***************************************************************** 08/14/07 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 15.190 ***************************************************************** 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 IRNA: Iran has not started a war in over 1,000 years: German expert 2 AFP: US to ink 30 billion dollar arms deal with Israel - NUCLEAR REACTORS 3 allAfrica.com: South Africa: State Sees Bright Future in Nuclear Ene 4 US: MiamiHerald.com: FPL's St. Lucie reactor being repaired - 5 Whitecourt Star, County retracts letter of support for Energy Albert 6 US: Platts: ASLB rejects Entergy motion to dismiss Vermont Yankee co 7 US: Platts: Kewaunee's Director of Nuclear organizational effectiven 8 Platts: Toshiba to transfer 10% share in Westinghouse to Kazatomprom 9 Platts: Law firm finds evidence of financial irregularities at Sieme 10 The Hindu: PM hasn't revealed everything in statement on Nuke deal s 11 US: JOURNAL NEWS: Indian Point's emergency sirens all sound, 10 days 12 GUARDIAN: Environmentalists urge Brown to overhaul Britain's energy 13 The Hindu: Nuke deal: Congress backs Manmohan 14 US: FR Doc E7-15887: Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Meeti 15 Japan Times: IAEA team's visit to nuclear plant 16 US: Victorville Daily Press: Victorville heads to Europe for energy 17 US: NRC: Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards to Meet in Rockvil 18 UPI: Analysis: Kazakhstan's nuclear future 19 US: MHNN: All sirens sound in current Indian Point test 20 US: CullmanTimes.com: TVA director: New nuclear reactor coming 21 Deccan Herald: CPM asks govt not to proceed with N-deal NUCLEAR SECURITY 22 US: JOURNAL NEWS: Regulators keeping tighter tabs on dangerous radio 23 Scotsman.com: Powerful vision of future fades into history NUCLEAR SAFETY 24 US: Bradenton.com: Tallevast leaders look to EPA for support 25 US: San Bernardino County Sun: Judge halts water case 26 US: OpEdNews: EPRI, NEI, NRC Inaction Killing Nuclear Workers? NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 27 ReviewJournal.com: Federal lawyers defend water use 28 US: Carlsbad Current-Argus: Residents support possible new type of w 29 Las Vegas SUN: Federal lawyers defend water use at Nevada's Yucca Mo 30 US: Sydney Morning Herald: No Indian uranium sales yet - Downer - PEACE US DEPT. OF ENERGY 31 Tri-City Herald: 10,000-acre fire scorches Hanford monument 32 Tri-City Herald: Fluor to make senior management changes 33 Tri-City Herald: Appeals Court overturns some Hanford downwinder ver 34 Denver Post: Idaho lab cleanup sends Rocky Flats waste to N.M. site 35 FR Doc E7-15870: Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Boa 36 Knoxville News Sentinel: Contract vote today in OR 37 MST: Reyes explores nuclear power option 38 Knoxville News Sentinel: Oakley lawyers may avoid security clearance 39 NewsChannel6: INL Cleanup Project is a Blast 40 Rocky Mountain News: Crews expanding cleanup at nuke waste site in I ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 IRNA: Iran has not started a war in over 1,000 years: German expert - Berlin, Aug 14, IRNA Germany-Iran-war Iran has not started a war in over 1,000 years, a leading German Mideast scholar and journalist said Tuesday. "The last offensive Iranian war dates back to over 1,000 years," wrote Michael Lueders in an analytical piece for Tuesday's edition of the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper. He also pointed out that contrary to US and Israeli claims there has been no "substantiated proof" that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, Lueders stressed also that sanctions imposed against Tehran will mainly hurt European interests in Iran, as other countries are waiting in line to fill the void. Russia, China and India are waiting to fill the gap as a result of Europe's scaling down of business ties with Iran, he added. Lueders said that UN sanctions against Iran are a "weak weapon". The sanctions are "patchy and damage mostly the European economy rather than the Iranian economy", the expert added. OT/2322/1416 ***************************************************************** 2 AFP: US to ink 30 billion dollar arms deal with Israel - Tue Aug 14, 5:15 PM ET WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States will sign a pact this week providing 30 billion dollars in military aid to Israel over a decade, the State Department said Tuesday. Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns, who will make a three-day visit to Israel from Wednesday, "will sign the memorandum of understanding on the new 30 billion dollar, 10-year military assistance package," the department said in a statement. The package was unveiled by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on July 30 as part of a new military pact with US allies in the Middle East in a bid to "counter the negative influences" of militant groups Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah as well as arch enemies Iran and Syria. They include a 20-billion-dollar weapons package for Saudi Arabia, a 13-billion-dollar package for Egypt, and reportedly arms deals worth at least 20 billion dollars for other Gulf states. The military aid to Israel reflected an increase of more than 25 percent, Israel Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said, describing the package as a considerable improvement and very important element for national security. "Other than the increase in aid, we received an explicit and detailed commitment to guarantee Israel's qualitative advantage over other Arab states," he had said following recent talks with US President George W. Bush. With current US defense aid to Israel standing at 2.4 billion dollars a year, the new package will hike the value of assistance to the Jewish state by 600 million dollars a year on average, officials said. The two countries are increasingly alarmed by Iran's nuclear ambitions, which have already incurred international economic sanctions. Iran insists its nuclear program is designed for peaceful, civilian energy purposes. Burns will meet with Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and other Israeli officials during the visit in which "discussions on regional security, including the challenge posed by Iran" would be held, the State Department said. Burns will also meet with Palestinian Authority leaders regarding "the development of a political horizon" and American humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people. The United States is striving to forge a deal for the establishment of a Palestinian state ahead of an international meeting called for by Bush in the fall. Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said last week he had positive talks with Olmert in the West Bank city of Jericho, the first time in seven years that such a high-level meeting has taken place on Palestinian territory. Copyright 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 3 allAfrica.com: South Africa: State Sees Bright Future in Nuclear Energy Business Day (Johannesburg) 14 August 2007 Khulu Phasiwe Johannesburg NUCLEAR energy will form part of SA's strategy to mitigate climate change and global warming, says the government's draft Nuclear Energy Policy and Strategy document, released yesterday for public comment. The document is the clearest and most emphatic commitment made by the government to nuclear energy . The government also commits itself to using nuclear energy only for peaceful purposes and to ensuring nuclear safety and radiation safety receive the "highest priority". In February, the treasury allocated R14,7m to strengthen the oversight role of the National Nuclear Regulator. The treasury said the allocation would increase to R24m a year in the next two years. The money would enable the nuclear regulator to monitor nuclear activities and develop safety standards for the protection of people, property and the environment against nuclear damage. The nuclear regulator exercises safety control over the entire life cycle of nuclear installations and vessels propelled by or containing radioactive material. About R3m has be allocated to implement the radioactive waste management policy, which the minerals and energy department says will be finalised this year. Last year the treasury also allocated R21m to nuclear technology agency the South African Nuclear Energy Corporation to conduct research into the development of a high-tech mini nuclear plant, the pebble bed modular reactor (PBMR). An additional R1,2bn has been allocated this year to the PBMR project for the construction of fuel plants. The nuclear facility is expected to be operational by 2011. "Nuclear energy remains very important to the government of SA as there are no greenhouse gases emitted from nuclear sources of energy and alternatives to nuclear are very expensive," says the minerals and energy department. Power utility Eskom plans to increase its nuclear energy output to 20000MW by 2025. Nuclear scientist Kelvin Kemm has recently defended the government's decision to turn to nuclear power as a means of satisfying SA's growing energy needs. Kemm, who works at Pelindaba, the nuclear-fuel facility outside Pretoria, says nuclear energy remains a viable means of meeting energy needs. He says claims by environmental group Earthlife Africa about dangerous radiation at the Pelindaba site are unfounded. "I have worked with the nuclear reactor at Pelindaba for something like 30 years. I am the guy that stands on top of that nuclear reactor. Believe me, when I am standing on top of that thing, I want to be sure that nothing is leaking out, everything is working perfectly," says Kemm. He dismissed concerns about the safety of nuclear power in general as part of a mass campaign by antinuclear energy groups to discredit the industry. But Earthlife Africa says its concerns are based on solid research. The organisation says it is worried about the effects of radioactive waste on communities living near nuclear sites. The debate over the storage and disposal of nuclear waste has been going on for nearly 30 years, ever since the first major nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in the US. Nuclear energy proponents say a chest X-ray or a long-distance flight expose a person to more radioactivity than they would experience in a year of living close to a nuclear plant. Environmental lobby groups, on the other hand, say the technology is expensive and fraught with risks. In SA, environmental activists want Eskom and its partners in the PBMR to abandon the project and explore renewable sources of energy instead. Industrialised countries, such as the US and those in western Europe, use nuclear power for electricity generation. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Lithuania and France produced about 80% of their electricity needs from nuclear plants in 2002. The US produced 20% of its needs from its 104 nuclear power stations. Southern Africa Economy, Business and Finance Energy Environment South Africa Sustainable Development The Environmental Justice Networking Forum says SA's proposed demonstration mini nuclear power plant will cost taxpayers R12bn. This is money that could be used to explore alternative energy or fund social upliftment programmes, it says. "Like the arms deal, the current cost estimate is unrealistic and South Africans can expect the costs to mushroom," the organisation says. ***************************************************************** 4 MiamiHerald.com: FPL's St. Lucie reactor being repaired - 08/14/2007 - Bloomberg News FPL Group, owner of Florida's biggest utility, said power was reduced further at its St. Lucie 1 nuclear reactor in Florida to repair a leak on a condensate pump seal water line. The reactor was listed at 40 percent of capacity in a report Tuesday morning from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Repairs should be completed by noon Tuesday, then the unit could begin ramping up, Tom Veenstra, a spokesman for FPL, said in a telephone interview. Veenstra declined to say when the reactor might return to full power. He said Monday that the unit had fallen to about 75 percent of capacity because of sea grass in the filter of a circulating water pump and increased ocean water temperatures. The St. Lucie plant is about 40 miles north of West Palm Beach. The capacity at Unit 1 is about 839 megawatts, the company has said. That means it can supply enough power for 671,200 average U.S. homes, based on Energy Department estimates. Another unit, St. Lucie 2, was listed at full power in a report Tuesday morning from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. FPL Group is based in Juno Beach. * Copyright 1996-2007 The Miami Herald Media Company| ***************************************************************** 5 Whitecourt Star, County retracts letter of support for Energy Alberta project Whitecourt, AB August 15, 2007 Last week Woodlands County councillors voted to retract a former letter of support for the nuclear power plant development after an informal petition signed by over 300 residents was presented to them. Chandra Lye Star staff Council also passed a motion to issue a new letter to the company that has proposed the project, Energy Alberta, to indicate they are still open to the plan but that they want more information given to their residents. "Democracy is clearing being served in that the people wanted a say in it and it was noted," County Mayor Jim Rennie said. "This is a pretty big issue for our council to have to decide on their own. I think allowing or facilitating the people to be able to do that I think that is truly the role of the council." "We put out a letter of support anticipating finding out more clarification on the public process and that never came," he added. Energy Alberta indicated that this would have a definite effect on their considerations of starting the project in the Whitecourt area. "I have to go where I feel comfortable with our project going ahead," company president, Wayne Henuset said. "Im nervous of the area right now with the council members doing what they did." However, he said that the final decision was based on scorecards from each community and that the Whitecourt area was still an option. "Its just disappointing that one council can throw off the Whitecourt opportunity, because its all part of the scorecards." Also during the meeting Counc. Albert McMillian indicated that in a discussion with Whitecourt-Lac Ste. Anne MLA, George VanderBurg, the council had been told to back off. However, VanderBurg denied that he had told Counc. McMillian not to proceed with any further action. "They have to bring in experts on all sides," VanderBurg explained, "So I told Albert, very clearly, that I would expect whichever community . . . that has an opportunity to host a nuclear plant, I expect that for the next few years there will be lots of opportunities to hear from experts on nuclear. Thats exactly what I told him and I havent swayed from that message." "People seem to think that there is six weeks in this process and thats all theyll have to do to talk right now or theyll never have a chance thats far from the truth," VanderBurg added. Rennie said that he understood county residents felt that they might never get their say and the project may "get away from them." "Similar to what weve seen in other pipeline applications and the waste management facility built in Swan Hills Ive heard reference to that as well." "Were going to let the people decide whether it is right or wrong for the area." "The public from Woodlands County will go to bed tonight knowing that they are going to have a say in it and that they will have a chance to get educated before that." County councillor Leann Caron said it was her job to ensure residents had a voice in their community. "It was clear to me that there was a very high