***************************************************************** 08/28/07 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 15.202 ***************************************************************** 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 US: It's doable! - Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free 2 IPS-English POLITICS-INDIA: Ruling Coalition Rift Over US Nuke 3 US: [NYTr] Bush wants START nuclear arms reduction treaty to lapse 4 Reuters: U.S., Russia must keep nuclear treaty - U.S. senator 5 Iran Answers UN Agency Questions On Plutonium Programme, Says Docume 6 IAEA: UN Study Analyzes Costs to Combat Climate Change 7 China Post: United States appears to adjust its stance on Pakistan - NUCLEAR REACTORS 8 The Hindu: Nuke issue: Congress holds talks with Forward Bloc 9 BBC NEWS: Strike at nuclear site suspended 10 RIA Novosti: Russia, U.S. to sign nuclear power cooperation deal in 11 Platts: The UK's Oldbury-2 reconnects to grid 12 US: Platts: Grand Gulf COL submittal now seen by February 13 US: toledoblade.com: No rush on re-regulation 14 US: Rutland Herald: Yankee union ratifies contract 15 London Times: Public backs nuclear energy to help power Britain's fu 16 US: Burlington Free Press: EDITORIAL: Vt. Yankee accident raises con 17 US: APP.COM: Money talks in lobbying for Oyster Creek's future | 18 Calgary Herald: Alberta nuclear future a step closer 19 US: Brattleboro Reformer: VY tower collapse leads to calls for furth 20 US: NRC: Southern Nuclear Operating Company Vogtle Electric Generati 21 WNN: Energy Alberta files Candu site application 22 Herald Sun: Australia raring to join nuclear club 23 Prague Daily Monitor: TemelĂ­n staff puts fuel back into 1st unit, w 24 US: MySA.com: CPS Energy staff backing nuclear 25 AFP: Russia, US close to peaceful nuclear energy deal - Moscow - 26 Edmonton Journal: Nuclear plant plan draws fire 27 MarketWatch: For Argentina, finishing nuclear plant a do-it-yourself 28 Calgary Sun: Alberta on path to nuclear power NUCLEAR SECURITY 29 Nuclear Safeguards May Prove Undoable - Scary 30 The Telegraph: Radioactive ?theft? from Tata plant NUCLEAR SAFETY 31 US: NIOSH: exposure cohort petition 32 US: NIOSH: Cohort Exposure Petition 33 Japan Times: Nationwide quake alert in offing 34 US: NAS: Project: Radiation Source Use and Replacement 35 asahi.com: NIIGATA: New fault survey for quake-hit plant - NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 36 US: [progchat_action] Australian uranium sales to India may breach t 37 US: Platts: Uranium spot price appears to stabilize in $90-$95/pound 38 US: Tri-City Herald: Crowd says no to more waste at Hanford 39 US: cantonrep.com: River cleanup costs $62 million 40 US: The State: McMaster doubts nuclear dump is safe 41 AU ABC: PM told to 'come clean' on nuke dump deals - 42 US: sacbee.com: McClellan cleanup in fresh hands - PEACE 43 Outside View: Betting on Bulava -- Part 1 US DEPT. OF ENERGY 44 Hanford News: Lampson tests device for Hanford vit plant 45 Hanford News: PNNL researchers share progress 46 Tri-City Herald: Emergency drill under way at Richland nuclear plant 47 DOE: Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board, Nevada 48 Knoxville News Sentinel: ORNL, BWXT doing their share to conserve po 49 Oak Ridger: Y-12 union workers reject 4/10 schedule - 50 DOE: DOE Official Touts Bush Administration’s Efforts to ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 It's doable! - Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2007 07:22:52 -0500 (CDT) Original source URL: http://www.ieer.org/carbonfree/summary.pdf Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free - Executive Summary Executive Summary Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy1 Arjun Makhijani, Ph.D.2 July 2007 A Joint Project of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute and the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research 1 This is a summary of a book of the same title, to be published in October 2007 by RDR Books. The book is a joint project of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute and the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research and will be available as a report at www.ieer.org/carbonfree in August 2007. Full references can be found there. 2 I would like to thank the Nuclear Policy Research Institute for having sponsored the project that will result in the book on which this summary is based. Helen Caldicott was the star who raised the funds, provided critical comments and suggestions, and had the vision that this study should be done because it is urgently needed. Helen's and S. David Freeman's presentations at NPRI's 2006 energy conference and our private discussions afterwards inspired me to write the book. Thank you to Julie Enszer for smoothly shepherding this project from beginning to end. I also wish to thank Hisham Zerriffi, Jenice View, and Paul Epstein, who, as members of the Advisory Board of the project (in addition to Helen and Dave and others), contributed valuable insights and criticisms of the draft manuscript and this summary. However, they may or may not agree with the recommendations or conclusions in this summary. The book will contain statements from Board members who wish to comment. Full acknowledgements will appear in the book. For their support of this project, NPRI and IEER wish to thank The Park Foundation, The Lear Family Foundation, The Lintilhac Foundation, and many individual donors who wish to remain anonymous. A three-fold global energy crisis has emerged since the 1970s; it is now acute on all three fronts: 1. Climate disruption: Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions due to fossil fuel combustion are the main anthropogenic cause of severe climate disruption, whose continuation portends grievous, irreparable harm to the global economy, society, and current ecosystems. 2. Insecurity of oil supply: Rapid increases in global oil consumption and conflict in and about oil exporting regions make prices volatile and supplies insecure. 