***************************************************************** 07/09/07 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 15.159 ***************************************************************** 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 UN Nuclear Inspectors To Revisit Dpr Korea 2 Comment is free: Diplomacy? It works! 3 AFP: US prefers nuclear talks after NKorean key reactor shutdown - 4 BBC NEWS: UN approves North Korea mission 5 IPS-English JAPAN: Nuclear Bombing Gaffe May Hit Conservatives 6 IAEA: Introductory Statement to the Board Of Governors 7 Guardian Unlimited: Energy firms seek £1bn for carbon capture projec NUCLEAR REACTORS 8 Platts: Plans for new Ignalina plant moved ahead July 6 9 Pravda.Ru: State-owned nuclear-controlling company being created in 10 US: CITIZEN-TIMES.com: Nuclear energy can be good for the environmen 11 US: Johnson City Press: NFS disputes criticism by N.Y. Times - 12 Deutsche Welle: Energy Company Admits Fresh Blunders At Nuclear Plan 13 US: NRC: Entergy Gulf States, Inc., River Bend Station, Unit 1; Noti 14 US: NRC: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania: Draft NRC Staff Assessment of 15 Reuters: Finland's nuclear plans lure political visitors 16 Reuters: Energy obese UK could be emissions-free by 2027 17 US: Reuters: GE-Hitachi prep for 'reemergence' of nuclear power 18 Telegraph: Atomic reactor plans win approval 19 US: Bloomberg.com: New Reactor Costs Daunt U.S. Utilities as TVA Res 20 US: OpEdNews: Mister Big Nuke Company CEO, We've Gotta Talk... 21 US: NRC: Speech - 07-032 - "Openness and Transparency: The Road to 22 RIA Novosti: Russian government approves Atomenergoprom charter 23 Platts: Regulator supports extending licenses for Loviisa-1, -2 NUCLEAR SECURITY NUCLEAR SAFETY NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 24 US: Bradenton.com: Panel: Fla. should lead in reprocessing spent nuc 25 Russia-InfoCentre: Brand New Technique For Radioactive Waste Process 26 US: NewsBlaze: The Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste and Materials 27 Guardian Unlimited: BNG offers 'virtual reprocessing' to Germans 28 US: Pueblo Chieftain: Officials worry about potential Cotter leak PEACE US DEPT. OF ENERGY 29 Hanford News: Nuclear ships: Millions to build, and now millions to 30 Tri-City Herald: Weapons wiped out at Umatilla Chemical Depot 31 Hanford News: Hanford saga still sells 32 Hanford News: Hanford news briefs 33 NAS Project: Review of DOE's Nuclear Energy Research & Development P 34 The Olympian: INL to conduct explosives test in E. Idaho desert - No ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 UN Nuclear Inspectors To Revisit Dpr Korea Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2007 18:00:32 -0400 New York, Jul 9 2007 6:00PM Inspectors from the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (<"http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/News/2007/bog090707.html">IAEA) will return to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to monitor the shutdown and eventual abandonment of the Yongbyon nuclear facilities, it was announced today. The decision to dispatch the experts came after the IAEA’s Board of Governors, meeting in Geneva, approved a report detailing the agency’s future activities in the Asian country. “This is the beginning of a long and complex process, but I welcome the return of the DPRK to the verification process,” IAEA’s Director General Mohamed ElBaradei told reporters after briefing the Board. He said that the inspectors’ mission to the DPRK is contingent on receiving an invitation from the country, but he predicted that IAEA inspectors would travel to the country in the next several weeks. “According to our experts, the shutting down of the facilities should not take much time, probably a few days,” Mr. ElBaradei said. Cameras and other equipment also need to be installed to monitor the sites, he added. Late last month, IAEA inspectors visited Pyongyang and reached agreement with the DPRK regarding arrangements for the agency’s monitoring and verification of the shutdown of the Yongbyon nuclear facility and the reactor under construction in Taechon. Additionally, the Board adopted a 4.2 per cent budget increase for the year 2008-2009. Although he noted that he is “pleased” with the surge in funding, Mr. ElBaradei said that he “made it clear to the Board that this is far from adequate to meet our increasing responsibilities in the area of verification, safety, security and development.” In his address to the Board, Mr. ElBaradei said that “the Agency remains under-funded in many critical areas, a situation which, if it remains unaddressed, will lead to a steady erosion of our ability to perform key functions.” He welcomed the support offered by United States President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin during their Kennebunkport meeting last weekend in which they “made it clear that they fully understand the need for additional financial resources for the for the Agency to meet its increasing responsibilities including the growing interest in nuclear power.” The Director General also voiced hope that there would be a breakthrough with Iran, to which an IAEA team is heading tomorrow to discuss how to resolve outstanding issues with the country’s authorities. “I very much, sincerely hope that Iran will seize that opportunity to work in earnest with us in a fast-track mode,” Mr. ElBaradei told reporters. “I think that this would be a major breakthrough, but I have to reserve that judgment until the mission comes back.” 2007-07-09 00:00:00.000 ___________________ For more details go to UN News Centre at http://www.un.org/news To listen to news and in-depth programmes from UN Radio go to: http://radio.un.org/ _______________________________ To change your profile or unsubscribe go to: http://www.un.org/apps/news/email/ ***************************************************************** 2 Comment is free: Diplomacy? It works! guardian.co.uk/commentisfree > Mark Leon Goldberg North Korea has shut down its main nuclear reactor - and not in response to US sabre-rattling. A rare lesson in sanity. Mark Leon Goldberg July 9, 2007 10:00 PM | Printable version Shhh! Don't tell John Bolton, but North Korea seems to be on the verge of dismantling its nuclear weapons program. On June 22, the Bush administration sent its first high-level official to Pyongyang in five years to shore up a February 13 2007 nuclear disarmament deal. Per the agreement, North Korea was to shut down its main nuclear facility in exchange for a package of incentives that include fuel subsidies and food aid. The former UN ambassador though was never a fan of this arrangement. "It's a very bad deal," Bolton told CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "It makes the US look very weak at a time in Iraq... when it needs to look strong." The February deal hit a snag in May, when the North Korean government demanded that the United States release $25 million frozen at American behest in a Macau bank. Assistant secretary of state Christopher Hill made the rare visit to Pyongyang to discuss the release of those funds. To Bolton, Hill's trip was the final death knell of the hardline approach to North Korea that he had forged while in government. On July 3, Bolton took to the Wall Street Journal op-ed page to vent his disgust: "This Pyongyang visit symbolises the full return of Clinton-era, bilateral negotiations with North Korea. The Bush administration has effectively ended where North Korea policy is concerned, replaced for the next 18 months by a caretaker government of bureaucrats, technocrats and academics." But something funny has happened since Hill's journey to Pyongyang: the reclusive government of Kim Jong Il has taken actual, concrete steps to dismantle the plutonium producing facility at Yongbyon. On June 28, the North Koreans let an International Atomic Energy Agency assessment team visit Yongbyon. This was the first time since 2002 that IAEA inspectors had been allowed inside North Korea. Before the team left the country, the government even struck a technical agreement that would allow the IAEA to oversee the shutdown of the facility. This morning, the IAEA board of governors met in Vienna to approve the agreement and authorised a new verification mission to North Korea. Now contrast the progress made in the past two weeks with events of the past five years, when Bolton's views reflected official policy. From 2002 to 2007, the Bush administration strenuously avoided direct negotiations with the North Korean government. As it did with Iran, the administration treated bilateral negotiations with North Korea as if it were a reward itself. And what happened during those lost years? North Korea withdrew from the non-proliferation treaty, kicked IAEA inspectors out of the country and detonated a nuclear weapon. Frankly, it is hard to see how snubbing the North Korean government benefited American interests in any tangible way. Still, Bolton and other hardliners coalesced at the American Enterprise Institute (where Bolton is now a fellow), refusing to give up on a policy that has so obviously been a failure. Part of the DPRK's newfound willingness to dismantle its nuclear weapons programme undoubtedly stems from the release of $25 million. You can call that a bribe, you can call it appeasement - or like Bolton, you can call it a display of "embarrassing US weakness". But the fact is that the North Korean government is closer to eschewing its nuclear ambitions than it has been at any point in the last five years. All it seems to have taken was a token incentive and a face-to-face meeting with an American official. So maybe you can also call it diplomacy. The views expressed here are the author's own. This entry was tagged with the following keywords: northkorea johnbolton unitedstates usforeignpolicy Comments Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007. Registered in England and Wales. No. 908396 Registered office: Number 1 Scott Place, Manchester M3 3GG ***************************************************************** 3 AFP: US prefers nuclear talks after NKorean key reactor shutdown - Mon Jul 9, 11:45 AM ET WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States said Monday that it preferred six-party talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear weapons program to resume after the reclusive state shut down its key atomic reactor under UN supervision. "I think ideally what everybody would like to see is an envoys' level meeting build on some already increased momentum," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said, citing proposals for talks "in the next week or two." Such momentum would stem from "a shutdown and sealing of the Yongbyon (reactor), having the IAEA in there and full strength, performing their full mission that they have set out for," he told reporters. A nine-member inspector team from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN atomic watchdog, is expected to travel to North Korea within the next "week or two", its chief Mohamed ElBaradei said in Vienna Monday. The mission will re-establish international monitoring nearly five years after the agency was kicked out in December 2002 when Pyongyang moved to re-start its Yongbyon plutonium-producing nuclear reactor and resume weapons work. North Korea conducted its first nuclear weapons test in October last year. It is believed to have several plutonium bombs. It said Friday it was considering shutting down Yongbyon as soon as its received its first shipment of heavy fuel as part of a nuclear disarmament pact reached at the six-party talks among the United States, China, the two Koreas, Japan and Russia in February. The accord is a first step towards Pyongyang giving up its nuclear weapons. South Korea has promised to send the first shipment of a total of 50,000 tonnes of fuel oil on Thursday. Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 4 BBC NEWS: UN approves North Korea mission Last Updated: Monday, 9 July 2007, 14:20 GMT 15:20 UK The international community has long wanted Yongbyon shut down United Nations nuclear inspectors have been given the go-ahead to return to North Korea to begin the process of shutting down the main nuclear reactor. The 35-nation board of the UN's nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), approved the mission at a meeting in Vienna. It will be the first time inspections have been allowed at Yongbyon since UN monitors were expelled in 2002. The first delivery of aid - a shipment of fuel oil - is expected to arrive from South Korea by the end of the week. Diplomats in Vienna said the inspection team could be in North Korea within a week to begin the process of verifying the shut-down of Yongbyon, which is capable of producing enough plutonium for a nuclear weapon each year. Shut-down agreement The inspectors will install monitoring cameras and seals on equipment at the reactor, as part of a two-year mission that is expected to cost some $5m (£2.48m). "The shutting down of the facilities, according our experts, should not take much time, probably a few days, but then we will have to install cameras and put other... equipment in place to ensure that we are able to monitor the shutting down of these facilities," said UN nuclear chief Mohamed ElBaradei. The IAEA meeting was considering the findings of the organisation's deputy director general, Olli Heinonen, and his three-man team, when they visited North Korea last month. Their report, seen by news agencies, says inspectors have been granted access to all the facilities that are to be shut down, and will be allowed to install all the necessary equipment needed to verify the closure. North Korea agreed in February that it would shut down the Yongbyon reactor. The agreement was the result of long-running talks with the US, Russia, China, South Korea and Japan. * BBC Copyright Notice ***************************************************************** 5 IPS-English JAPAN: Nuclear Bombing Gaffe May Hit Conservatives Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2007 14:43:05 -0700 ROMAIPS AP HD DV CR IP WO NU JAPAN: Nuclear Bombing Gaffe May Hit Conservatives Suvendrini Kakuchi TOKYO, Jul 5 (IPS) - Nationalists and pacifists alike have welcomed the resignation this week of Japan's high profile defence minister, Fumio Kyuma, in the wake of uproar over his reference to the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as events that ”couldn't be helped”. Opposition lawmakers demanded Kyuma's resignation, arguing he must take responsibility for what he said at the start of the Upper House election campaign that kicked off on the weekend. Kyuma told a public gathering that, but for the bombing, World War ll would have dragged on, leaving Japan vulnerable to deeper penetration by the Soviet Union. ‘'The problem with Kyuma's statement is his insensitivity to one of the most atrocious indiscriminate mass killings in human history,'' said the Asahi newspaper on Wednesday. More than 300,000 Japanese were killed in the world's first and only nuclear bombings. Ironically, on the other side of Japan's World War ll debate, nationalists who are growing more strident with calls to boost Japanese military strength, 62 years after its defeat, are also angry with Kyuma. ''I am glad Prime Minister Shinzo Abe accepted Kyuma's resignation. The atomic bombing was a human tragedy justified by the Americans as necessary to stop Japan's war of aggression,'' said Yuko Tojo, 68, granddaughter of Hideki Tojo, a ‘class A' war criminal hanged by the victorious allies. Experts contend that the two arguments compile the essence of why the Japanese continue to flounder when it comes to reaching a national consensus on its role in World War ll. On Aug. 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima city and followed it up with a second nuclear bombing, three days later, on Nagasaki. Together the attacks left an estimated 160,000 people dead and tens of thousands of people maimed by radiation, but decisively ended the war. Kyuma will be replaced by national security adviser Yuriko Koike who is now set to become Japan's first female defence minister. ‘'The huge uproar over Kyuma illustrates the anger the public feel at the U.S. and the destruction in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On the other hand, the stance of the nationalists signals the upsurge in deep-rooted nationalism in Japan. They are using the atomic bombing to shore up the old victimisation angle that Japan cannot be blamed for the war,'' said Fuyuko Nishisato, a writer and peace activist. Nishisato, a researcher on the former Japanese Imperial Army's sex slave system, under which Asian women were forced to provide sexual services to soldiers, says that Abe accepted Kyuma's resignation under the weight of public pressure at election time. Support ratings for Abe are at an all time low -- less than 30 percent last week. Kyuma is the third cabinet minister to resign during the last nine months of his tenure and it is being viewed as another blow to his political future that will be tested July end. ‘'The evidence was quite clear to Abe as public response was quite fierce against Kyuma. The show of anger indicated to him how deeply ingrained the atomic bombing is in the public psyche,'' she pointed out to IPS. The Kyuma incident and reaction among nationalists in Japan, according to analysts, have pushed to the surface yet another important undercurrent in politics. Hirotada Asakawa, a former journalist and presently a political commentator at Tohoku Fukushi University, says politics in the country are at a crossroads. ''New political candidates such as Tojo would never have been entertained a few decades ago. But the fact that she can campaign is the result of the rise of the conservatives, thanks to Abe,'' he said. Tojo is running as an independent candidate in the July elections. Speaking to the press on Tuesday, she called for a restoration of ”Japan's dignity” after its defeat in 1945 through the scrapping of the peace constitution and visits to Yasukuni Shrine to pay respect to soldiers like her father who is reviled in Asia for his harsh colonisation of such countries as China and Korea. ‘'Japan was forced into the war when western countries that had colonised Asia, slapped an economic embargo on us. My father is not guilty of starting the war but of losing it,'' she said. Tojo's stance represents a growing trend in Japan to support Abe's patriotism and his push to revise the post-war constitution dictated by the U.S. and to make Japan a ”normal” country with a military again. Last month's resolution passed in the U.S. Congress requesting Japan to formally apologise to the now aging ”comfort women” (military sex salves) also raised the hackles of conservatives here. Some of them attribute anything from the rise in juvenile crime to the North Korea missile threat to a non-militarised Japan. Still, Asakawa explains that the uproar against Kyuma's statements show that the conservatives and their views have limited support. ‘'Voters see Tojo's utterances as a step back in history. My research has shown that the conservative argument that Japan can be a proud nation again by revising its war past is not a popular one,'' he explained to IPS. Nishisato says the upcoming election is a crucial one for the Japanese. If Abe's party, the Liberal Democratic Party, gets less than the current 109 seats its holds in the 245 Upper House, the result would be boost for people like her who have long lobbied for the government to apologise to Asian victims of Japanese colonisation. ”If not,'' Nishisato warns, ‘'there is the highly likely prospect of a rise in narrow-minded nationalism in Japan.'' ***** +JAPAN: Abe's US Visit - One More Step to a Formal Military (http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37485) + JAPAN: Okinawa Poll Results Boost for US Military Ties (http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=35553) + JAPAN: Determined on Seat in UN Security Council (http://www.ipsnews.net/login.asp?idnews=35943) ***** + JAPAN: Abe's US Visit - One More Step to a Formal Military (http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37485) + JAPAN: Okinawa Poll Results Boost for US Military Ties (http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=35553) + JAPAN: Determined on Seat in UN Security Council (http://www.ipsnews.net/login.asp?idnews=35943 ) (END/IPS/AP/IP/HD/DV/WO/CR/SK/NU/RDR/07) = 07051050 ORP004 NNNN ***************************************************************** 6 IAEA: Introductory Statement to the Board Of Governors Statements of the Director General 9 July 2007 | Vienna, Austria IAEA Board of Governors Introductory Statement to the Board of Governors by IAEA Director General Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei As you are aware, at the invitation of the Democratic People´s Republic of Korea (DPRK), an Agency team visited the DPRK during the last week of June with