risk that we had given up our peoples opportunity to speak on the issue," she told the Star. "Our intent as a council is to organize some information sessions," she said, "and then go from there." She added she could see them organized by early September. However Rennie made it clear the county was still interested in hosting the plant. "By no means have we taken ourselves out of the running. The door is still wide open." He also said he was always concerned about the relationship between the town and the county but that he was doing what he had been elected to do. "Well we care 100 per cent about our relationship with the town . . . inevitably we represent the people that live in Woodlands county. Hopefully we havent damaged any bridges doing our job." "I commend my council that they are listening carefully to the people that they represent." "I think that our points are justified even if we dont see eye to eye on it." Whitecourt Mayor Trevor Thain said he was not happy with the decision. "It concerns me," he said. "I dont know how Energy Alberta is going to view this." He said that he hoped, "theyll take it in the light that it was put forward." However, Thain added that he understood the county council was not saying no to the nuclear power plant but "they want to have their citizenry to have a little more input before they make that decision." He said he hoped that this division would not hinder the longer-term relationship between the municipalities. "We have too much on the table together for it to be a negative between us." The county had also indicated they wanted to move towards a plebiscite if it was not an official requirement of the application process. However, Counc. McMillian told council that VanderBurg had advised him "not to dare" to bring a plebiscite motion forward. "I told him that I felt that there was ample opportunity in the next six months to 18 months to get more information," VanderBurg told the Star. " I dont know what a plebiscite without information would do. Just to call a plebiscite isnt sufficient for me." "I havent made that personal decision whether that is something that is needed," he added. "Good governance requires elected officials to make decisions." However, VanderBurg added that he would stand behind local government decisions "and support them on that." Rennie said he believed that if a plebiscite resulted in a positive vote for the project it might speed up the process for EA. "I think the business would rather know right up front that yes were welcome with open arms, we have the number to prove it and lets move ahead from there. Getting that number sooner rather than later should be able to help our application for Energy Alberta." "I honestly believe that if this thing ever went to a plebiscite it would be overwhelming support and that puts an end to it," Thain said. "That is just sort of the feeling that I get." If nuclear power is coming to Alberta lets make sure that we are the front-runner so that we at least have that opportunity," Thain said. "My concern is that why would we not want to be a front-runner in anything that is going to bring 1,000 jobs to our community?" Regional vice-president of Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd, Jack Scott confirmed that there were no formal requirements for a public vote in order for the project to proceed. He also indicated that the decision would indeed be a federal one. "The licensing and approvals for any nuclear facility has to be done at the federal level by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission," Scott said. Publisher: Pamela Allain Proprietor and published by Bowes Publishers Limited at 4732 - 50 Avenue, Whitecourt, Alberta, Canada T7S 1N7 2007 Whitecourt Star ***************************************************************** 6 Platts: ASLB rejects Entergy motion to dismiss Vermont Yankee contention 2007-08-13 Washington (Platts)--13Aug2007 A licensing board panel rejected Entergy's motion to dismiss a contention in the Vermont Yankee license renewal proceedings, saying the company had failed to show that no material fact was in dispute. In an August 10 decision that was just released, an NRC Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, or ASLB, said the contention "presents a 'classic battle of the experts' that requires the Board to weigh opposing expert testimony." Three contentions filed by the New England Coalition and one filed by the Vermont Department of Public Service were admitted in the case. Entergy sought to eliminate under summary disposition one of NEC's contentions, which claims Entergy's application did not include an adequate plan to monitor and manage aging of plant piping resulting from flow-accelerated corrosion during the extended period of operation. Copyright 2007 - Platts, All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 7 Platts: Kewaunee's Director of Nuclear organizational effectiveness named 2007-08-13 London (Platts)--13Aug2007 Dominion named Paul Blasioli as Kewaunee's Director of Nuclear organizational effectiveness, the company told NRC this week. Dominion said the new, temporary position was created to "accelerate improvements in the execution of corrective-action and self-assessment activities," in part by speeding up backlog reduction. Blasioli has worked in the operational effectiveness department at Millstone, another Dominion plant, the company said. The Dominion announcement is described in an August 10 posting on NRC's web site. Dominion announced three months ago that it was undertaking a three-year "recovery" effort at Kewaunee to whittle down the backlog in a number of areas and to raise performance standards at the Wisconsin plant, which Dominion has operated since July 2005. 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 ***************************************************************** 8 Platts: Toshiba to transfer 10% share in Westinghouse to Kazatomprom 2007-08-14 London (Platts)--14Aug2007 Toshiba will transfer a 10% ownership share in Westinghouse to Kazatomprom under an agreement the companies signed, Toshiba said August 13. The ownership transfer, which Toshiba said cost the Kazakh uranium supplier US$540 million, allows Westinghouse to offer fuel cycle services to its customers, making it more competitive. Toshiba said that it and Kazatomprom plan to transfer these shares in about a month, once the necessary regulatory reviews in relevant countries have been completed. It added that the agreement requires that any technological cooperation be in line with US, Japanese, and other countries' export control laws and international regulation of the nuclear power industry. As a result of the transfer, Toshiba's ownership in Westinghouse will be pared back to a 67% share, down from 77%, the company said. The Shaw Group Inc., a major US engineering firm, will continue to own 20% and Japan's IHI Corp., formerly Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries Co. Ltd., 3%. 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 Platts: Law firm finds evidence of financial irregularities at Siemens AG 2007-08-14 London (Platts)--14Aug2007 A US law firm probing financial irregularities at Siemens AG has found evidence of undeclared accounts and undeclared transactions associated with Siemens' power plant and power engineering business, according to German press accounts the weekend of August 11-12. The amounts under investigation may be as high as 300 million euros (US$405 million), the reports said. Earlier this year, Siemens confirmed allegations made by insiders that managers responsible for Siemens' information technologies business had set up accounts that were not declared to auditors or tax authorities. Siemens then made major top-level personnel changes, vowed to shareholders it would improve corporate governance, and hired the US legal firm Debevoise & Plimpton to investigate the extent of the irregularities. The probe is still ongoing. According to media reports August 13, the law firm found that the total amount of internal funds involved in unexplained transactions and accounts may be as much as Eur 1 billion ($1.35 billion). The reports said that as much as a third of the amounts in question concerned power engineering business managed from Erlangen, headquarters of the company's power plant vendor activities. 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 ***************************************************************** 10 The Hindu: PM hasn't revealed everything in statement on Nuke deal says V.P. Tuesday, August 14, 2007 : 2110 Hrs Singh Lucknow, Aug. 14 (PTI): Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has "not revealed everything" about the Indo-US nuclear deal in his statement in the Lok Sabha yesterday, former premier V P Singh today alleged. "All aspects of the deal were not revealed by the Prime Minister in the Lok Sabha while making a statement on the pact," Singh told reporters here. "It is surprising to see the Prime Minister supporting the deal despite the fact the majority in Parliament is against it," he said. The Union Cabinet is not above Parliament, Singh said. "If the Prime Minister ignores the majority, it will set a very dangerous precedent and Parliament will lose its supremacy," the Jan Morcha leader said. He said "if Manmohan Singh asks his own conscience it will oppose the deal". Copyright 2007, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the ***************************************************************** 11 JOURNAL NEWS: Indian Point's emergency sirens all sound, 10 days before FEMA deadline Tuesday, August 14, 2007 By GREG CLARY BUCHANAN - After several failures over the past few months, all of Indian Point's sirens sounded loud and clear during a test of the nuclear power plant's emergency notification system this morning. Federal officials watching over five different locations in four counties verified that all 155 sirens sounded during the four-minute test at 10:30 a.m. The sirens are spread across the parts of Westchester, Putnam, Rockland and Orange counties that fall within a 10-mile radius of the nuclear power plant. Six sirens had failed during a test attempted Saturday, resulting in a 96 percent success rate. The success comes just 10 days before the third federal deadline to get the plant's sirens working. Federal emergency management officials observed the tests at five locations throughout the 10-mile emergency zone around the plant. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has given Entergy Nuclear, Indian Point's owner and operator, until Aug. 24 to get the sirens working properly. Entergy had agreed to install a $15 million alert system in the fall of 2005. The company received a 75-day extension from the NRC after regulators agreed that the project needed more time than the Jan. 30, 2007, deadline allowed. But the agency wasn't as forgiving after the company missed an April 15 deadline, fining Entergy $130,000 and requiring a plan to finish the project by Aug. 24. The sirens can't necessarily be heard inside homes or offices, especially if air conditioning is on. Check back for updates at LoHud.com or read more in tomorrow's Journal News. Copyright 2007 The Journal News, a Gannett Co. Inc. newspaper ***************************************************************** 12 GUARDIAN: Environmentalists urge Brown to overhaul Britain's energy policy to meet EU targets * Ashley Seager * The Guardian * Tuesday August 14 2007 Environmental groups and the renewables industry yesterday urged Gordon Brown to overhaul government energy policy if Britain is to have any hope of meeting its EU targets to combat climate change. Groups including Greenpeace, the Renewable Energy Association, Friends of the Earth and the New Economics Foundation reacted angrily to revelations in the Guardian that government officials had secretly acknowledged that the UK would struggle to meet the EU target of 20% renewables by 2020 and had suggested it be reinterpreted to make it easier to achieve. The groups wrote to the prime minister saying it would be "unfortunate if the leadership shown by the UK in getting these European targets adopted in March were now eroded by a serious lack of ambition in our domestic policy. "Our European colleagues will be looking to the UK to propose a realistic contribution, especially as we have the EU's best resource of wind, tidal and wave energy. Such lowly domestic ambition also threatens to undermine the credibility of the new climate change bill, which puts into statute the commitment to long-term emission reductions." The letter calls on Mr Brown to commission an open assessment of the 20% target. "We look for your reassurance that the intellectual capital of the government is being invested in defining ways of meeting our renewable energy commitments, not wriggling out of them." Downing Street said in response to the Guardian report on the leaked guidance that the UK was fully committed to renewables. "It is no secret that these are ambitious targets and it will be a major challenge to meet them, not just for the UK, but for all EU states. It is now for the [European] commission to propose how the EU-wide targets should be met." An internal Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (DBERR) paper obtained by the Guardian showed that under current policies Britain, which currently sources just 2% of its overall energy from renewables, would get to only 5% by 2020. The EU average at present is 7%. Germany, Europe's biggest economy, is currently on 13%, but hopes to get to 27% by 2020, thanks to its large renewables industry. Green groups argue that Britain could achieve 20% by 2020 if it really wanted to. Adam Bruce, chairman of the British Wind Energy Association, said: "It is simply wrong for civil servants to now suggest that the 20% EU target cannot be met - the UK wind energy industry is confident that it can meet these new renewable objectives if the government takes the necessary measures to support it." He said 40% of the EU's entire potential wind energy blows across Britain, but a lack of government action was preventing its proper exploitation. Andrew Simms, head of the New Economics Foundation, said: "If renewable energy in Britain had enjoyed for decades the blank cheque that was written for the nuclear industry, today most of our electricity would be coming from a combination of wind, wave and solar power. "If the DBERR continues to undermine progress toward the new, renewable energy economy it will potentially do even more damage than a leaky reactor." The energy minister, Malcolm Wicks, told BBC radio that the government was on course to meet its own target of generating 15% of Britain's electricity from renewable sources by 2015. He acknowledged the EU target was more demanding. * Guardian Unlimited Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 13 The Hindu: Nuke deal: Congress backs Manmohan Wednesday, August 15, 2007 : 0415 Hrs New Delhi, Aug. 15 (PTI): Congress on Tuesday came out in full support of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the Indo-US civil nuclear deal with AICC president Sonia Gandhi congratulating him for "very successfully" negotiating the agreement. Sonia Gandhi was addressing a general body meeting of the Congress Parliamentary Party, the first after the recent row between the UPA and the Left over the nuclear deal in the wake of the latter's rejection of the pact. The meeting also came close on the heels of Singh's tough talk daring the Left parties to withdraw support to the party- led UPA government over the deal and his statement in Parliament strongly defending the pact. The Congress Working Committee has already endorsed the agreement over a fortnight ago. The address also saw Gandhi lamenting sloganeering in Parliament on Monday during the Prime Minister's statement on the deal describing it as unfortunate for Parliament as an institution. She was referring to the slogan shouting in both the House of Parliament by BJP and UNPA members opposed to the deal. While the Left parties walked out of the Lok Sabha towards the end of Singh's statement, the opposition parties did not allow him to read his statement in Rajya Sabha. Sonia Gandhi also referred to forthcoming elections in several states including Gujarat during the CPP meeting and said the party machinery needs to be alert and prepared for the electoral challenge. Copyright 2007, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the ***************************************************************** 14 FR Doc E7-15887: Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Meeting Notice [Federal Register: August 14, 2007 (Volume 72, Number 156)] [Notices] [Page 45452-45453] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr14au07-93] NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION In accordance with the purposes of sections 29 and 182b of the Atomic Energy Act (42 U.S.C. 2039, 2232b), the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS) will hold a meeting on September 6-8, 2007, 11545 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland. The date of this meeting was previously published in the Federal Register on Wednesday, November 15, 2006 (71 FR 66561). Thursday, September 6, 2007, Conference Room T-2b3, Two White Flint North, Rockville, Maryland 8:30 a.m.