3. Nuclear proliferation: Non-proliferation of nuclear weapons is being undermined in part by the spread of commercial nuclear power technology, which is being put forth as a major solution for reducing CO2 emissions. After a decade of global division, the necessity for drastic action to reduce CO2 emissions is now widely recognized, including in the United States, as indicated by the April 2007 opinion by the U.S. Supreme Court3 that CO2 is a pollutant and by the plethora of bills in the U.S. Congress. Many of the solutions offered would point the United States in the right direction, by recognizing and codifying into law and regulations the need to reduce CO2 emissions. But much more will be needed. Moreover, most of the solutions being offered are likely to be inadequate to the task and some, such as the expansion of nuclear power or the widespread use of food crops for making fuel, are likely to compound the world's social, political, and security ills. Some, like production of biofuels from Indonesian palm oil, may even aggravate the emissions of CO2. Our report, of which this is a summary, examines the technical and economic feasibility of achieving a U.S. economy with zero-CO2 emissions without nuclear power. This is interpreted as an elimination of all but a few percent of CO2 emissions or complete elimination with the possibility of removing from the atmosphere some CO2 that has already been emitted. We set out to answer three questions: * Is it possible to physically eliminate CO2 emissions from the U.S. energy sector without resort to nuclear power, which has serious security and other vulnerabilities? * Is a zero-CO2 economy possible without purchasing offsets from other countries - that is, without purchasing from other countries the right to continue emitting CO2 in the United States? * Is it possible to accomplish the above at reasonable cost? 3 On the Internet at www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/06pdf/05-1120.pdf. 2 ______________________________________ Central Finding The overarching finding of this study is that a zero-CO2 U.S. economy can be achieved within the next thirty to fifty years without the use of nuclear power and without acquiring carbon credits from other countries. In other words, actual physical emissions of CO2 from the energy sector can be eliminated with technologies that are now available or foreseeable. This can be done at reasonable cost while creating a much more secure energy supply than at present. Net U.S. oil imports can be eliminated in about 25 years. All three insecurities - severe climate disruption, oil supply and price insecurity, and nuclear proliferation via commercial nuclear energy - will thereby be addressed. In addition, there will be large ancillary health benefits from the elimination of most regional and local air pollution, such as high ozone and particulate levels in cities, which is due to fossil fuel combustion. ______________________________________ The achievement of a zero-CO2 economy without nuclear power will require unprecedented foresight and coordination in policies from the local to the national, across all sectors of the energy system. Much of the ferment at the state and local level, as well as some of the proposals in Congress, are already pointed in the right direction. But a clear long-term goal is necessary to provide overall policy coherence and establish a yardstick against which progress can be measured. A zero-CO2 U.S. economy without nuclear power is not only achievable - it is necessary for environmental protection and security. Even the process of the United States setting a goal of a zero-CO2, nuclear-free economy and taking initial firm steps towards it will transform global energy politics in the immediate future and establish the United States as a country that leads by example rather than one that preaches temperance from a barstool. The tables on pages 18-22 provide a sketch of the roadmap to a zero-CO2 economy with estimates of dates at which technologies can be deployed as well as research, development, and demonstration recommendations. ______________________________________ Recommendations: The Clean Dozen The 12 most critical policies that need to be enacted as urgently as possible for achieving a zero-CO2 economy without nuclear power are as follows. 1) Enact a physical limit of CO2 emissions for all large users of fossil fuels (a "hard cap") that steadily declines to zero prior to 2060, with the time schedule being assessed periodically for tightening according to climate, technological, and economic developments. The cap should be set at the level of some year prior to 2007, so that early implementers of CO2 reductions benefit from the setting of the cap. Emission allowances would be sold by the U.S. government for use in the United States only. There would be no free allowances, no offsets and no international sale or purchase of CO2 allowances. The estimated revenues - approximately $30 to $50 billion per year - would be used for demonstration plants, research and development, and worker and community transition. 2) Eliminate all subsidies and tax breaks for fossil fuels and nuclear power (including guarantees for nuclear waste disposal from new power plants, loan guarantees, and subsidized insurance). 3) Eliminate subsidies for biofuels from food crops. 4) Build demonstration plants for key supply technologies, including central station solar thermal with heat storage, large- and intermediate-scale solar photovoltaics, and CO2 capture in microalgae for liquid fuel production. 5) Leverage federal, state and local purchasing power to create markets for critical advanced technologies, including plug-in hybrids. 6) Ban new coal-fired power plants that do not have carbon storage. 7) Enact at the federal level high efficiency standards for appliances. 8) Enact stringent building efficiency standards at the state and local levels, with federal incentives to adopt them. 9) Enact stringent efficiency standards for vehicles and make plug-in hybrids the standard U.S. government vehicle by 2015. 10) Put in place federal contracting procedures to reward early adopters of CO2 reductions. 11) Adopt vigorous research, development, and pilot plant construction programs for technologies that could accelerate the elimination of CO2, such as direct solar hydrogen production (photosynthetic, photoelectrochemical, and other approaches), hot rock geothermal power, and integrated gasification combined cycle plants using biomass with a capacity to sequester the CO2. 12) Establish a standing committee on Energy and Climate under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Science Advisory Board. ______________________________________ Summary of Main Findings 1. A goal of a zero-CO2 economy is necessary to minimize harm related to climate change. 2. A hard cap on CO2 emissions -- that is, a fixed emissions limit that declines year by year until it reaches zero - would provide large users of fossil fuels with a flexible way to phase out CO2 emissions. However, free allowances, offsets that permit emissions by third party reductions, or international trading of allowances, notably with developing countries that have no CO2 cap, would undermine and defeat the purpose of the system. A measurement-based physical limit, with appropriate enforcement, should be put into place. 3. A reliable U.S. electricity sector with zero-CO2 emissions can be achieved without the use of nuclear power or fossil fuels. 4. The use of nuclear power entails risks of nuclear proliferation, terrorism, and serious accidents. It exacerbates the problem of nuclear waste and perpetuates vulnerabilities and insecurities in the energy system that are avoidable. Summary of Main Findings (continued) 5. The use of highly efficient energy technologies and building design, generally available today, can greatly ease the transition to a zero-CO2 economy and reduce its cost. A two percent annual increase in efficiency per unit of Gross Domestic Product relative to recent trends would result in a one percent decline in energy use per year, while providing three percent GDP annual growth. This is well within the capacity of available technological performance. 