the end of 2009, according to promises made by Lithuania to the European Union (EU) in 2002. He said the efforts on the part of the Lithuanian parliament might bear "unpredictable consequences" such as undermining Lithuania's international reputation, or stopping potential partners to participate in the construction of a new power plant in the country. The three Baltic countries, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, together with Poland, have agreed in principle to build a nuclear power station near Ignalina by 2015, with an estimated investment of 2.5-4 billion euros (3.3-5.2 billion U.S. dollars). The Lithuanian parliament decided on Tuesday to suspend discussion on a bill requiring the extension of Ignalina's service life. The EU affairs Committee of the Lithuanian parliament has appealed to related parties recently to step up diplomatic efforts within the EU, so as to present the extension bill to the bloc before May 1. Out of security concerns, the Lithuanian government closed down one of the Ignalina reactors in 2004, and it promised to close the second one by the end of 2009 in an agreement with the EU. However, the agreement was described as "political" by some of Lithuania's energy experts and scholars, who insist that the extension of Ignalina's service life would help ease the tension on electricity shortages in the country. Source: Xinhua Copyright by People's Daily Online, all rights reserved ***************************************************************** 34 Asia Times: Mushroom cloud over US-India nuclear talks Apr 6, 2007 By Sudha Ramachandran BANGALORE - Even as the tortuous process of operationalizing India-US civilian nuclear cooperation entered a critical phase last week with the two sides beginning negotiations on the details of the bilateral agreement, a new bump has emerged on the road to finalizing the deal. The alleged use of subterfuge by Indian government officials and entities to bring sensitive US missile and navigation technology to India is expected to put the nuclear agreement under greater congressional scrutiny in Washington. Four Indian nationals - the chief executive officer of Cirrus Inc, an electronics firm operating in South Carolina, Singapore and Bangalore, and three other employees - were indicted by a US court this week on charges of exporting sensitive technology to India in violation of US laws, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Arms Export Control Act. According to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the items exported include special heat-resistant computer chips with applications in missile-guidance systems, capacitors, semiconductors, rectifiers, resistors and microprocessors for use in aircraft navigation systems. Cirrus apparently exported the dual-use items from the US through Singapore to three Indian government entities - the Vikram Sarabhai Space Center (VSSC), Bharat Dynamics Ltd (BDL), and the Aeronautical Development Establishment (ADE). What is embarrassing to Delhi is that the entities for which the US laws were allegedly flouted are government ones. ADE, for instance, is an organization set up under India's Ministry of Defense, while the VSSC comes under the Department of Space. What is more, the FBI has named two Indian government officials as "co-conspirators"; one of them, it claims, is an official posted at the Indian Embassy in the United States and the other an official of ADE. India has said it will investigate the allegations. B N Sureesh, director of the VSSC, has denied that his organization used subterfuge to secure the high-tech items. The VSSC always provides an end-user certificate whenever it imports items, he told Times of India. "So there is no question of us trying to obtain items by stating one purpose and quietly using it for another.'' The allegations and the indictments couldn't have come at a worse time for India. Last week, Indian and US officials began negotiating details of the 123 Agreement ("123" refers to Section 123 of the US Atomic Energy Act of 1954). The 123 Agreement is the bilateral pact that will define the legal and administrative nature of civilian nuclear cooperation between India and the US. At a time when the agreement is in the process of negotiation, India would not want to be seen to be irresponsible. Negotiations on the 123 Agreement are crucial for India. The Henry Hyde Act, which was passed last December by the US Congress, removing legal obstacles to US nuclear trade with India, has provisions that are of concern to New Delhi. India believes that the act "significantly deviates" from the India-US understanding of July 18, 2005, and the separation plan of March 2006. Under the July 2005 agreement, the US agreed to "full nuclear cooperation" with India in return for the South Asian country placing its civilian nuclear reactors under international safeguards, but the cooperation envisaged under the Henry Hyde Act (named for the former Republican chairman of the House of Representatives International Relations Committee) excludes the sale of equipment related to uranium enrichment, spent-fuel reprocessing, and heavy-water production to India. There are important differences between the two countries. India is concerned that the US wants to include a condition in the 123 Agreement that entails termination of nuclear cooperation - Delhi will be required to return all nuclear equipment and fuel given to it by Washington - if it conducts a nuclear-weapon test, which is unacceptable to India. India wants a clear commitment of assured fuel supplies by the US to its reactors. Another issue of concern for India regards reprocessing of spent fuel. India wants its rights over this to be clearly written into the 123 Agreement. According to media reports, in January India sought clarification from the US on provisions in the Henry Hyde Act that run counter to the letter and spirit of the July 2005 agreement. It followed this up in February with its draft of the 123 Agreement. The Americans were not happy with the draft. At the two-day talks in New Delhi last week, the two sides said they had narrowed the scope of some of their disagreements. But the talks seem to have not met expectations on both sides. "We were hopeful that we would be able to make progress to close out all of the issues on the 123 [Agreement] talks. Some progress was made, but in our view, not enough," said Nicholas Burns, US Under Secretary of State and the Bush administration's main interlocutor with India on the nuclear deal. "The US has done its part. We've met every commitment we said we would meet." US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters: "Certainly, we have acted in good faith in these negotiations to see that they move forward, and we can only assume that that is the motivation of the Indian government as well." Indian officials disagree. They maintain that it is India that has acted in good faith so far and point to the way Washington has shifted the goalposts since the July 2005 agreement. Indian analysts have drawn attention to US efforts to pressure India to hurry up with the deal. Siddharth Varadarajan wrote in The Hindu that in "the run-up to the [Henry] Hyde Act, the Bush administration played the executive-legislature division in Washington to the hilt in order to shift the goal posts of the July 2005 agreement. Today, US officials are pressing India to conclude the 123 negotiations quickly, citing domestic political uncertainties caused by the ascendancy of the Democrats. As the US slips into presidential election mode, it is said Congress' appetite to give President Bush a foreign-policy boost by approving the 123 agreement will diminish ... "By seeking to introduce an artificial deadline, the US hopes to browbeat India into abandoning its concerns." It is in this context that the allegations regarding the flouting of US law for procurement of sensitive technology by Indian government entities should be seen, a former diplomat told Asia Times Online. "It is possible that this is aimed at putting India on the defensive, to make it more willing to back down on contentious issues," he said. Indian officials point out that the recent allegations are not related to nuclear proliferation. India's record on that remains unblemished. But "the allegations, if true, are embarrassing nonetheless", an official in the Ministry of External Affairs admitted, and "couldn't have come at a worse time for India". Indian officials point out that while the allegations have put India in a bit of an embarrassing spot now, in the long run the Bush administration could also feel the heat as the non-proliferation lobby in the US and critics of the India-US nuclear deal can be expected to use the controversy to derail the deal. "If the Indian government has attempted to circumvent US export controls over sensitive missile technology, as is alleged in the indictment, then it has violated its explicit agreements to become a responsible international actor in the context of non-proliferation," Ed Markey, a member of the House of Representatives and a vociferous critic of the nuclear deal, has said. After the finalizing of the 123 Agreement, it will need to be passed by the US Congress. There is concern that the allegations against India will now put the agreement under greater congressional scrutiny. Indian proponents of the deal want India to be less intransigent about getting things clearly stated in the 123 Agreement. They are calling on India to quibble less about its concerns. An editorial in the Indian Express said: "New Delhi wants its rights unambiguously written into the 123 Agreement. Washington is looking at finesse by kicking the can down the road ... For the US, it makes little sense to let the technical quibble over plutonium undermine the huge strategic investment it has made in transforming the relationship with India. In its embrace of legalism, New Delhi is in danger of forgetting the real objective of liberating itself from the straitjacket of a global regime that prevents any nuclear cooperation with India." But would "kicking the can down the road" - ie, overlooking its concerns in the agreement just to get a deal with the US - be in India's interests? An agreement with the US is essential for India's nuclear trade with that country. It is also essential to get the Nuclear Suppliers Group - a group of countries that seeks to contribute to the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons through the implementation of guidelines for nuclear exports and nuclear-related exports - to lift its restrictions on nuclear trade with India. Yet, as Varadarajan pointed out, the 123 Agreement "will form the template for changes to the Nuclear Suppliers Group guidelines". So backing down on core concerns and kicking the can further down the road, as some suggest, might not be the best strategy for India. Postponement of tackling the concern will only result in more goalposts being shifted. This is evident from India's experience over the past two years. India and the US have entered the home stretch in their effort to operationalize their civilian nuclear energy cooperation, and this last lap is proving to be more daunting than expected. Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in Bangalore. © Copyright 1999 - 2007 Asia Times Online (Holdings), Ltd. ***************************************************************** 35 NRC: NRC to Discuss 2006 Performance at Oconee Nuclear Plant News Release - Region II - 2007-011 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, Region II 61 Forsyth Street SW, Atlanta, GA 30303 www.nrc.gov CONTACT: Ken Clark (404) 562-4416 Roger D. Hannah (404) 562-4417 E-mail: opa2@nrc.gov The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff is scheduled to meet with Duke Energy officials on Thursday, April 12, to discuss the NRC’s annual assessment of safety performance for 2006 at the Oconee nuclear power plant, located near Seneca, S.C. The meeting, which is open to the public, is scheduled to begin at 10:00 a.m. in the Oconee Office Complex Auditorium, 155 East Pickens Highway (Highway 183) outside Seneca. The NRC staff will present the results of the assessment and be available to respond to questions or comments from the public before the close of the meeting. “The NRC continually reviews the performance of the Oconee plant and the nation’s other commercial nuclear power facilities,” NRC Region II Administrator William Travers said. “This meeting is a chance for us to discuss that safety performance with the company, with local officials and with people living near the plant.” A letter sent from the NRC Region II Office to plant officials addresses the performance of the plant during the period and will serve as the basis for the meeting discussion. It is available on the NRC web site at www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/LETTERS/oco_2006q4.pdf. The NRC uses color-coded inspection findings and performance indicators to assess nuclear plant performance. The colors start with “green” and then increase to “white,” “yellow” or “red,” depending on the safety significance of the issues involved. The NRC said the Oconee plant operated safely during 2006, but performance during the most recent quarter was in the NRC’s degraded cornerstone column based on a “white” performance indicator in conjunction with a “white” inspection finding in the same area. The details are available in the letter mentioned above. In response to the degraded cornerstone performance at the plant, the NRC plans a supplemental inspection to look into those issues. In addition to that inspections and the NRC’s routine baseline inspections, NRC inspectors will also be looking at the plant’s independent spent fuel storage facility and Duke’s actions related to a temporary instruction for containment sump blockage. The NRC staff will also conduct reactor operator licensing exams at the Oconee plant this year. Routine inspections are performed by NRC Resident Inspectors assigned to the plant and by specialists from the Region II Office in Atlanta, and the agency’s headquarters in Rockville, Md. Current information for the Oconee plant is available on the NRC web site at: www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/OCO1/oco1_chart.html, www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/OCO2/oco2_chart.html and www.nrc.gov/NRR/OVERSIGHT/ASSESS/OCO3/oco3_chart.html NRC news releases are available through a free list server subscription at the following Web address: http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/listserver.html. The NRC Home Page at www.nrc.gov also offers a Subscribe to News link in the News & Information menu. E-mail notifications are sent to subscribers when news releases are posted to NRC's Web Site. April 05, 2007 ***************************************************************** 36 UPI: Russia's pricing change may boost nuclear United Press International - Energy - 4/4/2007 7:38:00 PM -0400 MOSCOW, April 4 (UPI) -- Russia's Rosatom will build three nuclear plants per year by 2015, the agency's chief, Sergei Kiriyenko, said Tuesday. Russia decided last year to move toward a competitive electricity and gas-pricing policy by 2011 and 2012; Kiriyenko said he expects the nuclear-energy sector to be competitive by then, the Daily News Bulletin reported. Under the current pricing policy, Russia's gas market is much larger than the hydro, coal and nuclear markets. The potential for nuclear growth hinges on the move to competitive pricing, Kiriyenko said. In 2006, Kiriyenko said, the nuclear industry reached its highest production levels since the industry began. Two plants are expected to begin construction under a federal nuclear energy complex program. Looking past 2015, four or more plants are expected to be built annually. Recently, the French company Alstom invested $400 million along with Russian nuclear company Atomenergomash to build a factory that will produce low-speed turbines for use in nuclear power stations, the Itar-Tass news agency reported. Over the next 30 years, Kiriyenko said 300 to 600 nuclear plants are expected to be built worldwide, and Russia may be poised to represent about 20 percent of the market. © Copyright 2007 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 37 UPI: AmerenUE, UniStar join nuclear forces United Press International - Energy - 4/5/2007 1:27:00 PM -0400 ST. LOUIS, April 5 (UPI) -- St. Louis-based utility AmerenUE has joined the UniStar Nuclear team in preparation for a possible application to build a new nuclear plant. AmerenUE and UniStar Development Company will now put together a combined construction and operating license application, or COLA, a new streamlined way of applying to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. UniStar Nuclear is a joint project between Constellation Energy and Areva Inc., intended as a one-stop shop for applying for, building and operating a nuclear plant. UniStar standardizes its fleet with the U.S. Evolutionary Power Reactors. The move by AmerenUE allows it to move forward on a COLA and gets it in UniStar's queue for an EPR. "This is an important step forward for the UniStar Nuclear business model and our value-driven, risk managed business model," Michael Wallace, co-chief executive officer of UniStar Nuclear, said in a company release. © Copyright 2007 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 38 FR NRC: Tennessee Valley Authority Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant, Units 1, 2, and 3 Docket Nos. 50-259, 50-260, and 50-296 Exemption Doc 07-1696 [Federal Register: April 5, 2007 (Volume 72, Number 65)] [Notices] [Page 16832-16835] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr05ap07-133] NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 1.0 Background The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA, the licensee) is the holder of Facility Operating Licenses DPR-33, DPR-52, and DPR-68, which authorize operation of the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant, Units 1, 2 and 3. The license provides, among other things, that the facility is subject to all rules, regulations, and orders of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC, the Commission) now or hereafter in effect. The facility consists of three boiling-water reactors located in Limestone County in Alabama. 2.0 Request/Action On November 19, 1980, the Commission published a new Appendix R to Title 10 to the Code of Federal Regulations (10 CFR) Part 50 regarding fire protection features of nuclear power plants (45 FR 76602). Section 50.48(a) requires that each operating nuclear power plant have a fire protection plan which satisfies General Design Criterion (GDC) 3, ``Fire protection,'' in Appendix A, ``General Design Criteria for Nuclear Power Plants,'' to 10 CFR Part 50. The approved fire protection plan is the plan required to satisfy 10 CFR 50.48(a). Specific fire protection features deemed necessary to ensure this capability are delineated in Appendix R to 10 CFR Part 50. Section III of Appendix R contains 15 subsections, lettered A through O, each of which specifies the requirements for a particular aspect of fire protection features at nuclear power plants. The Browns Ferry units are required to comply with the provisions of Sections III.G and III.J and III.O. Section III.G.2 of Appendix R to 10 CFR Part 50 requires that where cables or equipment of redundant trains of systems necessary to achieve and maintain hot shutdown conditions are located within the same fire area outside of primary containment, one of the following means of ensuring that one of the redundant trains is free of fire damage shall be provided: a. Separation of cables and equipment and associated non-safety circuits of redundant trains by a fire barrier having a 3-hour rating. Structural steel forming a part of or supporting such fire barriers shall be protected to provide fire resistance equivalent to that required of the barrier; b. Separation of cables and equipment and associated non-safety circuits of redundant trains by a horizontal distance of more than 20 feet with no intervening combustible or fire hazards. In addition, fire detectors and an automatic fire suppression system shall be installed in the fire area; or c. Enclosure of cable and equipment and associated non-safety circuits of one redundant train in a fire barrier having a 1-hour rating. In addition, fire detectors and an automatic fire suppression system shall be installed in the fire area; By letter dated October 26, 2006, as supplemented by a letter dated January 11, 2007, the licensee requested a revision to an exemption from 10 CFR 50 Appendix R, III.G.2. For the items specified in this exemption request, the licensee has selected III.G.2.b as the option for compliance with Appendix R, Section II.G.2. The exemption involves allowing intervening combustible materials, for example, fire hazards (480V reactor building (RB) vent boards 1B, 2B, and 3B; small panels in Units 1, 2, and 3, and 1-hour rated Thermo-Lag 330-1 electrical raceway fire barrier (ERFB) material), in the specified 20 feet of separation protected with fire detection and automatic water-based fire suppression between redundant safe-shutdown trains. The redundant trains are separated by a horizontal distance of 20 feet with intervening combustibles in certain fire zones in the Units 1, 2, and 3 RBs. [[Page 16833]] Exemptions are requested from the requirements to provide 20 feet of separation, free of intervening combustibles. The following is a list of those fire zone locations and intervening combustibles/fire hazards present within a 20-foot spatial separation zone for redundant safe- shutdown trains: Unit 1 Fire Zone 1-1/1-2.... 565' Elevation......... 480V (RB) Vent Board 1B. Unit 1 Fire Zone 1-1/1-2.... 565' Elevation......... 1-LPLN-925-338 & 338A Process Radiation Monitor and Relay Panel. Unit 1 Fire Zone 1-1/1-2.... 565' Elevation......... Thermo-Lag on Conduits ES2625-II and ES2673-II. Unit 1 Fire Zone 1-3/1-4.... 593' Elevation......... Thermo-Lag on Conduits PP459-IA, PP460-IA, and ES125-I. Unit 1 Fire Zone 1-3/1-4.... 593' Elevation......... 1-LPLN-925-0281A Fire Detection Panel. Unit 1 Fire Zone 1-3/1-4.... 593' Elevation......... 1-LPLN-925-0315 Heat Detection Panel. Unit 2 Fire Zone 2-1/2-4.... 565' Elevation......... 480V (RB) Vent Board 2B. Unit 2 Fire Zone 2-1/2-2.... 565' Elevation......... 2-PWR-276-0007 480V Power Distribution Panel. Unit 2 Fire Zone 2-3/2-4.... 593' Elevation......... 25-281A Fire Detection Panel. Unit 2 Fire Zone 2-3/2-4.... 593' Elevation......... 25-316 Cable Tray Fire Detection Control. Unit 3 Fire Zone 3-1/3-2.... 565' Elevation......... 480 V (RB) Vent Board 3B. Unit 3 Fire Zone 3-1/3-2.... 565' Elevation......... 1-LPLN-925-336 & 336A Raw Cooling Water Effluent Radiation Monitor and Relay Panel. Unit 3 Fire Zone 3-1/3-2.... 565' Elevation......... 1-LPLN-925-337 & 337A Process Radiation Monitor and Relay Panel. To justify inclusion of intervening combustibles in RB fire areas, the licensee performed fire modeling to assess potential hazards using methodology from NUREG-1805, ``Fire Dynamics Tools (FDTs) Quantitative Fire Hazard Analysis Methods for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Fire Protection Inspection Program,'' December 2004. Enclosure 2 of the exemption request discussed the fire-risk analysis for the Units 1, 2, and 3 RBs. TVA provided an assessment utilizing fire modeling to evaluate the fire hazards due to intervening combustibles between redundant cable trains in the RBs. In this fire modeling analysis, the licensee modeled fire in Unit 1 RB Elevation 565' in the 20-foot zone of separation between fire zones 1-1 and 1-2.\1\ Specifically, 480V (RB) vent boards 1B, 2B, and 3B are located within the 20-foot zone of separation. The fire model uses a series of empirical correlations from NUREG-1805 to show the largest fire from a vertical low voltage electrical cabinet should not produce enough radiant energy to ignite the closest redundant cable trays or intervening combustibles within the redundant trains. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The Units 2 and 3 configuration are very similar and the results of this analysis are applicable to 480V (RB) vent board 2B and 480V (RB) vent board 3B. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The analysis is used to determine the extent of the potential fire damage associated with a realistic worst case fire scenario between Unit 1 RB fire zones 1-1 and 1-2 and the anticipated failure of cables or equipment of redundant trains of systems required for safe-shutdown. A fire scenario was postulated for the Unit 1 RB, that is, fire started in a vertical electrical cabinet (480V RB vent board 1B). This cabinet has 12 vertical sections with no vent openings. The penetrations in the cabinet consist of sealed conduits on top of the cabinet. The fire started from non-qualified Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineering Standard (IEEE)-383 cables within the cabinet and was assumed to be limited to one cable bundle. The heat release rate (HRR) \2\ used to calculate heat fluxes to the targets (cable trays located at radial distance of approximately 7 feet [17 feet above floor], conduits located at the bottom of the duct approximately 9 feet above the top of the cabinet, and Thermo-Lag 330-1 wrapped conduit located approximately 7 feet from the edge of the cabinet) was based on Table E-4 in Appendix E of NUREG/CR-6850 (EPRI [Electric Power Research Institute] TR-1019181), ``EPRI/NRC-RES Fire PRA [Probabilistic Risk Analysis] Methodology for Nuclear Power Facilities,'' November 2005. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \2\ HRR is the rate at which heat energy is generated by burning. The HRR of a fuel is related to its chemistry, physical form, and availability of oxidant. When an object burns, it releases a certain amount of energy per unit of time. For most materials, the HRR of a fuel changes with time, in relation to its chemistry, physical form, and availability of oxidant (air), and is ordinarily expressed as kW (kJ/sec) or Btu/sec and denoted by Q (1,000 kW = 1 MW or 1 BTU/sec = 1.055 kW). --------------------------------------------------------------------------- In order to evaluate the licensee's conclusion that a cabinet fire would not result in fire damage adversely affecting the safe-shutdown capability in Units 1, 2, and 3 RB located within the 20-foot separation area, the NRC staff identified areas in which additional information was necessary to complete its evaluation. The NRC staff had discussions with the licensee on November 20, 2006, concerning use of the HRR of a single bundle cable (vs. multiple bundles) fire from NUREG/CR-6850 in fire modeling. Specifically, the NRC staff requested TVA to justify how the single bundle cable HRR assumption bounds the worst case cabinet fire scenario. On January 11, 2007 (ADAMS Accession Number ML070160050), TVA provided a revised fire model to address the NRC concerns. In the revised fire modeling analysis, the HRR for multiple-cable bundles was assumed due to multiple conduit entries in each section of the low voltage vertical cabinet. The HRR associated with multiple- cable bundles for a vertical cabinet with non-qualified IEEE-383 cables was based on Table E-5 in Appendix E of NUREG/CR-6850. The critical incident radiative heat flux \3\ for ignition is calculated from the cabinet fire scenario to see if ignition of the redundant cables and adjacent surrounding targets (intervening combustibles) is possible. The critical incident radiative heat flux from the maximum fire HRR, that is, 816 Kilowatt (kW), was estimated at 4.28 kW/m2. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \3\ The incident heat flux (the rate of heat transfer per unit area that is normal to the direction of heat flow--it is a total of heat transmitted by radiation, conduction, and convection) required to raise the surface of a target to a critical temperature is termed the critical heat flux. Below this heat flux an object will typically not ignite while above this heat flux the time to ignition will decrease with the increasing heat flux. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The licensee determined that the maximum radiant heat flux is not sufficient to ignite non-qualified IEEE-383 cable or Thermo-Lag 330-1 wrapped on conduits or safety-related cables or equipment of redundant trains of systems for safe-shutdown, nor to adversely impact any surrounding equipment. The targets require a large amount of radiative heat to ignite. The measured critical heat flux level for representative non-qualified IEEE-383 or thermoplastic cable samples typically is in the range of 6 kW/m2 (NUREG/CR-6850, Appendix H, Table H-1). The measured critical heat flux for ignition for Thermo-Lag 330-1 ERFB material is 25 kW/m2 based on American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM) E1321, ``Standard Test Method for Determining Material Ignition and Flame Spread [[Page 16834]] Properties'' (TVA October 26, 2006 (ADAMS ML063040310)). Based on the above evaluation, the NRC staff concludes that the ability of Units 1, 2, and 3 to achieve and maintain safe-shutdown conditions in accordance with the requirements of Section III.G.2.b to Appendix R to 10 CFR 50 is not adversely affected by the inclusion of intervening combustibles or fire hazards in certain fire zones within Units 1, 2, and 3 RBs for the following reasons: --The fire modeling performed by the licensee provides reasonable assurance that redundant safe-shutdown trains will be maintained free of fire damage. This is because the estimated heat flux from the maximum exposure fire is less than the critical heat flux for ignition for non-qualified IEEE-383 cable or Thermo-Lag 330-1 ERFB material. --In the event of a postulated fire in the Units 1, 2, and 3 RBs, all units can safely shut down using the alternate shutdown panel located outside each RB. The Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant Appendix R alternate shutdown strategy is described in the approved fire protection plan. --A significant fire is unlikely due to control of transient combustibles near the redundant trains. RB volume and height would dissipate heat from a cabinet fire and not threaten redundant trains. Smoke detectors and portable extinguishers were installed for quick fire detection and suppression. All electrical cabinets in the area of concern are enclosed with no ventilation openings and the bottom of the cable tray stacks have non-combustible covers. --A fire originating in a low voltage cabinet exposing intervening combustibles/targets (cable trays located at radial distance of approximately 7 feet, conduits located at the bottom of the duct approximately 9 feet above the top of the cabinet (17 feet above floor), and Thermo-Lag 330-1 wrapped conduit located approximately 7 feet from the edge of the cabinet) would be slow to develop. Based on the fire detection arrangement in the Units 1, 2, and 3 RBs, detection of this type of fire would occur well before the fire had time to develop into a fully developed cable tray fire scenario. --The NRC staff reviewed the physical configuration of the Units 1, 2, and 3 RBs, the associated fire hazards (intervening combustibles) and fire protection features, and fire response procedures. This review found that a fire that initiated in one of the cabinets would likely be detected in its incipient stage, and fire-fighting activities initiated (including actuation of the automatic water-based fire suppression system) before the fire becomes fully developed, thereby limiting its potential to spread. The NRC staff, therefore, finds the licensee's proposed exemption to permit intervening combustibles in the 20-foot separation zone for certain specified fire areas in the Units 1, 2, and 3 RBs acceptable. The licensee indicated that all fire zones discussed previously are protected with fire detection and automatic pre-action sprinkler systems, manual fire extinguishers, and hose stations. If a fire were to occur in any of these locations it would be detected before significant flame propagation or increased temperature, radiative heat flux, and damaging smoke layering occurred. The fire brigade would then extinguish the fire using hose stations and manual fire fighting equipment. If rapid fire propagation occurred before the arrival of the fire brigade, one would expect the automatic pre-action sprinkler system to actuate and limit fire spread. Pending actuation of automatic pre-action sprinkler system, the physical separation of redundant trains is sufficient to provide reasonable assurance that one safe- shutdown train would remain free of fire damage. Therefore, the NRC staff concludes that the existing level of fire protection for the redundant safe-shutdown trains is an acceptable deviation from Section III.G.2 of Appendix R to 10 CFR Part 50. 3.0 Discussion Pursuant to 10 CFR 50.12, the Commission may, upon application by any interested person or upon its own initiative, grant exemptions from the requirements of 10 CFR Part 50 when (1) The exemptions are authorized by law, will not present an undue risk to public health or safety, and are consistent with the common defense and security; and (2) when special circumstances are present. These include the special circumstances that the underlying purpose of the rule is satisfied by the requested revision to the exemption, since the existing fire protection features and analyses demonstrate that the quantity of intervening combustibles permitted in the 20-foot separation zone does not affect the ability of the existing fire protection features to provide an equivalent level of protection as required by 10 CFR 50, Appendix R, Section III.G. Authorized by Law This exemption revision allows the existence of the specified intervening combustibles in the 20-foot separation zone identified previously. As stated above, 10 CFR 50.12 allows the NRC to grant exemptions from the requirements of 10 CFR 50.48 and Appendix R to 10 CFR 50. The NRC staff has determined that granting of the licensee's proposed exemption will not result in a violation of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended, or the Commission's regulations. Therefore, the exemption is authorized by law. No Undue Risk to Public Health and Safety The underlying purpose of 10 CFR 50.48 is to limit fire damage to structures, systems, and components (SSCs) important to safety so that the capability to shut down the plant safely is ensured. Compliance with the applicable provisions of Appendix R to Part 50 ensures that one train of cables and equipment necessary to achieve and maintain safe-shutdown are maintained free of fire damage. Based on the above, no new accident precursors are created by allowing the specified intervening combustibles into the 20-foot separation zone identified previously, thus, the probability of postulated accidents is not increased. Also, based on the above, the consequences of postulated accidents are not increased. Therefore, there is no undue risk to public health and safety. Consistent With Common Defense and Security The proposed exemption revision would allow the specified intervening combustibles into the 20-foot separation zone identified previously. This revision to the fire protection plan and existing exemptions has no relation to security issues. Therefore, the common defense and security are not impacted by this exemption. Special Circumstances In accordance with 10 CFR 50.12(a)(2), special circumstances are present whenever application of the regulation in the particular circumstances is not necessary to achieve the underlying purpose of the rule. The underlying purpose of 10 CFR 50.48 is to limit fire damage to SSCs important to safety so that the capability to shut down the plant safely is ensured. Compliance with the applicable provisions of Appendix R to Part 50 ensures that one train of cables and equipment necessary to achieve and maintain safe-shutdown are maintained free of fire damage. As the existence of [[Page 16835]] the intervening combustibles should not affect the capability of the installed suppression and detection system to detect and mitigate a fire, the underlying purpose of 10 CFR 50.48 and Appendix R is achieved. Therefore, the special circumstances required by 10 CFR 50.12(a)(2) for the granting of an exemption from 10 CFR 50.48 and Appendix R to 10 CFR 50 exist. 4.0 Conclusion Accordingly, the Commission has determined that, pursuant to 10 CFR 50.12, the revision to the exemption is authorized by law, will not present an undue risk to the public health and safety, and is consistent with the common defense and security. Also, special circumstances are present. Therefore, the Commission hereby grants the TVA a revision to the exemption from the requirements of Section III.G.2 of Appendix R to 10 CFR 50 for the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant, Units 1, 2 and 3. Pursuant to 10 CFR 51.32, the Commission has determined that the granting of this exemption will not have a significant effect on the quality of the human environment (22 FR 9036). This exemption is effective upon issuance. Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 29th day of March 2007. For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Catherine Haney, Director, Division of Operating Reactor Licensing, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation. [FR Doc. 07-1696 Filed 4-4-07; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 39 Oilweek Magazine: Ontario deal for nuclear energy didn‘t cover all risks for ratepayers: report (Nuclear-Deal-Report) Apr 5, 2007 3:36:00 PM MST TORONTO (CP) _ A multibillion-dollar deal Ontario made to acquire nuclear energy has left ratepayers exposed to a series of financial risks that could translate into higher electricity rates, Ontario‘s auditor general said Thursday. The $4.25-billion deal struck with private company Bruce Power in 2005 to refurbish two idled nuclear units was like a pricey insurance policy that protected the government from the costly risks associated with bringing new power online, Auditor General Jim McCarter found. The government decided it would pay Bruce Power an above-average price for the new energy stream and remove most of the ratepayers‘ liability if the cost of the nuclear units ran over budget, McCarter said in a report commissioned by the government. McCarter estimated Bruce Power will receive a premium of around 44 per cent in exchange for assuming the ongoing operating-cost risks, but ratepayers are still on the hook for some construction-related risks that could translate into even bigger bills. ?Ratepayers are going to be paying more, a fairly significantly higher price for electricity (produced by) these units,‘‘ he said. ?On the other hand, you have to recognize that if you‘re transferring a lot of these risks to a private-sector organization, you‘re going to have to pay them something for that.‘‘ McCarter said the deal was a ?mixed bag‘‘ for the government, with some good points and bad. In the case of a so-called ?mega overrun‘‘ _ when the price ends up being 50 to 100 per cent above estimates _ the government will pay only a quarter of the extra costs, and can avoid previous nightmares like the controversial Darlington station which nearly tripled in price during the 1980s to $14 billion. But McCarter said ratepayers would have to pay in the likelier event that overruns are in the range of 10 to 20 per cent above estimates. And if costs run below estimates, it‘s unlikely ratepayers will benefit, he added. The opposition said the deal with Bruce Power had too many ?sweetheart‘‘ provisions and stuck ratepayers with too much liability. ?The government says they‘ve negotiated away the risk _ that‘s nonsense,‘‘ said New Democrat Leader Howard Hampton. ?If Bruce Power went bankrupt, it would be the people of Ontario that would have to go in and take this over, because you‘re dealing here with an essential service.‘‘ Conservative critic John Yakabuski said the government was in a position of weakness when it signed the deal, noting it was in desperate need of power and forced into a bad decision. ?Bruce Power acted in the best interests of its shareholders,‘‘ he said. ?The auditor‘s report would certainly raise some doubt as to whether the government acted in the best interests of its shareholders.‘‘ But Energy Minister Dwight Duncan said he feels vindicated by the report, which found the government properly considered and addressed the risks of the deal. Despite the criticism, he said he would make the same deal again. ?What we‘ve done successfully is transferred potentially billions of dollars of risk away,‘‘ Duncan said. ?The trade off between say a $20-billion stranded debt that people are paying every month on their bill, and a relatively modest price differential, we think is a good trade off.