-8:35 a.m.: Opening Remarks by the ACRS Chairman (Open)-- The ACRS Chairman will make opening remarks regarding the conduct of the meeting. 8:35 a.m.-10:30 a.m.: Final Review of the License Renewal application for the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station (Open)--The Committee will hear presentations by and hold discussions with representatives of the NRC staff and Entergy Nuclear Operations, Inc. regarding the license renewal application for the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station and the associated NRC staff's final Safety Evaluation Report. 10:45 a.m.-12:15 p.m.: Revisions to Standard Review Plan (SRP) Sections 19.0 and 19.2 (Open)--The Committee will hear presentations by and hold discussions with representatives of the NRC staff regarding revisions to SRP Sections 19.0, ``Probabilistic Risk Assessment and Severe Accident Evaluation for New Reactors,'' and 19.2, ``Review of Risk Information Used to Support Permanent Plant Specific Changes to the Licensing Basis: General Guidance.'' 1:30 p.m.-3 p.m.: Proposed Recommendations for Resolving Generic Safety Issue (GSI) 156.6.1, ``Pipe Break Effects on Systems and Components Inside Containment'' (Open)--The Committee will hear presentations by and hold discussions with representatives of the NRC staff regarding the recommendations proposed by the staff for resolving GSI-156.6.1, and related matters. 3:15 p.m.-4:45 p.m.: Status of NRR Activities in the Fire Protection Area (Open)--The Committee will hear presentations by and hold discussions with representatives of the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation (NRR) regarding the status of ongoing and proposed NRR activities associated with fire protection. 5 p.m.-7 p.m.: Preparation of ACRS Reports (Open)--The Committee will discuss proposed ACRS reports on matters considered during this meeting, as well as a proposed ACRS report on Technology-Neutral Framework for Future Plant Licensing. Friday, September 7, 2007, Conference Room T-2B3, Two White Flint North, Rockville, Maryland 8:30 a.m.-8:35 a.m.: Opening Remarks by the ACRS Chairman (Open)-- The ACRS Chairman will make opening remarks regarding the conduct of the meeting. 8:35 a.m.-9:30 a.m.: Future ACRS Activities/Report of the Planning and Procedures Subcommittee (Open)--The Committee will discuss the recommendations of the Planning and Procedures Subcommittee regarding items proposed for consideration by the full Committee during future meetings. Also, it will hear a report of the Planning and Procedures Subcommittee on matters related to the conduct of ACRS business, including anticipated workload and member assignments. 9:30 a.m.-9:45 a.m.: Reconciliation of ACRS Comments and Recommendations (Open)--The Committee will discuss the responses from the NRC Executive Director for Operations to comments and recommendations included in recent ACRS reports and letters. 9:45 a.m.-10 a.m.: Subcommittee Report (Open)--The Committee will hear a report by and hold discussions with the Chairman of the ACRS Subcommittee on Plant License Renewal regarding interim review of the license renewal application for the Fitzpatrick Nuclear Plant. 10:15 a.m.-11:45 a.m.: Draft Report on Quality Assessment of Selected NRC Research Projects (Open)--The Committee will discuss a draft ACRS report on the results of the quality assessment of the NRC research projects on: Fatigue Crack Flaw Tolerance in Nuclear Power Plant Piping; Cable Response to Live Fire (CAROLFIRE) Testing; and Technical Review of On-Line Monitoring Techniques for Performance Assessment. 12:45 p.m.-2:45 p.m.: Draft ACRS Report on the NRC Safety Research Program (Open)--The Committee will discuss a draft ACRS report on the NRC Safety Research Program. 3 p.m.-7 p.m.: Preparation of ACRS Reports (Open)--The Committee will discuss proposed ACRS reports. Saturday, September 8, 2007, Conference Room T-2B3, Two White Flint North, Rockville, Maryland 8:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m.: Preparation of ACRS Reports (Open)--The Committee will continue its discussion of proposed ACRS reports. 12:30 p.m.-1 p.m.: Miscellaneous (Open)--The Committee will discuss matters related to the conduct of Committee activities and matters and specific issues that were not completed during previous meetings, as time and availability of information permit. Procedures for the conduct of and participation in ACRS meetings were published in the Federal Register on October 2, 2006 (71 FR 58015). In accordance with those procedures, oral [[Page 45453]] or written views may be presented by members of the public, including representatives of the nuclear industry. Electronic recordings will be permitted only during the open portions of the meeting. Persons desiring to make oral statements should notify the Cognizant ACRS staff named below five days before the meeting, if possible, so that appropriate arrangements can be made to allow necessary time during the meeting for such statements. Use of still, motion picture, and television cameras during the meeting may be limited to selected portions of the meeting as determined by the Chairman. Information regarding the time to be set aside for this purpose may be obtained by contacting the Cognizant ACRS staff prior to the meeting. In view of the possibility that the schedule for ACRS meetings may be adjusted by the Chairman as necessary to facilitate the conduct of the meeting, persons planning to attend should check with the Cognizant ACRS staff if such rescheduling would result in major inconvenience. Further information regarding topics to be discussed, whether the meeting has been canceled or rescheduled, as well as the Chairman's ruling on requests for the opportunity to present oral statements and the time allotted therefor can be obtained by contacting Mr. Sam Duraiswamy, Cognizant ACRS staff (301-415-7364), between 7:30 a.m. and 4 p.m., (ET). ACRS meeting agenda, meeting transcripts, and letter reports are available through the NRC Public Document Room at pdr@nrc.gov, or by calling the PDR at 1-800-397-4209, or from the Publicly Available Records System (PARS) component of NRC's document system (ADAMS) which is accessible from the NRC Web site at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html or http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc- ding-rm/doc- Video teleconferencing service is available for observing open sessions of ACRS meetings. Those wishing to use this service for observing ACRS meetings should contact Mr. Theron Brown, ACRS Audio Visual Technician (301-415-8066), between 7:30 a.m. and 3:45 p.m., (ET), at least 10 days before the meeting to ensure the availability of this service. Individuals or organizations requesting this service will be responsible for telephone line charges and for providing the equipment and facilities that they use to establish the video teleconferencing link. The availability of video teleconferencing services is not guaranteed. Dated: August 8, 2007. J. Samuel Walker, Acting Secretary of the Commission. [FR Doc. E7-15887 Filed 8-13-07; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 15 Japan Times: IAEA team's visit to nuclear plant japantimes.co.jp Web Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2007 A six-member team from the International Atomic Energy Agency's Nuclear Installation Safety Division has finished a four-day inspection of Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear-power station, which was damaged by a major earthquake July 16. The IAEA team's task was to find out what actually happened at the power station, the world's largest in terms of electrical output. It is hoped that not only the Japanese government and nuclear-power industry but also the governments and power industries of other countries can learn from the IAEA inspectors' findings and implement measures as needed. Although water and exhaust gas containing tiny amounts of radioactive materials were released into the sea and air, there was no major radioactive leakage. Four of the plant's seven reactors automatically shut down; the other three were undergoing regular checks. The IAEA team discussed operational management with TEPCO, but reportedly did not inspect reactor pressure vessels. TEPCO will have to carefully examine the pressure vessels and reactor cores before resuming operation. The IAEA team leader said restarting the plant could take as long as a year. Some local government officials had expressed the hope that the IAEA team would dispel rumors that the area might have been contaminated with radioactive material. But this task must be borne by TEPCO and the central and local governments. It is their job to explain what happened fully and, by so doing, regain the trust of the people. The Japan Times (C) All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 16 Victorville Daily Press: Victorville heads to Europe for energy talks August 13, 2007 - 7:24PM TATIANA PROPHET VICTORVILLE City officials went to Europe for ways to meet energy demands back home. Mayor Terry Caldwell and City Manager Jon Roberts recently returned from a week-long trip to Spain and France to find out more about solar, waste-to-energy and nuclear technologies. Only the cost of Roberts airfare and hotel were available, at $3,700, said city spokeswoman Yvonne Hester, adding that Caldwells expenses were likely similar. The city began looking into nuclear energy in 2006, hiring an environmental attorney to explore the possibility of using the technology. But such a program would require a major legal change, namely the opening of Yucca Mountain to nuclear waste, before any power plant can be built in California, state officials have said. Caldwell and Roberts are also looking at finding a private company to become the citys partner in the energy business. Theres a great deal of interest by companies in being involved in our public-private partnership, particularly the solar component, said Roberts, adding that nothing had been finalized. Unlike nuclear energy, solar is more realistic for the short-term, and is part of the citys plans for a second massive power plant at the north end of the city this one near Southern California Logistics Airport. The 563-megawatt plant is slated to include 513 megawatts of energy powered by natural gas and 50 megawatts generated by the sun. In Seville, the group toured energy company Solucars research and design facility, looking at the latest solar technology. Solucar is planning to build two of the worlds largest solar plants in Spain. Right now, the titleholder is the Florida Power and Light, which owns a pair of power plants built in the 1970s at Kramer Junction and Harper Dry Lake. In Paris, city officials met with French company Areva to discuss nuclear technology and with transit company Cofiroute. City Attorney Andre de Bortnowsky also went along, as well as executives with Victorvilles consultant, Newport Beach-based Inland Energy, who traveled at their own expense. Tatiana Prophet may be reached at 951-6222 or at tprophet@vvdailypress.com. Copyright 2007 Daily Press, a Freedom Communications newspaper. ***************************************************************** 17 NRC: Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards to Meet in Rockville, Maryland, September 6-8 News Release - 2007-100 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-0001 E-mail: opa@nrc.gov www.nrc.gov The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS) will hold a public meeting Sept. 6-8, in Rockville, Md., to discuss, among other items, a final review of the license renewal application for the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station. In addition, the committee will discuss the draft ACRS report on the NRC safety research program and review a draft report on the quality of selected NRC research projects. The ACRS advises the Commission on licensing and operation of nuclear power plants and related safety issues. The meeting will be held in Room T-2B3 of the agency’s Two White Flint North building, at 11545 Rockville Pike. The session on Thursday will run from 8:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.; Friday’s session is from 8:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.; Saturday’s session will run from 8:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. A complete agenda is available on the NRC’s Web site at: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/acrs/agenda/2007. NRC news releases are available through a free list server subscription at the following Web address: http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/listserver.html. The NRC Home Page at www.nrc.gov also offers a Subscribe to News link in the News & Information menu. E-mail notifications are sent to subscribers when news releases are posted to NRC's Web Site. Tuesday, August 14, 2007 ***************************************************************** 18 UPI: Analysis: Kazakhstan's nuclear future United Press International - International Security - Energy - Analysis Published: Aug. 14, 2007 at 11:49 AM By JOHN C.K. DALY UPI International Correpondent While Western attention focuses on the rising oil and natural gas potential of Caspian states, rising energy player Kazakhstan has another energy asset up its sleeve: uranium. Kazakhstan contains the world's second-largest uranium reserves, estimated at 1.5 million tons. In 2006 it produced 5,279 tons of uranium, 21 percent more than in 2005, and intends in 2007 to increase uranium production 31 percent to 6,937 tons, according to the countrys Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry. Kazakhstan is the world's No. 3 uranium miner, exceeded only by Australia and Canada; the three countries account for more than half of global uranium production. If market indicators are any gauge, Kazakhstan may soon become as big an international player in the global uranium market as it is in the oil sphere. All indications are there. Uranium prices have increased 1,000 percent in just five years and seem set to rise further. In 2001 a pound of uranium sold for between $5 and $10; current spot prices are $105 per pound. The Royal Bank of Canada Capital Markets noted in a recent study, "Investing in Uranium Companies," that mining remains in the middle of a uranium bull market with an average $100 per pound price this year, further asserting that a supply gap will exist in uranium