a view to agreeing on modalities for verification and monitoring by the IAEA of the shutdown and sealing of the Yongbyon nuclear facility, as foreseen in the "Initial Actions" agreed at the Six Party Talks in Beijing on 13 February 2007. Document GOV/2007/36 details the ad hoc monitoring and verification arrangement that was worked out between the DPRK and the Agency. I welcome the return of the DPRK to the verification process. I am particularly pleased with the active cooperation of the DPRK that the IAEA team received during the visit and I look forward to continuing to work with the DPRK as the verification process evolves as envisaged in the Initial Actions. You may recall that the Board concluded in June that, "a successfully negotiated settlement of the Korean nuclear issue, maintaining the essential verification role of the Agency, would be a significant accomplishment for international peace and security". In this context, I would invite the Board to take the actions recommended in document GOV/2007/36. As explained in my report, the conduct of the verification activities requested by the DPRK was not foreseen in the Agency´s budget. The initial costs of these activities, estimated at €1.7 million for 2007 and €2.2 million for 2008, would cover inter alia the replacement of cameras and installation of containment and surveillance devices, the purchase of other needed equipment, and logistical and staff costs. I am requesting Member States therefore to provide funding for the implementation of these verification activities in 2007 and 2008. I should emphasize that, as with all our verification work under the Statute, verification in the DPRK should not have to rely on donations by individual States. I intend therefore to include the associated costs in the draft regular budget for 2009. The DPRK case clearly illustrates the need for the Agency to have an adequate reserve that can be drawn upon to enable it to respond promptly and effectively to unexpected crises or extraordinary requests, whether in the areas of verification, nuclear and radiological accidents, or other emergencies. The Agency´s financial vulnerability is also demonstrated by our current cash situation, which indicates that unless some major donors pay their outstanding contributions by the end of next month, the Agency will have to draw from the Working Capital Fund in order to continue operations. And unless contributions are received by September, that Fund would be depleted. Finally, let me stress that the recent process of preparing and getting approval for the programme and budget for the next biennium has once again highlighted the urgent need for adequate resources to ensure effective delivery of the entire programme that you have requested. As I made clear during the last Board, even with the budget originally proposed by the Secretariat, the Agency remains under-funded in many critical areas, a situation which, if it remains unaddressed, will lead to a steady erosion of our ability to perform key functions, including in the verification and safety fields. To this end, and in order to remedy this unsustainable situation, I have initiated a study to examine the programmatic and budgetary requirements of the Agency over the next decade or so. It is my intention to engage a high level panel of experts to review the study and consider options for financing the requirements identified therein. Once completed, the study and the recommendations of the panel will be submitted to the Board. I believe that the study will help to clarify expectations about the Agency´s mission over the medium term and how these expectations can be matched by the necessary financial and human resources in a predictable and assured manner. The Agency´s critical missions in the fields of development, safety and security, and verification deserve no less. More DG Statements » Copyright ©, International Atomic Energy Agency, P.O. Box 100, Wagramer Strasse 5, A-1400 Vienna, Austria Telephone (+431) 2600-0; Facsimilie (+431) 2600-7; E-mail: ***************************************************************** 7 Guardian Unlimited: Energy firms seek £1bn for carbon capture projects Terry Macalister Monday July 9, 2007 The government has been warned it needs to take a quick decision to spend almost £1bn to experiment with the potential benefits of carbon sequestration and capture to fight global warming. Gordon Brown has spoken about Britain becoming a pioneer in this revolutionary sector and the energy white paper outlined the criteria by which companies would compete for part-funding for trials. However, oil and electricity providers are understood to have privately told ministers they will need more than £300m for each of the three expected experimental facilities, according to industry sources. BP, one of the companies pushing to proceed with an experimental hydrogen plant using carbon capture in a North Sea oil field has abandoned its plans due to government delays. Other companies are now threatening to do the same unless ministers accept they must make a significant investment, said the source. Eon, RWE and British Gas parent, Centrica, are among the companies that have put forward plans for coal-fired power stations that would remove and bury the CO2 offshore. The power industry is arguing that Britain is facing a looming energy crunch in the run-up to 2015 after which there is a chance new nuclear stations could come on stream. Some experts are arguing Britain still needs 15 large non-nuclear plants and while there are many potential plans, less than a handful have got the definite go-ahead so far while others are dependent on a government decision on carbon capture. Eon and RWE are proposing to build "supercritical" clean coal power stations with carbon capture while Centrica wants to construct an 800MW station at Teesside which would be the lowest emitting fossil fuel powered station in Britain. Useful links Energy Saving Trust Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 8 Platts: Plans for new Ignalina plant moved ahead July 6 007-9J London (Platts)--9Jul2007 Plans for a new Ignalina plant moved ahead July 6, with Prime Ministers of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia asking their national utilities to proceed with formation of a company to invest in and manage the project. The prime ministers were meeting in Vilnius and were to have been joined by Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, whose country will also participate in the project. Kaczynski's visit was cancelled at the last minute and no reason was given publicly. The countries hope to have a tender for the plant by early 2009. For more news, request a free trial to Platts Nucleonics Week at http://www.platts.com/Request%20More%20Information/index.xml?story or subscribe now at http://www.platts.com/infostore/product_info.php?cPath=22_41&products_id=67 Copyright © 2007 - Platts, All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 9 Pravda.Ru: State-owned nuclear-controlling company being created in Russia 07/09/2007 14:51 Source: AP © Russia has created a state-owned company to control the nuclear energy industry, from research and uranium extraction to power stations, waste storage and exports, the Federal Atomic Energy Agency said Monday. Mikhail Fradkov signed an order Saturday establishing the charter of the 100-percent state-owned JSC Atomic Energy Industry Complex (www.tribuneindia.com) Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov signed an order Saturday establishing the charter of the 100-percent state-owned JSC Atomic Energy Industry Complex, or Atomenergoprom, the agency said. President Vladimir Putin had signed a decree in April ordering the company's creation. Russia has 31 reactors at 10 nuclear power plants, accounting for 16-17 percent of its electricity generation. Putin has called for increasing the proportion of nuclear-generated power to at least 25 percent by 2030. Russia is also seeking increased involvement in nuclear industries abroad and is establishing a facility for the enrichment of uranium for countries that want nuclear power. According to Putin's decree, Atomenergoprom and its affiliates will be responsible for a wide array of nuclear industry activities, including research and development, fuel extraction, power plant construction and management and waste disposal. The head of the Federal Atomic Energy Agency, Sergei Kiriyenko, has been named chairman of the new company and his deputy Vladimir Travin as its director, the agency statement said. All news About Pravda.Ru Site map Export news STATISTICS © 1999-2006. «PRAVDA.Ru». When reproducing our materials in whole or ***************************************************************** 10 CITIZEN-TIMES.com: Nuclear energy can be good for the environment Asheville, NC Monday, July 9, 2007 7:08 PM Opinion » Letters to the Editor by Ralph Lambert Much discussion lately has been focused on alternative energy sources, including nuclear power. However, the discussion seems to be focused on the old-type thermal reactors, which use about only 5 percent of their fuel in producing energy. The depleted fuel from these reactors presents a disposal problem. A December 2005 “Scientific American” article described a special refining procedure for the waste fuels from these reactors. This refined fuel could be used in a “safer and more sustainable” reactor designed in the 1980s at Argonne National Laboratory. These “fast-moving neutron” reactors could use about 99 percent of the depleted fuel left over from the thermal reactors. They can even run on the tailings from uranium mines. They would thus not only provide energy without using fossil fuels, but actually use up all but 1 percent of the material now considered waste, thus solving most of today’s nuclear waste disposal problems. These kinds of reactors should be put on the fast track along with renewable energy sources such as solar, tidal and wind energy. Ralph Lambert, Asheville USA Today ? USA Weekend ? Gannett Co., Inc. ? Gannett Foundation ***************************************************************** 11 Johnson City Press: NFS disputes criticism by N.Y. Times - Story questioned NRC secrecy in 2006 spill at Erwin facility Tuesday, July 10, 2007 • Today's Front Page • By Gregg Powers Press Outdoors Writer gpowers@johnsoncitypress.com ERWIN - A spokesman for Nuclear Fuel Services said a story that appeared in the New York Times Friday criticizing secrecy by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and reporting information from a 2006 spill at NFS contained no new information and several inaccuracies. Tony Treadway, spokesman for the facility that makes fuel for the Navy at its Erwin facility, said Friday that he spent 20 minutes on the phone with Matthew Wald of the New York Times interviewing for the article. "There is no new news there," Treadway said of Friday's Times story. "I spend 20 minutes talking to (Wald) and it's clear he had his opinions set. It just goes to show you that the New York Times can get it wrong too." Wald's story says NFS makes "uranium fuel for nuclear reactors and had a spill so bad it kept the plant closed for seven months last year and became one of only three events in all of 2006 serious enough" for the NRC to include in an annual report to Congress. "There were several inaccuracies within the article - two within the first sentence," Treadway said. "The article states that NFS `makes uranium fuel for nuclear reactors.' That statement is incorrect. NFS produces a low-enriched material that is later processed by other suppliers to produce actual uranium fuel for use in commercial nuclear reactors. In the same sentence, Wald states that the `plant was closed for seven months'. This is also inaccurate." Treadway said NFS self-identified the spill when it occurred in March 2006 and immediately and voluntarily opted to shut down the process. However, the numerous other process operations within the plant were never "closed" due to the spill and remained active in the production of uranium material for other customers. No employee was injured due to the spill and no member of the public or the environment was negatively impacted by the spill. "NFS acted promptly and appropriately in addressing the spill, immediately notifying on-site and off-site officials of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission of the matter," Treadway said. "The company relied on its own safety and engineering experts as well as numerous nuclear experts in making enhancements to the process. After three operational readiness reviews by different NRC teams, the government regulator agreed that the process operations were safe and ready to begin in October 2006. Since that time, the process has set new safety and productivity records." Wald reported that, after an investigation, "the commission changed the terms of the factory's license and said the public had 20 days to request a hearing on the changes. "But no member of the public ever did. In fact, no member of the public could find out about the changes. The document describing them, including the notice of hearing rights for anyone who felt adversely affected, was stamped `official use only,' meaning that it was not publicly accessible." Wald wrote " `official use only' is a category below `secret.' Documents in that category are not technically classified but are kept from the public." He also reported that the agency "would not even have told Congress which factory was involved were it not for the efforts of Gregory B. Jaczko, one of the five commissioners. Jaczko identified NFS in a memorandum "that became part of the public record. His memo said other public documents would allow an informed person to deduce that the factory belonged to Nuclear Fuel Services." Wald's article states that "such secrecy by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is now coming under attack by influential members of Congress." These lawmakers argue that the "agency is withholding numerous documents about nuclear facilities in the name of national security, but that many withheld documents are not sensitive. The lawmakers say the agency must rebalance its penchant for secrecy with the public's right to participate in the licensing process and its right to know about potential hazards." Wald said "additional details of the 2006 event are coming to light now because of a letter sent Tuesday to the nuclear agency by the House Energy and Commerce Committee." The article quotes Jaczko as saying, " `Ultimately, we regulate on behalf of the public, and it's important for them to have a role.' He said he thought other information about Nuclear Fuel Services that should be public had been marked "official use only." The article says "With a resurgence of nuclear plant construction expected after a 30-year hiatus, agency officials say frequently that they are trying to strike a balance between winning public confidence by regulating openly and protecting sensitive information. A commission spokesman, Scott Burnell, said the `official use only' designation was under review." "It is important to note the article's focus was on how some members of Congress have questioned the NRC's decision to withhold some information related to nuclear facilities, including NFS, from the public," Treadway said Friday. "The decision by the NRC was sparked after a request by an office within the U.S. Department of Energy to withhold certain information related to highly enriched uranium process operations," he said. "The intent was to limit information that could be used by terrorists. HEU is considered weapons-grade material. The process involved at NFS converts HEU into a low-enriched uranium material. The decision also prohibits NFS from sharing information declared `official use only' with the public. Thus, NFS would have violated regulations had it released information related to the spill." The New York Times article states that, "as laid out by the commission's report to Congress and other sources, the event at the Nuclear Fuel Service factory was discovered when a supervisor saw a yellow liquid dribbling under a door and into a hallway. Workers had previously described a yellow liquid in a `glove box,' a sealed container with gloves built into the sides to allow a technician to manipulate objects inside, but managers had decided it was ordinary uranium." Wald wrote that, "in fact, it was highly enriched uranium that had been declared surplus from the weapons inventory of the Energy Department and sent to the plant to be diluted to a strength appropriate for a civilian reactor." "Generally, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission does describe nuclear incidents and changes in licenses. But in 2004, according to the committee's letter, the Office of Naval Reactors, part of the Energy Department, reached an agreement with the commission that any correspondence with Nuclear Fuel Services would be marked `official use only.' " Treadway said the article noted that a change by the NRC to the terms of the factory's license was declared "official use only" and thus not shared with the public. "While significant changes to a process operation can require an opportunity for members of the public to request a hearing, the only change made by the NRC to the license in this instance was an order by the NRC affirming NFS' commitment to enhancing its own safety culture among employees at the Erwin plant and the NRC's commitment to overseeing that effort," Treadway said. Story published: 07-10-2007 ? Print Story ? E-mail Story to a Friend ***************************************************************** 12 Deutsche Welle: Energy Company Admits Fresh Blunders At Nuclear Plants | Germany | 09.07.2007 Swedish energy giant Vattenfall faces massive criticism after it admitted fresh blunders by its nuclear reactor operators in Germany after a string of irregularities last month. Under fire for failing to reveal the full extent of a series of irregularities at two of its nuclear reactors in northern Germany last month, Vattenfall Europe on Sunday admitted there had been further blunders at the affected plants. Last month, a blaze broke out at the Krmmel power plant in Geesthacht, 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) southeast of northern city of Hamburg. Separately, another nuclear power plant in Schleswig-Holstein, Brunsbttel, was temporarily shut down last Thursday about two hours before the Krmmel fire because its capacity was overloaded. The incident triggered a fresh national debate about the safety of nuclear energy just days before an annual energy summit in Berlin focused on exploring ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and curb global warming. Human error to blame? On Sunday, Vattenfall said that human error at the plant was to blame for a further irregularity. Fire-fighters at the Krmmel nuclear plant after a blaze broke outBildunterschrift: Groáansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Fire-fighters at the Krmmel nuclear plant after a blaze broke out In the first such report from the Brunsbttel power station near station, the company said staff at the reactor were surprised by a surge of hot water and then forgot to hold down a control button. This caused an automatic cut-off of the reactor's water filtration system for eight minutes. There was no release of radioactivity. At the time the plant was powering up after a short circuit had closed it for three days. The revelations that staff were unsure what to do have put the nuclear industry in Germany on the defensive. Germany's 17 reactors are to be phased out by 2021, but the industry has advocated a revival of nuclear power to reduce German carbon-dioxide emissions. The European Union has set a goal of a 20 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 compared with 1990 levels, but Germany is aiming for a cut of up to 40 percent. Energy firm's information policy under scrutiny Energy regulators of Schleswig-Holstein state said Sunday Vattenfall had only reported the error at the last moment. Hours later, Vattenfall Europe said it had decided to inform the public better about nuclear incidents and published on its Web site detailed technical correspondence about the accidents at its Brunsbttel and Krmmel reactors. Ivo Banek, a spokesman for Vattenfall, said the Brunsbttel blunders had posed no safety risk. Nuclear power opponents demonstrating in Germany in2003Bildunterschrift: Groáansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Nuclear power opponents demonstrating in Germany in2003 However, the latest disclosures have prompted a fresh demand by Germany's opposition Greens party for Swedish-owned Vattenfall's nuclear licence to be revoked on grounds of unreliability. "Vattenfall's scandalous approach to the legally-binding right to information shows that that this company doesn't possess the reliability that the nuclear energy law demands from operators of nuclear plants," said