6. Biofuels, broadly defined, could be crucial to the transition to a zero-CO2 economy without serious environmental side effects or, alternatively, they could produce considerable collateral damage or even be very harmful to the environment and increase greenhouse gas emissions. The outcome will depend essentially on policy choices, incentives, and research and development, both public and private. 7. Much of the reduction in CO2 emissions can be achieved without incurring any cost penalties (as, for instance, with efficient lighting and refrigerators). The cost of eliminating the rest of CO2 emissions due to fossil fuel use is likely to be in the range of $10 to $30 per metric ton of CO2. 8. The transition to a zero-CO2 system can be made in a manner compatible with local economic development in areas that now produce fossil fuels. ______________________________________ Main Findings Finding 1: A goal of a zero-CO2 economy is necessary to minimize harm related to climate change. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, global CO2 emissions would need to be reduced by 50 to 85 percent relative to the year 2000 in order to limit average global temperature increase to 2 to 2.4 degrees Celsius relative to pre-industrial times. A reduction of 80% in total U.S. CO2 emissions by 2050 would be entirely inadequate to meet this goal. It still leaves U.S. emissions at about 2.8 metric tons per person. A global norm of emissions at this rate would leave worldwide CO2 emissions almost as high as in the year 2000.4 In contrast, if a global norm of approximately equal per person emissions by 2050 is created along with a 50 percent global reduction in emissions, it would require an approximately 88 percent reduction in U.S. emissions. An 85 percent global reduction in CO2 emissions corresponds to a 96 percent reduction for the United States. An allocation of emissions by the standard of cumulative historical contributions would be even more stringent. A U.S. goal of zero-CO2, defined as being a few percent on either side of zero relative to 2000, is both necessary and prudent for the protection of global climate. It is also achievable at reasonable cost. Finding 2: A hard cap on CO2 emissions -- that is, a fixed emissions limit that declines year by year until it reaches zero - would provide large users of fossil fuels with a flexible way to phase out CO2 emissions. However, free allowances, offsets that permit emissions by third party reductions5, or international trading of allowances, notably with developing countries that have no CO2 cap, would undermine and defeat the purpose of the system. A measurement-based physical limit, with appropriate enforcement, should be put into place. A hard cap on CO2 emissions is recommended for large users of fossil fuels. The annual revenues that would be generated by the government from the sale of allowances would be on the order of $30 billion to $50 billion per year through most of the period, since the price of CO2 emission allowances would tend to increase as supply goes down. These revenues would be devoted to ease the transition at all levels - local, state and federal - as well as for demonstration projects and research and development. Finding 3: A reliable U.S. electricity sector with zero-CO2 emissions can be achieved without the use of nuclear power or fossil fuels. The U.S. renewable energy resource base is vast and practically untapped. Available wind energy resources in 12 Midwestern and Rocky Mountain states equal about 2.5 times the entire electricity production of the United States. North Dakota, Texas, Kansas, South Dakota, Montana, and Nebraska each have wind energy potential greater than the electricity produced by all 103 U.S. nuclear power plants. Solar energy resources on just one percent of the area of the United States are about three times as large as wind energy, if production is focused in the high insolation areas in the Southwest and West. Just the parking lots and rooftops in the United States could provide most of the U.S. electricity supply. This also has the advantage of avoiding the need for transmission line expansion, though some strengthening of the distribution infrastructure may be needed. A start has been made. The U.S. Navy has a 750 kW installation in one of its parking lots in San Diego that provides shaded parking spots for over 400 vehicles, with plenty of room to spare for expansion of electricity generation (see Figure 1). Wind energy is already more economical than nuclear power. In the past two years, the costs of solar cells have come down to the point that medium-scale installations, such as the one shown above, are economical in sunny areas, since they supply electricity mainly during peak hours. The main problem with wind and solar energy is intermittency. This can be reduced by integrating wind and solar energy together into the grid - for instance, wind energy is often more plentiful at night. Geographic diversity also reduces the intermittency of each source and for both combined. Integration into the grid of these two sources up to about 15 percent of total generation (not far short of the contribution of nuclear electricity today) can be done without serious cost or technical difficulty with available technology, provided appropriate optimization steps are taken. Solar and wind should also be combined with hydropower - with the latter being used when the wind generation is low or zero. This is already being done in the Northwest. Conflicts with water releases for fish management can be addressed by combining these three sources with natural gas standby. The high cost of natural gas makes it economical to use combined cycle power plants as standby capacity and spinning reserve for wind rather than for intermediate or baseload generation. In other words, given the high price of natural gas, these plants could be economically idled for some of the time and be available as a complement to wind power. Compressed air can also be used for energy storage in combination with these sources. No new technologies are required for any of these generation or storage methods. Baseload power can be provided by geothermal and biomass-fueled generating stations. Intermediate loads in the evening can be powered by solar thermal power plants which have a few hours of thermal energy storage built in. Finally, new batteries can enable plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles owned by fleets or parked in large parking lots to provide relatively cheap storage. Nanotechnology-based lithium ion batteries, which Altairnano has begun to produce, can be deep discharged far more times than