after 2013. Australias Macquarie Banks stock-broking division is even more bullish, projecting that by 2009 uranium prices might rise to $200 a pound. Driving uranium prices upward are record-high oil prices and rising demand for the fuel, particularly from Asia. South Korea relies on nuclear energy to produce 45 percent of the countrys electricity, and Japan is not far behind, relying on nuclear power for 30 percent of its energy needs. Asias rising economic powerhouses China and India are interested in nuclear energy as well. China's Commission of Science Technology and Industry for National Defense in its 11th Five-Year Plan for the Nuclear Industry said China will prospect for and develop indigenous uranium deposits in order to expand the nations ability to produce 40 gigawatts of nuclear power electrical generating capacity by 2020. China is also developing a national uranium reserve, to commence in 2010. Nuclear power accounts for just 1.4 percent of Chinas electrical power generation. Despite Beijings ambitious attempts to expand uranium production in Xinjiang and elsewhere, local sources will be insufficient to meet domestic needs; analysts predict that within less than a decade China's planned nuclear power reactors will consume 44 million pounds of uranium annually, as more than 16 provinces, regions and municipalities have announced intentions to build nuclear power plants within the next eight years -- a total of 77 planned and proposed new reactors. India is also increasingly interested in nuclear electrical power generation, despite the fact that nuclear accounts for a paltry 3 percent to 4 percent of the countrys power needs; India has 19 planned and proposed nuclear power reactors. The rest of the world is taking a new look at nuclear power as well. Londons World Nuclear Association in May reported that worldwide, 256 reactors were either in the planning stage or under construction, in addition to the 437 nuclear power reactors in operation. Even Ukraine, site of the infamous 1986 Chernobyl disaster, has announced plans to build 22 new nuclear power stations, while the United States, site of the 1979 Three Mile Island partial meltdown accident, has 23 reactors being proposed. Unlike its dominant position in the worlds oil and natural gas market, Russias footprint in the global uranium market remains relatively small. Russian state holding company Atomprom is the worlds seventh-largest holder of uranium ore reserves, the third-largest producer of nuclear fuel and the worlds fifth-largest miner of uranium. Current Russian production is only 3,000 metric tons of uranium ore out of an annual requirement of 18,000 metric tons. It is most unlikely therefore that Atomprom will be able to meet the Russian governments declaration last year of its intention to increase the Russian Federations nuclear power generation from its rate of 15 percent of the nations energy by an additional 10 percent. In April, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, "Over the entire Soviet period, 30 nuclear power plant units were built, but we plan to build 26 such units over the next 12 years, and to do so using the most advanced technology available." As with its oil and gas reserves, Kazakhstan has adroitly maneuvered to lessen its dependency on Russia by diversifying its partners and markets. In April 2005 South Korea and Kazakhstan established a joint mining venture for uranium, scheduled to begin operations in 2008 with an eventual annual output of 1,000 tons; last April Kazakhstan and Japan signed a civil nuclear cooperation agreement under which Japan will import 30 percent of annual uranium needs of 9,500 tons for power generation from Kazakhstan. Other foreign companies investing in Kazakhstans uranium industry include Canadas SXR Uranium One Inc., Japans Marubeni Corp., Chinas Guangdong Nuclear Power Group, Britains New Power Systems Ltd. and the U.S. uranium trading company Nukem. Soothing Kremlin concerns, Astana has informally promised to export up to 6,000 tons a year to Russia as well. As with its oil industry, Kazakhstan has actively courted foreign investment for its mining operations. The worlds leading producer of uranium oxide, Canadas Cameco, has a 60-percent share in Kazakhstans Inkai uranium mining operation, while the state atomic energy agency, Kazatomprom, the worlds fourth-largest producer, also has a stake in Inkai. Nor is the investment one way; Kazatomprom, flush with cash, has proposed purchasing a 10-percent stake in the U.S. company Westinghouse Electric. The rosy future for Kazakhstans uranium ambitions faces some bottlenecks, however, including massive skilled labor and infrastructure shortages that could hamper a rapid expansion of uranium production. Astana is betting on its foreign partners to provide both funding and expertise to help close the gap. There is also the question of selling uranium, which is not currently listed as a commodity on global exchanges. About 15 percent of uranium is sold via the spot market, while long-term contract pricing accounts for the remaining 85 percent. Given that the International Energy Agency estimates that global energy needs will rise by 51 percent by 2030, sales contracts would seem to be less of a future problem for the Kazakh government than choosing among a multitude of bidders. (e-mail: energy@upi.com) Copyright 2007 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 19 MHNN: All sirens sound in current Indian Point test Covering the Hudson to the Catskills! August 14, 2007 Copyright 2007 Mid-Hudson News Network, a division of Statewide Buchanan All 155 new sirens sounded Tuesday as Entergy works toward meeting its deadline of August 24th to turn on the new Indian Point warning system. Company spokesman James Steets said that all of the sirens sounded when tested this morning. Last weekend, 96 percent of the new sirens worked. Steets said the some remaining issues must be resolved, but he is confident the new system will be fully operational on deadline day. HEAR today's news on MidHudsonRadio.com, the Hudson Valley's only Internet radio news report. ***************************************************************** 20 CullmanTimes.com: TVA director: New nuclear reactor coming Cullman, Alabama - Published: August 14, 2007 11:04 am By Nancy Glassock The Cullman Times The Tennessee Valley Authority will finish construction on a new reactor unit by 2013 that will produce enough energy to power an area the size of Huntsville and its suburbs, said Howard Thrailkill, TVA Board member Monday at a Cullman Kiwanis luncheon. Thrailkill, of Huntsville, was appointed to the TVA board in March 2006 the first Alabama appointee in the 75-year history of the TVA. He recently retired as president and chief operating officer of Adtran, Inc., in Huntsville, a company that supplies equipment for telecommunications service providers and corporate end-users. Thrailkill is a former president and chief executive operating officer of Floating Point Systems. His TVA term expires May 18, 2010. Thrailkill said the TVA Board of Directors this month approved a $2.49 billion, five-year construction effort to build a 1,180-megawatt reactor at Watts Bar Nuclear Plant in Spring City, Tenn., after about a year of studies on energy needs, cost, and the impact of building a second unit at the Watts Bar Plant. He said TVA has an economic and environmental responsibility to the public. We have a fundamental role to fulfill in society that transcends what we do at TVA, Thrailkill said. He gave an overview of TVAs history and recent events, and offered his predictions for the near future. TVA serves 8.7 million customers in seven southeastern states, provides power to large industries and 158 power distributors, and manages the Tennessee River and its tributaries. The organization stopped receiving government funding in 1959. In 2005, the organization became governed by a director, oversight board and chief operating officer, Thrailkill said. Also in 2005, Congress approved the Energy Policy Act, resulting in a renewed focus on energy conservation, reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and renewable energy from the wind, sun or water, he said. This year, the TVA Board approved a new Land Policy governing planning, retention and disposal of land under TVAs stewardship, Thrailkill said. According to the policy, TVA originally acquired about 1.3 million acres of land in the Tennessee Valley. The construction and operation of the reservoir system inundates about 470,000 acres with water. The organization has transferred or sold about 508,000 acres, the majority of which was transferred to other federal and state agencies for public uses. TVA now owns about 293,000 acres that continue to be managed pursuant to the TVA Act. This month, TVA appointed Kim Greene as chief financial officer and executive vice president of financial services. According to a press release from TVA, Greene earned a bachelors degree in engineering science and mechanics from The University of Tennessee, and a masters degree in biomedical engineering from The University of Alabama at Birmingham. She is the former senior vice president of finance and treasurer for Southern Company. The TVA Board of Directors approved a new Strategic Plan May 31 focusing on the following key points for the next decade: customers, the public, finances, assets and operations. Thrailkill predicted fuel prices will continue to rise. Thats going to be a dangerous situation, and supplies are going to be limited, he said. He also predicted passage of greenhouse gas legislation, and new standards set for the percentage of energy generated by renewable sources. But the southeast, Thrailkill said, doesnt have enough wind to produce an adequate supply of energy and using solar energy is costly. TVA operates six nuclear units three boiling water reactors at Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant in Athens, and three pressurized water reactors at Watts Bar and Sequoyah nuclear plants in Tennessee. 2007, The Cullman Times 300 4th Ave. SE; Cullman, AL 35055 Phone: (256) 734-2131; Fax: (256) 737-1006 Send us your news tips & comments. ***************************************************************** 21 Deccan Herald: CPM asks govt not to proceed with N-deal Tuesday, August 14, 2007 New Delhi, PTI: The CPM reasons that the Prime Minister has not addressed Left concerns in the nuclear deal. It is difficult to agree with PM that the deal has no impact on the independent foreign policy... CPI (M) contends that: - Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has not addressed Left concerns on Indo-US civil nuclear deal. -Difficult to agree with PM that the deal has no impact on our independent foreign policy. -The US can terminate with all its consequences for India's civilian nuclear energy programme. -Full access to technology for the fuel cycle will not be available to India. -Annual certification (of US cooperation with India) is an obligation of the US President which he is bound to fulfil -PM's statement in Parliament sheds no new light on civil nuclear deal for a reassessment on our part., . Copyright 2007, The Printers (Mysore) Private Ltd., 75, M.G. Road, Post Box No 5331, Bangalore - 560001 Tel: +91 (80) 25880000 Fax No. +91 (80) 25880523 ***************************************************************** 22 JOURNAL NEWS: Regulators keeping tighter tabs on dangerous radioactive material Tuesday, August 14, 2007 By GREG CLARY BUCHANAN - Specially trained contractors broke open a bolted box at the bottom of Indian Point 3's spent-fuel pool this month, hoping to find tiny amounts of weapons-grade uranium 235 that federal officials want to verify haven't been misplaced, lost or stolen. The work - done underwater with equipment operated from above - should be finished in the next few days, and Indian Point officials expect to find all the radioactive isotopes they're supposed to. Still, the process is painstaking. "You can't just empty the contents of the boxes on the floor and start counting," said Indian Point spokesman Jim Steets. "One of the boxes gave the guys trouble just to get it opened." Federal regulators are requiring an updated inventory of "special nuclear material" at nuclear plants across the country and have found a few cases - including Indian Point - where the storage methods and records don't meet Nuclear Regulatory Commission standards. Those gaps bring into focus the storage of radioactive isotopes that, before Sept. 11, 2001, were considered so dangerous to handle that thieves wouldn't risk certain suicide to steal them. "The current threat environment has changed the NRC's perspective of the self-protecting nature of this material," said Martha Williams, the agency official most responsible for ensuring inventories are accurate. "Ten years ago it never occurred to anybody that somebody would give up their life to get something like this." It's pretty clear from experts that those trying to grab some plutonium or enhanced uranium to create a radiological disaster wouldn't get far at a nuclear plant without taking extraordinary precautions. "When you're talking about somebody trying to steal or deliver the material, the radiation around that spent-fuel pool would be so high that if you didn't have the proper equipment, you'd have only minutes to live," said Joseph Alverez, a health physicist with more than 30 years' experience in radiation-protection programs, most of that with the U.S. Department of Energy. "It would be like trying to walk into a place that's 300 degrees and expecting to live," Alverez said. "We're talking about radiation so strong, you're getting fried. Your nerves just go. Your body can't cool itself off." NRC officials say that since terrorists have shown they will give their lives if the cause is important enough to them, the rules have changed, not just in tightened security measures, but also in the day-to-day warehousing of nuclear material. So much so that the agency committed extra resources late last year to review all of its 104 nuclear plant inventories by the summer, even down to verifying amounts minute enough to force Indian Point to break open a box that had been closed since about 1988. Entergy Nuclear, which owns and operates Indian Point, bought the power plant in 2001 and is responsible for visually verifying all its inventories. "We have to account for metric tons (of special nuclear material)," said Robert "Monk" Hansler, the man responsible for Indian Point's inventory. "Almost all of it - probably 99.9 percent - is spent fuel." The small remaining amount is either new fuel, instrumentation calibration samples, or detectors that measure the power of the nuclear reactors on site. That last category is what caused the inventory problem at Indian Point and has cost other nuclear plants hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines when the detectors have turned up missing. It's too early to know what the NRC will do on the issue with Indian Point, which was cited for not visually verifying each detector during annual inspections. Entergy said it believed the bolted container left over from previous owners was to be counted as a unit. Federal regulators said company officials should have opened it because it was merely bolted shut, not sealed. Indian Point isn't alone among plants that have had to find special nuclear material that wasn't properly inventoried. As recently as last month, Dresden 3 in Morris, Ill., ran into trouble when officials couldn't locate two fuel pellets and 99 pieces of uranium used as in-core power detectors. The items were last documented in 1977 in the reactor's spent- fuel pool and are still unaccounted for, NRC officials said yesterday. There have been other cases, as well, including Entergy plants in Vermont and Massachusetts. The case that raised the most