Reinhard Btikofer, head of the Green Party. On Monday, Vattenfall executives are to meet with representatives of Germany's federal environment ministry and with state authorities from Schleswig-Holstein to discuss the company's handling of the incidents and its information policies. Deutsche Welle ***************************************************************** 13 NRC: Entergy Gulf States, Inc., River Bend Station, Unit 1; Notice of Consideration of Approval of Transfer of Facility Operating License and Conforming Amendment and Opportunity for a Hearing FR Doc E7-13259 [Federal Register: July 9, 2007 (Volume 72, Number 130)] [Notices] [Page 37266-37267] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr09jy07-102] NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION [Docket No. 50-458] The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC or the Commission) is considering the issuance of an order under 10 CFR 50.80 approving the direct transfer of the Facility Operating License (No. NPF-47) for the River Bend Station, Unit 1 (RBS), to the extent currently held by Entergy Gulf States, Inc. (EGS), as owner of RBS. The transfer would be to Entergy Gulf States Louisiana, L.L.C. (EGS-LA), a Louisiana limited liability company. Entergy Operations, Inc. (EOI), the licensed operator of the facility, will remain as such and will continue to operate RBS. The Commission is also considering amending the license for administrative purposes to reflect the proposed transfer. According to an application for approval filed by EGS and EOI, both EGS and EOI are direct subsidiaries of Entergy Corporation. Under a proposed restructuring, EGS will merge into EGS-LA, with EGS-LA being the surviving entity. EGS-LA, will own all of EGS' Louisiana assets, including RBS, except for EGS' undivided ownership interests in Big Cajun, Unit 2 and the Nelson 6 coal plants, which will be jointly owned with Entergy Texas, Inc. (ETI), a company to be formed by EGS. Once these and other steps of the restructuring are competed, EGS- LA will serve EGS' current retail customers in Louisiana and EGS' current wholesale customers, and ETI will serve EGS' current retail customers in Texas. EGS-LA's retail utility operations will be subject to the jurisdiction of the Louisiana Public Service Commission (LPSC) to the same extent that LPSC currently possesses jurisdiction over EGS' retail utility operations. EGS-LA will succeed to and assume all of EGS' jurisdictional tariffs, rate schedules, and service agreements, and provide electric service to EGS' customers without interruption. EOI operates RBS pursuant to an Operating Agreement with EGS. EOI will continue to operate RBS and the current Operating Agreement will be amended to reflect the new owner of the plant. EOI will not be affected by the restructuring. [[Page 37267]] No physical changes to the RBS facility or operational changes are being proposed in the application. The proposed amendment would replace references to Entergy Gulf States, Inc., in the license with references to Entergy Gulf States Louisiana, L.L.C., to reflect the proposed transfer. Pursuant to 10 CFR 50.80, no license, or any right thereunder, shall be transferred, directly or indirectly, through transfer of control of the license, unless the Commission shall give its consent in writing. The Commission will approve an application for the direct transfer of a license, if the Commission determines that the proposed transferee is qualified to hold the license, and that the transfer is otherwise consistent with applicable provisions of law, regulations, and orders issued by the Commission pursuant thereto. Before issuance of the proposed conforming license amendment, the Commission will have made findings required by the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended (the Act), and the Commission's regulations. As provided in 10 CFR 2.1315, unless otherwise determined by the Commission with regard to a specific application, the Commission has determined that any amendment to the license of a utilization facility which does no more than conform the license to reflect the transfer action involves no significant hazards consideration. No contrary determination has been made with respect to this specific license amendment application. In light of the generic determination reflected in 10 CFR 2.1315, no public comments with respect to significant hazards considerations are being solicited, notwithstanding the general comment procedures contained in 10 CFR 50.91. The filing of requests for hearing and petitions for leave to intervene, and written comments with regard to the license transfer application, are discussed below. Within 20 days from the date of publication of this notice, any person whose interest may be affected by the Commission's action on the application may request a hearing and, if not the applicant, may petition for leave to intervene in a hearing proceeding on the Commission's action. Requests for a hearing and petitions for leave to intervene should be filed in accordance with the Commission's rules of practice set forth in Subpart C ``Rules of General Applicability: Hearing Requests, Petitions to Intervene, Availability of Documents, Selection of Specific Hearing Procedures, Presiding Officer Powers, and General Hearing Management for NRC Adjudicatory Hearings,'' of 10 CFR Part 2. In particular, such requests and petitions must comply with the requirements set forth in 10 CFR 2.309. Untimely requests and petitions may be denied, as provided in 10 CFR 2.309(c)(1), unless good cause for failure to file on time is established. In addition, an untimely request or petition should address the factors that the Commission will also consider, in reviewing untimely requests or petitions, set forth in 10 CFR 2.309(c)(1)(i)-(viii). Requests for a hearing and petitions for leave to intervene should be served upon Terence A. Burke, Associate General Counsel--Nuclear, Entergy Services, Inc., 1340 Echelon Parkway, Jackson MS 39213; the General Counsel, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001 (e-mail address for filings regarding license transfer cases only: OGCLT@NRC.gov); and the Secretary of the Commission, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, Attention: Rulemakings and Adjudications Staff, in accordance with 10 CFR 2.302 and 2.305. The Commission will issue a notice or order granting or denying a hearing request or intervention petition, designating the issues for any hearing that will be held and designating the Presiding Officer. A notice granting a hearing will be published in the Federal Register and served on the parties to the hearing. As an alternative to requests for hearing and petitions to intervene, within 30 days from the date of publication of this notice, persons may submit written comments regarding the license transfer application, as provided for in 10 CFR 2.1305. The Commission will consider and, if appropriate, respond to these comments, but such comments will not otherwise constitute part of the decisional record. Comments should be submitted to the Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, Attention: Rulemakings and Adjudications Staff, and should cite the publication date and page number of this Federal Register notice. For further details with respect to this action, see the application dated May 29, 2007, available for public inspection at the Commission's Public Document Room (PDR), located at One White Flint North, Public File Area O1 F21, 11555 Rockville Pike (first floor), Rockville, Maryland. Publicly available records will be accessible electronically from the Agencywide Documents Access and Management System's (ADAMS) Public Electronic Reading Room on the Internet at the NRC Web site, http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html. Persons who do not have access to ADAMS or who encounter problems in accessing the documents located in ADAMS should contact the NRC PDR Reference staff by telephone at 1-800-397-4209, or 301-415-4737 or by e-mail to pdr@nrc.gov. Dated at Rockville, Maryland this 2nd day of July, 2007. For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Bhalchandra Vaidya, Project Manager, Plant Licensing Branch IV, Division of Operating Reactor Licensing, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation. [FR Doc. E7-13259 Filed 7-6-07; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 14 NRC: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania: Draft NRC Staff Assessment of a Proposed Agreement Between the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania FR Doc E7-13262 [Federal Register: July 9, 2007 (Volume 72, Number 130)] [Notices] [Page 37268-37272] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr09jy07-104] NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission. ACTION: Notice of a proposed Agreement with the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. SUMMARY: By letter dated November 9, 2006, Governor Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania requested that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC or Commission) enter into an Agreement with the Commonwealth as authorized by Section 274 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended (Act). Under the proposed Agreement, the Commission would give up, and Pennsylvania would take over, portions of the Commission's regulatory authority exercised within the Commonwealth. As required by the Act, the NRC is publishing the proposed Agreement for public comment. The NRC is also publishing the summary of an assessment by the NRC staff of the Pennsylvania regulatory program. Comments are requested on the proposed Agreement, especially its effect on public health and safety. Comments are also requested on the draft NRC staff assessment, the adequacy of the Pennsylvania program, and the Commonwealth's program staff, as discussed in this notice. The proposed Agreement would release (exempt) persons who possess or use certain radioactive materials in Pennsylvania from portions of the Commission's regulatory authority. The Act requires that the NRC publish those exemptions. Notice is hereby given that the pertinent exemptions have been previously published in the Federal Register and are codified in the Commission's regulations as 10 CFR Part 150. DATES: The comment period expires July 18, 2007. Comments received after this date will be considered if it is practical to do so, but the Commission cannot assure consideration of comments received after the expiration date. ADDRESSES: Written comments may be submitted to Mr. Michael T. Lesar, Chief, Rulemaking, Directives and Editing Branch, Division of Administrative Services, Office of Administration, Washington, DC 20555-0001. Comments may be submitted electronically at nrcrep@nrc.gov. The NRC maintains an Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS), which provides text and image files of NRC's public documents. The documents may be accessed through the NRC's Public Electronic Reading Room on the Internet at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html. If you do not have access to ADAMS or if there are problems in accessing the documents located in ADAMS, contact the NRC Public Document Room (PDR) reference staff at (800) 397-4209, or (301) 415-4737, or by e-mail to pdr@nrc.gov. Copies of comments received by NRC may be examined at the NRC Public Document Room, 11555 Rockville Pike, Public File Area O-1-F21, Rockville, Maryland. Copies of the request for an Agreement by the Governor of Pennsylvania including all information and documentation submitted in support of the request, and copies of the full text of the NRC Draft Staff Assessment are also available for public inspection in the NRC's Public Document Room-ADAMS Accession Numbers: ML070240128, ML063400549, ML070240055, ML063330295, ML070290041, ML070290046, ML070260116, ML070260179, ML070260026, ML070260119, ML070250054, ML063400559, ML070790604, ML070790609, ML070790612, ML070790616, ML070790620, and ML070890378. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Mr. Andrew N. Mauer, Office of Federal and State Materials and Environmental Management Programs, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001. Telephone (301) 415- 3962 or e-mail to anm@nrc.gov. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Since Section 274 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended (Act) was added in 1959, the Commission has entered into Agreements with 34 States. The Agreement States currently regulate approximately 17,600 Agreement material licenses, while the NRC regulates approximately 4,400 licenses. Under the proposed Agreement, approximately 690 NRC licenses will transfer to Pennsylvania. The NRC periodically reviews the performance of the Agreement States to assure compliance with the provisions of Section 274. Section 274e requires that the terms of the proposed Agreement be published in the Federal Register for public comment once each week for four consecutive weeks. This notice is being published in fulfillment of the requirement. [[Page 37269]] I. Background (a) Section 274b of the Act provides the mechanism for a State to assume regulatory authority, from the NRC, over certain radioactive materials\1\ and activities that involve use of the materials. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ The radioactive materials, sometimes referred to as ``Agreement materials,'' are: (a) Byproduct materials as defined in Section 11e.(1) of the Act; (b) byproduct materials as defined in Section 11e.(3) of the Act; (c) byproduct materials as defined in Section 11e.(4) of the Act; (d) source materials as defined in Section 11z. of the Act; and (e) special nuclear materials as defined in Section 11aa. of the Act, restricted to quantities not sufficient to form a critical mass. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- In a letter dated November 9, 2006, Governor Rendell certified that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has a program for the control of radiation hazards that is adequate to protect public health and safety within Pennsylvania for the materials and activities specified in the proposed Agreement, and that the Commonwealth desires to assume regulatory responsibility for these materials and activities. Included with the letter was the text of the proposed Agreement, which is shown in Appendix A to this notice. The radioactive materials and activities (which together are usually referred to as the ``categories of materials'') that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania requests authority over are: (1) The possession and use of byproduct materials as defined in Section 11e.(1) of the Act; (2) The possession and use of byproduct materials as defined in Section 11e.(3) of the Act; (3) The possession and use of byproduct materials as defined in Section 11e.(4) of the Act; (4) The possession and use of source materials; (5) The possession and use of special nuclear materials in quantities not sufficient to form a critical mass; and (6) The regulation of the land disposal of: byproduct materials as defined in Section 11e.(1), 11e.(3), or 11e.(4) of the Act; source; or special nuclear waste materials received from other persons. (b) The proposed Agreement contains articles that: Specify the materials and activities over which authority is transferred; Specify the activities over which the Commission will retain regulatory authority; Continue the authority of the Commission to safeguard nuclear materials and restricted data; Commit the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and NRC to exchange information as necessary to maintain coordinated and compatible programs; Provide for the reciprocal recognition of licenses; Provide for the suspension or termination of the Agreement; and Specify the effective date of the proposed Agreement. The Commission reserves the option to modify the terms of the proposed Agreement in response to comments, to correct errors, and to make editorial changes. The final text of the Agreement, with the effective date, will be published after the Agreement is approved by the Commission, and signed by the NRC Chairman and the Governor of Pennsylvania. (c) The regulatory program is authorized by law under the Radiation Protection Act (35 P.S. Sec. Sec. 7110.101-7110.703). Section 7110.201 provides the authority for the Governor to enter into an Agreement with the Commission. Pennsylvania law contains provisions for the orderly transfer of regulatory authority over affected licensees from the NRC to the Commonwealth. After the effective date of the Agreement, licenses issued by NRC would continue in effect as Pennsylvania licenses until the licenses expire or are replaced by State-issued licenses. NRC licenses transferred to Pennsylvania which contain requirements for decommissioning and express an intent to terminate the license when decommissioning has been completed under a Commission- approved decommissioning plan will continue as Pennsylvania licenses and will be terminated by Pennsylvania when the Commission-approved decommissioning plan has been completed. Pennsylvania currently regulates the users of naturally-occurring and accelerator-produced radioactive materials. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct) expanded the Commission's regulatory authority over byproduct materials as defined in Sections 11e.(3) and 11e.(4) of the Act, to include certain naturally-occurring and accelerator-produced radioactive materials. On August 31, 2005, the Commission issued a time-limited waiver (70 FR 51581) of the EPAct requirements. Under the proposed Agreement, Pennsylvania would assume regulatory authority for these radioactive materials. Therefore, if the proposed Agreement is approved, the Commission would terminate the time-limited waiver in Pennsylvania coincident with the effective date of the Agreement. Also, a notification of waiver termination would be provided in the Federal Register for the final Agreement. (d) The NRC draft staff assessment finds that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Bureau of Radiation Protection of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection is adequate to protect public health and safety, and is compatible with the NRC program for the regulation of Agreement materials. II. Summary of the NRC Staff Assessment of the Pennsylvania Program for the Control of Agreement Materials The NRC staff has examined the Pennsylvania request for an Agreement with respect to the ability of the radiation control program to regulate Agreement materials. The examination was based on the Commission's policy statement ``Criteria for Guidance of States and NRC in Discontinuance of NRC Regulatory Authority and Assumption Thereof by States Through Agreement'' (46 FR 7540; January 23, 1981, as amended by policy statements published at 46 FR 36969; July 16, 1981 and at 48 FR 33376; July 21, 1983), and the Office of Federal and State Materials and Environmental Management Programs (FSME) Procedure SA-700, ``Processing an Agreement.'' (a) Organization and Personnel. The Agreement materials program will be located within the existing Bureau of Radiation Protection (BRP) of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP). The Bureau will be responsible for all regulatory activities related to the proposed Agreement. The educational requirements for the BRP staff members are specified in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania personnel position descriptions, and meet the NRC criteria with respect to formal education or combined education and experience requirements. All current staff members hold at least bachelor's degrees in physical or life sciences, or have a combination of education and experience at least equivalent to a bachelor's degree. Several staff members hold advanced degrees, and all have had additional training plus working experience in radiation protection. Supervisory level staff each have at least seven years working experience in radiation protection. The BRP performed and the NRC staff reviewed an analysis of the expected workload under the proposed Agreement. Based on the NRC staff review of the BRP's staff analysis, the BRP has an adequate number of staff to regulate radioactive materials under the [[Page 37270]] terms of the Agreement. The BRP will employ a staff with at least the equivalent of 17.2 full-time professional/technical and administrative employees for the Agreement materials program. Pennsylvania has indicated that the BRP has an adequate number of trained and qualified staff in place. Pennsylvania has developed qualification procedures for license reviewers and inspectors which are similar to the NRC's procedures. The technical staff are working with NRC license reviewers in the NRC Region I Office and accompanying NRC staff on inspections of NRC licensees in Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is also actively further supplementing their experience through