needed simply to operate the vehicle over its lifetime (10,000 to 15,000 times compared to about 2,000 times respectively). Since the performance of the battery is far in excess of the cycles of charging and discharging needed for the vehicle itself, vehicular batteries could become a very low-cost source of electricity storage that can be used in a vehicle-to-grid (V2G) system. In such a system, parked cars would be connected to the grid and charged and discharged according to the state of the requirements of the grid and the charge of the battery in the vehicle. Communications technology to accomplish this via wires or wireless means is already commercial. A small fraction of the total number of road vehicles (several percent) could provide sufficient backup capacity to stabilize a well designed electricity grid based on renewable energy sources (including biomass and geothermal). [tables in original] Glossary Baseload generation: A large-scale power plant designed to generate electricity on a continuous basis. Biofuel: Fuel derived from biomass. Biomass: Organic material produced by photosynthesis. Carbon capture: Capture of carbon dioxide when fuels containing carbon are burned for their energy. Carbon sequestration: Deep geologic storage of carbon for long periods (thousands of years) to prevent it from entering the atmosphere. CFL: Compact fluorescent lamp, which is a high-efficiency light bulb. CHP: Combined heat and power. In this arrangement, some of the energy derived from burning a fuel is used as heat (as for instance in heating buildings or for industrial processes), and some is used for generating electricity. Combined cycle power plant: Power plant in which the hot gases from the burning of a fuel (usually natural gas) are used to run a gas turbine for generating electricity. The exhaust gas from the turbine is still hot and is used to make steam, which is used to drive a steam turbine, which in turn generates more electricity. Electrolytic hydrogen production: The use of electricity to separate the hydrogen and oxygen in water. Geothermal heat pump: A heat pump that uses the relatively constant temperature a few feet below the earth's surface in order to increase the efficiency of the heat pump. IGCC: Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle plant. This plant gasifies coal or biomass and then uses the gases in a combined cycle power plant. LEED: Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design - a rating system used for building efficiency. The platinum level is the highest rating. Microalgae: Tiny algae that grow in a variety of environments, including salty water. Nanocapacitor: A capacitor that has the surface area of its electrodes increased greatly by the use of nanotechnology. Photolytic hydrogen: Hydrogen produced by plants, for instance, algae, in the presence of sunlight. Photoelectrochemical hydrogen: Hydrogen produced directly using devices similar to some solar photovoltaic cells that generate electricity. In this arrangement, hydrogen is produced instead of electricity. Pumped storage: Using electricity at off-peak times to pump water into a reservoir and then using a hydroelectric power plant to generate electricity with the stored water during peak times (or, when used with wind energy, when the wind is not blowing). Solar light pipe: A fiber optic cable that conveys light from the sun along its length without leaking it out of the sides, much like a wire carries electricity. It can be used to light the interiors of buildings during the daytime. Solar PV: Solar photovoltaic cells - devices that turn incident sunlight into electricity. Solar thermal power plant: A power plant that uses reflectors to concentrate solar energy and heat liquids that are then used to produce steam and generate electricity. Spinning reserve: The capacity of electric power plants that are kept switched on ("spinning") but idle in order to be able to meet sudden increases in electricity demand. Standby capacity: Power plants that are kept on standby to meet increases in electric demand. Ultracapacitor: A capacitor that can store much more electricity per unit volume than normal capacitors. V2G: Vehicle to grid system. Parked cars are connected to the grid. When the charge on the batteries is low, the grid recharges them. When the charge is sufficient and the grid requires electricity, a signal from the grid enables the battery to supply electricity to the grid. -- -------------------------------------------------------- Posting archives: historical: http://cyberjournal.org/show_archives/?lists=newslog recent: http://groups.google.com/group/newslog/topics Escaping the Matrix website: http://escapingthematrix.org/ cyberjournal website: http://cyberjournal.org How We the People can change the world: http://governourselves.blogspot.com/ Community Democracy Framework: http://cyberjournal.org/DemocracyFramework.html Moderator: rkm@quaylargo.com (comments welcome) ***************************************************************** 2 IPS-English POLITICS-INDIA: Ruling Coalition Rift Over US Nuke Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2007 15:00:34 -0700 POLITICS-INDIA: Ruling Coalition Rift Over US Nuke Deal Continues Praful Bidwai NEW DELHI, Aug 28 (IPS) - Confronted with stiff opposition to the United States-India nuclear cooperation deal from the supporting parties of the Left, Manmohan Singh's minority government has initiated talks with communist leaders to create a 'mechanism' to resolve mutual differences. However, the talks have not yet produced agreement on the mechanism, barring acceptance that it should be a committee of political leaders which can invite scientists and other experts for consultations. Nor is it clear that the government will put on hold further steps for completing and implementing the deal, as the Left demands. The committee will discuss objections to the nuclear deal raised by the Left on the ground that it will draw India into the U.S. strategic orbit. It will also examine to what extent a law on nuclear cooperation with India, passed last December by the U.S. Congress, called the Henry J. Hyde Act, meets India's concerns about sovereign control over its nuclear activities. Unless agreement is reached on these thorny issues, the Left has warned of ”serious political consequences” if Singh's United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government goes ahead with deal. The Left parties' 59 MPs are crucial for the government's survival in the 543-member lower house of Parliament. It is not clear if the Left will go to the extent of withdrawing support to the UPA, leave alone vote against it and topple it. Under India's Constitution, an international treaty or agreement does not need Parliament's approval for ratification. A cabinet resolution is enough. But withdrawal of support by the Left will seriously weaken the Congress party-led UPA and possibly lead to elections well before the Singh government completes