‘‘ The deal will give the province an additional 1,500 megawatts of energy, which is enough to power about 1.2-million homes. McCarter also criticized the government‘s decision to accept a last-minute increase of $250 million to the total cost of the project without ?sufficient evidence‘‘ to determine it was needed. And there are other scenarios where significant costs would be passed onto the public if production doesn‘t go according to plan, he said. Ratepayers need to assume the risk for cost overruns on steam generators, even though Bruce Power had already planned to purchase them before negotiating with the government. And if the government doesn‘t upgrade its transmission lines in time to use the new energy source, it will have to pay Bruce Power anyway. But Duncan said a new project announced last week will ensure the province is ready. INDEX: POLITICS UTILITIES CP Command News is one of many services from The Canadian Press, Canada’s No. 1 Source for News. Copyright © 2006 JuneWarren Publishing Ltd. ***************************************************************** 40 Hindustan Times: India to allow private players in nuclear sector- Chetan Chauhan New Delhi, April 05, 2007 Last Updated: 23:54 IST(5/4/2007) Moving ahead of Indo-US nuclear deal, the government may soon allow private firms to build and run nuclear power plants in India. A proposal to permit firms registered under the Companies Act to build nuclear plants is under the consideration of the Central government, said Dr Karit S Parikh, member (energy) Planning Commission, in a presentation to US energy secretary William Bodman, recently. The proposed changes was also sold as a proposition to United States as an opportunity to set up ‘ultra mega’ power plants in the India. The government is also willing to relax the norms to allow easy entry of private international players in the energy sector, in a bid to meet the country’s growing energy demand. Parikh said, the government was considering relaxing the norms to allow private firms, registered under the Companies Act. As an assurance that the power plant will not close down like Enron owned Dabhol Power Project, the government has assured of lifetime cost based purchase from the plant set up by the private sector. Karit also expressed the government’s willingness to reduce the dominance of public sector in power generation and distribution, identifying the Electricity Act of 2003 as a step in this direction. The major reforms under government consideration are strengthening regulation and making it independent, ensuring common carrier principle for transmission and distribution assets, introducing tariff based international competitive bidding level terms and removing entry barriers for international players. “The government wants to have a level playing field for private participation,†he said. The government is also considering setting up of National Energy Fund as recommended by Integrated Energy Policy report, encouraging zero emission technologies and three stage nuclear programme aimed at utilising thorium. In all this, the government has identified US as a major collaborator. Five major areas - setting up ultra mega projects, exploration and exploitation of oil, natural gas and coal, development of nuclear power plants, manufacturing of power related equipment and coal mining equipment - have been identified for cooperation with the US. Energy consumption/capita India : 550 kWH China : 1380 kWH US : 13,070 kWH World : 2430 kWH Total energy needs Requirement in 2006 : 617 billion kWH If economy grows by 8 per cent: 3,880 billion kWH by 2031-32 and 4806 kWH by 2031-32 ***************************************************************** 41 IHT: Japan: Nuclear scandal may juice power prices - International Herald Tribune Safety coverups could force closure of more reactors By Shigeru Sato Bloomberg News Published: April 4, 2007 TOKYO: Japan's electricity prices may surge because safety coverups could prompt the government to order more nuclear reactors closed, Mizuho Investors Securities says. The average price on the Japan Electric Power Exchange may climb more than 58 percent to pass the record of ¥21, or 17.70 U.S. cents, a kilowatt hour for the peak hours of 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. when demand peaks in July and August, Hirofumi Kawachi, an energy analyst at Mizuho Investors said in an interview from Tokyo. Japan relies on nuclear power to produce 30 percent of its electricity and demand rises in summer as higher temperatures increase air-conditioning use in homes and offices. Hokuriku Electric Power will keep two reactors closed until March 2008 after the government ordered them shut. Japan Atomic Power, which hid an accident in 1997, may have to shut a plant. The wholesale power exchange in Tokyo enables utilities and new market entrants like Nippon Oil and Tokyo Gas to trade 1,000 kilowatt-hour lots of electricity for delivery the next day or month as far as a year ahead. The exchange began trading in April 2005. Electricity for delivery during peak hours averaged ¥13.33 on the exchange Tuesday. In 2004, Japan's retail electricity prices for household use averaged 19.6 cents a kilowatt hour, compared with 8.9 cents for the United States, 17.6 cents for Germany, and 14.1 cents for France, according to research conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. In 1999, there was an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction at the No. 1 reactor at Hokuriku Electric's Shika power station during a maintenance shutdown. Control rods were improperly handled, the Toyama City-based company said March 15. The company did not record the accident or notify local and state authorities. In February, the 10 regional power utilities burned 1 million kiloliters, or 6.3 million barrels, of crude oil and heavy fuel oil for thermal power generation, less than 2.3 million kiloliters consumed a year ago, according to statistics compiled by the Federation of Electric Power, Japan. To compensate for the shutdown, Hokuriku Electric plans to more than double the use of crude oil and fuel oil for thermal power generation to 1.25 million kiloliters in the year started April 1 from 550,000 in the previous year. Power from oil- and coal-fired stations is more expensive than electricity from nuclear plants. The government ordered the company to shut the 540-megawatt No. 1 reactor at the Shika nuclear power station on March 15. Hokuriku closed the 1,358-megawatt No. 2 reactor last July after finding cracks in turbines supplied by Hitachi. The trade ministry may decide this month whether Japan Atomic Power will have to close the reactors at its Tsuruga plant for safety checks, Kawachi said. Akira Amari, minister of economy, trade and industry, said Friday that the government would decide within a month on the penalties and punishment for plant accident coverups and safety data fabrication during the past three decades. In November last year, the government ordered all of the country's power producers to review their plant operation records and find whether they had violated safety laws. It also ordered the utilities to reveal all safety breaches at their plants by March 30. "Closure of the Tsuruga power station could lead to a major supply problem for Hokuriku Electric," Kawachi said. Japan Atomic Power supplies all electricity produced at the Tsuruga station to Hokuriku Electric, Kansai Electric Power, and Chubu Electric Power. The Tsuruga station houses two reactors: the 357-megawatt No. 1 reactor and the 1,160-megawatt No. 2 unit. "For now, we have no plans to shut down reactors any time soon," Isao Tanabe, spokesman for Japan Atomic Power, said Monday. "But, it's up to the trade ministry." Tokyo Electric Power, Asia's largest generator, estimates the utilization rate for its 17 nuclear reactors at about 70 percent of capacity in this business year, down from 75 percent last year, a spokesman, Takuya Ito, said by telephone. The drop came after additional maintenance work on the reactors was carried out, he said. Temperatures in Japan's major cities have already been higher than average this year, a trend that is expected to continue into the summer, the Japan Meteorological Agency said. In February, temperatures in Tokyo's Otemachi financial district averaged 8.6 degrees Celsius, or 47 Fahrenheit, marking the highest for the month in 131 years, according to the agency's data. Huaneng Power International, the largest Chinese electricity producer listed in Hong Kong, plans capital spending of 36.7 billion yuan, or $4.74 billion, during the next three years as it expands capacity to meet demand. Spending will be 17.5 billion yuan this year, excluding acquisitions, the company's vice chairman, Huang Long, told reporters in Hong Kong. In 2008, the company plans to invest 13.8 billion yuan and 5.4 billion yuan in 2009, he said. Copyright © 2007 the International Herald Tribune All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 42 Whitehaven News: Canada given nuclear peek 6:53 - 6 April 2007 Published on 29/03/2007 REPRESENTATIVES from nuclear organisations and companies formed a Canadian inward investment visit to West Cumbria. At the invitation of UK Trade and Investment and the Canadian High Commission, 14 delegates, from a number of Canadian organisations, including the Canadian Nuclear Association, had a tour of the Sellafield Visitors’ Centre and visited Westlakes Science Park. Sellafield’s Dave Henderson, met the group to discuss the supply chain. He said: “We gave them the opportunity to learn how to do business with Sellafield and we hope this will encourage their organisation to consider Sellafield for future business opportunities. It has also given us good contacts with Canadian nuclear organisations.†View this story and the latest newspaper in full digital reproduction, just like the printed copy at www.whitehaven-news.co.uk/digitalcopy ***************************************************************** 43 IRNA: Nuclear energy a top national priority in Thailand Kuala Lumpur, April 5, IRNA Thailand-Nuclear Energy- Thai Energy Ministry said using nuclear energy has been placed on top national priority in his country. Thai Energy Minister Piyasvasti Amranand, after a meeting of 300 energy experts, academics, investors, bankers and environment experts and their consensus on the issue, declared Bangkok will follow seriously the idea of using nuclear energy. He said training experts, creating infrastructures, preparing technologh and providing legal conditions take 7 years and another six years is needed for building a power plant. Piyasvasti added many of Asian countries are considering employing such energy. He concluded the 15-year plan will be followed seriously. Vietnam is developing its four nuclear power plants, Indonesia has decided to go forward with the idea, China, South Korea, Japan and India are using nuclear energy and Thailand should be active in this field, Piyasvasti added. ***************************************************************** 44 BBC NEWS: Polonium test continuing for 17 Last Updated: Wednesday, 4 April 2007, 23:29 GMT 00:29 UK Mr Litvinenko's London home is still sealed up Seventeen people exposed to radiation after the poisoning of former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko are continuing to be monitored five months on. All have been assigned a doctor, provide regular samples for testing and have been offered counselling. After testing positive for polonium-210, they were told they had a greater long-term risk of cancer. A major public health investigation was launched by the Health Protection Agency after Mr Litvinenko's body was found to contain high levels of the radioactive substance polonium-210. They have elevated levels of polonium-210 in their bodies which does slightly increase their risk of cancer later in life Dr Michael Clark It is still ongoing and has cost £2m so far and involved hundreds of agency staff. In all, more than 700 people in the UK have been tested for radiation. Of those, 17 were found to have levels that were not high enough to cause illness in the short term, but in the long term there may be a very small increased risk of cancer. Dr Michael Clark, of the Health Protection Agency, said: "The 17 are not likely to see any health effects in their lifetime. "These people have not been poisoned, they have elevated levels of polonium-210 in their bodies which does slightly increase their risk of cancer later in life." A further 673 people from 52 different countries were also tested. Just three were found to have had possible contact with polonium-210, but their levels posed no risk to their health. The Pine Bar at the Millennium Hotel remains closed The HPA has also taken requests for particular individuals to be tested for radiation from the Metropolitan Police, which is investigating Mr Litvinenko's death. The Millennium Hotel in Mayfair where he met his associate Dmitry Kovtun and his business partner Andrei Lugovoi, on 1 November 2006, emerged as being at the heart of the polonium trail. Four guests at the hotel's Pine Bar and nine members of staff were among the 17 to test positive. According to the hotel, all nine members of staff are still working there. Others affected include two employees of the Sheraton Hotel, in Park Lane, who are both still working there, and one member of staff from Best Western Hotel in Piccadilly. Police investigation Tests for radiation were carried out at all three hotels, and a further 11 sites. At the Millennium Hotel, the Pine Bar and several guest bedrooms remain shut while remediation work continues to seal or remove contaminated material. However, it is understood that by the end of the month all except two sites where work has taken place, will be open. Only Mr Litvinenko's London home, and offices in Grosvenor Street will remain shut, largely due to difficulties in tracing the property owners who live abroad. Meanwhile, the police investigation in the UK is still continuing and some information has already been passed onto the Crown Prosecution Service. * BBC Copyright Notice ***************************************************************** 45 BBC NEWS: Cumbria | Beaches tested for radioactivity Last Updated: Thursday, 5 April 2007, 14:10 GMT 15:10 UK Beaches near the Sellafield plant in Cumbria are to be monitored for a year for radioactive material. Increased monitoring has been taking place in the area after a particle of radioactive material was found at Braystones beach in 2003. British Nuclear Group (BNG), which operates the plant, said the next phase of testing would be at beaches between Drigg and St Bees. The work is expected to be completed by March next year. A spokeswoman for Sellafield said: "A particle of contamination was found by our investigators in 2003 and extra monitoring is on-going. "We just want people in the affected areas to be aware there will be increased activity with vehicles mounted with monitoring equipment being used in the tests." A spokesman for BNG said it would attend parish council meetings in April and May to ensure councillors and members of the public were aware of the programme and to discuss any concerns. * BBC Copyright Notice ***************************************************************** 46 recordonline.com: Potassium iodide tablets expire, new shipment is late Potassium iodide, distributed to residents living within 10 miles of Indian Point nuclear plant, would help protect people from the effects of radiation in the event of a nuclear accident.Times Herald-Record/DOMINICK FIORILLE By Greg Bruno Times Herald-Record April 05, 2007 Buchanan — For five years, self-preservation for those living near the Indian Point nuclear power plant meant reliance on these three truths: If a reactor blew its top, refuge would come by car, foot or — for those preferring a more pharmaceutical approach — by pill. But should the Westchester County power station go critical tomorrow, option No. 3 would pose a problem for people picky about labels — the tablets prescribed to block the uptake of radiation expired on March 31. Fresh supplies won't be available for weeks. "The federal government's calendar should be the same as the state and counties; they should have known March 31st was the deadline for expiration," said Lisa Rainwater, director of the Indian Point campaign at the environmental group Riverkeeper. "They are playing Russian roulette with people's lives." Regulators, health officials and emergency workers all say the expired potassium iodide tablets, now 5 days old, would still protect people from radiological iodine released during a nuclear plant accident. And maybe they would. But the delay in swapping out the old drugs — first delivered in 2002 — has rankled some longtime Indian Point watchers. "It's almost like a comedy of errors," said Anthony Sutton, director of emergency service in Westchester County. It's not entirely clear why the outdated supplies of potassium iodide, called KI, are still sitting in medicine cabinets around the region. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which oversees the county's 104 nuclear power stations, leaves it up to states to determine how potassium iodide should be used and distributed. Dennis Michalski, a spokesman for the state Emergency Management Office, said Albany received a new shipment of the drug — more than a half-million adult doses — from the NRC during the week of March 19. Supplies of tablets and liquid KI were then distributed to Westchester, Rockland and Orange counties on March 30 — one day before expiration of the current stockpile. Michalski said it would have been "unreasonable" to expect county officials to distribute tens of thousands of pills to hospitals, schools and residents in less than a day. But Diane Screnci, an NRC spokeswoman, had no answer for why it took federal officials until March to get the fresh KI shipment to Albany. Rules requiring KI distribution near nuclear plants have been in place since 2002. "As far the county saying it's the state, and the state saying it's the NRC, I don't have any comment on that," she said. Equally vague is whether old pills would still work in an emergency. Everyone knows milk and aspirin last longer than the date stamped on the bottle. But would evacuees risk expired pills in a nuclear emergency? Screnci says yes. Rainwater says maybe. And Dominick Greene, Orange County's deputy commissioner for emergency management, isn't waiting around to find out. He said officials in Goshen hope to announce tablet pickup times and locations next week. About KI pills Known as KI, potassium iodide tablets are intended to block absorption of radioactive iodine during a nuclear emergency. Radioactive iodine can be emitted into the air or contaminate the food supply, and later absorbed by the thyroid. The tablets do not protect the body from other forms of radiation, and are not a replacement for evacuation, health experts say. Orange County Health Commissioner Jean M. Hudson said the best defense against a radiological release is time, distance and shielding. "You want to be as far away from it as possible," Hudson said. Indian Point 3 plant goes back online Buchanan - Nuclear plant workers needed less than a day to fix a busted water pump and return Indian Point 3 to service, plant officials said. The 1,000-megawatt reactor was taken offline at about 4:15 a.m. Tuesday after low water levels were detected in the plant's steam generators. The generators produce steam that spin turbines to make electricity. Indian Point 3 was returned to service about 1 a.m. yesterday after workers repaired a control for a boiler pump, plant owner Entergy Nuclear Northeast said in a statement. There was no release of radioactivity during the 21-hour outage. Indian Point 2, a second 1,000-megawatt reactor, remained operating at full power. Greg Bruno Save, Share & RecommendWhat's This? Record Online is brought to you by the Times Herald-Record, serving New York"s Hudson Valley and the Catskills. Phone: (845) 341-1100 ***************************************************************** 47 ITAR-TASS: Russia businessmen say suffered from polonium, want indemnity 05.04.2007, 12.32 MOSCOW, April 5 (Itar-Tass) - Russian businessmen Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun consider themselves victims of polonium-210 and want to make their losses good. They are going to seek an indemnity in a fund that was set up by Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky after the death from polonium poisoning of Russian ex-Federal Security Service officer Alexander Litvinenko in London. Berezovsky, Litvinenko’s widow and Alexander Goldfarb established the Litvinenko Fund Justice in London on April 3. The co-founders declared that they would provide compensation to all who had been exposed to polonium, a highly toxic radioactive substance. They also pledged the intention to assist court suits of polonium sufferers against states or state institutions. “We are going to be first to ask this fund for many-sided help, as we have seriously suffered from polonium and from this whole story,” Lugovoi told reporters on Thursday. Lugovoi, who is considered a witness in the “Litvinenko case” along with Kovtun, said that they “have spent substantial sums on a long examination in a prestigious medical institution and, if necceary, can present to the fund respective payment documents”. Also, “it is difficult to evaluate the whole moral damage inflicted on our families”, Lugovoi said. “We and our loved ones, including children, were in shock, our reputation and business also have suffered,” he said. Kovtun in turn said that he counted on “technical help of the new fund”, including in protection of honor and dignity of Russian businessmen in British court “against several defendants”. “We hope that Berezobvsky’s statement about the help to polonium sufferers is a real and not a populist step, and we want to make sure of it by the example of our own,” Kovtun said. © ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. You undertake not to copy, store ***************************************************************** 48 The Australian: Nuclear waste is all in the wording NEWS.com.au | * April 05, 2007 This story is from our news.com.au network Source: AAP A FORMER mining executive looking to set up a nuclear business in Australia says he has found the ideal spot for what he calls a nuclear waste 'repository', not a dump. Mr Morgan, the former head of WMC (Western Mining Corporation) said he was doing preparatory work to establish a nuclear business in Australia. "What I would propose is that there ought to be an internationally-owned facility in Australia," Mr Morgan said on ABC radio. Mr Morgan said the facility should be owned by various glocal governments and utilities, together with the Australian Government and leading Australian businesses. Mr Morgan also wanted the public to stop calling facilities for nuclear waste dumps. "Call it a repository ... not a dump," he said. He said there were three ideal sites in the world for such a repository, the best one in the Australian outback. "A site in one of the three most secured geological sequences in the world," Mr Morgan said. "One of those sequences lies in South Australia and extends into Western Australia, one is in South Africa and one is in China." Mr Morgan said that Australia had the best geological and political stability for such a facility. "I would say South Australia - Western Australia, that's where the geological sequence lies," he said. "I know politically they're (anti-nuclear lobbyists) going to get up and say `not over my dead body, etc, etc'. I'm saying that's where ... in the international interest ... you would go." Mr Morgan said fears about nuclear waste disposal were ill-founded. "There are many satisfactory disposal locations already ... in Sweden, in France, in the United States," he said. "There are technologies that are continuing to come forward to provide changes in the nature of the nuclear power plants themselves - the nature of the waste which reduces the time to achieve half-life." © The Australian ***************************************************************** 49 AdelaideNow...: Call for SA nuclear dump NEWS.com.au | April 05, 2007 03:25pm Article from: AAP FORMER mining executive Hugh Morgan says an internationally-owned and run nuclear waste facility should be set up in land across the South Australian and West Australian border. The former head of WMC (Western Mining Corporation) said he was doing preparatory work to establish a nuclear business in Australia. "What I would propose is that there ought to be an internationally-owned facility in Australia," Mr Morgan told ABC Radio. Mr Morgan said the facility should be owned by various governments and utilities around the world, together with the Australian government and leading Australian businesses. He said there were three preferable sites for a nuclear waste dump, the best one being in the Australian outback. "A site in one of the three most secured geological sequences in the world," Mr Morgan said. "One of those sequences lies in South Australia and extends into Western Australia, one is in South Africa and one is in China." Mr Morgan said that Australia offered the best geological and political stability to have such a facility. "I would say South Australia/Western Australia, that's where the geological sequence lies," he said. "I know politically they're (anti-nuclear lobbyists) going to get up and say `not over my dead body, etc, etc.' "I'm saying that's where ... in the international interest ... you would go." Mr Morgan said fears about nuclear waste disposal were ill-founded. "There are many satisfactory disposal locations already ... in Sweden, in France, in the U.S.," he said. "There are technologies that are continuing to come forward to provide changes in the nature of the nuclear power plants themselves – the nature of the waste which reduces the time to achieve half life." Mr Morgan also wanted the public to stop calling facilities for nuclear waste dumps. "Call it a repository ... not a dump," he said. The Rann gov are the bigegst hypocrites in Australian politics. It's fine for the SA gov to take millions from BHP Billiton for the lease agreement covering the Olympic Dam mine. Of which a lot of the profits come from the production and sale of UOC (Uranium Ore Concentrate) but he's unwilling to have a radioactive waste site or nuclear power plant in SA. Mike.. Wake up and smell the shit you are shoveling. Posted by: Peter of Adelaide 2:04pm today You may call it a repository, but it is still a dump, where everyone else dumps thier nuclear waste. It should be a case of everyone who makes the waste be responsible for it themselves and store it in thier own country, not dump it here. Hugh Morgan is only thinking of the money he could make if he were allowed to set up his repository, not what effect it could have on Australia. I would be willing to bet he will not be spending any time there if it is set up as he would like it to. There is no way he could make a 100% garantee that nothing could go wrong with the storage of waste and be truthful about it. It is about time that making a dollar at any cost is stopped and reason takes over before there is nothing left of this lovely country. Posted by: Alan Kuchel of Mount Barker 7:35am today Yep, of course there should be a dump, we.. SA exports it and SA makes money out of it. We should have honor to put it back in the ground where it came from, we are not crack dealers, we should accept responsibility for its safe retrieval and incarceration in one of the best places in the world to do it. I ain't no drug pusher therefore, we get it back, ensuring its not going into missiles! And bury it in the timeless desert where it came from. This stuff is the new oil and will make us rich, we have too accept the responsibility of it too. People of SA have had enough of backward thinking councils and vision less governments held hostage by overseas car companies, running their 'work for the dole schemes' Time for a vision, not the do nothing, chicken Rann; but a new hero, not from the liberal - I love my parkland's, and I hate the poor, but from the rational forward thinking MR FOLEY! GIVE IT TO US BIG KEV! , (Mr Rann, sorry Mr Runaway, doing nothing is not good policy, totally boring, this is not the 80's derrgghh) Besides the blokes in the pubs in the Port speak of your challenge! Posted by: Graham Foster-Hall of Peppermint Park 8:12pm April 05, 2007 Exactly !over our dead body! will it be put in south Australia? You tried once and got told south Australia ain't the worlds dumping ground. If you are so adamant its safe then lets dump it in yours or john Howards backyard. Posted by: glenn of adelaide Not a nuclear dump 5:40pm April 05, 2007 Read all 5 comments We welcome your comments on this story. Comments are submitted for possible publication on the condition that they may be edited. Please provide your full name. We also require a working email address - not for publication, but for verification. The location field is optional. Read our publication guidelines. Copyright 2007 News Limited. All times ACST (GMT +9:30). ***************************************************************** 50 Bradenton Herald: Adviser says Tallevast work is inadequate | 04/05/2007 | By DONNA WRIGHT dwright@bradenton.com TALLEVAST - Lockheed Corp.'s limited cleanup operation at the source of the Tallevast pollution plume is inadequate to deal with the problem, according to an independent consultant advising residents. Moreover, data from extraction wells operating near the former plant at 1600 Tallevast Road appear to suggest a concentration of pollutants in an undetermined location , Tim Varney wrote in a letter to William Kutash, of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. "It's not uncommon to get back information that may suggest that something is going on that you have yet to describe," said Varney, who is on staff at Environ International Corp., in Tampa. "The reports seem to suggest areas of contamination in the underlying groundwater that have not yet been