direct meetings, discussions, and facility walk-downs with NRC licensees in Pennsylvania, and through self-study, in-house training, and formal training. In the course of the NRC staff's continued interactions with Pennsylvania, the NRC staff will confirm the assurances that Pennsylvania provided concerning having an adequate number of trained and qualified staff in place, based on Pennsylvania's staff needs analysis and qualification procedures. Specifically, the NRC staff will verify how BRP staff fit into the qualification process, which staff are qualified in certain areas, and the basis for the determinations. (b) Legislation and Regulations. In conjunction with the rulemaking authority vested in the Environmental Quality Board by Section 302 of the Pennsylvania Radiation Protection Act 1984-147, PADEP has the requisite authority to promulgate regulations for protection against radiation. The law provides PADEP the authority to issue licenses, issue orders, conduct inspections, and to enforce compliance with regulations, license conditions, and orders. Licensees are required to provide access to inspectors. The NRC staff verified that Pennsylvania adopted the relevant NRC regulations in 10 CFR parts 19, 20, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 39, 40, 70, 71, and 150 into Pennsylvania Code Title 25, Environmental Protection by reference. The NRC staff also verified that Pennsylvania adopted the relevant NRC regulations in 10 CFR part 61 into Pennsylvania Code Title 25, Environmental Protection. The NRC staff also approved an order to implement Increased Controls requirements for risk-significant radioactive materials for certain Pennsylvania licensees under the proposed Agreement. As a result of the renumbering of 10 CFR part 71 in 2004, Pennsylvania is proceeding with necessary revisions to their regulations to ensure compatibility, that will be effective by October 1, 2007. Therefore, on the proposed effective date of the Agreement, Pennsylvania will have adopted an adequate and compatible set of radiation protection regulations which apply to byproduct, source, and special nuclear materials in quantities not sufficient to form a critical mass. The NRC staff also verified that Pennsylvania will not attempt to enforce regulatory matters reserved to the Commission. (c) Storage and Disposal. Pennsylvania has also adopted by reference the NRC requirements for the storage of radioactive material and for the land disposal of radioactive material as waste. The waste disposal requirements cover both the disposal of waste generated by the licensee and the disposal of waste generated by and received from other persons. (d) Transportation of Radioactive Material. Pennsylvania has adopted the NRC regulations in 10 CFR part 71 by reference. Part 71 contains the requirements licensees must follow when preparing packages containing radioactive material for transport. Part 71 also contains requirements related to the licensing of packaging for use in transporting radioactive materials. Pennsylvania will not attempt to enforce portions of the regulations related to activities, such as approving packaging designs, which are reserved to NRC. (e) Recordkeeping and Incident Reporting. Pennsylvania has adopted by reference the Sections of the NRC regulations which specify requirements for licensees to keep records, and to report incidents or accidents involving materials. (f) Evaluation of License Applications. Pennsylvania has adopted by reference the NRC regulations that specify the requirements a person must meet to get a license to possess or use radioactive materials. Pennsylvania has also developed a licensing procedures manual, along with the accompanying regulatory guides, which are adapted from similar NRC documents and contain guidance for the program staff when evaluating license applications. (g) Inspections and Enforcement. Pennsylvania has adopted a schedule providing for the inspection of licensees as frequently as, or more frequently than, the inspection schedule used by the NRC. The program has adopted procedures for the conduct of inspections, reporting of inspection findings, and reporting inspection results to the licensees. Pennsylvania has also adopted procedures for the enforcement of regulatory requirements, and is authorized by law to enforce the State rules using a variety of sanctions, including the imposition and collection of civil penalties, and the issuance of orders to suspend, modify or revoke licenses, or to impound materials. (h) Regulatory Administration. Pennsylvania is bound by requirements specified in Commonwealth law for rulemaking, issuing licenses, and taking enforcement actions. The program has also adopted administrative procedures to assure fair and impartial treatment of license applicants. Pennsylvania law prescribes standards of ethical conduct for Commonwealth employees. (i) Cooperation with Other Agencies. Pennsylvania law deems the holder of an NRC license on the effective date of the proposed Agreement to possess a like license issued by Pennsylvania. The law provides that these former NRC licenses will expire either 90 days after receipt from the radiation control program of a notice of expiration of such license or on the date of expiration specified in the NRC license, whichever is later. In the case of NRC licenses that are terminated under restricted conditions required by 10 CFR 20.1403 prior to the effective date of the proposed Agreement, Pennsylvania deems the termination to be final despite any other provisions of Commonwealth law or rule. For NRC licenses that, on the effective date of the proposed Agreement, contain a license condition indicating intent to terminate the license upon completion of a Commission approved decommissioning plan, the transferred license will be terminated by Pennsylvania under the plan so long as the licensee conforms to the approved plan. Pennsylvania also provides for ``timely renewal.'' This provision affords the continuance of licenses for which an application for renewal has been filed more than 30 days prior to the date of expiration of the license. NRC licenses transferred while in timely renewal are included under the continuation provision. The Pennsylvania Code provides exemptions from the Commonwealth's requirements for licensing of sources of radiation for NRC and U.S. Department of Energy contractors or subcontractors. The proposed Agreement commits Pennsylvania to use its best efforts to cooperate with the NRC and the other Agreement States in the formulation of standards and regulatory programs for the protection against hazards of radiation, and to assure that Pennsylvania's program will continue to be compatible with the Commission's [[Page 37271]] program for the regulation of Agreement materials. The proposed Agreement stipulates the desirability of reciprocal recognition of licenses, and commits the Commission and Pennsylvania to use their best efforts to accord such reciprocity. III. Staff Conclusion Section 274d of the Act provides that the Commission shall enter into an agreement under Section 274b with any State if: (a) The Governor of the State certifies that the State has a program for the control of radiation hazards adequate to protect public health and safety with respect to the agreement materials within the State, and that the State desires to assume regulatory responsibility for the agreement materials; and (b) The Commission finds that the State program is in accordance with the requirements of Section 274o, and in all other respects compatible with the Commission's program for the regulation of materials, and that the State program is adequate to protect public health and safety with respect to the materials covered by the proposed Agreement. The NRC staff has reviewed the proposed Agreement, the certification by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the application for an Agreement submitted by Governor Rendell on November 9, 2006, and the supporting information provided by the staff of the Bureau of Radiation Protection of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, and concludes that, except as discussed above in Section II. ``Summary of the NRC Staff Assessment of the Pennsylvania Program for the Control of Agreement Materials,'' (a) ``Organization and Personnel,'' of this document, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania satisfies the criteria in the Commission's policy statement ``Criteria for Guidance of States and NRC in Discontinuance of NRC Regulatory Authority and Assumption Thereof by States Through Agreement,'' and therefore, meets the requirements of Section 274 of the Act. The proposed Pennsylvania program to regulate Agreement materials, as comprised of statutes, regulations, and procedures, is compatible with the program of the Commission and is adequate to protect public health and safety with respect to the materials covered by the proposed Agreement. With respect to discussion above in Section II. ``Summary of the NRC Staff Assessment of the Pennsylvania Program for the Control of Agreement Materials,'' (a) ``Organization and Personnel,'' once the NRC staff confirms the assurances provided by Pennsylvania concerning staff training and qualifications, the staff will be able to conclude that area is satisfied. Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 2nd day of July, 2007. For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Janet R. Schlueter, Director, Division of Materials Safety and State Agreements, Office of Federal and State Materials and Environmental Management Programs. Appendix A--An Agreement Between the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for the Discontinuance of Certain Commission Regulatory Authority and Responsibility Within the Commonwealth Pursuant to Section 274 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as Amended Whereas, The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (the Commission) is authorized under Section 274 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended, 42 U.S.C. 2011 et seq. (the Act), to enter into agreements with the Governor of any State/Commonwealth providing for discontinuance of the regulatory authority of the Commission within the Commonwealth under Chapters 6, 7, and 8, and Section 161 of the Act with respect to byproduct materials as defined in Sections 11e.(1), (3), and (4) of the Act, source materials, and special nuclear materials in quantities not sufficient to form a critical mass; and, Whereas, The Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is authorized under the Pennsylvania Radiation Protection Act, Act of July 10, 1984, Pub. L. 688, No. 147, as amended, 35 P.S. Sec. 7110.101 et seq., to enter into this Agreement with the Commission; and, Whereas, The Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania certified on November 8, 2006, that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (the Commonwealth) has a program for the control of radiation hazards adequate to protect public health and safety with respect to the materials within the Commonwealth covered by this Agreement, and that the Commonwealth desires to assume regulatory responsibility for such materials; and, Whereas, The Commission found on [date] that the program of the Commonwealth for the regulation of the materials covered by this Agreement is compatible with the Commission's program for the regulation of such materials and is adequate to protect public health and safety; and, Whereas, The Commonwealth and the Commission recognize the desirability and importance of cooperation between the Commission and the Commonwealth in the formulation of standards for protection against hazards of radiation and in assuring that Commonwealth and Commission programs for protection against hazards of radiation will be coordinated and compatible; and, Whereas, The Commission and the Commonwealth recognize the desirability of the reciprocal recognition of licenses, and of the granting of limited exemptions from licensing of those materials subject to this Agreement; and, Whereas, This Agreement is entered into pursuant to the provisions of the Act; Now, therefore, It is hereby agreed between the Commission and the Governor of the Commonwealth acting on behalf of the Commonwealth as follows: Article I Subject to the exceptions provided in Articles II, IV, and V, the Commission shall discontinue, as of the effective date of this Agreement, the regulatory authority of the Commission in the Commonwealth under Chapters 6, 7, and 8, and Section 161 of the Act with respect to the following materials: 1. Byproduct materials as defined in Section 11e.(1) of the Act; 2. Byproduct materials as defined in Section 11e.(3) of the Act; 3. Byproduct materials as defined in Section 11e.(4) of the Act; 4. Source materials; 5. Special nuclear materials in quantities not sufficient to form a critical mass; and 6. The regulation of the land disposal of all byproduct, source, and special nuclear waste materials covered by this Agreement. Article II This Agreement does not provide for discontinuance of any authority and the Commission shall retain authority and responsibility with respect to: 1. The regulation of the construction and operation of any production or utilization facility or any uranium enrichment facility; 2. The regulation of the export from or import into the United States of byproduct, source, or special nuclear material, or of any production or utilization facility; 3. The regulation of the disposal into the ocean or sea of byproduct, source, or special nuclear materials waste as defined in the regulations or orders of the Commission; 4. The regulation of the disposal of such other byproduct, source, or special nuclear materials waste as the Commission from time to time determines by regulation or order should, because of the hazards or potential hazards thereof, not be disposed without a license from the Commission; and 5. The evaluation of radiation safety information on sealed sources or devices containing byproduct, source, or special nuclear materials and the registration of the sealed sources or devices for distribution, as provided for in regulations or orders of the Commission. Article III With the exception of those activities identified in Article II.A.1 through 4, this Agreement may be amended, upon application by the Commonwealth and approval by the Commission, to include one or more of the additional activities specified in Article II, whereby the Commonwealth may then exert regulatory authority and responsibility with respect to those activities. [[Page 37272]] Article IV Notwithstanding this Agreement, the Commission may from time to time by rule, regulation, or order, require that the manufacturer, processor, or producer of any equipment, device, commodity, or other product containing source, byproduct, or special nuclear material shall not transfer possession or control of such product except pursuant to a license or an exemption from licensing issued by the Commission. Article V This Agreement shall not affect the authority of the Commission under Subsection 161b or 161i of the Act to issue rules, regulations, or orders to protect the common defense and security, to protect restricted data, or to guard against the loss or diversion of special nuclear material. Article VI The Commission will cooperate with the Commonwealth and other Agreement States in the formulation of standards and regulatory programs of the State and the Commission for protection against hazards of radiation and to assure that Commission and Commonwealth programs for protection against hazards of radiation will be coordinated and compatible. The Commonwealth agrees to cooperate with the Commission and other Agreement States in the formulation of standards and regulatory programs of the Commonwealth and the Commission for protection against hazards of radiation and to assure that the Commonwealth's program will continue to be compatible with the program of the Commission for the regulation of materials covered by this Agreement. The Commonwealth and the Commission agree to keep each other informed of proposed changes in their respective rules and regulations, and to provide each other the opportunity for early and substantive contribution to the proposed changes. The Commonwealth and the Commission agree to keep each other informed of events, accidents, and licensee performance that may have generic implication or otherwise be of regulatory interest. Article VII The Commission and the Commonwealth agree that it is desirable to provide reciprocal recognition of licenses for the materials listed in Article I licensed by the other party or by any other Agreement State. Accordingly, the Commission and the Commonwealth agree to develop appropriate rules, regulations, and procedures by which such reciprocity will be accorded. Article VIII The Commission, upon its own initiative after reasonable notice and opportunity for hearing to the Commonwealth, or upon request of the Governor of the Commonwealth, may terminate or suspend all or part of this agreement and reassert the licensing and regulatory authority vested in it under the Act if the Commission finds that (1) Such termination or suspension is required to protect public health and safety, or (2) the Commonwealth has not complied with one or more of the requirements of Section 274 of the Act. The Commission may also, pursuant to Section 274j of the Act, temporarily suspend all or part of this agreement if, in the judgment of the Commission, an emergency situation exists requiring immediate action to protect public health and safety and the Commonwealth has failed to take necessary steps. The Commission shall periodically review actions taken by the Commonwealth under this Agreement to ensure compliance with Section 274 of the Act which requires a Commonwealth program to be adequate to protect public health and safety with respect to the materials covered by this Agreement and to be compatible with the Commission's program. Article IX This Agreement shall become effective on [date], and shall remain in effect unless and until such time as it is terminated pursuant to Article VIII. Done at [City, State] this [date] day of [month], [year]. For the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Dale E. Klein, Chairman. For The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Edward G. Rendell, Governor. [FR Doc. E7-13262 Filed 7-6-07; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 15 Reuters: Finland's nuclear plans lure political visitors Sun Jul 8, 2007 8:15PM EDT By Sami Torma OLKILUOTO, Finland (Reuters) - The road to this island on Finland's western coast winds through pristine fields and forests, an idyllic place for a cottage by the shore -- if you ignore the heavy-duty power lines overhead. The nuclear plant they lead to is at the frontier of European efforts to fight climate change while also meeting demand from Finland's energy-hungry industry. Alongside two existing reactors, industry-controlled utility Teollisuuden Voima (TVO) is building a third in a bid to meet European Union carbon dioxide reduction targets and feed a growing economy -- a rare new nuclear project in largely nuclear-skeptical Western Europe. In a little more than a decade there could be two to three new reactors, despite Environment Minister Paula Lehtomaki joining environmental groups in expressing alarm at what she sees as a growing acceptance of nuclear power as an environmentally friendly alternative to other forms of energy. "We have become somewhat of a tourist attraction. High level (foreign) politicians are meeting me weekly, keen to hear how we are doing," said Jukka Laaksonen, head of Finland's nuclear watchdog STUK, overseeing the construction in Olkiluoto. After an almost two-decade moratorium on building new reactors in much of Western Europe following the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, political debate on reviving nuclear energy has renewed in countries such as Britain. German industry has been hoping to reopen discussion about nuclear power but Chancellor Angela Merkel is bound to a deal to phase out nuclear energy in the country by the 2020. In Finland, half a dozen municipalities have responded to the most recent plans to build more new reactors saying they would be keen to host one in the hunt for jobs and tax revenue. Among the newer EU members there are nuclear projects ongoing in Bulgaria and Romania, while Russia and Ukraine are between them building nine new plants. Continued... ***************************************************************** 16 Reuters: Energy obese UK could be emissions-free by 2027 Mon Jul 9, 2007 1:54PM EDT By Michael Szabo LONDON (Reuters) - Forget about Britain's plan to reduce emissions 60 percent by 2050. According to a radical new strategy released on Monday, the country could be completely carbon-free within two decades. Zerocarbonbritain, the first strategy to propose eliminating carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, advocates a series of drastic measures, such as limiting domestic flights to emergency use, that would make an "Island Britain" self-sufficient in energy. The result would be to abolish Britain's CO2 emissions, which trap the sun's heat in the earth's atmosphere, by 2027. "The UK government's (current target) is well ahead of its peers, but still falls far short of what is known to be needed," Tim Helweg-Larsen, one of the authors of the report commissioned by Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) in Wales. "We've concluded from the climate science that we ought to be at zero emissions from fossil fuels very soon, if not already... this is an emergency situation," he added. The report says that years of cheap, abundant fossil fuels have led to highly wasteful practices and attitudes, making Britain "energy obese" by using far more energy than is actually required to deliver well-being. Whereas other solutions have placed emphasis on the need for nuclear power, which produces very low emissions, the report's authors believe energy demand could be cut by 50 percent. That would allow the country to rely solely on indigenous renewable resources such as wind, tidal, solar, biomass and hydroelectricity. Eleven percent of Britain's electricity demand, or the equivalent to what is currently supplied by nuclear power, can be met by tidal energy alone, the report said. CONTRACTION AND CONVERGENCE The strategy also relies on a framework of contraction and convergence (C&C), whereby a national CO2 cap is agreed followed by a progressive contraction to zero emissions by 2027. Similar to the European Union's emissions trading scheme, Britain's total allocation would be translated into Tradeable Energy Quotas (TEQs), each representing one kilogram of CO2. Under the proposal, TEQs would become a sort of parallel currency, with 40 percent distributed free to households while the remaining 60 percent would be auctioned to businesses. A portion of the proceeds would go to assist the poorest households in switching to energy efficient appliances. Zerocarbonbritain also advocates improvements to rail and bus services, expansion in cycle lanes and pedestrian facilities, and limiting air travel. A switch to electric-powered cars would also facilitate the introduction of a vehicle-to-grid system, where drivers plug in and either feed from or contribute to the national power grid. The study calculates that the nation's 27 millions cars, replaced entirely by electric vehicles with an average battery capacity of 15kW, could generate enough power to supply UK's power needs more than ten times over. A large reduction in livestock of 60 percent or more is also required, which would cause a major shift in the nation's landscape and eating habits. Reforestation and biomass plant cultivation will replace grazing pastures, while more fruit and vegetable will replace much of the meat, fish and dairy to which Britons have become accustomed, the report added. The proposal concludes by suggesting a national strategy be developed in harmony with those of other nations. "Poland has a large resource of grain but little opportunity for renewable energy generation... Scandinavia has forestry biomass and Spain has sun. All could be traded," the report said. "Although this is a strategy for Britain, it is necessarily also part of an international process," Helweg-Larsen added. ***************************************************************** 17 Reuters: GE-Hitachi prep for 'reemergence' of nuclear power Mon Jul 9, 2007 1:31PM EDT By Scott Malone NEW YORK, July 9 (Reuters) - As many as five new nuclear power plants could be built in the world each year if an expected "nuclear renaissance" materializes over the next decade, General Electric Co. (GE.N: Quote, Profile, Research) executives said on Monday. Much of that demand will come from the United States, where nuclear power produces about 20 percent of the electricity supply, but no new plants have been commissioned in about three decades. It will be further boosted by rising demand in Asia, including China and India, GE officials said. "This is an industry that really is reemerging after decades of not being in strong production," said Jeff Immelt, chairman and chief executive of the U.S. conglomerate. "Nuclear energy has become of higher interest, clearly, today with higher energy costs. Already much of the rest of the world has moved aggressively." GE and Japan's Hitachi Ltd. (6501.T: Quote, Profile, Research) in November agreed to pool their nuclear units into a $2 billion operation that they hope will capture more contracts as power suppliers prepare to build a new generation of plants. They are bidding to build a $4.9 billion nuclear power plant for merchant power company NRG Energy Inc. (NRG.N: Quote, Profile, Research) in Texas, though Toshiba Corp. (6502.T: Quote, Profile, Research) is also in the running. As the roughly 100 nuclear power plants in the United States start to approach the end of their lifespans, power companies will need to invest in more such facilities, GE and Hitachi executives told reporters in New York. "We are coming together at the right time, at the right place and in the right circumstances," said Masaharu Hanyu, president of Hitachi-GE Nuclear Energy, which focuses on Japan. FISSION OR FOSSIL FUELS Nuclear energy is looking more appealing to power executives due to the rising cost of rival fuels such as natural gas, as well as a desire in many countries to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases, which are linked to climate change and released by burning fossil fuels, GE and Hitachi executives said. They are not alone in predicting new demand for nuclear power. U.S. President George W. Bush said in June that new nuclear plants would be key to keeping up with growing electricity demand without driving more global warming, and a May report from the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change said that nuclear power could be in the arsenal of tools to fight climate change. But other reports from U.S. and international groups in recent months questioned whether it would be reasonable to build the dozens of new nuclear plants that would be needed to significantly offset reliance on fossil fuels. No new nuclear plants are likely to begin operation in the United States until 2015 at the earliest, said Andy White, president and CEO of GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy, which focuses on nuclear business outside Japan. "This is not going to be 10 to 20 plants overnight," White said, noting that GE's nuclear revenues are growing by about 10 percent per year. "This is going to be two or three per year from a U.S. perspective and then maybe one or two overseas." While nuclear power has re-attracted the attention of many in Washington and the industry, an open question remains whether the U.S. public is ready for new plants, GE officials acknowledged. While the nuclear plants do not release significant quantities of carbon dioxide, they do produce radioactive waste that is dangerous to people and must be safely stored for long periods of time. Immelt said the factor that would most boost demand for nuclear plants in the United States would be the imposition of a tax or fee system to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. "We're not naive about how this changes over time," said Immelt. "It's hard to believe simultaneously in energy security and reduction in greenhouse gas emissions without believing in nuclear power. It's just intellectually dishonest." ***************************************************************** 18 Telegraph: Atomic reactor plans win approval By Katherine Griffiths Last Updated: 1:02am BST 09/07/2007 Four companies have been given the green light for their reactor designs, moving construction of new nuclear power stations in the UK a step closer. Gordon Brown confirmed his support for atomic energy during his first Prime Minister's Questions Areva, the largest reactor maker in the world, has received approval from the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, along with Westinghouse, owned by Japan's Toshiba, and US giant General Electric. Canada's AECL has also won approval. Sources close to the nuclear industry said the real competition to win the potentially multi-billion pound work was now on. They added the strongest contenders were Areva, Westinghouse and GE. Winning approval on nuclear reactor design is the first step in the lengthy process that most energy experts believe will lead to anything between one and seven new reactors being built in the UK. The Government under Tony Blair made clear its support for new power stations to replace Britain's ageing facilities, which will be decommissioned over time. Gordon Brown confirmed his support for atomic energy during his first Prime Minister's Questions last week. He said last year's disruption to the supply of Russian gas via Ukraine "should make it clear to everyone that we cannot rely on an energy policy that makes us wholly dependent on one or two countries or one or two regions around the world". Mr Brown added that this is why the UK's energy supply is "best safeguarded by building a new generation of nuclear power stations." Yet the nuclear industry is in an unusual situation because the Government has not formally endorsed new nuclear building. Greenpeace won a judicial review of the Government's nuclear policy in February, which has forced a formal consultation on the value of nuclear power. The process is due to be wrapped up in October. While few doubt the Government will conclude more power stations will be built, companies are having to put time and money into positioning themselves for the work with no certainty it will happen. Sources said the cost of the reactor design pre-licensing process could be as much as £10m. Nuclear insiders said their position will become more difficult in the next few months because building reactors is a very long and complex process. Certain parts can take years to make, so have to be ordered early. While the cost of pre-licensing is relatively small for the size of the companies involved, ordering parts can run into hundreds of millions. "There is going to be a long-lead material issue by September," one source said. The reactor makers, known in the industry as "vendors", will team up with utility companies to generate and supply the power to customers. Utilities most interested in nuclear new build are EDF, which operates London Electricity, Germany's E.ON, which owns Powergen, and RWE, which operates the npower brand. Publishers wishing to reproduce photographs on this page should phone 44 (0) 207 931 2921 or email syndication@telegraph.co.uk © Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2007. | Terms ***************************************************************** 19 Bloomberg.com: New Reactor Costs Daunt U.S. Utilities as TVA Restarts Old Unit Updated: New York, Jul 10 00:03 By Elliot Blair Smith TVA's nuclear reactor at Browns Ferry, Alabama July 9 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush plunged into the cotton fields of northern Alabama last month to fete the restart of the Tennessee Valley Authority's oldest, most troubled nuclear reactor after a $1.8 billion renovation. ``We want to start building plants,'' said Bush, whose administration is promoting loan guarantees and tax breaks to get the first new U.S. reactors constructed since 1996. U.S. electricity producers aren't leaping to embrace that vision. Bankers and their utility clients are demanding more generous loan guarantees than the Bush administration is offering. And consumers probably will have to pay more for power to make the $4 billion needed to build each new reactor a worthwhile investment. ``It's a whopping amount of money,'' says Rob Graber, vice president of EnergyPath Corp., an energy consulting firm. Far more than safety and environmental concerns, the biggest hurdle to fulfilling Bush's ambition to build the equivalent of three new nuclear plants a year by 2015 is money. U.S. utilities will have to invest about $350 billion by 2025 to satisfy the country's growing appetite for electricity, according to Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a Cambridge, Massachusetts, consultant. At a time when the Nuclear Energy Institute, a Washington trade group, is heralding a ``nuclear renaissance,'' TVA is alone in executing the objective. Of the 16 U.S. electricity producers that have told the government they are interested in building new nuclear plants, none has committed to the projects. Challenges The challenges TVA faced at Browns Ferry, a former stagecoach crossing 11 miles (18 kilometers) southwest of Athens, Alabama, demonstrate how difficult it will be to relaunch the U.S. nuclear power industry. The tasks range from lining up billions of dollars in financing to securing scarce components in a manufacturing sector decimated decades ago, and hiring and training a new generation of skilled workers at a time when about one-third of the industry's existing workforce is close to retirement. Yet, now that TVA has finished the overhaul of its Browns Ferry Unit One reactor, which is generating enough electricity to light 650,000 homes, the company is already looking to build or complete three other reactors it abandoned in the 1980s. U.S. nuclear power utilities have scared away investors ever since the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island plant near Middletown, Pennsylvania. These days, the overwhelming stumbling block is that it costs about 28 percent more to build a new nuclear plant than the value Wall Street assigns to existing reactors. New Versus Old Investment banking consultant Gary L. Hunt, president of Global Energy Advisors in Sacramento, California, estimates the cost of building a plant at $2,214 per kilowatt of generating capacity. The market places a value of $1,730 per kilowatt of generating capacity on currently operating reactors, he says. TVA's renovation of Browns Ferry Unit One was attractive because it retooled an old reactor for just $1,558 per kilowatt. By comparison, traditional coal-fired plants cost $2,022 per kilowatt to build, Hunt says. And Congress is considering clean-air legislation that would add about $500 per kilowatt to the cost of those conventional coal plants. Because nuclear power runs on uranium, it doesn't emit the greenhouse gases associated with carbon-emitting coal. Its disadvantage is producing permanent stores of radioactive waste. To satisfy an estimated 40 percent increase in U.S. electricity demand by 2025, the Bush administration is promoting nuclear power's development with tax credits, loan guarantees and a streamlined regulatory review process. Higher Rates Several state governments in the south -- Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and South Carolina -- have assured utilities they will be able to recapture the costs of new nuclear plants through higher electricity rates, says Mary Quillian, director of business and environmental policy at the Nuclear Energy Institute. James Curtiss, an energy lawyer at the Washington law firm Winston & Strawn LLP, predicts that applications to build and license the new reactors will start coming in to the government overseer, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or NRC, at the pace of about one a month beginning in the fourth quarter. That would surpass the peak of applications in the 1970s. Still, bankers and utility executives say more incentives are necessary to make the projects viable. That is because $3 of nuclear power-generating assets -- reactors hooked up to steam generators -- are needed to produce $1 of revenue, making it the most capital intensive of all major industries, according to Cambridge Energy Research Associates. Loan Guarantees In March, five bankers told U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman -- who accompanied Bush to Browns Ferry -- that the administration's offer to support new plant development with loan guarantees covering 72 percent of a reactor's construction costs should be increased to 80 percent. In a letter, energy partners at Goldman, Sachs & Co., Citigroup Global Markets Inc., Credit Suisse Securities LLC, Lehman Brothers Inc. and Morgan Stanley told Bodman that without the added concession it wouldn't be possible to raise financing for new nuclear plants ``on commercially reasonable terms.'' Democrats' hold on Congress, meantime, has taken some steam out of the nuclear lobby. ``It is not unqualified or unambiguous support we are enjoying,'' says the Nuclear Energy Institute's chief executive officer, Frank L. ``Skip'' Bowman. Morgan Stanley Executive Director Caren Byrd says political consensus may not emerge until after the 2008 presidential election: ``Both parties -- certainly the Democrats -- are concerned about the environment. But I don't see a lot of Democrats pounding the table of new nuclear yet.'' Shift to Customer Government backing is necessary, says Goldman Managing Director John Gilbertson, a signatory on the bankers' letter to Bodman. ``Nobody can have confidence now that when the bell rings and the time comes to go raise the money that they'll find it,'' he says. Government incentives are too generous already, says Peter Bradford, an NRC commissioner from 1977 to 1982. Now a critic of nuclear power, he says the state and federal programs to promote a nuclear revival shift investment risks from the utilities to consumers and taxpayers. ``The reforms of the '80s said, `Let's put the risk on the utilities and the builders because they're in charge of managing these projects and are in a position to assess and manage the risk,''' Bradford says. ``What's offensive about what's happening now is Congress and the state legislatures are doing it in much the opposite direction.'' $300 Million New TVA, with its headquarters in Knoxville, Tennessee, was created by Congress in 1933 as a self-regulated utility and development corporation to produce jobs and electricity in the rural South. Today, TVA is the largest U.S. power producer, serving 8.7 million people in seven states. ``It really broke a mold of what we call total poverty,'' says sketch artist James Croley Smith, 83, of Athens, Alabama, who remembers life without electricity before TVA changed the landscape in the seven states the Tennessee River traverses. TVA began building the Browns Ferry plant in 1967. It completed Unit One in 1974 for $300 million. At the time, TVA was promoting plans to build 17 reactors to contend with forecasts for rising energy costs and fast- growing demand -- a scenario much like today's. It completed only six, including three reactors at Browns Ferry, while spending $10.9 billion on 11 unfinished projects. $3.3 Billion Debt The debacle almost led to TVA's insolvency and saddled it with $3.3 billion in debt still on its balance sheet. The last U.S. nuclear plant completed was TVA's Watts Bar I reactor in Spring City, Tennessee. It was finished in 1996 for $6.9 billion, after a quarter-century of management missteps, shifting regulations and spiraling costs. During those years, TVA spent $1.8 billion on a second, uncompleted reactor at Spring City and about $4 billion on another uncompleted reactor in Hollywood, Alabama. Meanwhile, danger signs dogged its existing fleet. A fire at Browns Ferry Unit One in March 1975 -- caused by an electrician working with a candle -- burned out of control for almost seven hours. The reactor, then only eight months old, was closed for 1 1/2 years. From 1980 to 1985, the NRC assessed TVA's nuclear fleet with more than 1,000 regulatory violations. `A Certain Arrogance' In March 1985, TVA closed the Browns Ferry plant due to safety concerns that temporarily sidelined its entire fleet of reactors and prompted it to abandon the costliest nuclear energy building program in U.S. history. The NRC says 28 U.S. nuclear plants have shut since the 1960s, 16 are being decommissioned and 97 were canceled before completion. Craven Crowell, TVA's chairman from 1993 to 2001, says hubris brought on the government enterprise's ills. ``There was a certain arrogance at TVA that `We can do anything, we can build anything': `We've harnessed a river, we've built carbon plants, and there's nothing different about how a nuclear plant boils water,''' Crowell says. ``It took until the mid-80s until people realized there had to be a different approach to how people managed the nuclear program.'' Today, Ashok Bhatnagar, 51, TVA's senior vice president of nuclear development, defends the decision to rehabilitate the 1960s-era Browns Ferry reactor. ``These are very robust designs,'' he says. ``And there is so much experience built in over the years, you can't discount what the experience is worth to you.'' Latest Technology Andrew C. White, who runs nuclear operations for General Electric Co., says the refurbished unit is fully modern. General