auditing concerns, however, was the Millstone power plant in Waterford, Conn., which was fined $288,000 in 2002 for two fuel rods that were reported missing in 2000 and were never found. Millstone, in fact, is the reason that the federal government started keeping a closer eye on the nuclear industry's fuel supplies - that and the terrorist attacks of 2001, NRC officials said. A special investigation soon after those events led to a 2005 federal government report that cited a lack of visual verification of inventory and too great a reliance on record keeping that wasn't even computerized until more recent times. "It's because of some of the problems ... that the NRC is now more in a Missouri mode, where you have to 'show me,' " said David Lochbaum, a nuclear specialist with the Union of Concerned Scientists. "In the past, a paperwork audit was enough and the change is leading to some of the situations that we have today like Indian Point's." Lochbaum chided the NRC's lack of speed in arriving at the new attitude, noting that the Millstone discovery happened in late 1999 and that seven-plus years was too long to wait to enact tighter controls. "The NRC is moving in the right direction on this, but they can turn a license renewal around in 24 months," Lochbaum said. "They're an agency that allegedly puts safety first." Lochbaum and Alverez, as well as Entergy and NRC officials, all pointed out that the amounts of uranium 235 being reviewed at Indian Point are too small to make a bomb. The material has also been enriched to a maximum of 5 percent, while the amounts needed for an atomic bomb would be thousands of times greater and would have to be enriched to more than 90 percent. "The uranium at a nuclear power plant, you can't make it into a bomb. You just can't blow that stuff up," Alverez said. "The stuff that could be made into a bomb, there just so little of it, you'd have to collect a bunch of it from a bunch of different places to do it." He said the people who have enough nuclear material to make something dangerous are sanctioned labs set up for nuclear bomb research. "Unless you're doing special types of experiments, you don't want that much of this material," Alverez said. "If you've got enough to make a bomb, and it gets together accidentally, you'd have a problem. It's very unstable." Reach Greg Clary at 914-696-8566 or gclary@lohud.com. J WAYNE LEONARD C E O ENTERGY HEADQUATERS 639 LOYOLA AVE. NEW ORLEANS, LA 70113 PHONE : 504-576-4000 FAX : 504-576-4428 Copyright 2007 The Journal News, a Gannett Co. Inc. newspaper ***************************************************************** 23 Scotsman.com: Powerful vision of future fades into history Tue 14 Aug 2007 JOHN ROSS 1 The test took place at 1pm on 13 August, 1957, in Cell 1 of Dounreay's Experimental Criticality Facility, code-named D1249. 2 3,000 were employed at Dounreay at its peak, transforming the local economy. 3 The population of nearby Thurso grew from 3,000 in 1951 to 9,000 in 1971. 4 Until the 1950s, Dounreay was an area of grazing land with just a 16th century ruined castle, a farm and a Second World War aerodrome, called HMS Tern (II). 5 The building has been decommissioned and demolished. 6 The site is 140 acres in size. 7 In 1954, the government selected Dounreay as the location for the national centre for research and development of fast-breeder reactors, a new type of atomic energy. 8 Fast reactors were thought to have good potential for generating electricity as they made more efficient use of uranium fuel. 9 Construction work on the site began in 1955. 10 Two fast reactors were built - the Dounreay Fast Reactor (DFR), which operated from 1959 to 1977, and the Prototype Fast Reactor (PFR), a larger model that ran from 1974 to 1994. 11 A materials test reactor (DMTR) also operated from 1958 to 1969. 12 300 individual plates make up the famous golfball-shaped "dome of discovery". 13 The first electrical power from DFR was exported to the national grid in October 1962. 14 600 million kilowatt-hours of electricity were supplied by DFR during its working lifetime. 15 In 1988, the government decided that there was no short-term need for fast reactors and the programme ended in 1993. 16 Reprocessing of PFR fuel continued until 1996, and spare capacity in fuel plants allowed commercial work, including the manufacture of fuel elements and recovery of enriched uranium. 17 In the late 1990s, the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) stopped new commercial work to concentrate on decommissioning the site. 18 A public consultation will be held this year into whether the dome should be kept. 19 The UKAEA originally estimated that it would take 100 years to decommission Dounreay. 20 The timetable was revised to 50 years after pressure from industry regulators. 21 2033 has been given as the most recent date for the clean-up of the site to be completed. 22 The original cost of decommissioning was put at £4.5 billion. 23 £2.9 billion is the current estimated cost of decommissioning. 24 1,500 separate projects have been identified as part of the plan to restore the environment of the Dounreay site. 25 20 per cent of the work has been completed in the first seven years of the clean-up. 26 99 buildings have been knocked down so far as part of the clean-up of the Dounreay site. 27 It will cost £250 million to clear out DFR, and take until 2030. 28 It will cost £200 million to clear out PFR, which will take until 2032. 29 Work costing £164 million was carried out at Dounreay between April 2006 and April 2007. 30 115 tonnes of sodium, which had been used as a coolant, was destroyed on the site last year. 31 3,576 drums of solid, low-level radioactive waste were processed for disposal on-site last year. 32 300 tonnes of scrap metal was recycled at the site during the past 12 months. 33 It will cost £180 million to clean out the notorious waste shaft over the next 20 years. 34 800 cubic metres of waste are contained in the waste shaft, in which an explosion in 1977 caused it to be sealed off. 35 143 safety recommendations had to be addressed by Dounreay after an audit by the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency in 1998. 36 On a scale of one to ten, the 1998 audit gave Dounreay a mark of seven. A mark of one was considered world-class and ten unlicensable. 37 Dounreay contributes £80 million to the Scottish economy every year. 38 The plant is responsible for one out of five jobs in the area. 39 More than 2,000 now work at the site. 40 The decommissioning of Dounreay is said to support an additional 5,000 jobs across the UK. 41 UKAEA has trained more than 1,000 engineering apprentices at Dounreay since 1955. 42 £10 million has been spent trying to resolve the continuing problem of radioactive particles being found on beaches near the complex. 43 Since 1983, more than 900 particles have been found on the nearby seabed and over 200 on beaches. 44 19 radioactive particles were found last year during monitoring of five million metres of local beaches. 45 Dounreay is nine miles west of Thurso. 46 The UKAEA was fined £15,000 on 12 July this year for health and safety failings that led to a worker breathing in plutonium. 47 In February, the UKAEA was fined £140,000 for releasing radioactive particles into the sea and illegally dumping radioactive waste. 48 2.9 tonnes of thorium nitrate exported to Peru from Dounreay almost ten years ago has been returned to Caithness. The waste was originally produced at Dounreay as a by-product of reprocessing and was exported to Peru in 1998, but it could not be treated or disposed of. 49 Dounreay is owned by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), a government body which has responsibility for the clean-up of the UK's 20 civil nuclear sites. 50 Dounreay's Ordnance Survey grid reference is NC982669 Related topic * Dounreay http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=566 This article: http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=1280982007 Last updated: 13-Aug-07 00:21 BST 2007 Scotsman.com | contact | terms & conditions ***************************************************************** 24 Bradenton.com: Tallevast leaders look to EPA for support 08/14/2007 | By DONNA WRIGHT and DUANE MARSTELLER Herald Staff Writers TALLEVAST -- Tallevast leaders, saying efforts to clean up toxic waste beneath their community are not addressing residents' health and relocation concerns, are asking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to intervene. FOCUS, a residents' advocacy group, asked the EPA last week to establish a multi-agency, alternative-dispute-resolution process to handle those and other issues not raised in several lawsuits over the contamination. "Our health is failing us in numbers too great to ignore, yet our public health agencies and regulatory agencies have taken no action to address this issue even though they are aware that we ingested and inhaled chemicals for years, and science acknowledges a range of diseases will occur with exposure to these chemicals," an early draft of the letter said. FOCUS sent the letter to the EPA's Office of Environmental Justice, created to identify and address disproportionately high and adverse human health or environmental effects on minority and low-income communities. FOCUS also sent the letter to more than 200 federal, state and local government leaders, civil rights advocates, black leaders, presidential candidates and media outlets. Among them: Jesse Jackson, Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey and former presidents Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush. In the process, FOCUS is seeking a neutral moderator who would assist responsible parties - including the U.S. Departments of Defense and Energy - in identifying and sharing the cost of addressing community needs stemming from a 200-acre plume of underground contamination in Tallevast. The plume traces back to a former beryllium plant that made parts for nuclear weapons and reactors under U.S. government contracts. Lockheed Martin Corp. discovered the pollution when it owned the plant in 2000, and is responsible for investigating its extent and cleaning it up - a process the defense giant says could take up to 100 years. Although Lockheed has set up a free health program for residents, FOCUS says no one has stepped forward to relocate them or address cancers, illnesses and deaths it contends are caused by the contamination. "What has happened in Tallevast is representative of what has happened in other communities of color," said Connie Tucker of the Southern Organizing Community for Economic and Social Justice and the African American Environmental Justice Action Network in Atlanta, who has been advising Tallevast residents. "If this had happened in a white community, you would have had a different response." Court decisions often don't address or leave unresolved the most critical issues facing a contaminated community, she said. The dispute resolution process could address those issues and won't interfere with ongoing clean-up and litigation, Tucker said. "To expect this community to live in the middle of a clean-up process for up to 100 years is not only unjust but inhumane," she said. Gail Rymer, a Lockheed spokeswoman, said Monday the company had not seen a copy of the letter nor was aware of FOCUS' request. The letter was addressed to an official of the EPA's Office of Environmental Justice in Atlanta, who did not return a telephone call Monday. herald wathco Group says residents' health and relocation concerns not being addressed ***************************************************************** 25 San Bernardino County Sun: Judge halts water case Rialto perchlorate issue dealt setback Jason Pesick, Staff Writer Article Launched: 08/14/2007 12:00:00 AM PDT In the latest delay for efforts to clean up water contamination around Rialto, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge halted next week's state water board hearings on the matter. The hearings were supposed to determine whether three companies should be held responsible for perchlorate in the area's drinking water. On Monday, Judge Dzintra Janavs issued a temporary stay to prevent the hearings from moving forward after the companies involved, Emhart Industries - affiliated with Black & Decker - Goodrich and Pyro Spectaculars, filed two suits and asked the judge to shut down the hearings before the State Water Resources Control Board. "They're trying to keep the state board or any agency whatsoever from enforcing the water code," said Scott Sommer, Rialto's lead attorney in the perchlorate battles. Perchlorate, used in the production of explosives, can interfere with the thyroid and may also be harmful to neurological development in fetuses. Rialto officials have estimated the cost of cleaning up the perchlorate flowing through the city's drinking water at $300 million. Currently, perchlorate is cleaned out of the water before it goes to residents. The companies filed motions in the state board proceedings requesting that the state board remove itself and the staff of the Riverside-based Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board from the process, which would essentially kill the hearings. On Saturday, the hearing officer for those proceedings, Tam Doduc, denied those requests. In response, as expected on Monday morning, Emhart and Goodrich showed up in court and dumped pages upon pages of material before Janavs, who had not been involved in the issue. Janavs stayed the hearings and scheduled an Aug. 31 court hearing to review the merits of the suits. The suits claimed that the companies' due process rights were being violated during the water board proceedings and that the state board did not follow the proper procedures in taking the case from the Santa Ana Board, which was originally supposed to hear the case. One of Goodrich's concerns involved ex parte - or off the record - communications between the state board and the staff of the Santa Ana board, said Goodrich spokesman Patrick Palmer. The staff of the Santa Ana board was going to act as the prosecutor in the hearings. The state board also has a financial interest in the outcome of the hearings because it handed out grants to clean perchlorate out of drinking water in the area, Palmer said. Emhart raised similar concerns, including an entire list of what its attorneys said were inappropriate ex parte communications. Bob Wyatt, one of Emhart's lawyers, said one of the most troubling incidents was when Gerard Thibeault, the executive officer of the Santa Ana board, gave a presentation to the state board about the perchlorate problem in Rialto. "It's like a lawyer coming in and talking to a judge about a case before it's going to be heard," Wyatt said. The case should be decided in a fair and neutral forum, he said. Sommer, Rialto's lawyer, said he was told the state board plans to fight the suits. Bill Rukeyser, spokesman for the board, said the board's lawyers are still discussing how to move forward. "The state water board is disappointed with today's order from the court. The board is fully prepared to fulfill its role to ensure neutral and fair hearings," he said. On Saturday, when she denied the companies' motions that the state board recuse itself and disqualify the regional board staff, Doduc, the state board's hearing officer and chairwoman, wrote that all ex parte communications have been disclosed and that none of them show any appearance of bias. The companies disagreed, and asked the court to overrule her. Sommer said Monday's stay will only delay the hearings by a few weeks and that the companies will eventually run out of delaying tactics. They were bound to raise these issues at some point. To shut the process down on every front, he said Wyatt has argued that state regulatory agencies, like the state and regional water