identified." Tallevast residents selected Varney in 2004 to be their technical consultant during the investigation and cleanup of the Tallevast plume, an underground spill of toxic chemicals traced to a broken sump at the former beryllium plant that covers more than 200 acres. As the owners of the plant when the contamination was found, Lockheed Martin Corp. is responsible for determining the size of the spill and cleaning it up, under the DEP's supervision. Kutash forwarded Varney's letter to Lockheed engineers and asked that they include his comments in their next report on the pump-and-treat treatment system in progress at the former beryllium plant. Lockheed is taking Varney's comments seriously, said Gail Rymer, spokeswoman. "We need to look at all comments that are submitted," Rymer said. "We will definitely review Dr. Varney's as we prepare our final remedial plan that we will submit on May 4." Better site-specific aquifer and hydraulic test data are vital to selecting the right clean up methods, Varney said. Without that data, he warned, the design of the cleanup plan will be reduced to trial and error. He also said more monitoring wells are necessary opposite the plant site just north of Tallevast Road, including the vacant lot west of Billy's Ward's dental clinic and near Mt. Tabor Church. Wanda Washington, vice president of FOCUS, a residents' advocacy group, said she hopes the DEP and Lockheed take Varney's suggestions more seriously than they have in the past. Donna Wright, health and social services reporter, can be reached at 745-7049. ***************************************************************** 51 ENS: License for Uranium Enrichment Plant Challenged in Court Environment News Service (ENS) AmeriScan: April 4, 2007 License for Uranium Enrichment Plant Challenged in Court WASHINGTON, DC Two anti-nuclear nonprofit groups filed a brief Tuesday in the DC Court of Appeals challenging the legality of the license for Louisiana Energy Services' proposed uranium enrichment plant near Eunice, New Mexico. The Nuclear Information and Resource Service, NIRS, and Public Citizen claim that the license was issued illegally. "Our brief shows that the license violates the law because the NRC issued an environmental impact statement and then decided it was incomplete and had to supplement it after the public hearing," said Michele Boyd, legislative director of Public Citizen's Energy Program. "Congress intended for the public to have the environmental impact statement for consideration at the time of the hearing," she said. Approved on June 23, 2006, the license was the first to be issued by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, NRC, for a full-scale, uranium enrichment plant. NIRS and Public Citizen filed a lawsuit against the NRC challenging the license in August 2006. "The license also violates NRC's regulations because it determined that the waste could be disposed in shallow-land burial, even though the regulations do not allow it and radiation doses to the public would far exceed regulatory limits," said Michael Mariotte, executive director of NIRS. The brief details many other problems with the environmental impact statement. For instance, the groups claim that no adequate waste disposal exists for the 133,000 metric tons of depleted uranium waste that would be produced by the enrichment plant. Louisiana Energy Services, LES, is a consortium of U.S. and European energy companies led by Urenco, a grouping of British, Dutch and German government and corporate entities. The consortium includes industry giants such as Exelon Corp., Entergy Corp., Duke Energy and Westinghouse Electric Co. z Each of these companies has an interest in greater ownership of the nuclear fuel chain and collectively formed LES for the purpose of developing a new domestic uranium enrichment facility. The NRC will file its brief with the Court of Appeals on May 2, and LES will file its brief on May 17. NIRS and Public Citizen will file a reply brief on May 31. news@ens-news.com Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2006. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 52 WNA: Authority prepares to tackle waste World Nuclear Assoc 05 April 2007 The UK's Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) has established a new directorate - the Radioactive Waste Management Directorate (RWMD) - to "design and build an effective implementing organization to deliver a safe, environmentally sound, publicly acceptable, geological disposal solution." The RWMD will be led by Richard Waite, previously the NDA's Engineering Director. The NDA said that it expects the new organization to become a wholly-owned subsidiary of the NDA and, once a suitable repository site has been selected, the subsidiary could develop into the site licence company. The NDA also reported that the integration of the Nuclear Industry Radioactive Waste Management Executive's (Nirex's) skills and expertise was now complete and, as of 2 April, the NDA will perform the functions previously undertaken by Nirex. Nirex was formed in 1982 to develop an intermediate-level waste disposal facility, with shares held by British Energy, BNFL, the UKAEA and the government. It carried out detailed studies and in 1994 sought permission to construct an underground rock laboratory to investigate the suitability of strata near Sellafield for deep geological disposal. Permission was refused three years later. Under plans announced in 2003, the government assumed control of Nirex and gave it independence from the nuclear industry in order to achieve greater transparency for its endeavours. Its independence is part of wider reforms such as establishment of the NDA to deal with legacy nuclear installations and sites. In October 2006, the government announced its intention for NDA to take over Nirex in line with its mandate for geological disposal of higher activity wastes. Meanwhile, the NDA has also announced that its chairman, Sir Anthony Cleaver, will retire at the end of his three year appointment in July 2007. Cleaver said, "The NDA has come to the end of its start-up phase and this is an ideal time to hand over to someone who can provide continuity through the next stage of the NDA's journey." Further information Nuclear Decommissioning Authority WNA's Nuclear Power in the United Kingdom information paper ***************************************************************** 53 TCRE: Entergy to take over radioactive waste storage at Big Rock Traverse City Record-Eagle 04/05/2007 By CRAIG McCOOL cmccool@record-eagle.com CHARLEVOIX ? It's 107 acres, radioactive and soon to be someone else's problem. The spent fuel storage area at the Big Rock nuclear power plant site near Charlevoix will be handed over this month to a New Orleans power company, said Consumers Energy spokesman Tim Petrosky. Consumers will pay Entergy Corp. $30 million to assume responsibility for Big Rock's dry fuel storage area, where waste from 35 years of nuclear power production is kept. The transaction is tied to Entergy's previous purchase of Consumers' Palisades nuclear plant near South Haven. To be finalized by May 1, the deal includes 107 acres surrounding a basketball-court sized pad where 441 bundles of spent fuel rods are sealed in concrete and steel casks, Petrosky said. The remaining 400-plus acres of land, including over a mile of Lake Michigan shoreline, will for now remain in Consumers' hands, though talks continue with both local land conservancy and state officials to release the property to the public, Petrosky said. The state Department of Natural Resources in December killed a $20 million proposal to buy Big Rock after environmental groups voiced concern over the nuclear waste stored there. The federal government has since declared the bulk of the property safe for any public or private use. "We continue to discuss the possibility of the acquisition of the property by the state, or a group of organizations working with the state, to keep it in public hands,? Petrosky said. Entergy is paying Consumers $380 million for the working Palisades plant near South Haven. When the entire transaction is complete, Consumers will be completely out of the nuclear power business. Palisades is Consumers' last nuclear facility, Petrosky said. "The motivation is directly tied to the Palisades property,? he said. "It's very difficult to be a single nuclear plant owner. It makes great sense to have the entire nuclear operation sold.? Spent fuel from the Palisades plant is stored there, said plant spokesman Mark Savage, and there is little chance that waste from Big Rock and Palisades will be consolidated. "State law prohibits movement of used fuel between sites in Michigan. It's highly unlikely that that will change,? Savage said. Fuel from both sites eventually could be taken to a federal repository proposed for Nevada's Yucca Mountain, though local opposition continues to stall plans to build a long-term storage facility there. Yucca Mountain is now set to receive waste no sooner than 2017, Savage said. © Traverse City Record-Eagle, 1998-2006 | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy Record-Eagle.com | GTHerald.com | RecordEagleJobs.com | ***************************************************************** 54 SA: Creamer Media: Where to with the waste? 6 April 2007 Telecoms & ICT www.creamermedia.co.za By: Irma Venter Earlier this year the Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa (Necsa) announced that it expected electricity generated from nuclear energy to increase by 25 000 MW by 2030. This means government will have to build 24 pebble-bed modular nuclear reactors, and 12 conventional nuclear power stations as it works towards reducing its dependence on coal-fired power stations. However, 36 new nuclear power stations – adding to Koeberg, in the Western Cape, and Necsa’s reactor, at Pelindaba, near Pretoria – will pose a nuclear waste challenge that existing facilities will not be able to cope with. In fact, a new spent nuclear fuel facility will have to be constructed. In other countries that make use of nuclear energy, the cost of building such a waste facility has reached around R5-billion, says Necsa nuclear liability management divisional manager Dr Piet Bredell. Low- and medium-level radioactive nuclear waste from Koeberg is currently trucked to the Vaalputs near-surface repository, in the Northern Cape, where it is buried in seven- to eight-metre- deep trenches. Higher-level waste, such as spent nuclear fuel, is kept in storage pools on site at Koeberg. Necsa’s own waste is stored on site at Pelindaba. Low-level waste typically consists of gloves, clothes, paper and cleaning material, and medium-level waste of resins, filters and smaller components. It is planned that high-level waste from Koeberg and Pelindaba, and possibly other nuclear plants, will go to a “future high-level waste repository site”, says Bredell. Such a deep geological repository is typically 500 m to a kilometre deep, and costs around R5-billion to develop. Bredell says South Africa is in the process of preparing legislation to establish a radioactive waste-management agency, as well as a waste fund, all before 2010. It is expected that the Bill regarding the agency will be before Parliament in March next year, while that on the fund will follow later. “It will be a challenge to put this into operation; we need to get going on it,” notes Bredell. It will be the task of the radioactive wastemanagement agency to initiate the project to establish a deep-level disposal site for South Africa. The establishment of such a site is normally an extremely sensitive social issue, with Bredell noting that several similar initiatives failed abroad, as they were “wrongly initiated”. “It can take up to 20 years to get a site adopted.” One example of where this happened is the proposed Yucca mountain site, in the US. “We need to ensure the timely selection of a site for Eskom’s nuclear power station needs,” emphasises Bredell. Eskom Generation nuclear fuel procurement manager Hans Lensink says the power utility has a reference plan for its spent nuclear fuel, which includes not only disposal, but also reprocessing. Reprocessing nuclear fuel reduces the volume of waste, through the removal of plutonium and uranium. However, even reprocessing nuclear fuel leaves waste products in need of disposal at the end of the cycle. Edited by: Martin Zhuwakinyu Copyright © Creamer Media (Pty) Ltd ***************************************************************** 55 SA: Creamer Media: Competition bodies get tough, nuclear-waste challenge, township 6 April 2007 www.creamermedia.co.za By: Terence Creamer Just as this edition of Engineering News was being put to bed, the Competition Tribunal released its much-anticipated ruling on South Africa’s first-ever ‘excessive pricing’ case. The case was referred directly to the tribunal by gold-miners Harmony and DRDGold in February 2004, in the wake of a somewhat controversial non- referral decision by the Competition Commission. The commission had run an in-depth, two-year probe into the complaint, but its assessment was that there was no justification for a referral, given its view that import-parity pricing did not constitute anticompetitive behaviour. Well, the tribunal certainly did not take the same position. It found Mittal Steel South Africa to be ‘super-dominant’ in the flat-steel market and that market to be ‘uncontested and incontestable’. But more importantly, it found that Mittal had abused its dominance to the detriment of domestic steel consumers (see page 63). No doubt, this case will run and run for many years yet, given that Mittal is likely to appeal. But there is also little question that it has set a major precedent, not only for South African competition law, but also for how competition authorities, particularly in the developing world, will perceive the whole issue of excessive pricing. Interestingly, the ruling coincided with our cover story, which, itself, focuses on the tougher stance being taken by the Competition Commission to what it perceives as some of the structural legacies of anticompetitive behaviour that still linger in the postdemocratic order (see page 16). The commissioner explains that the authority