Electric designed the original Browns Ferry reactor and performed $170 million in renovation work on it. ``This has probably brought in all the latest and greatest technology, fuel, instrumentation and technology that we have today for an existing plant,'' White says. Yet building nuclear reactors will remain challenging, as revealed by TVA's efforts to secure the scarce components -- which took it from Brazil to Japan -- and the skilled personnel it needed to bring back the Browns Ferry reactor. The Nuclear Energy Institute estimates that only about 10 percent of the U.S. manufacturing capacity that existed to build the current generation of nuclear reactors remains. Most companies that produced the heavy steel forgings, cables, pumps and valves that went into U.S. reactors in the 1960s and 1970s have since been acquired by non-U.S. companies or folded, making parts hard to find and expensive. Lost Infrastructure Former TVA Chief Nuclear Officer Oliver Kingsley says, ``I don't believe the United States is really ready to start the new construction of nuclear reactors. We've lost our previous infrastructure, and it wasn't too good.'' Thomas Retson, president of EnergyPath in Wilmington, North Carolina, takes a more hopeful view. ``The entire supply chain has been weakened over the years,'' he says. ``This project has brought back into the game the functionalities, some of which had gone dormant.'' The Browns Ferry restoration also cost federal regulators more than 60,000 hours of review time over five years. The restoration was replete with surprises, from welding defects to an unexpected shutdown of the reactor during testing in June. ``It's absurd,'' says Faith Young, a Hartsville, Tennessee, environmental activist who has opposed TVA's nuclear program since the 1970s. ``I think they learned no lessons.'' `Massive Undertaking' NRC Chairman Dale E. Klein responds that the time and care taken shows how much has been learned. ``What I hope Browns Ferry does is give the public and industry confidence in the NRC,'' Klein says. ``This was a massive undertaking.'' TVA will have to continue to expand. Peak demand for its electricity is increasing by 1.9 percent a year, resulting in the need for new generating capacity comparable to Browns Ferry Unit One every 20 months. TVA CEO Tom Kilgore told his board May 31 that the enterprise will have to buy $1.06 billion of power on the open market this year to cover its generating shortfall. The situation is heightened by a drought in the Tennessee Valley that has reduced by 50 percent TVA's river-based hydro- electric generation, its cheapest energy source. ``We need to be self sufficient,'' Kilgore said. The CEO told his board he would like to finish the uncompleted Spring City reactor by 2013, if cost studies support the project. Some TVA managers, contractors and government inspectors already have moved from Browns Ferry to Spring City. Kilgore said TVA also is considering whether to build two reactors by 2019 at its Hollywood, Alabama, site. Financial Stretch Even the Browns Ferry renovation was a financial stretch. TVA funded the project in part by borrowing $1.3 billion against its gas-fired turbine generators and other equipment. It also raised cash through the pre-sale of $1.5 billion in electricity, at about a 1 percent discount, to its largest customer, the city-owned Memphis Light, Gas and Water utility. TVA's Bhatnagar says the Browns Ferry restart will pay for itself in five years. ``We've shown the value of nuclear once again as a good source of energy for the country,'' he says. Within the nuclear power industry, TVA's example is seen as a symbol of progress that others may follow. ``They did go procure nuclear-grade materials on a global scale,'' says Randy Hutchinson, senior vice president of nuclear development at New Orleans-based Entergy Corp., which is considering building two nuclear plants, in Louisiana and Mississippi. ``They were able to go out, and -- even though it was difficult -- to marshal a workforce to do this. ``They brought a nuclear plant that had been shut down for a number of years -- that everybody in the industry thought would never restart -- and they started it,'' he says. To contact the reporter on this story: Elliot Blair Smith in Athens, Alabama at esmith29@bloomberg.net ***************************************************************** 20 OpEdNews: Mister Big Nuke Company CEO, We've Gotta Talk... July 9, 2007 at 12:24:23 by Eileen McCabe http://www.opednews.com So y'all are making some pretty extraordinary profits lately. Even so. You've been required to pay into a money pit for 2 decades. You're allowed to pass this on to ratepayers, but it's still impacting your bottom line. You know and I know Yucca Mountain is never going to open. You are wisely moving forward with on-site storage, and I see good faith efforts being made to work with local communities. You are, of course limited by the NRC regulations which generally don't see local communities as having a voice in approving or rejecting on-site storage. The growing recognition of the necessity of these facilities is going to be a factor in getting any future plants built, as communities focus on this an environmental risk and terrorist threat. It's also costing a pretty penny to build the facilities, and of course, you're still paying into the Waste Fund. You make regular contributions to senators and congress people, to see that your interests are looked after, and I think you'd have to agree that this money has been well spent. Let's think about your interests for a moment. In many of the states where you do business, Renewable Portfolio Standards have been passed, which require you to produce a percentage of your power output from renewables. You are meeting this challenge, and already have sizable investments in wind and solar installations. How are these investments looking next to your nuclear holdings? Even with subsidies, and a cap on liability through the Price-Anderson Act, your capital expenses, decommissioning costs, and the volatility of the uranium market must be keeping you up at night. What does it cost to decommission a wind turbine? You can sell the steel for scrap, and actually recover some of your initial outlay. Let's stop the bleeding. It's at best disingenuous, and at worst, theft to keep charging you for Yucca Mountain. It isn't going to happen. It's a political stalemate. It's also a budget drain, since it's been a long time since the Waste Fund actually covered Yucca Mountain as a line item. So. Let's start lobbying your Senators and representatives to change the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to abolish the Waste Fund. Further, let's assess what you have paid thus far. Second, let's acknowledge the reality that on-site storage is already happening, and has industry approval, and change the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to reflect this. Third, let's determine a fair payment back to you for your outlay towards a project the federal government will never be able to deliver. Fourth, let's formally shut down Yucca Mountain. Budget for expenses to close down and remediate the site, but take remaining budget amounts and put them towards paying back Waste Fund expenditures. Fifth, since eliminating the budget line item for Yucca Mountain is probably not going to be enough to pay back the nuclear power companies, we need to figure out another source for these funds. Here's the catch: we recognize that you need to be made financially whole for your outlay, but some of this funding will have to come from budget lines currently dedicated to subsidies for nuclear power. Sixth, we both lobby for extending renewable energy credits instead of sunsetting then every couple of years. This will protect your renewable investments, and encourage healthy competition and research and development. Your Return on Investment is much higher from renewables, anyway. The cutting edge is currently held by Denmark, Spain and Japan. As a nation (and a business sector), are we content to surrender the technological upper hand in these growing industries? With more federal investment, The Xcels, Exelons and Entergy's would be able to compete with the Vestas, Gamesas and Kyoceras in wind and solar. Fair? We'll need to get on the phone to our congress people and committee contacts. I'll work on the constituent political cover, you work on letting them know it's in your business interests, and their political interests to move on this. Chew on this a bit, while I buy the next round. Copyright © OpEdNews, 2002-2007 ***************************************************************** 21 NRC: Speech - 07-032 - "Openness and Transparency: The Road to Public Confidence," Gregory B. Jaczko, Commissioner US Nuclear Regulatory Commission OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-0001 E-mail: opa@nrc.gov Web Site: Public Affairs Web Site Prepared Remarks for The Honorable Gregory B. Jaczko Commissioner U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Nuclear Energy Agency Workshop on the Transparency of Nuclear Regulatory Activities Tokyo, Japan May 22, 2007 Thank you, Dr. Storey and I appreciate the opportunity to chair the first session of this very important workshop. We will have some very interesting discussions from the three people who will be talking today and we are very honored to have a facilitator with the background that Professor Masaharu Kitamura has. I would like to say just a few remarks about my thoughts on the topic of transparency before I turn it over to each of the speakers. About three months after I became a Commissioner, I was invited to give a talk at the Regulatory Information Conference, which is the big annual conference the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission hosts. Many of you, I know, have participated in that conference, and we certainly appreciate that. One of the issues I thought a lot about at that time was the importance of public confidence and public confidence in the work that we do. Being new to the Commission I talked to some of my fellow Commissioners to get their insights on public confidence. One of the things that they told me was that it is very difficult for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission or any regulatory agency to control public confidence. Public confidence is not something that we license. It is not something that we regulate, so it is very difficult sometimes for a regulatory body to demand public confidence. So I thought about that and listening to some of the things that were said earlier this morning by many of the speakers, it was clear that the thought process that has developed for these workshops was very similar to the thought process that I went through. That is, to break down the idea of public confidence and identify the components that allow a regulatory body to have an influence. While we may not ultimately be able to control and dictate public confidence, in the end, regulatory bodies can do things to improve and instill public confidence in their decisions. There are several key components to public confidence. One of them is openness, and another is transparency. When I gave that talk two years ago, I tried to focus on distinguishing those two things because they are very different. Openness from the perspective of the United States and from a regulatory body involves the idea of access to information. We have a large number of statutory responsibilities that dictate how we provide information to the public about the actions and the activities that we undergo. I believe openness is an easy thing for a regulatory body to control. We can measure it. We can determine how well we're doing it-- providing information to the public. But providing information is just the first part. It is the second part which goes a long way toward public confidence, and I look forward to hearing from the other speakers about their ideas about what transparency means. For me transparency means clearly explaining the decision-making process and how we use the information that we have. Both of those things are crucial for the public to understand the conclusions in the decisions that we make. Not only does the public need to have access to the same information that we have, but they have to have access to understand the decision-making process we use as a regulatory body. And that is really where transparency comes in. So that is a little bit of my thoughts of what transparency is and I just want to touch on a few examples of why I believe it is such an important issue. With many of the things that we do in the regulation of nuclear power, these issues are never new. Some of them are issues that go back very far and that others at the NRC have touched on in different ways. I have to credit some of this going back to Chairman Ivan Selin, who in the early 1990s, stated that the NRC should increase its “efforts to reach out to the public at large to recognize how important public credibility is to the achievement of its regulatory goals." That was something that was said in the early '90s and it's something that we continue to work on now as an agency and as a regulatory body. Transparency and openness really go hand in hand towards the NRC achieving public credibility and public acceptance of decisions that we make. There are several recent examples of where we lack some of that public trust and public confidence and it has, in fact, created more work and more effort on the part of the agency. One issue, which I believe will be addressed a little bit later by one of the other speakers, has to do with releases of tritium-contaminated water at several facilities in the United States. None of the releases was a threat to public health and safety. Some of the releases at some facilities are no unusual and are on-going. Yet, there was tremendous public outcry in many communities about these releases. Communities that previously had been very supportive of the nuclear facilities were now raising serious questions about the performance of those facilities. The interesting aspect that really touches on the issues of public credibility and ultimately then transparency was the public's reaction to the NRC's response. When the NRC made very strong statements that these were not threats to public health and safety, the public did not immediately accept those explanations. Therein laid the challenge. We now, as an agency, not only had to do a tremendous effort to get the public to be comfortable with our decisions, we then had to educate the public about the implications of tritium contamination. This is where it is so important for the agency to make sure that we continue to maintain credibility. This issue was resolved really by the industry initiating a program to monitor groundwater contamination or groundwater releases in a much more rigorous manner. That ultimately was the answer about openness and transparency. So nothing really changed from our perspective in terms of how we regulated these releases. We did not change any regulatory safety thresholds for releases of tritium. We didn't make any changes that had an impact on public health and safety. But the kinds of changes we made had to do with the issues of credibility, with openness and transparency. The agency itself made some changes. We underwent some examinations of this issue and we, in fact, reinstated a practice of publishing information about releases of this kind so that people would be made more aware of them. They may happen on a somewhat regular basis, but that does not pose, in our view, a public health and safety risk. Crucial again to that was the issue of transparency. The public needed to understand the process of how we reviewed and monitored releases from nuclear power plants. And that's where the transparency aspect came in. So that was a very specific example of something that happened since I have been a Commissioner that really tested the issues of trust and faith. In the current era, openness and transparency are extremely important. We live in an age now where information access is very easy, with the Internet. People can learn a lot about nuclear power plants. They can learn a lot about the facilities that we regulate. And sometimes that information is accurate. Sometimes it's not accurate. It’s certainly important from an openness standpoint that the agency is providing so much information because we have been entrusted by our government and ultimately by the American people to be shepherds of that information. The other important issue that was touched upon earlier was the issue of security, which in the United States has been a very important issue. And it is there that transparency and openness have been extremely important, because in security space or for security issues, we cannot be as open with information. We cannot provide details of security plans for facilities. We cannot provide details of threat information, except to specifically cleared individuals. But what we can do is be transparent about how we're using that information in the decision-making process. That is again where the distinction between openness and transparency becomes so important and where we begin to have to rely on trust. The public has to trust the information that we have as accurate and reliable and they have to then have confidence in our decision and in our analysis of that information. That is where transparency is so important. To conclude, one thing that is important to keep in mind, and is perhaps a workshop in and of itself, is the term that we use in this kind of a context which is the “public.” I have given many speeches and I always like to talk about the public. I've heard many people just in this morning's session talk about the public, and I suspect that we'll hear from the speakers in this particular session about the public. The public, of course, is a very, very broad group. In fact, to some extent it's everyone. It includes the people who work at our agency. It includes me and it includes my mother, my father, my sister, as well as other members of my family. It includes the licensees. It includes a very important stakeholder for us, the Members of Congress. Each of these different members of the public has different expectations about openness, about transparency. One of the biggest challenges is making sure that we work to find out who the most important and most influential members of the public are going to be on any issue. Sometimes those members of the public don't present themselves and we have to find them. And that is one of the challenges that we face as regulatory bodies in moving forward. It would be helpful as we go forward to keep in the back of our minds who we're talking about with the public, who are the customers for this information, and who are the customers for the transparency that we seek. In some cases that will be different in different countries. In some cases it will be different for different issues, but it is certainly an important issue that is crucial to really getting the issue of transparency correct. NRC speeches are available through a free list serve subscription at the following Web address: http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/listserver.html. The NRC homepage at www.nrc.gov also offers a SUBSCRIBE link. E-mail notifications are sent to subscribers when speeches are posted to NRC's Web site. Monday, July 09, 2007 ***************************************************************** 22 RIA Novosti: Russian government approves Atomenergoprom charter 12:57 | 09/ 07/ 2007 MOSCOW, July 9 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's government has approved the charter of state-owned Atomenergoprom, which will incorporate the country's leading civilian nuclear energy companies, a source in the Russian Nuclear Power Agency (Rosatom) said Monday. Rosatom earlier said Atomenergoprom, which will be wholly controlled by the government, will be a full-cycle corporation engaged in activities ranging from uranium extraction, fuel production and electric power generation, to the construction of nuclear power plants, both at home and abroad. Rosatom head Sergei Kiriyenko has been appointed chairman of the Atomenergoprom board of directors, the source said. Kiriyenko earlier said the incorporation of Atomenergoprom, which will also carry out scientific research into nuclear energy use and introduce new technologies and developments in the nuclear energy field, was expected to be completed by the end of the year. RIA Novosti ***************************************************************** 23 Platts: Regulator supports extending licenses for Loviisa-1, -2 007-6J Stockholm (Platts)--6Jul2007 Loviisa-1 and -2's operating licenses should be extended for 20 years, the Finnish Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority, or STUK, said in a statement to the government July 6. An extension would mean the units would run for 50 years each, until 2027 