boards, are not the proper venue for this case, while also arguing that the federal courts are not the proper venue. A federal trial on the issue is tentatively scheduled for October 2008. The state hearings and other attempts to pursue suspected polluters have already been delayed numerous times, and it has been 10 years since the perchlorate was discovered. On July 31, Goodrich sued Rialto, accusing the city of not pursuing all of the parties it says Rialto should try to hold responsible for the contamination. Barry Groveman, a lawyer representing the West Valley Water District and the private Fontana Water Company, who are Rialto's neighbors, used Monday's setback in court as another example of why he believes Rialto should join his clients and invite the Environmental Protection Agency to declare the area a Superfund site. "The amount of money being spent is ungodly and it's not achieving the desired goal," he said of Rialto's strategy, which city officials estimate has cost $15 million in legal and investigative fees. In the past month or two, Rialto has asked the EPA to get more involved but does not want to turn the area into a Superfund site, Sommer said. The case so far The State Water Resources Control Board was supposed to hold hearings starting Aug. 21 to figure out if three companies are responsible for cleaning up the perchlorate in Rialto. Following a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge's order, those hearings will not take place next week and may never take place, depending on the outcome of a court battle. What is perchlorate? Perchlorate is used in the production of explosives, like rocket fuel and fireworks. It can interfere with the thyroid gland, which is important for the development of the nervous system. Perchlorate is flowing from industrial sites on Rialto's north end through the city and possibly into Colton and toward Fontana. Perchlorate is cleaned out of water before it goes to residents. Copyright 2007 Los Angeles Newspaper Group ***************************************************************** 26 OpEdNews: EPRI, NEI, NRC Inaction Killing Nuclear Workers? by Sherwood Martinelli http://www.opednews.com Monday, August 13, 2007 What EPRI, NEI, NRC and Nuclear Industry Do Not Want Reactor Workers Knowing Nuclear Industry Workers, Killing Them Softly With Your REMs. As we watch the nuclear industry rubber stamping license renewals for 104 failing American Nuclear Reactors in the name of a Nuclear Renaissance, we have to wonder where worker protections are at plants like Entergy Nuclear's Indian Point. To push through license renewals for failing reactors, the NRC has allowed EPRI and NEI to rewrite major sections of 10 CFR, the NRC regulations meant to protect human health,safety and the environment. Meanwhile, one simple rule change that would provide nuclear workers with a great deal of protection from cancer causing REM exposures sits on the back burner. Almost universally, the world has a 2 REM a year exposure rating for people working in nuclear facilities...not so in America, and not even close for many workers at Nuclear Reactor sites. A quick rule change could enact this exposure rating for every NRC licensee...however, the NRC buckled to industry pressure (EPRI and NEI), and is taking no action on changing the rules to lower worker exposure limits until after EPRI (using statistics provided by NEI) conducts a study on the effects of lowering the yearly exposure limits from 3 REM to 2 REM on the industry! Let's save the industry a LOT OF TIME and MONEY by spelling out what such a rule change would do. 1. It would reduce worker radiation exposures by 1/3 from 3 REM to only 2 REM per year. 2. It would propably cost nuclear plant owners like Entergy who reported profits last year of almost half a billion dollars a few million a year in added staff. 3. It would provide union workers more job opportunities, as nuclear plants would have to schedule in more workers to keep individual employee exposures under 2 REM. So, why not make this simple rule change? Because MANAGEMENT cares more about PROFITS than their workers, especially when those workers are the laborers, the pipe fitters, the welders, nozzle damn insertion-removal workers, radwaste technicians, in-house maintenance, valve and pump vendor technicians...in short, the blue collar, union workers, the back bone of American Industry. It is a known fact that Indian Point workers read this blog...go to your management at Indian Point. Ask them if it is true that NRC is/has been considering a REM dose reduction. Ask them about the EPRI study on this topic, ask them why worker personal information was shared with EPRI for this study. Demand they explain to you, the worker being exposed why they as a company, as an industry are not pushing the NRC to make this rule change IMMEDIATELY. Further, so that the NRC has ACCURATE records on every employee in the nuclear industry, demand that PADS tracking be mandatory for every worker in the industry, including in-house employees. Where is your union demanding this rule change? Where is your union in demanding that the NRC not grant exemptions to this exposure and tracking rule? One would think the Pipe fitters Local would be ALL OVER THIS VERY IMPORTANT ISSUE. Grow a backbone, demand that EPRI make public their study entitled: Evaluation of 2 Rem per Year Occupational Dose Limit: Potential Impacts on U.S. Nuclear Utilities http://greennuclearbutterfly.blogspot.com Anti-Nuclear activist, and publisher of two blogs on the subject of nuclear energy. Living less than three miles from Entergy's Indian Point, which is leaking tritium and strontium 90 into the Hudson, I write in the hopes of awakening the public to the horrors that are nuclear energy. NEI's( Nuclear Energy Institute) lies about nuclear energy being carbon free have to be exposed, their incestous relationship with the NRC and DOE has to be brought into the light of day, the wrongful rubber stamping of license renewals ended before and American Chernobyl occurs. Copyright OpEdNews, 2002-2007 ***************************************************************** 27 ReviewJournal.com: Federal lawyers defend water use Aug. 14, 2007 Filing contradicts Nevada in Yucca Mountain case By KEITH ROGERS REVIEW-JOURNAL Contrary to Nevada's stance that the Department of Energy violated a court-approved agreement by using the state's water to drill bore holes at the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site, Justice Department attorneys contend in court papers Monday that DOE did nothing wrong. The 44-page document filed by Stephen Bartell and Ronald Tenpas, attorneys for the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division, sets the stage for a hearing Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas on their emergency motion to block the state engineer's cease-and-desist order. "State defendants assert that this case does not involve state regulation of federal activity, but rather state control over acquisition of state property rights which, as a consequence of federal as well as state policy, is exclusively governed by state law. (They) are wrong as to each of these contentions," Bartell and Tenpas wrote. The lawyers further tried to debunk the state's position, citing the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution which they said prohibits state interference with DOE's water use on federal land. Scientists at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, have continued to use water from two nearby wells despite State Engineer Tracy Taylor's June 1 cease-and-desist order that was reinstated July 20 after he determined that it is not in Nevada's interest to allow the water to be used to drill bore holes. The water is used to cool and lubricate drill bits and to create mud for collecting soil and rock samples from hundreds of feet below the surface where DOE wants to build hangar-size buildings above ground for handling and storing spent nuclear fuel before it is entombed in the mountain. The "geotechnical" information about the potential for earthquakes and floods in the area is needed for a license application for building a repository that DOE plans to submit to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by June 2008. State attorneys have argued in court filings that the drilling program should have been completed by 2002 before then-Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham recommended the site to President Bush. The Justice Department lawyers assert that activities related to bore hole drilling "lawfully occur 'between' the 'site characterization state' and the 'construction stage.' " By failing to follow the court-approved agreement and ignoring Taylor's cease-and-desist order, state attorneys have said the Department of Energy and its counselors have come to the court with unclean hands that should disqualify them from receiving a preliminary injunction. "The state's argument is baseless," the Justice Department attorneys wrote in Monday's filing. "The correspondence between the parties reveals unmistakably that DOE followed the procedures it had agreed upon, gave ample notice of its planned water use to the state engineer and complied with all previous agreements," they wrote. Links powered by inform.com Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2007 Stephens Media, LLC Privacy Statement ***************************************************************** 28 Carlsbad Current-Argus: Residents support possible new type of waste Article Launched: 08/13/2007 10:35:08 PM MDT By Tom Schneider Current-Argus Staff Writer CARLSBAD ? In the first step toward determining whether the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant should be the destination of 5,600 cubic meters of radioactive waste, the U.S. Department of Energy last night conducted a public forum at Carlsbad's Pecos River Village Conference Center to gauge public sentiment toward such a move. The Department of Energy is seeking to dispose of 2,600 cubic meters of non-defense waste from commercial sources - decommissioned nuclear power plants, radioactive sealed sources no longer being used in such activities as food irradiation and medical procedures, and waste from industry research and development - designated as "Greater Than Class C" or "GTCC" waste. The additional 3,000 cubic meters has similar contents but unspecified origins. The amount of waste in question is relatively small compared to the 175,000 cubic meters of defense-related nuclear waste authorized for WIPP. The site itself is currently not authorized, through legislation or regulation, for this type of waste. If WIPP were to become authorized, however, the increase in waste would not exceed the volume of what is currently allowed at the site. More than a dozen individuals came forward to offer their comments. Local residents who spoke were in favor of the new class of waste being deposited at WIPP. Department of Energy and Los Alamos National Lab employees pointed out that they spoke at this meeting as private citizens, not as representatives of their employers. "There is probably no place on earth that has been evaluated more than (southeastern) New Mexico," said Carlsbad resident Jeff Neal. "No other place is better suited for the disposal of wastes. Expand the mission of WIPP. We have the land. We understand the technology. We have the geology. We have the experience. We have the safety record," said Neal. WIPP is "clearly more than adequate to dispose of GTCC waste," said Roger Nelson, DOE employee. "I'm excited to find that GTCC might be coming to WIPP," said Jerri McTaggart, Los Alamos employee. "WIPP is the best place to bury GTCC. WIPP is set up to handle defense waste; it only makes sense (to bring non-defense waste to WIPP)." "I agree that WIPP would be perfect for GTCC wastes," said Norbert Reuyse, a Carlsbad resident with a background in potash mining and the oil and gas industry. "WIPP must evolve." "I (want) to register my support for the deep geologic disposal option as well as the WIPP vicinity options," said Tim Burns. "I have a Ph.D. in chemistry and have worked in radioactive waste management for more than 20 years," he said. "WIPP would provide a key nuclear disposal solution," said Cliff Stroud, a Los Alamos employee. "If we wait too long, it may be too late for the environment and for national security needs," he said. "We don't anticipate any additional impact," said Jim Conca, director of NMSU's Environmental Research Center. "I can't tell you how much I enjoy working on the project and the progress we've made," said Carlsbad Mayor Bob Forrest. "We're the only facility in the world that's licensed. DOE has got the greatest success rate of all the programs right here in Carlsbad," he said. "WIPP is the best thing that could have happened to Carlsbad. Our future is unlimited." "I believe WIPP is the safest and most cost-effective place to put the GTCC waste," said Russ Patterson, a DOE employee. "I have to say that this is the safest place for nuclear waste in all of the United States." "The DOE should consider WIPP for the disposal of GTCC waste as it inherently meets the NRC's regulations," said State District 55 Rep. John Heaton, chairman of the N.M. Radioactive and Hazardous Materials Committee. "They should find that WIPP is the best alternative as it has clearly demonstrated its ability to dispose of GTCC-level waste. The citizens in my district overwhelmingly would support this action," said Heaton. Some New Mexico residents from out of the area made the trip to the meeting to make sure their voices were heard as well. "My thoughts on increasing the ability (of WIPP to receive) new kinds of waste is a mistake," said Frank McKinnon, a Roswell resident, is an active opponent of DOE Global Nuclear Energy Partnership activities in Chaves County. "The people who would want us to have nuclear waste of any kind at WIPP care very little for any of you," he said. "It's very important for everyone here with the common sense to care about their grandchildren that they make some noise." "The cumulative impact, the increasing number of facilities, uranium enrichment, more material coming to WIPP, I would like the DOE to address that," said Albuquerque resident Shrayas Jatkar. "There may be a lot of support in Carlsbad, but that is not true in other parts of the country," he said. Hearings similar to that held Monday in Carlsbad will be conducted around the nation to form a draft environmental impact statement for possible action by Congress. Copyright © 2005 Carlsbad Current Argus, a MediaNews Group ***************************************************************** 29 Las Vegas SUN: Federal lawyers defend water use at Nevada's Yucca Mountain Today: August 14, 2007 at 11:25:7 PDT LAS VEGAS (AP) - In advance of a scheduled court Wednesday hearing, Justice Department lawyers argue that the federal Department of Energy didn't violate a court-approved agreement in using Nevada water during drilling near the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear dump. Justice Department lawyers Stephen Bartell and Ronald Tenpas made the argument in papers filed Monday in U.S. District Court in efforts to block the state engineer's cease-and-desist order against the water use. The lawyers said the state engineer is wrong in maintaining that the water use is governed exclusively by state law. They also cited the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution, arguing it prohibits state interference with DOE's water use on federal land. Scientists at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, have continued to use water from two nearby wells despite state Engineer Tracy Taylor's June 1 cease-and-desist order that was reinstated July 20 after he determined that it is not in Nevada's interest to allow the water to be used in drilling bore