its five-year term in May 2009. Talks on setting up the ”mechanism”, being conducted between the government and each of the four main Left parties, are expected to be completed in the next few days. Whatever their outcome, it is plain that the fate of the nuclear deal in India hangs on its domestic politics. Meanwhile, indications of qualified support for the deal have come from an unexpected quarter: the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, the main opposition group. On Sunday, BJP veteran and leader of the Opposition L.K. Advani told the influential ‘Indian Express' newspaper that his party would have no objection to the nuclear deal if the government amends domestic laws to ensure India's strategic autonomy and continuity in supplies of nuclear fuel for Indian reactors. Advani has been keen to distance the traditionally pro-U.S. BJP from the Left, which opposes a ”strategic partnership” between the U.S. and India. He criticised the Left for its ”anti-Americanism” and said: ”So far as the BJP is concerned, ŕ we have no objection to a strategic partnership with the U.S. This includes the forthcoming joint naval exercises”. Starting Sep. 4, the Indian navy is due to hold large-scale exercises off India's east coast, involving 20 ships from the U.S., Australia, Japan, Singapore and India. The U.S. alone is sending in 13 warships and the Left has decided to protest against them strongly. Ironically, what might get the BJP to support the deal is a formula proposed by a Communist Party (Marxist-CPM) leader. Under this formula, the Indian government would insure itself against a sudden termination of nuclear cooperation by the U.S. or other countries by enacting a ”domestic Hyde Act”. This would prohibit the transfer of imported nuclear equipment or material out of India if such transfer affects the continuous operation of Indian reactors. Such an arrangement would take care of the Indian concern that the U.S. might suddenly stop nuclear supplies if India conducts a nuclear test, and that Washington would have the right to demand the return of nuclear equipment and material exported to India. This is mandated by domestic U.S. laws, including the Hyde Act. ”This is nuclear nationalism, which links national sovereignty with the possession of mass-destruction weapons and one's unhampered ability to amass them,” says M.V. Ramana, an independent nuclear expert based in Bangalore. ”This is an unhealthy, even dangerous, doctrine. But unfortunately, it has become the dominant public discourse in India. Even the Left does not demarcate itself sharply from it.” India's Left parties criticise the nuclear deal primarily on two grounds: it will undermine independence in foreign and security policy-making through India's strategic embrace of the U.S., and it will erode India's autonomy in running her nuclear programme, including the freedom to test nuclear weapons. It is only peripherally or in passing that the Indian Left mentions the nuclear deal for its likely negative regional and global impact on disarmament and peace, and for its promotion of nuclear power, a highly controversial, hazardous and unpopular form of energy generation. ”This is a deeply contradictory position,” adds Ramana. ”The Left alone among India's political parties condemned the 1998 nuclear blasts and demanded that India and Pakistan roll back their weapons programmes. The Left parties also oppose further nuclear testing. So it's sad that they should now pander to nuclear nationalism by criticising the nuclear deal on grounds of sovereignty.” However, it is not clear that the Left parties will carry out the implicit threat to withdraw support to the UPA if the Alliance pushes ahead with the deal. Collectively, the Left's leadership is under twin pressures. The smaller Left parties, including the Communist Party of India, Forward Bloc and Revolutionary Socialist Party, pull in the direction of ending support to the UPA on foreign and economic policy grounds. There is pressure from the opposite direction from the Left's dominant party, the CPM, in particular, its West Bengal unit, which is turning conservative through its embrace of neo-liberal economics. ”The Bengal leadership enjoys a cosy relationship with the UPA and does not want to upset the applecart,” says Rajat Roy, a Kolkata-based political analyst and keen observer of the Left, which has ruled the state for fully 30 years. ''The Left Front did brilliantly in the 2006 state legislature elections, winning 235 of 294 seats. It knows that its tally of votes and seats is likely to decline in a mid-term election. It wants to avert such an eventuality right now,'' Roy told IPS. If national elections are held right now, opinion polls have forecast a decline in the number of Left MPs from 59 currently to between 39 and 43. This is likely to have a sobering impact on the Left leadership. Equally important, the UPA has quietly, if temporarily, shelved its plans to negotiate a special safeguards (inspections) protocol with the International Atomic Energy Agency in September, when its plenary meets in Vienna. Instead, the government will take up the issue in November, thus giving itself more time to work out a compromise with the Left. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has also declined a special invitation by President George W. Bush to a meeting at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. This is meant to signal that his government is prepared to make some distance from Washington. However, uncertainties remain. Will the Left be satisfied with a ”domestic Hyde Act” or insist on other assurances? Will the UPA suspend further steps in completing the deal, and for how long? What is clear is that the primary determinants of the deal's fate will be domestic. ***** + Nuclear Ambitions - The World's Deadly Arsenal (http://www.ipsnews.net/new_focus/nuclear/index.asp) + DISARMAMENT: US-India Nuke Deal May Spark Asian Arms Race (http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38744) + POLITICS: Doomsday Clock Ticking Faster - in Asia (http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=36245) + POLITICS-AUSTRALIA : Uranium for India - Business or Strategy? (http://www.ipsnews.net/login.asp?redir=news.asp?idnews=39004) (END/IPS/AP/WD/IP/NU/NR/SC/DV/PB/RDR/07) = 08281635 ORP009 NNNN ***************************************************************** 3 [NYTr] Bush wants START nuclear arms reduction treaty to lapse Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2007 18:50:49 -0500 (CDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Reuters - Aug 28, 2007 http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSL2884581820070828?feedType=RSS&feedName=politicsNews U.S., Russia must keep nuclear treaty: U.S. senator By Christian Lowe MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia and the United States will be making a mistake if they allow the START nuclear arms reduction treaty to lapse in 2009, U.S. Senator Richard Lugar, a leading disarmament advocate, said on Monday. The treaty, signed in 1991, set ceilings on the size of the Russian and U.S. nuclear arsenals and became a symbol of the end of the Cold War. Washington has indicated it will not extend it in 2009 but wants to replace it with a more up-to-date pact. Sen. Lugar said that without this treaty there would be no mechanism for each side to verify the other in observing arms control treaties, at a time of weakening trust between Moscow and Washington . "The United States and Russia must extend the START Treaty's verification and transparency elements, which will expire in 2009," Lugar told a conference of arms control experts in Moscow. "I am concerned by reports that U.S.