for Loviisa-1 and 2030 for Loviisa-2, assuming there are no problems that would cause permanent shutdown before then. STUK said it believes that the units can operate safely, but will require two major safety reviews for the plant during the extended lifetime. The government makes the final decision on licensing, and is expected to approve the extension soon. Copyright © 2007 - Platts, All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 24 Bradenton.com: Panel: Fla. should lead in reprocessing spent nuclear fuel 07/09/2007 | By DAVID ROYSE Associated Press Writer TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Florida should consider building more nuclear power plants and even contemplate constructing a facility that would recycle nuclear waste into usable fuel, a panel examining the state's energy future says. The committee will likely recommend that nuclear be a big part of that future, in light of concerns about coal contributing to global warming. Volatile spikes in the price of natural gas and concerns about carbon emissions from coal plants are driving a renewed interest in nuclear power across the nation, and Florida should also be moving in that direction, several members of the Florida Energy Commission said Monday. One of the obstacles to building more nuclear power plants is the question of what to do with the spent fuel. Currently, much of that waste is set to eventually be taken to the national Yucca Mountain Repository in Nevada, but it won't hold it all. There's also opposition to storing it there that may pose problems for that plan. Last year, the Bush administration proposed reviving nuclear fuel reprocessing. Recycling used fuel, which contains 90 percent of its original energy after one use, can reduce waste. "Do we want to put (the waste) into salt mines for eternity or do we want to make use of it as a fuel?" said J. Sam Bell, chairman of the Florida Energy Commission's advisory committee on energy supply. The panel will recommend changes to the commission, which in turn will make suggestions to the Legislature. The United States stopped reprocessing nuclear waste in the 1970s because that also produces a plutonium that's nearer to weapons grade, raising fears that widespread reprocessing could increase the risks of nuclear terrorism or proliferation of nuclear weapons. Several members of the panel said knowledge about the reprocessing technology is lacking, so it needs to be studied more before committing Florida to taking a leading role. Along with security concerns, some environmental and other groups have questioned whether reprocessing is a legitimate answer to the nuclear waste problem, noting that it is expensive and still leaves waste that must be disposed of. What to do with the safety, security and waste aren't the only obstacle to more nuclear plants - there's also the huge capital costs in building them. The last new nuclear plant in the United States, opened in 1996 in Tennessee after 22 years of construction, cost $7 billion. The panel's discussions also included whether state policy should embrace coal as another option for the state's electric power generating future, a touchy subject considering recent statements by Gov. Charlie Crist that he thinks coal's future is shaky because of global warming. Also, state regulators recently rejected a proposed new coal plant for the state's largest utility, Florida Power & Light, although it was primarily on economic grounds. Electric industry officials say new technology makes coal much cleaner, and some members of the panel said they hope the state doesn't discount coal entirely - because it's such an abundant and cheap fuel source. "I think the governor's message is really that he doesn't want any more dirty coal plants," said panel member David Mica. "We've got an awful lot of coal out there.... I just don't know if you can afford to throw coal out of that mix." Bradenton.com | ***************************************************************** 25 Russia-InfoCentre: Brand New Technique For Radioactive Waste Processing 9.07.2007 Structure of phosphine Scientists from Russian Institute of Geochemistry and Analytic Chemistry have developed a new technology for radioactive waste processing. Mentioned technology allows extracting over 99% of uranium, 99.7% of plutonium and over 98% of americium from liquid radioactive wastes. Russian chemists used diphenyl phosphine oxide, which is able to form stable complex compounds with uranium, its decay products and long-lived radionuclides. The agent is too expensive, thus scientists have developed a technique for using its trace quantities for extracting maximum of hazardous compounds. Source: Cnews.ru © Garant-InfoCentre, 2004-2006. All rights reserved and protected by the copyright law. ***************************************************************** 26 NewsBlaze: The Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste and Materials to Meet The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste and Materials (ACNW&M) will meet Tuesday, July 17 through Thursday, July 19, in Rockville, MD, to discuss, among other items, Waste Incidental to Reprocessing (WIR) monitoring activities at the Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory and Savannah River sites, a status update of the infiltration studies and modeling at Yucca Mountain, and a review of the Committee's draft White Paper entitled: "Background, Status, and Issues Related to the Regulation of Advanced Spent Nuclear Fuel Recycle Facilities." Annual and semi-annual briefings by the Offices of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards (NMSS) and Nuclear Regulatory Research (RES) are also scheduled. The 181st meeting will be held in Room T-2B3 of the NRC's Two White Flint North building at 11545 Rockville Pike. The Tuesday session will run from 8:30 a.m. to 4:45 p.m., and both the Wednesday and Thursday sessions will run from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. For video teleconferencing services, please contact Mr. Theron Brown at 301-415-8066 in advance. The full agenda and transcripts for the meeting can be found at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/acnw/agenda/2007. All other questions and statements should be directed to Dr. Antonio Dias at 301-415-6805. Source: NRC judythpiazza@newsblaze.com Copyright © 2007, NewsBlaze, Daily News ***************************************************************** 27 Guardian Unlimited: BNG offers 'virtual reprocessing' to Germans Paul Brown and Terry Macalister Monday July 9, 2007 Ministers are planning to give permission to use British stockpiled plutonium as fuel for German nuclear reactors because of the two-year closure of the Thorp reprocessing plant - a move some industry experts believe is against the law. The government has been forced to consider what it describes as "virtual reprocessing" amid fears that without the use of the plutonium, German reactors would have to be closed down, leading to expensive legal claims against the British Nuclear Group because it cannot fulfil its contracts to supply fuel. The UK is supposed to reprocess German fuel to extract plutonium and uranium but, because of the disastrous leak discovered in April 2005, the Thorp reprocessing plant has closed. The closure is costing up to £500m a year in revenue from overseas customers - money that should have been spent by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) clearing up nuclear waste. To get round the problem officials at the Department of Trade and Industry have come up the notion of "virtual reprocessing" or what it describes in its consultation document as "advance allocation". The plan is to calculate how much plutonium would have been produced if the German fuel had been dissolved in the Thorp plant and recovered and then substituting the same quantity of stockpiled British plutonium and uranium. This would solve the contractual problems and avoid power shortages in Germany, but leaves British Nuclear Group with several hundred tonnes of German spent fuel in its Sellafield storage ponds. The DTI says that the plan for virtual reprocessing merely speeds up the return of plutonium, uranium and nuclear waste to Germany, Switzerland and Japan. The fuel would have been mixed with British fuel in the reprocessing plant and so when the nuclear materials were recovered it would not be possible to tell which came from which individual batch of fuel. British Nuclear Group said it hoped that the Thorp plant would soon be up and running again, and expected to put a batch of fuel through any day now to check all was in order. Martin Forwood, from Cumbrians Opposed to Radioactive Environment, one of the statutory consultees for the plan, said he thought it would lead to the closure of the plant. "If British materials can be sent abroad, pretending they are the product of reprocessed foreign fuel, there is absolutely no point in then going to the expensive business of restarting Thorp and putting this fuel through it." However, Mr Forwood doubted whether the substitution idea was legal. When the SMP plant started up in 2001 under international rules it had to have an economic case based on the fact that the benefit of the plant outweighed the environmental detriment it would cause. Since then the economic case has collapsed. Thorp is not reprocessing and many of the Mox contracts have not materialised. "In my view substituting plutonium and uranium requires a new economic case," said Mr Forwood, although the DTI denies this. Useful links British Energy Department of Trade and Industry British Nuclear Fuels Ltd Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Greenpeace Come Clean WMD awareness programme UK atomic energy authority National Radiological Protection Board Friends of the Earth World Nuclear Association World Nuclear Transport Institute Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 28 Pueblo Chieftain: Officials worry about potential Cotter leak Pueblo, Colorado U.S.A Monday July 09, 2007 Company says state wrong about leak. By TRACY HARMON THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN CANON CITY - State health officials say they think they have detected a small leak in the lined tailings impoundment at the Cotter Corp. Uranium Mill, but say the leak does not pose a health risk. Cotter officials say they believe there is no leak. The impoundment, lined with 18 inches of clay, has been used by the mill for storage of its uranium waste material for about 27 years, since old, unlined tailings ponds were suspected to be the cause of groundwater contamination just south of the mill in the Lincoln Park community. The area has been the subject of a Environmental Protection Agency Superfund cleanup since 1984. In 2006, Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment officials oversaw the drilling of 11 wells adjacent to the newer impoundment. The wells extend about 70 feet underground to tap into groundwater which can be tested. "We've been watching those wells for one year and also looking at the impoundment," Edgar Ethington, a state health department geologist, said last week. "I would say the shape of the groundwater surface indicates a small leak near one well." Ethington said he believes the leak is small because within 500 feet of that well, "it loses its chemical distinctness. It is not having a very big effect, but it has the earmarks of a small leak at this point in time." However, Cotter officials say there is no leak from the new impoundment and, instead, the contamination of the groundwater in that well is residual contamination from the old tailings pond. "We do not believe there is a leak - it is not obvious," said John Hamrick, Cotter mill manager. "If you have two waters that are mixing you track eight major ions on a trilinear plot, but the state is basing their assumption on just two of those components, not all of the components and the acceptable method is to use all eight." "(The leak) is not a risk and we will continue to monitor it," Ethington said. "That's just not good enough," said Sharyn Cunningham, Colorado Citizens Against Toxic Waste co-chairwoman. "Leaks never get smaller and what frustrates me is they are minimizing the impact of this discovery. "Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulations say a tailings pond impoundment liner cannot leak at all, and if it does they are supposed to do something about it. This leak indicates there is a possibility there are others. The main point is that the impoundment is not supposed to leak at all and people here should be concerned," Cunningham said. "I think people should be demanding a lot more answers and demanding that Cotter act more quickly." Ethington said if the leak is determined to be a problem, it can easily be stopped. "If you take the water away, you take the leak away," Ethington said. The state ordered Cotter to switch to the dry placement of tailings and asked that the water-covered impoundments be dried up as part of Cotter's license renewal conditions laid out in December 2004. Cotter officials are appealing that order and several other license conditions. "There is a reason why we ask for the things we ask for," Ethington said. "Now we will have to wait for years more to see if dewatering will stop it from leaking into the groundwater," Cunningham said. The Cotter mill has been idle since March 2006, when the last of the company's uranium ore stockpile was processed. Hamrick said managers are actively looking at options to get the mill up and running again now that uranium is receiving international attention as a catalyst to cleaner power generated by nuclear power plants. ©1996-2007 www.chieftain.com Star-Journal Publishing Corp. Pueblo, Colorado U.S.A. ***************************************************************** 29 Hanford News: Nuclear ships: Millions to build, and now millions to trash This story was published Friday, July 6th, 2007 By Jack Dorsey, The Virginian-Pilot NORFOLK, Va. - For more than two decades, the Hyman G. Rickover plied the North Atlantic and other oceans, stealthily traveling the equivalent of 26 times around the world. The nuclear-powered sub and its crew of 160 sailors packed torpedoes and missiles to help keep Cold War foes in check and support ground troops in the war on terror. The Rickover will soon face its demise when it is shredded into millions of pounds of recyclable steel and lead, plus lesser bundles of aluminum, brass, bronze, copper and zinc. Only its radioactive "heart" will be spared the cutting torch, instead being shipped west to be buried for at least the next 600 years beside 115 other nuclear core reactors. The Rickover cost $900 million to build; it will cost another $30 million to discard. It is among a number of seasoned nuclear vessels the Navy has decided, mainly for cost reasons, to replace, and the sea service will have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to do so. The Navy has designated 18 nuclear-powered ships it wants to scrap over the next 10 years at a cost of about $30 million each. The most expensive will be dismantling the carrier Enterprise, scheduled for 2012. It could cost more than $1 billion. It is the first nuclear-powered carrier, commissioned in 1961. Ditching the aging nuclear fleet creates a budget drain on the Navy, which has an ambitious - and expensive - plan to modernize the fleet with high-tech war ships. Congress gave it $15 billion to spend on the program next year. Deactivated in a ceremony in Norfolk on Dec. 14, the 362-foot Rickover sailed to Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Maine to begin a long demise. For traditionally powered ships - those with oil-fired steam plants or diesel engines - it's relatively easy to cut them up, sink them or sell them to another nation's navy. Not so with a nuclear-powered ship or submarine. The Navy has been authorized 224 nuclear-powered vessels through March 2006. For the crew of the Rickover, dismantling their home - removing still useful equipment - is a hard and humbling task. "There is some amount of sadness, as I certainly have poured my blood, sweat and tears into forming the crew," said Cmdr. Robert E. Cosgriff, the Rickover's commanding officer prior to his recent relief. Speaking by phone from the Maine shipyard where about 85 crew members remain with their ship, Cosgriff said the crew remains proud of the Rickover even as it gets torn apart. "We are off loading 23 years worth of things that have gone onto the ship, including tremendous amounts of supplies and logistics," he said. Refrigerants, oils, pots, pans, mattresses and everything reusable will be recycled to other submarines or returned to the supply system. Removal of valuable gear, including nuclear fuel, is scheduled to be finished in November or December. The Rickover will be towed in early spring 2008 through the Panama Canal to Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Wash., Deb White, a shipyard spokeswoman, said in an e-mail. There, the Rickover will be moored at the Inactive Nuclear Ship Storage Facility until the disposal process begins. Fifteen other defueled nuclear-powered ships are in floating storage at Puget Sound, White said. Once the ship is dry-docked, workers will cut the 33-foot diameter submarine shell into three sections. The reactor compartment - the middle section - is a hulk measuring 42 feet long and weighing 1,680 tons. Tracks with rollers are installed beneath the submarine to allow the sealed reactor package - containing cobalt-60, lead and PCBs - to be slid away from the ship once it is cut free. The two ends not containing the reactor will be cut up and sold for scrap. Standard cutting equipment - torches, hand-held saws, pipe-cutters and grinders - is used to sever the several feet of steel in front of the shielded reactor compartment. Three-quarter-inch-thick steel end bulkheads will be welded in place to protect the radioactive core. Once the safety measures have been completed, the entire assembly, containing low-level radioactive waste, is placed on a reinforced barge and towed by an ocean tug 310 miles through Puget Sound, then down the Washington coast to the Columbia River and to the Port of Benton at Richland, Wash. The trip takes about three days. That worries Jim Puckett, a spokesman for the Basel Action Network, which works to prevent chemical crises. "We are not happy to see this type of shipment over water," he said. "If we had our preferences, it would be to very carefully manage them over land." The Navy said a barge wreck is unlikely because of the strong barge and other safety factors, such as the use of two tugs, one as a backup; experienced crews; and a Coast Guard escort. Also, welds attaching the reactor compartment to the barge are designed to withstand maximum wind forces, and the strong exterior of the package can withstand severe accidents, according to the Navy. If a barge did sink, a buoy would float to the surface along with an emergency locating beacon. Then the sunken reactor compartment could be retrieved, the Navy said. There are no reports of a barge sinking with a reactor aboard, according to the Navy. When a reactor has reached its destination, it is transported over land about 26 miles to a trench at a Hanford Nuclear Reservation site burial lot. The lot is on a plateau about seven miles from the Columbia River. Hanford is 586 square miles of flat desert. Eight burial sites are located on 518 acres. It received its first reactor core in 1986. The burial trench is 30 feet deep. The reactor package, when buried, must be designed to resist corrosion for at least 300 years, according to regulatory requirements the Navy says are demanded by a number of agencies, including the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Washington State Department of Ecology and the Puget Sound Air Pollution Control Agency. The Navy says its reactor packages are designed to last at least twice that long. "After burial, direct radiation at the land surface will be insignificant (i.e. below detectable levels) due to the low contact radiation fields on the package and the shielding effect of the soil cover," the Navy said in a 1999 document titled "U.S. Naval Nuclear Powered Ship Inactivation, Disposal and Recycling." The overall plan for disposing of radioactive material at Hanford is under frequent review by officials in Washington state and Oregon. Issues associated with Hanford include leaking, nonmilitary underground storage tanks and the site's active nuclear power plant, said Diana Enright, a spokeswoman for Oregon's Department of Energy. "We have to have safety drills because if there was ever an accident there, it potentially would affect two of our counties in the northeast part of the state," Enright said. For more than 40 years, the government produced plutonium for nuclear weapons at the Hanford site, generating enormous amounts of radioactive and chemically hazardous wastes, according to a report by the Oregon Energy Department