holes. The water cools and lubricates drill bits used in collecting soil and rock samples at a site where DOE wants to build hangar-size buildings for storing spent nuclear fuel before it's entombed in Yucca Mountain. The geotechnical information about the potential for earthquakes and floods in the area is needed for a license application for building a repository that DOE plans to submit to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by June 2008. State attorneys have argued in court filings that the drilling program should have been completed by 2002 before then-Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham recommended the site to President Bush. By failing to follow a court-approved agreement and ignoring Taylor's cease-and-desist order, state attorneys have said the DOE and its counselors have come to the court with unclean hands that should disqualify them from getting a preliminary injunction. The plan for the dump, which would contain 77,000 tons of the nation's most highly radioactive waste, has been delayed by legal challenges, money shortages, scientific controversies and political opposition. The Energy Department was obligated to start accepting waste from nuclear utilities around the country beginning in 1998, but the dump site wasn't picked until 2002 and the site won't open until 2017 under the best-case scenario. --- On the Net: Nevada's Agency for Nuclear Projects: http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste Yucca Mountain project: http://www.ymp.gov All contents copyright 2005 Las Vegas SUN, Inc. ***************************************************************** 30 Sydney Morning Herald: No Indian uranium sales yet - Downer - www.smh.com.au August 15, 2007 - 2:34AM Uranium sales to India are fair way off, and would need to pass a number of hurdles before they could occur, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer says. The National Security Committee of Cabinet was expected to consider a proposal from Mr Downer to allow the fuel to be sold to India. Mr Downer was not elaborating on the committee's discussion but it is reported to have agreed to the proposal. The federal government is considering uranium sales to India despite the fact it is not signed up to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT). While Australian nuclear sales are usually conditional on the NPT, India may get an exemption due to a deal it struck with the United States, opening its civilian reactors to international inspections. If any deal were to be struck, Mr Downer said it will be some time off, with a nuclear safeguards agreement to be negotiated, which would ensure that uranium would only go to civilian reactors that were subjected to an international inspections regime. "If we're ever to sell uranium to India, it's a bit down the track," he told ABC TV on Tuesday night. And he stressed the uranium would not find its way into nuclear weapons. "India can always get uranium for its nuclear weapons program if they want to, it's just that they will never get it from Australia," Mr Downer said. "If we were to go down the path of negotiating an agreement with India, we wouldn't sell uranium that could be used in any way at all for any military purpose." 2007 AAP Copyright 2007. The Sydney Morning Herald. ***************************************************************** 31 Tri-City Herald: 10,000-acre fire scorches Hanford monument Tuesday, August 14th, 2007 08:18 PDT By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer A Monday afternoon fire along Highway 240 spread west across thousands of acres of grassland of the Arid Lands Ecology Reserve of the Hanford Reach National Monument by evening. "Hopefully the humidity will go up and the winds will come down tonight," said Greg Hughes, project leader for the Fish and Wildlife Service. But the fire still could be burning in places this morning, he said. With fire crews still at the fire Monday night, estimates of the acreage burned were rough. Benton County Emergency Services put the fire at hundreds of acres at 5:30 p.m., but Hughes had reports that the fire was 8,000 to 10,000 acres about 9 p.m. The fire was reported about 2:30 p.m. in the area of milepost 20 along Highway 240 as it cuts between the Hanford nuclear reservation and its security perimeter to the southwest, the Arid Lands Ecology Reserve, which includes Rattlesnake Mountain. The cause of the fire had not been determined Monday night, but its proximity to Highway 240 had officials suspecting it was manmade. The fire burned Monday evening between the highway and the 1,200 Foot Level Road that parallels the highway. It had earlier crossed a dirt road and a gravel road that follows power lines. The acreage is among the 163,000 acres that burned in the devastating 24 Command Fire of June 2000. Some of it had been rehabilitated with native bunch grass that may have helped slow the spread of Monday's fire, Hughes said. Fire spreads less quickly in bunch grass than in the non-native cheat grass. About 20 fire engines, four bulldozers, two single-engine air tankers and a heavy air tanker were being used to fight the fire, with flights by the tankers stopping at dusk. Fire crews from Hanford, the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife and Benton County and other county rural fire districts responded. The Rattlesnake Barricade exit from Hanford to Highway 240 was closed as nuclear reservation workers were leaving the site Monday evening because of the fire. They were directed to leave the site at the Yakima Barricade to the northwest or the Wye Barricade to the east. © 2007 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press & Other Wire Services ***************************************************************** 32 Tri-City Herald: Fluor to make senior management changes (about) Tuesday, August 14th, 2007 03:42 PDT ANNETTE CARY HERALD STAFF WRITER Fluor Hanford and Fluor Government Group will make several changes to senior management effective next week, the Department of Energy Hanford contractor announced Monday. George Jackson, chief operations officer and executive vice president of Fluor Hanford, has been named manager of Fluor Government Group's Richland Operations Office. He will be replaced at Fluor Hanford by Pete Knollmeyer. The changes are being made to align the contractor with the work DOE has assigned it in the coming year, Fluor Hanford Chief Executive Con Murphy said in a statement. The changes also are planned to strengthen overall performance and to capitalize on the experience and technical credentials of senior managers, he said. Fluor's contract with DOE expires in September 2008, and DOE is asking for proposals from companies interested in doing work now done by Fluor, including cleanup of central Hanford other than the tank farms and providing support services across the site. Fluor's last major reorganization of senior management was announced three years ago. In his new position, Jackson will lead the 600 employees of Fluor Government Group. About 350 of those employees now are assigned to Fluor or other Hanford contractors or subcontractors to work on cleanup of the nuclear reservation. He'll be responsible for increasing Fluor Government Group's environmental and nuclear business as well as other government and commercial business. That could include work at Yucca Mountain, Nev., or NASA's testing ground for rocket propulsion, as Fluor Government Group discussed earlier this year. Norm Powell, who has had dual responsibility for Fluor Government Group's Richland Operations Office and Fluor Hanford's business services organization, now will focus his attention on managing and integrating business services for Fluor Government Group. Knollmeyer, who will replace Jackson as Fluor Hanford chief operations officer, has been Fluor Hanford's vice president in charge of removing spent nuclear fuel and sludge from the K Basins. Fluor Hanford has about 3,600 employees, which includes some of the Fluor Government Group employees assigned to cleanup work. Leadership at the K Basins now will be split between Mark Peres and Bob Wilkinson. As vice president of K Basins Operations, Peres will lead activities for the K West Basin and the Cold Vacuum Drying Facility, where sludge from the basins will be treated. With sludge removed from the K East Basin, draining of the water and demolition work will be added to Wilkinson's responsibilities as vice president of deactivation and decommissioning. Bruce Hanni has been named Fluor Hanford's vice president of business services after serving as assistant controller for Fluor Government Group. Tony Umek, vice president of safety and health for Fluor Hanford, will lead Fluor Government Group's environmental, safety, health and quality organization. Most of Fluor Hanford's regulatory compliance and safety and health organizations will be combined under the leadership of vice president Beth Bilson. However, Craig Walton will continue to manage safeguards and security. Mark Cherry will become the deputy vice president in the waste stabilization and disposition project, which recovers temporarily stored transuranic waste and prepares the waste to be shipped offsite. © 2007 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press & Other Wire Services ***************************************************************** 33 Tri-City Herald: Appeals Court overturns some Hanford downwinder verdicts Published Tuesday, August 14th, 2007 By the Herald staff The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned jury decisions on four people who believe their thyroid disease was caused by exposure to radioactive emissions from the Hanford nuclear reservation. The case has more than 2,000 plaintiffs. But under a plan hoped to give guidance in settling the cases, six of the cases were tried before a jury in 2005 and 2006. Agreeing with plaintiff attorneys, the appeals court found problems in the trial that resulted in verdicts against three plaintiffs who had noncancerous thyroid disease. In a fourth case, it agreed with attorneys for Hanford contractors and found that a woman with thyroid cancer who was awarded $317,000 may have filed her claim too long after the cancer was diagnosed to meet the statute of limitations. For more information, read Wednesday's Herald. ====================================================================== Get the latest breaking news from the Tri-City Herald delivered to your RSS reader or RSS-enabled browser. To find out more, go to our RSS information page. ====================================================================== Get the latest breaking news from the Tri-City Herald delivered right to your email with our new breaking news e-mail alerts. Click here to sign up for FREE ====================================================================== ====================================================================== Today's Top Stories 10,000-acre fire scorches Hanford monument KGH's 42-cent tax levy may cost nearly as much as first plan Committee to take on options for Pasco pools Self-proclaimed pedophile blogger charged in LOS Sports Source: NBA ref expected to plead guilty Raiders coach Kiffin remains in hospital Weird Wide World Man pays big tax bill in coins, $1 bills Movies Find out what's playing in the local theaters ====================================================================== Get the entire Tri City Herald delivered to you at home - subscribe now © 2007 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press & Other Wire Services Contact Us | Advertising Info | User Agreement | Copyright Notice All Top Jobs... Find a Job Keywords: Location: This store never closes. Browse advertisements from the paper. Merchandise, services, opportunities, announcements and more. The largest help-wanted database in the Mid-Columbia New and used vehicles, buying tools, tips and financing information Enhanced community profiles, funished and unfurnished, and classified listings. Real estate for sale from Tri-City area brokers and listings from the Tri-City Herald ***************************************************************** 34 Denver Post: Idaho lab cleanup sends Rocky Flats waste to N.M. site By The Associated Press Article Last Updated: 08/14/2007 02:10:23 AM MDT Idaho Falls, Idaho - Crews have begun excavating Cold War-era weapons waste from a second burial site at the U.S. Department of Energy's Radioactive Waste Management Complex in the eastern Idaho desert. Cleanup work at the facility, within the 890-square-mile Idaho National Laboratory, began in 2005. So far, the recovery project has focused on excavating radioactive and hazardous wastes, repackaging the materials, then shipping them in trucks for permanent disposal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. The majority of the waste material came from the Rocky Flats nuclear-weapons plant near Denver. From the 1950s through 1970, the waste materials were shipped in drums to Idaho and buried in a 97-acre section of the INL facility, said Amy Lientz, spokeswoman for the Idaho Cleanup Project. For the past two years, workers have concentrated on wastes buried in a single pit about 20 feet below the desert surface. Earlier this month, crews expanded the recovery to a second pit nearby, she said. The materials in both pits contain some of the highest accumulation of plutonium and other volatile organic compounds, which pose the greatest threat to the underlying Snake River Plain Aquifer, a Lake Erie-sized reservoir nearly 600 feet beneath the burial sites. All contents Copyright 2007 The Denver Post or other copyright ***************************************************************** 35 FR Doc E7-15870: Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board, Hanford [Federal Register: August 14, 2007 (Volume 72, Number 156)] [Notices] [Page 45422-45423] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr14au07-49] DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY AGENCY: Department of Energy. ACTION: Notice of open meeting. SUMMARY: This notice announces a meeting of the Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board (EM SSAB), Hanford. The Federal Advisory Committee Act (Pub. L. No. 92-463, 86 Stat. 770) requires that public notice of this meeting be announced in the Federal Register. DATES: Thursday, September 6, 2007, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.; Friday, September 7, 2007, 8:30 a.m.-4 p.m. ADDRESSES: Seattle Public Library, 1000 Fourth Avenue, Seattle, Washington 98104, Phone: (206) 386-4636. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Erik Olds, Federal Coordinator, Department of Energy Richland Operations Office, 2440 Stevens Drive, P.O. Box 450, H6-60, Richland, WA 99352; Phone: (509) 372-9130; or e- mail: Theodore_E_Erik_Olds@orp.doe.gov. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Purpose of the Board: The purpose of the Board is to make recommendations to DOE in the areas of environmental restoration, waste management, and related activities. Tentative Agenda: Annual Agency Updates (Department of Energy Office of River Protection and Richland Operations Office; Washington State Department of Ecology; and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency). Discussion on Board Priorities from Hanford Advisory Leadership Retreat and Adoption of Priorities. Introduction of the Hanford Advisory Board Process Manual. Tank Waste Committee Updates, includes Early Startup of the Low-Activity Waste Facility; Demonstration Bulk Vitrification System; and Tank Closure and Waste Management Environmental Impact Statement. River and Plateau Committee Updates, includes the River Corridor Risk Assessment for the 100 and 300 Areas; the July 24th workshop on groundwater data gap for cleanup decisions in the 100 and 300 Areas; and Institutional Controls. Budget and Contracts Committee Updates, includes Briefing on Request for Proposals; Fiscal Year 2009 Budget Submission Update; and Fiscal Year 2008 Budget Appropriations. Tri-Party Agreement Negotiations. Request for Proposals. Public Participation: The meeting is open to the public. Written statements [[Page 45423]] may be filed with the Board either before or after the meeting. Individuals who wish to make oral statements pertaining to agenda items should contact Erik Olds' office at the address or telephone number listed above. Requests must be received five days prior to the meeting and reasonable provision will be made to include the presentation in the agenda. The Deputy Designated Federal Officer is empowered to conduct the meeting in a fashion that will facilitate the orderly conduct of business. Individuals wishing to make public comment will be provided a maximum of five minutes to present their comments. Minutes: The minutes of this meeting will be available for public review and copying at the U.S. Department of Energy's Freedom of Information Public Reading Room, 1E-190, Forrestal Building, 1000 Independence Avenue, SW., Washington, DC 20585 between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., Monday-Friday, except Federal holidays. Minutes will also be available by writing to Erik Olds' office at the address or telephone number listed above. Issued at Washington, DC on August 9, 2007. Rachel M. Samuel, Deputy Advisory Committee Management Officer. [FR Doc. E7-15870 Filed 8-13-07; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 6450-01-P ***************************************************************** 36 Knoxville News Sentinel: Contract vote today in OR Security police officers at government facilities to decide to accept or strike By Frank Munger (Contact) Tuesday, August 14, 2007 OAK RIDGE — Hundreds of security police officers at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant and other Oak Ridge facilities will vote today on a new five-year contract. The contract proposal does not have the full endorsement of the union leadership, raising the possibility of an Oak Ridge strike. There has not been a strike by security guards here since 1982. “We’re not recommending a portion of the contract but we’re bringing it back to a vote for the members,” Randy Lawson, president of the International Guards Union of America, Local No. 3, said Monday. “We’re telling the membership to vote their conscience on this one” There are 500-600 members of the union, he said. “This is probably some of the toughest negotiations I’ve been around,” Lawson said. Although there were several issues of contention, including concerns about the “multiplier” used in retirement planning, the union chief noted, “It’s not a bad contract.” Jean “John” Burleson, general manager of Wackenhut Services, the government’s security contractor in Oak Ridge, said, “We expect it to be approved. If they decide not to ratify it, then we’ll go from there and see what happens.” He referred further questions to a federal spokesman at the National Nuclear Security Administration. Steven Wyatt of NNSA said there are plans to quickly bring security police officers from other sites to Oak Ridge in case of a strike. “This is necessary to ensure that there are no gaps in security and that Oak Ridge is fully protected in the event of a strike,” Wyatt said. That’s standard practice for federal operations in the nuclear weapons complex, he said. Two shifts of Wackenhut supervisors in Oak Ridge were dispatched to the Pantex warhead-assembly plant near Amarillo, Texas, when security guards went on strike there earlier this year. The Oak Ridge guards contract expires at 4 p.m. Wednesday, but last week the union agreed to a 14-day buffer period in case a strike is called. In other words, if the contract proposal is rejected, the actual strike wouldn’t begin until Aug. 29. Lawson said union members will vote today between 4:30 a.m. and 8 p.m. The Oak Ridge security police officers are highly trained paramilitary forces, who are hired to protect the federal facilities — including Y-12, which houses the nation’s supply of bomb-grade uranium — from terrorists and other threats. The protective forces earn up to $21.38 per hour under the current contract, and the proposed contract would include 4 percent raises in each of the next two years and scale down after that, Lawson said. Senior writer Frank Munger may be reached at 865-342-6329. 2007, Knoxville News Sentinel Co. ***************************************************************** 37 MST: Reyes explores nuclear power option Manila Standard Today By Roderick T. dela Cruz The Department of Energy yesterday disclosed its plan to attract as much as $5 billion in investments into the natural gas sector and pursue nuclear options in order to avert a power crisis which is seen to hit the country starting 2009. Energy Secretary Angelo Reyes said that unless new investments flow into the power generation sector, Visayas and Mindanao will have a power shortage by 2009 while Luzon will suffer the same fate by 2010 or 2011. But Reyes could only assure that there will be enough power to support economic growth until December this year, and said he ordered a more comprehensive assessment of the power supply and demand situation in the country. “The increasing demand for power is something we cannot escape,” Reyes said. New investments should be put up in energy sources other than coal and oil, he said. “If we look at the next five years, 2009 is critical for Visayas and Mindanao. 2010 or 2011 is critical for Luzon,” said Reyes, former Armed Forces chief who also served as secretary of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, prior to his transfer to the energy department. Reyes said the government’s plan is to reduce its dependence on imported oil by turning to natural gas, renewable sources of energy, bio-fuels, and nuclear energy. He said large investments in energy sector are needed to support an annual economic growth of more than 6 percent. “Ideally, energy supply should increase 1.5 percentage point higher than economic growth,” he said. The energy chief said some $5 billion would be needed to develop potential natural gas reserves, put up gas-fired power plants, and link the Philippines to the proposed Trans Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Gas Pipeline System. “We want to expand the use of natural gas to cover industry and transportation,” he said, noting that Shell Philippines country chairman and president Edgar Chua committed to open a CNG daughter station in Bian, Laguna, to provide fuel to about 200 buses in Laguna and Batangas area. At the same time, Reyes said his department will look at the possibility of developing nuclear energy, despite the fact that the country’s first nuclear reactor, the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, which was supposed to be commissioned in 1987, has never been opened. “We should now re-examine the nuclear option for power generation,” he said, noting that other Asian countries are developing their nuclear energy programs. Reyes said he would create a special office in the department to specifically study the nuclear energy options for the country. “Utilization of nuclear energy is increasing in the region,” he said. “The technology has improved. We should seriously study it.” Manila Standard Today - Philippine News & Views Online Tuesday, August 14, 2007 ***************************************************************** 38 Knoxville News Sentinel: Oakley lawyers may avoid security clearances Former janitor charged with trying to sell OR equipment By Frank Munger (Contact) Tuesday, August 14, 2007 J. Miles Cary Roy Oakley, 65, center, of Roane County arrives at the U.S. District Court in Knoxville Monday afternoon flanked by his attorneys, Adam Moncier, left, and Herb Moncier. Oakley was charged with stealing uranium enrichment equipment from a nuclear cleanup site in Oak Ridge. Attorneys for a former Oak Ridge maintenance worker accused of stealing classified uranium-enrichment equipment and offering it to the French government apparently will be able to defend their client without getting security clearances. “Yes, I think so,” Herbert S. Moncier, lead attorney for 65-year-old Roy Lynn Oakley of Roane County, said as he exited U.S. District Court on Monday following a pre-_trial conference. Assistant U.S. Attorney David Dake indicated in court that he and Moncier had already agreed on some rules for the case. The two are expected to discuss any differences during the coming week. Dake is supposed to present a protective order for review by U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Guyton by Aug. 20. The order would outline systems and procedures for court security to prevent classified information from inadvertently being revealed during the upcoming proceedings. Guyton privately met in his chambers with Moncier, Dake and other members of the legal teams during much of Monday’s brief pre-trial conference. The magistrate later made mention of another case involving classified information where the defense was able to proceed without security clearances. Moncier has balked at getting a federal security clearance to facilitate discussing details of the Oakley case. The key evidence involves so-called “barrier” equipment that was reportedly stolen from the East Tennessee Technology Park — a former uranium-enrichment plant that was built during the World War II Manhattan Project. Barrier is a honeycombed filtration system that was used in the gaseous diffusion process for enriching uranium. It was used at the Oak Ridge plant, once known as K-25, to separate the different isotopes of uranium and to concentrate the fissile U-235 for use in atomic bombs. In natural uranium, U-235 constitutes far less than 1 percent of the uranium isotopes, but the gaseous diffusion process at Oak Ridge was capable of enriching the material to more than 90 percent U-235. In court Monday, Moncier did not absolutely refuse to get a security clearance for the case. “We are always open to re-looking at that,” he told Guyton. “We’ll be open to the process.” Outside the courtroom, however, he said he felt the government-sanctioned security clearances were unnecessary. He said similar situations have been resolved in many other court cases “more prominent than this.” Having to go through the clearance process would place him under the purview of the executive branch, Moncier said, adding, “That gives me an uncomfortable feeling.” He also suggested some of the things being safeguarded in this case may be widely available on the Internet, including detailed descriptions and illustrations of the barrier. Such information is just a “keystroke away,” he said. Moncier said he thought all the security issues would be resolved. Oakley, a former employee of Bechtel Jacobs Co., the Department of Energy’s cleanup contractor in Oak Ridge, is accused of stealing sections of barrier and other equipment between October 2006 and January 2007. He reportedly called the French Embassy and offered to sell the chopped-up pieces of equipment. Although his initial inquiry to the French was rebuffed, court documents indicated that he later got a call from an FBI agent posing as an embassy official. During that conversation, Oakley was supposedly given a code name, and a sale price for the equipment was negotiated. Oakley was temporarily detained after a Jan. 26 sting operation, which included a search of his Midway home, but he was not charged until his federal indictment in July. Moncier acknowledged Monday that he has not seen key evidence in the case, including the pieces of equipment reportedly taken from the Oak Ridge uranium-enrichment plant that is being dismantled by Bechtel Jacobs. Because that equipment is classified, Moncier and other defense attorneys, including co-counsel David Wigler, apparently would not be able to view it without first gaining a security clearance. In the government’s request for a pre-trial conference, U.S. attorneys stated that under the Classified Information Procedures Act the court may order disclosure of classified discovery materials. “But the court must carefully fashion appropriate protective orders taking into account the identities and ‘trustworthiness’ of ‘persons associated with the defense’ who will be exposed to such information.” The government’s filing indicated that using security clearances is typically the most effective way of doing that. Senior writer Frank Munger may be reached at 865-342-6329. 2007, Knoxville News Sentinel Co. ***************************************************************** 39 NewsChannel6: INL Cleanup Project is a Blast Reporter: Kristi Henderson Cleanup is usually not very fun, but at the Idaho National Labratory, they are having a blast. Workers with the Idaho Cleanup Project used explosives to break through the wall of The Test Area North Hot Shop. The blasts were done to verify the amount of explosives need to penetrate the walls - which are made up of seven feet of high density concrete and reinforced steel. Eventually, the entire building will be turned into a series of pillars and archways prior to bringing entire building down this fall. The Test Area North Hot Shop was built in 1954 to support work on radioactive components of nuclear-powered jet engines. The Hot Shop was later used to support nuclear safety and accident research including examination of damaged fuel from the Three Mile Island Accident. No radiation or contamination was released into the environment by the test. All content Copyright 2000 - 2007 WorldNow and kpvi. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 40 Rocky Mountain News: Crews expanding cleanup at nuke waste site in Idaho By Idaho Post Register August 14, 2007 IDAHO FALLS, Idaho - Crews have begun excavating Cold War-era weapons waste from a second burial site at the U.S. Department of Energy's Radioactive Waste Management Complex is in the eastern Idaho desert. Cleanup work at the facility, located within the 890-square mile Idaho National Laboratory, began in 2005. So far, the recovery project has focused on excavating radioactive and hazardous wastes, repackaging the materials, then shipping them in trucks for permanent disposal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. The majority of the waste material came from the former Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant near Denver. From the 1950s through 1970, the waste material was shipped in drums to Idaho and buried in a 97-acre section of the INL facility, said Amy Lientz, spokeswoman for the Idaho Cleanup Project. For the past two years, workers have concentrated on wastes buried in a pit about 20-feet below the desert surface. Earlier this month, crews expanded the recovery to a second pit nearby, she said. The materials in both pits contain some of the highest accumulation of plutonium and other volatile organic compounds, which pose the greatest threat to the underlying Snake River Plain Aquifer, a Lake Erie-sized reservoir nearly 600-feet beneath the burial sites. "We're not quite finished with the first burial pit, but we have enough resources and plans in place to begin doing retrievals from both areas right now," Lientz told the Associated Press on Monday. "It'll at least be another year before we can say we're close to being finished." The materials are a mix of plutonium-contaminated filters, graphite molds used to form weapons, contaminated sludges and oxidized uranium. So far, more than 7,500 cubic yards of material have been exhumed, classified and repackaged into more than 2,800 55-gallon drums and shipped to New Mexico, Lientz said. 2007 The E.W. Scripps Co. ***************************************************************** NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. 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