-Russian negotiations do not include discussions of a legally-binding treaty or the continuation of a formal verification regime. "The current Russian-American relationship is complicated enough without introducing more elements of uncertainty into the nuclear relationship," Lugar said. Russia has warned it may return to its Cold War stance of aiming its nuclear missiles at targets in Europe if Washington goes ahead with its plan for a missile defense shield in Europe. In another sign of U.S.-Russian tensions, Moscow has suspended its compliance with a conventional arms treaty, citing what it says is a NATO arms build-up in eastern Europe. Sen. Lugar and former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn were the authors of a cooperation program through which the United States has been working with Russia for the past 15 years to destroy their stocks of chemical and biological weapons. B) Reuters 2007. * ================================================================= .NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems . Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us . .339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org . List Archives: https://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ . Subscribe: https://blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================= ***************************************************************** 4 Reuters: U.S., Russia must keep nuclear treaty - U.S. senator Tue Aug 28, 2007 9:57AM EDT By Christian Lowe MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia and the United States will be making a mistake if they allow the START nuclear arms reduction treaty to lapse in 2009, U.S. Senator Richard Lugar, a leading disarmament advocate, said on Monday. The treaty, signed in 1991, set ceilings on the size of the Russian and U.S. nuclear arsenals and became a symbol of the end of the Cold War. Washington has indicated it will not extend it in 2009 but wants to replace it with a more up-to-date pact. Sen. Lugar said that without this treaty there would be no mechanism for each side to verify the other in observing arms control treaties, at a time of weakening trust between Moscow and Washington . "The United States and Russia must extend the START Treaty's verification and transparency elements, which will expire in 2009," Lugar told a conference of arms control experts in Moscow. "I am concerned by reports that U.S.-Russian negotiations do not include discussions of a legally-binding treaty or the continuation of a formal verification regime. "The current Russian-American relationship is complicated enough without introducing more elements of uncertainty into the nuclear relationship," Lugar said. Russia has warned it may return to its Cold War stance of aiming its nuclear missiles at targets in Europe if Washington goes ahead with its plan for a missile defense shield in Europe. In another sign of U.S.-Russian tensions, Moscow has suspended its compliance with a conventional arms treaty, citing what it says is a NATO arms build-up in eastern Europe. Sen. Lugar and former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn were the authors of a cooperation program through which the United States has been working with Russia for the past 15 years to destroy their stocks of chemical and biological weapons. © Reuters 2007. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 5 Iran Answers UN Agency Questions On Plutonium Programme, Says Document Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2007 17:00:50 -0400 IRAN ANSWERS UN AGENCY QUESTIONS ON PLUTONIUM PROGRAMME, SAYS DOCUMENT New York, Aug 28 2007 5:00PM Iran has addressed the questions of the United Nations nuclear watchdog about its past plutonium programme and both parties now consider that matter resolved, according to a statement posted on the The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) yesterday published on its website the <" http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Infcircs/2007/infcirc711.pdf">text of a joint work plan on how to resolve outstanding issues between the agency and Iran after a request to do so from Tehran. That text states that Iran provided clarifications to the IAEA to help explain all remaining questions it had about its plutonium programme, and that the agency agreed on 20 August that the matter has been resolved. The text added that the two parties had also been cooperating in preparing the safeguards approach for the fuel enrichment plant at Natanz, with draft texts on the approach circulated and further talks scheduled next month. Last week IAEA experts <"http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/PressReleases/2007/prn200711.html">were in Iran for two days of talks with Government officials about the country’s past nuclear programme and to clarify safeguards implementation issues. This followed negotiations in both Vienna and Tehran in July. Iran’s nuclear programme has been a matter of international concern since the discovery in 2003 that it had concealed its nuclear activities for 18 years in breach of its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (<"http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Treaties/npt.html">NPT). Last December, the Security Council adopted a <"http://www.un.org/Docs/journal/asp/ws.asp?m=s/res/1737(2006)">resolution banning trade with Iran in all items, materials, equipment, goods and technology which could contribute to the country's enrichment-related, reprocessing or heavy water-related activities, or to the development of nuclear weapon delivery systems. It tightened the measures in March, banning arms sales and expanding the freeze on assets. 