is planning to focus on those sectors of the economy that have a “ripple effect” on other industries as well as consumers and small enterprises. Sectors already receiving attention include banking, agroprocessing, building and construction, and telecoms. But beyond competition and regulatory issues, this week’s edition also features a range of other critical stories, providing insight into unfolding trends in South Africa’s technoeconomic environment. We have a story on the challenges surrounding nuclear waste as South Africa commits to scaling up its use of that power source; we offer insight into some of the developments surrounding the biofuels strategy and incentive regime; and we report on a plan to rejuvenate 20 Gauteng townships. Our features this week cover developments in the flooring, screening and handrailing sector, as well as developments in fire prevention and protection. Don’t forget to visit Engineering News Online at www.engineeringnews.co.za for daily news and insight into the real economy. And, during that visit, feel free to subscribe to our free daily email, which will give you up-to-the-minute, essential business-to-business news. Copyright © Creamer Media (Pty) Ltd ***************************************************************** 56 Times-Standard: Nuke fuel storage effort in motion www.times-standard.com John Driscoll The Times-Standard Article Launched: 04/05/2007 04:30:37 AM PDT KING SALMON -- A project to store spent nuclear fuel from the Humboldt Bay Nuclear Power Plant got under way Wednesday with a ceremonial groundbreaking here, marking the end of decades of controversy over the safety of the facility. Contractors for the Pacific Gas and Electric Co. have begun to carve a pit that will be lined with 500 cubic yards of concrete and hold 390 spent fuel rods in casks secured inside the bunker. It's designed to withstand a nearly unimaginable 9.3-magnitude earthquake and shield the fuel from a terrorist attack. ”Let's move some dirt,” said plant manager Roy Willis, signaling officials at the ceremony to move a few celebratory shovelfuls. The construction should take less than six months. The spent fuel and any other radioactive waste now stored in a pool a few hundred yards away will be transferred into six stainless steel casks sheathed in carbon steel housings in 2008. They'll then be moved to the bunker, which will be fully operational in 2009. Michael Welch, one of the many activists who campaigned to have PG&E's nuclear plant decommissioned and its fuel moved from the pool, wants the rods to stay on the site. While the company says the facility may only serve as storage until a federal repository can be built, Welch believes it's too dangerous to move the fuel rods and endanger some other community. ”That's just not fair,” Welch said. The opening of a major federal dump site is at least a decade away. The 2017 date set for the Yucca Mountain storage facility in Nevada is probably four years or more on the optimistic side, and political and fiscal wrangling could easily set that back further. The nuclear unit of the Humboldt Bay plant came on line in 1963. It was shut down for refueling in 1976, but concerns were raised about operating the plant after seismic investigations showed it was vulnerable to quakes. Demonstrations, vigils and lawsuits were waged, and the issue repeatedly drew hundreds to public meetings. The nuke unit never ran again, and its fuel was submerged in a pool on site in 1988. In 1998, PG&E began taking down a 250-foot-tall smokestack that in a major earthquake could have tumbled onto the building that houses the pool. A few years later, PG&E learned it had lost track of several pieces of fuel rods, prompting an investigation by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and a $96,000 fine. While never fully accounted for, PG&E and the commission determined the material was probably moved to a waste facility. PG&E began talking about a dry cask storage system in 1999, and in 2005 the commission approved a license to build it on the site. Humboldt County 1st District Supervisor Jimmy Smith said he was happy to see the fuel moved from a fragile to a safe environment. ”I want to compliment PG&E for being on top of it,” Smith said. The dry cask facility is designed to handle a mega-earthquake in which the Cascadia Subduction Zone and Little King Salmon faults ruptured at the same time. The 22,000-pound lids to the bunker will be at 44 feet above sea level, just above the height believed to be the maximum tsunami surge. ”It isn't going anywhere,” said Andrew Keough with contractor American Civil Constructors from Benecia. After the fuel is moved to the storage facility, PG&E intends to start dismantling the nuclear unit in 2010. The two fossil-fuel generators that produce most of Humboldt County's electricity are also slated for decommissioning. The 50-year-old units will be replaced by a modern, more efficient natural gas-burning plant that will generate 163 megawatts, and be able to mesh with renewable power projects in the area. PG&E chief nuclear officer and senior vice president of generation Jack Keenan said that the effort is part of a larger one to improve facilities it owns. ”To me, this site is very important because this is our only generating facility in this area,” Keenan said. John Driscoll can be reached at 441-0504 or jdriscoll@times-standard.com. ***************************************************************** 57 Carlsbad Current-Argus: Pearce has praise for GNEP project between cities By Kyle Marksteiner Article Launched: 04/04/2007 07:30:29 PM MDT CARLSBAD ? U.S. Rep Steve Pearce, R-N.M. praised Carlsbad officials for working with Hobbs while speaking at a stakeholder meeting Tuesday morning at the Pecos River Village Conference Center. Pearce, a Hobbs resident, said the two communities have done well in expressing joint interest in potential involvement in the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. "The cooperation between the two counties (Eddy and Lea) is beginning to really have dividends and I give you all full credit for that," he said. "The potential for us right now in southern New Mexico is tremendous." The meeting was one of several stops Pearce made during a Tuesday morning trip to Carlsbad. He also praised local efforts in converting algae into energy. "New Mexico should be a leader in every form of energy," he said, noting that alternative energies are important in the war on terror. The congressman listened to a mixture of praise and concerns during the hour-long meeting. City councilors Jeff Diamond and Louise Tracy both noted the low staffing and hours at the local social security office. Tracy also said she'd like to see national parks, including Carlsbad Caverns National Park, be able to advertise themselves. State Senator Vernon Asbill talked about the importance of watershed cleanup. Pearce also spoke to legislators this year to emphasize efforts to solve the state's methamphetamine problem, Asbill noted. Last year, Pearce held more than 40 town hall meetings around the state to address the meth issue. Resolving the issue involves treatment, prevention and education. "Governor Bill Richardson and I are trying to put together a pilot project to help reclaim some of these lives," he said. Pearce also listened to updates from the WIPP Records Archive and the Carlsbad Mental Health Association. Officials with the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant briefed him on the disposal of remote handled waste. Pearce noted that he feels the potential expansion of WIPP would soon be a topic of discussion at federal levels. "I think we are going to see the opportunity for you to increase your mission in the very near future," he said. Pearce said he believed the economy in the area was doing well. He noted that one local potash mine recently mentioned giving three 10 percent raises over the past few years. "Those things cause good things to happen in the community," he said. "I hear from retail merchants that more people are shopping, and they're shopping with cash." Carlsbad resident Jay Jenkins thanked Pearce for his part in obtaining funds to widen Highway 62-180. "The critical dates are starting to come up," Jenkins said. " I wanted to thank you and your office for taking the lead and helping us overcome stumbling blocks." Copyright © 2005 Carlsbad Current Argus, a MediaNews Group ***************************************************************** 58 WA Business News: SA and WA outback best place for nuclear dump - Morgan - 5-April-07 by AAP Former mining executive Hugh Morgan says there should be an internationally-owned and run nuclear waste facility in Australia, with the ideal site an area of land straddling the border between South Australia and Western Australia. The former head of Western Mining Corporation said he was doing preparatory work to establish a nuclear business in Australia. "What I would propose is that there ought to be an internationally-owned facility in Australia," Mr Morgan told ABC Radio. Mr Morgan said the facility should be owned by various governments and utilities around the world, together with the Australian government and leading Australian businesses. He said there were three preferable sites for a nuclear waste dump, the best one being in the Australian outback. "A site in one of the three most secure geological sequences in the world," Mr Morgan said. "One of those sequences lies in South Australia and extends into Western Australia, one is in South Africa and one is in China." Mr Morgan said that Australia offered the best geological and political stability for such a facility. "I would say South Australia - Western Australia. That's where the geological sequence lies," he said. "I know politically they're (anti-nuclear lobbyists) going to get up and say `not over my dead body, etc, etc.' "I'm saying that's where ... in the international interest ... you would go." Mr Morgan said fears about nuclear waste disposal were ill-founded. "There are many satisfactory disposal locations already ... in Sweden, in France, in the United States," he said. "There are technologies that are continuing to come forward to provide changes in the nature of the nuclear power plants themselves - the nature of the waste which reduces the time to achieve half life." Mr Morgan also wanted the public to stop calling facilities for nuclear waste dumps. "Call it a repository ... not a dump," he said. ***************************************************************** 59 RSC: Safer storage of nuclear waste Royal Society of Chemistry 05 April 2007 Nuclear waste repositories could be safer places thanks to UK chemists, who have revealed the likely structure of a contaminant in reprocessed nuclear fuel. Nuclear fuel is generally reprocessed by extracting out the actinide metals uranium and plutonium. However, this extracted material is often contaminated with another radioactive metal, technetium, which can catalyse unwanted side reactions and complicate waste storage. Now, Iain May, David Collinson and colleagues at the University of Manchester have discovered how technetium, in the form of pertechnate [TcO4]-, is extracted during reprocessing. 'Pertechnate would traditionally be classed as a weakly coordinating anion,' said May, 'and we were very interested in why pertechnate so effectively co-extracted.' Pertechnate contaminates the extracted material by forming a complex with uranium, said May. Studying perrhenate, [ReO4]-, a non-radioactive analogue of pertechnate, the team showed that perrhenate can act as a bridge between two uranium ions, as well as a simple, singly bonding ligand. 'The demonstration of perrhenate as an inner-sphere ligand in these uranyl complexes serves as a good model for how pertechnate may coordinate actinyl compounds in general,' said Thomas Albrecht-Schmitt, an expert in actinide complexes at Auburn University, Alabama, US. 'A better molecular understanding of the behaviour of pertechnate in this waste could ultimately aid safe and cost-effective treatment and disposal,' said May. 'Nuclear power is now being seriously considered by many countries as a key component of a secure "carbon neutral" energy policy. Future fuel processing technology will require a sound fundamental understanding of actinide and fission product coordination chemistry.' James Mitchell Crow Dimeric uranyl complexes with bridging perrhenates Gordon H. John, Iain May, Mark J. Sarsfield, David Collison and Madeleine Helliwell, Dalton Trans., 2007 DOI: 10.1039/b614481k * Chemical Science Home © Royal Society of Chemistry 2007 ***************************************************************** 60 Whitehaven News: Underground N-waste site back on cards Published on 05/04/2007 MOVES to ask if Cumbrians will be ‘volunteering’ to be home to the UK’s underground nuclear waste dump are to accelerate this summer. This week the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) announced it had taken over all the work and many of the staff from the now deceased Nirex quango. The government decided to pass responsibility for the long term disposal of nuclear waste from Nirex to the NDA. The NDA stated this week: “The government transferred its shares in Nirex to the NDA and since then the two organisations have been working closely together via a joint transition team to bring about the successful integration of Nirex’s skills and expertise into the NDA. The majority of Nirex staff have been transferred to the NDA ensuring that the necessary skills, knowledge and experience are protected. “This integration is now complete and with effect from April 2, the NDA will perform the functions previously undertaken by Nirex. “As a result of this successful integration a new Directorate has been established within the NDA – the Radioactive Waste Management Directorate (RWMD) – which will be led by Richard Waite, previously NDA’s Engineering Director.†The NDA is to focus on geological disposal of nuclear waste. The nuclear industry had retained land ownership between Sellafield and Gosforth for potential use as an underground nuclear dump site. And the NDA state that their next step is consultation this summer and “This will include proposals for a voluntarist / partnership approach to site selection, and also an outline geological disposal delivery programme.