that was updated in July 2006. Hanford's 177 waste storage tanks now hold more than 53 million gallons of highly radioactive waste. Sixty-seven of these tanks have leaked an estimated 1 million gallons into the soil, with some reaching the groundwater. The waste eventually will reach the river, which flows through the Hanford site, the report said. The Navy realized in the late 1970s that it would need a deactivation program for its nuclear-powered ships, according to the 1999 report by the Navy Sea Systems Command. It evaluated two basic options: one using its current method and the other sinking the entire defueled submarine in the ocean. While the Navy has lost two nuclear submarines - the Scorpion and Thresher - in accidents, it says it never intentionally disposed of them on the ocean's floor. The former Soviet Union secretly disposed of about 16 submarines by sinking them in the northern oceans, said White, the Navy's spokeswoman in Maine. "After the end of the Cold War, Russia simply parked many older submarines in floating storage without any effort to remove nuclear fuel or radioactive material," White said. Several other published reports tend to agree with the Navy's statements. The United Kingdom, Canada, Norway, Japan, Germany, Australia and the United States are helping to pay for Russian nuclear submarine dismantlement. Russia now has a plan that follows the U.S. policy of cutting out the reactor core and placing it in a storage facility ashore. However, fuel may be "mothballed" afloat too, according to a Feb. 28 report in the Russian Defense and Security that said reactor compartments are not cut out but are filled with air. In France, the reactor compartment from the first French nuclear-powered submarine has been removed and placed in a storage building next to the dry dock at the Cherbourg shipyard, White said. The French plan is to let the radioactivity decay for 20 years, then further dismantle the reactor compartment and ship the pieces to a French radioactive waste site, she said. In the U.K., the government has not been able to reach national agreement on what to do with the nation's decommissioned nuclear-powered submarines, White said. The nuclear fuel has been removed and the ships inactivated, similar to the work on the Rickover, she said. Still, critics are wary. "You've got a nuke Navy so you will have difficult disposal issues," Puckett, of BAN, said, "and they are all coming home to roost." --- (Virginian-Pilot researcher Ann Kinken Johnson contributed to this report.) --- (c) 2007, The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, Va.). Visit Pilot Online, the World Wide Web site of the Virginian-Pilot, at http://www.pilotonline.com/ Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. © 2007 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 30 Tri-City Herald: Weapons wiped out at Umatilla Chemical Depot Published Monday, July 9th, 2007 By Mary Hopkin, Herald staff writer HERMISTON -- The last of the sarin-filled munitions stored at the Umatilla Chemical Depot were destroyed early Sunday. Depot officials said the final 155mm GB, sarin-filled artillery projectile was incinerated at 7:56 a.m. "This is great news," said Lt. Col. Donna Rutten, depot commander. "It's great news for the depot and great news for the community that GB munitions are gone." The depot stored 220,604 munitions and containers filled with 7.4 million pounds of deadly nerve and mustard agents. In September 2004, workers began the process of destroying the stockpile of the sarin-filled weapons -- 155,000 munitions containing about 1,010 tons of sarin. A total of 47,406 155mm GB artillery projectiles were sent through the depot's metal parts furnace during the final phase of the GB destruction effort. Other munitions destroyed since processing started include M55 rockets, 8-inch projectiles, GB ton containers and 500- and 750-pound bombs. GB sarin attacks the central nervous systems and can cause seizures and paralysis in the most extreme cases. Now that the sarin-filled weapons are gone, workers will spend the next four months preparing the incinerator facility to destroy VX-filled munitions, said Bruce Henrickson, the depot's public affairs officers. Henrickson said some equipment must be changed to handle different-sized munitions and workers also will install monitors to detect VX, an oily, clear liquid that can cause seizures, paralysis and suffocation. More than 727,000 pounds of VX are stored in about 62,400 munitions at bunkers on the 20,000-acre depot, as well as 2,635 ton containers holding about 4.7 million pounds of mustard agent. That will be destroyed after the VX is taken care of. "The changeover is expected to last about four months and we are confident that we have a good plan," Henrickson said. The depot stored the largest number of M55 rockets in the U.S. The nerve agent was brought to the depot for storage between 1962 and 1969. "The most important accomplishment is that we destroyed the GB munitions safely and in an environmentally responsible manner," said Doug Hamrick, project manager at the depot for Washington Group International, which built the incinerator and is operating it for the Army. © 2007 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press & Other Wire Services ***************************************************************** 31 Hanford News: Hanford saga still sells This story was published Sunday, July 8th, 2007 Annette Cary, Herald staff writer As Michele Gerber began writing the history of Hanford nearly two decades ago, she was told the subject would have some interest for a few years but little lasting appeal. She's proved that wrong. On the Home Front - The Cold War Legacy of the Hanford Nuclear Site has been released in its fourth edition this summer, or the third in the current paperback form. "It's a testament to the continuing importance of Hanford," she said. To understand the 20th century, one must understand the Cold War, she writes in her book, "And one cannot understand the Cold War without knowing the Hanford site." The Hanford nuclear reservation was created as part of the Manhattan Project during World War II as the nation raced to produce the world's first atomic bomb. At Hanford, the plutonium was produced for the first atomic bomb exploded in the New Mexico desert and for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. Activity only increased at Hanford, the nation's largest production site, as it manufactured the majority of the plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons during the arms race of the Cold War. But Gerber had no idea of that when she arrived in the Tri-Cities in 1987 with a doctorate in history from the University of New York, Albany. Her specialty was 20th century America. She found little work available in the community for a historian, but her timing was good. Weapons-related work at the nuclear reservation had been done in a climate of secrecy for more than four decades. Then, in 1986, DOE began to declassify thousands of pages of documents about the nuclear reservation, giving the first real public look inside the Hanford fence. "Historians love an untold story," Gerber told the Herald in 1989, midway through writing the first edition of the book. Two years earlier, with regional interest in the site growing as declassified documents began to reveal its secrets and dangers, she had become a regular at 7-Eleven. She'd buy copies of the Tri-City Herald, Spokane and Seattle papers, fascinated by the vastly different takes each had on Hanford news and history. That led to her own research and work as a consultant, including helping the U.S. Centers for Disease Control find people who might have been exposed to airborne radioactive iodine releases from Hanford in its early years. She also started writing articles. But as more of Hanford's history was revealed, her research grew beyond the occasional historical piece. The technical documents being declassified did not readily tell the site's story. "It was daunting," Gerber said. "It was fascinating, but intimidating. I'm not a scientist." The documents were so confusing that she enrolled in chemistry and statistics classes at Columbia Basin College to make sure she didn't make any errors as she worked to understand what she was reading. Her work resulted in a comprehensive look at the Hanford site, tracking its history from a 1942 scouting trip for possible sites for plutonium production through the nuclear reservation's Cold War years as it released contamination into the air, land and Columbia River. The site produced not only plutonium, but massive amounts of chemical and radiological waste. Hanford was pivotal in the changes that occurred in the 20th century, Gerber said. It played a role in changing the global balance of power. Before World War II, Great Britain dominated the world with its far-flung empire. But once the atomic bomb was developed, power shifted to those nations with a nuclear arsenal, she said. The development of the atomic bomb propelled the United States from a fairly isolationist nation to a world power, she said. Hanford also gives an early look at the societal changes that would shape the nation during the last half of the 20th century, at home and in the workplace. A facility as large and complex as B Reactor, the world's first production-scale reactor, brought together a large community of scientists and engineers to work cooperatively. The nuclear reservation also drew workers who built a community in the Eastern Washington desert, an early outpost of what would become an increasingly mobile society. "Richland became a town without grandparents, a town of newcomers," Gerber said. "Later that may have seemed sort of normal. It was absolutely unique then." The site continues to be important as every taxpayer pays for its legacy of waste and contamination, she said. The nation spends about $2 billion annually on cleanup of the 586-square-mile site. It also poses a potential threat to the health and safety of the Northwest if cleanup does not proceed, she said. In the latest edition of the book, she includes an epilogue covering the first 17 years of cleanup of the site, finding successes and problems. Unlike the site's earlier history, the cleanup is being done in cooperation with other agencies and with public scrutiny. "I think that's the way to get the best answers, to involve many viewpoints," she said. After finishing the first edition of her book, she found work at Hanford and currently works as a senior communications specialist at Fluor Hanford. As part of her job, she occasionally leads the popular Hanford site tours. The site remains closed to the public and when infrequent tours are offered, Internet registration fills seats on the tours within minutes of opening. On a tour this spring, she asked participants what drew them to Hanford. When she mentioned history, nearly everyone on the bus raised a hand. "The history has enduring value," she said. "I think it still has lessons to teach." © 2007 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 32 Hanford News: Hanford news briefs This story was published Sunday, July 8th, 2007 the Herald staff * Eva Eckert Hickey of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has been named program manager for the lab's Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Hickey led the proposal preparation for a five-year contract in support of environmental and safety reviews for the licensing of new nuclear power plants. * Joe Cleary, also of PNNL, has been named deputy program manager. * John C. Fulton, president and CEO for CH2M Hill Hanford Group Inc., has been named to the United Way of Benton and Franklin Counties' board of directors. Awards * Fluor Hanford's communications department has received three APEX 2007 Awards for Publication Excellence. It received an award for producing its company newsletter, FYI, or Fluor Your information, edited by Deb Dunn. Graphic designer Brian Miller received an award for designing a display on Hanford's Plutonium Finishing Plant. Senior communications specialist Michele Gerber received a feature writing award for an article, "Battling Groundwater Contamination at Hanford," that appeared in Radwaste Solutions magazine. * John Jeskey of Fluor Hanford has received an Innovation Award from the Voluntary Protection Program Participants Association, Region X. The Hanford Atomic Metal Trades Council safety director received the honor for helping develop the HAMTC safety representative program. The award is given to encourage new approaches and to emphasize the value of creativity and flexibility in the resolution of worker safety and health issues. © 2007 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 33 NAS Project: Review of DOE's Nuclear Energy Research & Development Program Project Title: PIN: BEES-J-05-01-A Major Unit: Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences Sub Unit: Board on Energy and Environmental Systems RSO: Bowen, Matt Subject/Focus Area: Energy and Energy Conservation; Engineering Project Scope The committee will undertake a comprehensive, independent evaluation of DOE's nuclear energy (NE) program's goals and plans, and validate the process of establishing program priorities and oversight (including the method for determining the relative distribution of budgetary resources). The evaluation will result in a comprehensive and detailed set of policy and research recommendations and associated priorities (including performance targets and metrics) for an integrated agenda of research activities that can best advance NE's fundamental mission of securing nuclear energy as a viable, long-term commercial energy option to provide diversity in energy supply. The review will also include the relationship of the research program to the Idaho Facilities Management program. In conducting the evaluation of the R&D program, the committee will: (1) Review the technical goals and timetables for government and industry R&D efforts in the various technical areas (e.g., Nuclear Power 2010; Generation IV; Hydrogen Initiative; Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative); (2) Review the R&D directions and progress in various parts of the program and their relevance to meeting the goals of the R&D program; (3) Review the overall balance and adequacy of the R&D program in light of the objectives and schedules in the major technology areas, and whether efforts in various technical areas are at an appropriate level, should be expanded, reduced, or eliminated; (4) Identify, if appropriate, new and promising technologies not included in the DOE portfolio that the DOE could meaningfully advance to meet the goals of the program; (5) Examine and comment, as necessary, on the appropriate federal role in the various technical areas; (6) Examine and comment on the commercial implications of each major part of the R&D portfolio and what each element needs to contribute to the commercial adoption of the technology; (7) Examine and comment on NE's strategy for accomplishing its goals, which would include such issues as: (a) program management and organization; (b) the process of setting milestones, research directions and making Go/No Go decisions; (c) collaborative activities with other parts of the government or private sector; (d) the integration of major activities in each program into a plan and associated schedule; (e) integration and associated schedule and milestones of the various major programs across DOE-NE; (f) consistency of the budget, schedule and scope for selected major activities; (g) risk identification and assessment and mitigation activities; and (h) other topics that the committee finds important to comment on related to the success of the program to meet its technical goals. (8) Comment on the relationship of the R&D program to the Idaho Facilities Management program. The committee will write a report documenting its findings and recommendations. The project is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. The approximate start date for the project is April 24, 2006. A report will be issued at the end of the project in approximately 18 months. Project Duration: 18 months Provide FEEDBACK on this project. Contact the Public Access Records Office to make an inquiry or to schedule an appointment to view project materials available to the public. Committee Membership Meetings Meeting 1 - 08/24/2006 Meeting 2 - 10/17/2006 Meeting 3 - 11/08/2006 Meeting 4 - 01/09/2007 Meeting 5 - 03/08/2007 Meeting 6 - 05/30/2007 Reports Reports having no URL can be seen at the Public Access Records Office Email: info@nas.edu ***************************************************************** 34 The Olympian: INL to conduct explosives test in E. Idaho desert - Northwest - Olympia, Washington Published July 09, 2007 JOHN MILLER Associated Press Writer BOISE, Idaho — Bomb experts at the Idaho National Laboratory will detonate explosive blasts sometime this week in a remote sage-and-grass corner of the 890-square-mile atomic research reservation in a new program aimed at helping design buildings better able to withstand terror attacks. U.S. Department of Energy engineers will be testing the effects of thousands of pounds of vehicle-borne explosives on buildings, protective barriers and materials. Only one test will be conducted this week, INL spokesman Ethan Huffman said. Ensuing tests would occur weekly and monthly. While explosives tests at other U.S. sites, including the Nevada Test Site near Las Vegas, are geared to improving weapons systems, these tests at INL are aimed at making safer buildings, bridges and tunnels. Since 1949, 52 nuclear reactors have been built at the INL; this week's planned explosions are part of the installation's changing mission following the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. For three years, the Energy Department has planned research here to probe the effects of car bombs and other explosions on sensitive facilities and security systems. "Architects, structural engineers, designers will be able to take information we've gained off these tests and design a safer building," Huffman said Monday. "This is purely defensive research." After the Energy Department released a draft environmental assessment in December, about a dozen groups or individuals submitted public comments on the proposal. For instance, the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, whose traditional lands extend beyond the nearby Fort Hall Reservation and include the compound, raised concerns about wildlife habitat, as well as potential damage to cultural resources in the east Idaho desert. The Nature Conservancy noted that two rare species, the leopard lizard and whipsnake, live at the proposed location, which is also close to an active sage grouse mating area and a nesting site for ferruginous hawks. Now that the INL is set to go ahead, Nature Conservancy officials said they're working with INL contractors who oversee the site's ecology to try to reduce possible negative impacts. "They did a pretty good job of designing it so it has a real specific impact," said Marilyn Manguba, the Nature Conservancy's protections specialist for Idaho and a former INL contract worker who helped draft her group's response to the DOE's explosives plan. "They've set it up so that it will have a specific direction that the explosions go. They'll be able to contain it." Only conventional explosives including TNT, dynamite and ammonium nitrate fertilizer will be tested at the site. High-speed cameras and audio sensors will be used to monitor the effects of the aboveground explosions. This week's explosion will be less than the equivalent of 15,000 pounds of TNT explosives, though Huffman declined to give specifics. Huffman also wouldn't say just when the explosives would be detonated, for security reasons, he said. The site can accommodate blasts of as much as 20,000 pounds, or three times the force of the bomb that destroyed the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995. In the future, the INL plans to make media announcements in advance whenever tests exceed 3,000 pounds of TNT equivalent. Officials say the test range is located 7 miles from a public access road. The nearest occupied public building is 13 miles away. Huffman said residents of Idaho Falls, located about 60 miles to the east, wouldn't notice the blast. The test site is on an undisturbed area - to avoid kicking up any contaminated radioactive dust from more than a half-century of atomic work here. "It's a site that hasn't been touched by previous research activities," Huffman said. Eventually, other government agencies including the Department of Homeland Security and bomb squad units of local police forces may use the site to test explosives, he added. ©2007 The Olympian ***************************************************************** 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: *****************************************************************