2007-08-28 00:00:00.000 ___________________ For more details go to UN News Centre at http://www.un.org/news To listen to news and in-depth programmes from UN Radio go to: http://radio.un.org/ _______________________________ To change your profile or unsubscribe go to: http://www.un.org/apps/news/email/ ***************************************************************** 6 IAEA: UN Study Analyzes Costs to Combat Climate Change Delegates to UNFCC Meet in Vienna This Week Staff Report 28 August 2007 The Kyoto Protocol aims to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. (Photo Credit: C. Carnemark/World Bank) A new report from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) finds that far more investment is needed to hold greenhouse gas emissions in check, especially in developing countries. The report is being presented at a UNFCC meeting in Vienna this week. The study -- an "analysis of existing and potential investment and financial flows relevant to the development of an effective and appropriate international response to climate change" -- says that additional investment and financial flows of US $200 to 210 billion are needed by 2030 to return GHG emissions to current levels. "Developing countries will require a large share of investment and financial flows because of their expected rapid economic growth," said UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer. "This presents a real opportunity," he added. The IAEA -- through its laboratories, the Department of Nuclear Science and Applications, and the Department of Nuclear Energy -- supports and contributes to assessments of climate change and mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. The UNFCC study shows that governments will need to adopt new policies and change the way they use their funds. One key way of enabling increased funding outlined in the report is by means of the carbon markets. The carbon market spawned by the Kyoto Protocol and policies to promote renewables are already playing an important role in shifting investment flows. "A long-term international agreement on climate change will broaden the range of mitigation measures that are attractive investments and could allow the expansion of existing market mechanisms to a market of USD 100 billion per year," Mr. de Boer said. The report will help delegates meeting for the UNFCC Conference in Bali in December 2007 in assessing the financial architecture needed for a post-2012 international agreement, for which negotiations are expected to be launched this year. Background With 191 Parties, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has near universal membership and is the parent treaty of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol has to date 175 member Parties. Under the Protocol, 36 States, consisting of highly industrialized countries and countries undergoing the process of transition to a market economy, have legally binding emission limitation and reduction commitments. The ultimate objective of both treaties is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system. The IAEA's Planning & Economic Studies Section in the Nuclear Energy Department specifically addresses international negotiations on climate change and sustainable development, and contributes to the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other bodies. Copyright ©, International Atomic Energy Agency, P.O. Box 100, Wagramer Strasse 5, A-1400 Vienna, Austria Telephone (+431) 2600-0; Facsimilie (+431) 2600-7; E-mail: ***************************************************************** 7 China Post: United States appears to adjust its stance on Pakistan - Monday, August 27, 2007 - By Arshad Mohammed, WASHINGTON, Reuters While still solidly behind Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, the United States appears to be bracing for the possibility that he might have to give up or share power, analysts said. An ally in the U.S. led war on terrorism, Musharraf has seen his popularity erode this year following a failed attempt to oust Pakistan's chief justice and a series of bombings and clashes across the nuclear-armed South Asian nation. While analysts said Washington was by no means abandoning Musharraf, a general who seized power in bloodless 1999 coup, his diminished popularity and Pakistan's pro-democracy clamor appear to have made the United States consider contingencies. "Their preference would certainly still be that Musharraf continue. They are comfortable working with him and they probably consider him a stronger leader than the alternatives," said Teresita Schaffer of the CSIS think tank. "But I think they would like to see him joined to one or another of the secular parties because they think that provides a stronger combination," she added. "That is a recalibration, but I don't think they would characterize it as moving away from Musharraf because they still want him." Ten days ago, a diplomat said Washington had urged Musharraf to explore ways of cooperating politically with former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, whose father, also a Pakistani leader, was executed during a previous period of military rule. The effort to encourage a political deal, first reported by The New York Times, appeared aimed at shoring up Musharraf's domestic support and ensuring Pakistan's continued cooperation with the United States in the war on terrorism. The strategy carries risks for Washington, which could be seen as meddling in Pakistan's internal affairs, and for Bhutto, who could taint herself by allying with Musharraf, the latest of a long line of military officers to rule Pakistan. Last week, Pakistan's Supreme Court ruled that another former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, whom Musharraf ousted in 1999, could return to Pakistan after seven years in exile. There is no love lost between the two. Pakistan's military overthrew the former prime minister after he sought to replace Musharraf as army chief of staff while the general was out of the country. Analysts said the prospect of Sharif's return was sure to raise domestic pressure on Musharraf, who hopes to win a second term as president in an election expected to be held this autumn. Fresh parliamentary elections are expected afterward. A senior U.S. official denied any effort by the United States to distance itself from Musharraf, who chose after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to support Washington in its effort to topple the Taliban regime in Afghanistan that harbored al-Qaida. While declining to detail U.S. contacts with Sharif or Bhutto, the official said contact with opposition parties was natural ahead of Pakistan's elections. "We're not walking away from Musharraf," the U.S official said flatly. "We're just talking to more people because it's a political year and more people are coming up in importance." "We are trying to help him make a successful transition because he knows and we know that is the only way to continue the alliance ... and to continue moving the country in the direction he's charted," he added. Stephen Cohen, an analyst at the Brookings Institution think tank, said he thought the U.S. emphasis in recent months on the importance of Pakistan holding free and fair elections bespoke a slight shift in the U.S. approach. "We hadn't been talking about that at all, or if we had, it was in the most abstract way," Cohen said. "I think that's language that probably reflects an adjustment in policy -- not a change -- but an adjustment to support Musharraf, but to be prepared if things go in different directions." Lisa Curtis of the Heritage Foundation think tank said U.S. officials had been "somewhat behind the curve" in grasping how much Musharraf's standing had diminished and how strong the pro-democratic sentiment was in Pakistan. "The political landscape has changed drastically inside Pakistan over the last six months, with Musharraf's popularity plummeting, and I think the administration understands that and is now seeking to adapt its policy accordingly," Curtis said. "Given the severe strains in the U.S.