†The NDA will use its new Radioactive Waste Management Directorate to design and build an effective implementing organisation to deliver a safe, environmentally sound, publicly acceptable, geological disposal solution. It is envisaged that in due course this new organisation will become a wholly owned subsidiary of the NDA. Once a suitable site has been selected the subsidiary can develop into the repository Site Licence Company. Considerable future dialogue with government, regulators and the supply chain will be required before this step is taken. View this story and the latest newspaper in full digital reproduction, just like the printed copy at www.whitehaven-news.co.uk/digitalcopy ***************************************************************** 61 SNA: Bulgaria: Radioactive Waste Spill in Bulgaria's N-Plant Poses "No Danger" Sofia News Agency DARIK NEWS 5 April 2007, Thursday A container, loaded with pressed low-level radioactive waste, has spilled while being transported on the territory of Bulgaria's nuclear power plant Kozloduy. The incident has been assessed at zero level according to the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES). Radioactive defence experts rushed to the area and sealed it off. The levels of radioactivity has been set at just the same levels as those recorded on Eagles Bridge in downtown Sofia, they said. Contact Us | The Team | Link to us | Partners | BGtop All Rights Reserved © Novinite Ltd., 2001-2007 - Copyright & Disclaimer - Privacy Policy ISO 9001:2000 Certified Bulgaria news Novinite.com (Sofia News Agency - www.sofianewsagency.com) is unique with being a real time news provider in English that informs its readers about the latest Bulgarian news. The editorial staff also publishes a daily online newspaper "Sofia Morning News." Novinite.com (Sofia News Agency - www.sofianewsagency.com) and Sofia Morning News publish the latest economic, political and cultural news that take place in Bulgaria. Foreign media analysis on Bulgaria and World News in Brief are also part of the web site and the online newspaper. News Bulgaria ***************************************************************** 62 DOE: DOE to Provide up to $14 Million to Develop Advanced Batteries for Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles April 5, 2007 WASHINGTON, DC – The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced that it will provide up to $14 million in funding for a $28 million cost-shared solicitation by the United States Advanced Battery Consortium (USABC), for plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) battery development. This research aims to find solutions to improving battery performance so vehicles can deliver up to 40 miles of electric range without recharging. This would include most roundtrip daily commutes. “President Bush is committed to developing alternative fuels and energy-saving innovations for an improved and diversified array of vehicle technologies,” Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman said. “By improving batteries for plug-in hybrids, we can help achieve the President’s goal of reducing gasoline usage by 20 percent within the decade. This research builds on President Bush’s Advanced Energy Initiative, which aims to change the way we power our homes, offices, and automobiles. In addition, the President proposed his Twenty in Ten plan, targeting a twenty percent reduction in gasoline usage by 2017 through greater use of alternative fuels and increased vehicle efficiency. DOE and USABC seek to identify electrochemical storage technologies capable of meeting or approaching USABC’s criteria for performance, weight, life-cycle, and cost. Other considerations include the potential to commercialize proposed battery technologies and bring them to market quickly. DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s Vehicle Technologies Program leads the Department’s efforts to bring PHEVs to market and works with industry to develop advanced transportation technologies that will reduce the nation’s use of imported oil. The development of a lower cost, high-energy battery has been identified as a critical pathway toward commercialization of PHEVs. USABC is a consortium of the United States Council for Automotive Research (USCAR), the umbrella organization for collaborative research among DaimlerChrysler Corporation, Ford Motor Company and General Motors Corporation. Supported by a cooperative agreement with the DOE, USABC’s mission is to develop electrochemical energy storage technologies that support commercialization of fuel cell, hybrid, and electric vehicles. A copy of USABC’s request for proposal information can be downloaded at: http://www.uscar.org/guest/article_view.php?articles_id=87 The submission deadline is Thursday, May 31, 2007. For more information on DOE’s Vehicle Technologies Program, visit: http://www.eere.energy.gov/vehiclesandfuels/. USCAR Contact: Susan Bairley, (248) 223-9023 OR sbairley@uscar.org. Media contact(s): Julie Ruggiero, (202) 586-4940 U.S. Department of Energy | 1000 Independence Ave., SW | Washington, DC 20585 1-800-dial-DOE | f/202-586-4403 ***************************************************************** 63 Santa Fe New Mexican: State presses LANL on water monitoring Thu Apr 5, 2007 6:43 pm Andy Lenderman | State Environment Secretary Ron Curry is pushing Los Alamos National Laboratory to better track the safety of drinking water. New rules proposed by Curry would require lab managers to spend millions of dollars to drill new wells at the lab to watch for contaminants resulting from Cold War nuclear-weapons work. But the lab is still negotiating with Curry's office on how to deal with the issue. "We want to see them perform as far as their environmental cleanup goes," Curry said Wednesday. "And how they perform is the ultimate measurement." The lab is committed to working cooperatively with Curry's office, which regulates environmental cleanup efforts, and the federal agency that oversees the lab, a spokeswoman said. But the lab did not commit to Curry's specific requests Wednesday. "We're in negotiations for how we're going to get it accomplished," lab spokeswoman Kathy DeLucas said. Accurate groundwater monitoring is crucial to protect the regional aquifer -- the sole water supply for the lab and the towns of Los Alamos and White Rock, the department said. Lab officials have estimated about 700 sites need to clean up at the lab, and the cost to do that work comes to about $1 billion. Money for such work is appropriated by Congress on a yearly basis. Curry's deputy, James Bearzi, criticized the lab in a seven-page letter that said lab managers "must make a much greater effort to address this problem." Bearzi said "groundwater monitoring beyond reproach" is crucial to protect the water and to comply with a consent order, a legal agreement that regulates cleanup at the lab. "As you know," Bearzi wrote to lab managers, "the order has ambitious, but negotiated, cleanup goals. The department remains committed to following the schedule agreed to by both parties in the order." Curry said the system of monitoring wells "fails too often and has improperly drilled and constructed wells." He has asked that the lab fix problems at three areas, including Technical Area 54, the lab's main waste-management unit; Technical Area 50, a waste-treatment area; and Technical Area 21, which hosted plutonium work in the 1950s, according to the department. DeLucas, the lab spokeswoman, said by e-mail that these wells were drilled with state and federal approval. "We now recognize using drilling fluids and mud could potentially influence test results, and we are working with (the U.S. Department of Energy) and (The New Mexico Environment Department) on a path forward," she said. "We look forward to continuing working very closely with DOE and NMED on the groundwater monitoring plan in an attempt to understand how the water flows underneath the laboratory." The Associated Press contributed to this report. Contact Andy Lenderman at 995-3827 or alenderman@sfnewmexican.com. Copyright 2007 The New Mexican, Inc. ***************************************************************** 64 Hanford News: Hanford cleanup video wins award This story was published Wednesday, April 4th, 2007 By the Herald staff A fast-paced, four-minute video showing Hanford cleanup progress has won the Gold Screen Award, a national award from the National Association of Government Communicators. The video celebrates Hanford cleanup programs with music and captions to convey the dedication and enthusiasm of the site's 11,000 workers. Fluor Hanford produced the video, working with the Department of Energy and its contractors. Those working on the video included Karen Lutz and Erik Olds of DOE; Judy Connell, Geoff Tyree and Brian Miller of Fluor Hanford; Suzanne Heaston of Bechtel National; Lynette Bennett of Washington Closure Hanford and Joy Shoemake of CH2M Hill. The video is posted at www.hanford.gov. © 2007 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 65 NMBW: Environment Department issues monitoring requirements for LANL - New Mexico Business Weekly - 2:36 PM MDT Wednesday, April 4, 2007 The New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) has issued requirements to Los Alamos National Laboratory detailing improvements the agency wants to see in LANL's groundwater monitoring network. Deficiencies in the monitoring network are hampering the lab's ability to detect contamination from polluted sites at LANL. These include improperly drilled and constructed wells, according to NMED Secretary Ron Curry. NMED's dissatisfaction with LANL's pace in addressing these issues compelled the department to impose these requirements, according to a prepared statement from the state agency. NMED's requirement include abandonment of portions of damaged or defective wells in key locations and the rapid assessment of the lab's groundwater monitoring capabilities in areas where remedy and closure activities are imminent. These areas include one where LANL still disposes of low-level radioactive waste. Also, NMED is requiring the lab to address monitoring problems in three areas: TA-54 (LANL's main waste management area); TA-50 (one of LANL's main waste treatment areas); and the Los Alamos Canyon area, which includes a section where plutonium manufacturing was conducted in the 1950s. © 2007 American City Business Journals, Inc. and its licensors. All ***************************************************************** 66 KnoxNews: ORNL's 'Jaguar' purring perfectly Fastest supercomputer passes 72-hour acceptance test with high marks By FRANK MUNGER, munger@knews.com April 5, 2007 OAK RIDGE - Oak Ridge National Laboratory's revved-up "Jaguar" passed its 72-hour acceptance test with high marks, and the supercomputer now has a peak capability of 119 trillion calculations per second - or 119 teraflops. "It's truly the fastest 'open science' machine in the world," Thomas Zacharia, ORNL's scientific computing chief, said Wednesday. The lab's staff combined 68 newly arrived cabinets of the Cray XT4 system with 58 cabinets already on hand at the National Center for Computational Sciences. The reconfigured system was put through a "very rigorous acceptance test," which concluded in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, Zacharia said. The test runs included a number of real-life applications, including computer codes associated with advanced simulation of materials at the atomic scale, he said. One of the material codes had a sustained performance that was 68 percent of the computer's peak capability, Zacharia said. Other codes ran at about 36 percent, he said. "These are the kinds of things you would expect out of a well-balanced, high-performance machine," Zacharia said. "We're thrilled." The upgraded Jaguar will now be turned over to researchers for complex problems that can't be solved any other way, Zacharia said. The research projects include work on climate change, chemistry, astrophysics and fusion energy. In addition to use by researchers from universities and national laboratories, some time on the ORNL supercomputer is allotted to private industry. "Boeing is doing advanced design of their (airplane) wings using this machine," Zacharia said. The ORNL official lauded the work of Cray Inc., which built the units for Jaguar at its Chippewa Falls, Wis., manufacturing facility. But he also praised the leadership team at ORNL's computing center. "In order for this to work, we have to have these applications ready to run on these machines. It took some of our smartest people working around the clock so that we could get this turned over to the users," Zacharia said. Meanwhile, Cray announced this week that ORNL's Jaguar had set a new performance record for running weather-forecasting software. Using the Oak Ridge machine for a test run of the Weather and Research Forecast software, scientists were able to generate a one-day weather forecast at 2.5-kilometer resolution for the entire United States in as little as 18 minutes, the company said. It reportedly takes several hours to perform the operation on other supercomputers. Zacharia said weather-forecasting calculations were a one-time test to better understand how certain codes would perform. But he made it clear that weather forecasting is not one of the missions for the ORNL machine. He said the weather-forecasting test was done before the two Jaguar systems were combined. "It only used a portion of the machine," he said. Later this year, Jaguar will be upgraded again. New processors will be loaded into the cabinets. That will more than double the peak operating capability to about 250 teraflops. Within the next two years, the Oak Ridge lab expects to have a new petascale machine from Cray, with a peak capability exceeding 1,000 trillion calculations per second. Senior writer Frank Munger may be reached at 865-342-6329. Copyright 2007, Knoxville News Sentinel Co. ***************************************************************** NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: *****************************************************************