-Pakistan relationship, I believe it is critical that the administration not be seen as solely supporting Musharraf against the will of the people, who are obviously clamoring for democratic rule," she said. Copyright © 1999 ˇV 2007 The China Post. Breaking News, World News, ***************************************************************** 8 The Hindu: Nuke issue: Congress holds talks with Forward Bloc Tuesday, August 28, 2007 : 1410 Hrs New Delhi, Aug. 28 (PTI) The Congress today continued efforts to find a way to end the stand-off on the Indo-US civil nuclear deal with top party leaders holding discussions with the Forward Bloc. After a meeting with External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Forward Bloc leaders Debabrata Biswas and G Devarajan favoured a political solution to the issue. "The issue should be settled politically," Biswas told reporters after meeting Mukherjee, who was assisted by Defence Minister A K Antony and senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel. Asked whether the leaders would like to be a part of the committee expected to be set up by the Government to look into the issue, Biswas said "definitely, yes. But it is for the Government to decide on the composition of the committee." "The committee should be a political committee," he said. A meeting of the UPA-Left apparently to concretise the mechanism proposal is likely to be held tomorrow in which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi and other top coalition leaders are expected to be present. Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the ***************************************************************** 9 BBC NEWS: Strike at nuclear site suspended Last Updated: Tuesday, 28 August 2007, 13:55 GMT 14:55 UK Workers are in dispute with the operators over pay Strike action by staff at the Dounreay nuclear plant in Caithness planned for Wednesday has been suspended pending talks between unions and management. Workers are in dispute with operators, the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), over the current year's pay claim. Almost 87% of GMB members had backed industrial action and 90% supported an overtime ban at the site. * BBC Copyright Notice ***************************************************************** 10 RIA Novosti: Russia, U.S. to sign nuclear power cooperation deal in fall -1 15:43 | 28/ 08/ 2007 MOSCOW, August 28 (RIA Novosti) - A senior Russian nuclear official said Tuesday that a deal is likely to be signed with the United States this fall on the civilian use of nuclear power. The document, initialed two months ago, envisages the transfer of fissile materials, and relevant installations and equipment. "We hope the document will be signed during the coming fall," said Nikolai Spassky, deputy head of the Federal Agency for Nuclear Power. He said the agency aimed to increase the share of nuclear energy in Russia's power generation to 21-25% from the current 16.5% by 2020. Russia plans to put 10 new nuclear power units into operation by 2015. Agency chief Sergei Kiriyenko said last September that Russia was planning to build 42-58 nuclear reactors for its own needs by 2030, and 40-50 units abroad in the next 30 years. Russia currently has 10 operational nuclear power plants with 31 reactors, but Kiriyenko said the country would need another 300 gigawatts from new plants to cover a projected energy deficit in the next three decades. "We will have to commission new energy-generating facilities capable of producing 300 GW by 2030," he said at the time, adding that from 2015 the industry would commission at least two power-generating units annually without governmental subsidies. Russia's reserves of coal and natural gas could be depleted in fifty years. With around 8% of the world's uranium output, Russia plans to mine 60-70% of its uranium needs domestically by 2015, with the remainder coming from joint ventures in former Soviet republics, particularly Kazakhstan, which holds 25-30% of the world's uranium reserves. RIA Novosti ***************************************************************** 11 Platts: The UK's Oldbury-2 reconnects to grid 2007-08-24 London (Platts)--24Aug2007 The UK's Oldbury-2 magnox reconnected to the grid August 23, operator Magnox North said August 24. A fire and then turbine vibrations kept the reactor offline most of the time since May 30. Oldbury-2, one of the four remaining operating magnox reactors, underwent a 23-month outage until May 27 to determine the extent of graphite depletion in its core. It operated only three days before a May 30 fire on the non-nuclear side of the plant forced its shutdown. It returned to service June 30, only to be shut again in early July following the turbine vibration problem. Sister unit Oldbury-1 has been offline since August 31, 2006, also undergoing graphite weight loss checks. Its safety analysis work for return to service is with regulator Nuclear Installations Inspectorate. Oldbury-1 and -2 are due to close permanently in December 2008 and have experienced higher levels of graphite weight loss than the rest of the almost fully retired 11-station (26-reactor) magnox fleet. Copyright © 2007 - Platts, All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 12 Platts: Grand Gulf COL submittal now seen by February 2007-08-27 Washington (Platts)--27Aug2007 The Grand Gulf COL application submittal is being pushed back from November 2007 to no later than February 2008, the industry consortium NuStart Energy said. In a letter posted August 27 on NRC's electronic library, NuStart Energy said a later timetable "better fits Entergy's business needs and overall new plant development project schedule." NuStart is preparing the combined construction permit-operating license, or COL, application for the Grand Gulf site. But either Entergy or its subsidiaries will be the license applicant. NuStart and Entergy have said the application will seek to license a General Electric ESBWR at the Grand Gulf site in Port Gibson, Mississippi, where Entergy subsidiary System Energy Resources operates and owns 90% of the existing unit 1. Copyright © 2007 - Platts, All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 13 toledoblade.com: No rush on re-regulation Article published Tuesday, August 28, 2007 GOV. Ted Strickland has set a high bar for what should be his next major legislative initiative: re-regulating the electric business in Ohio. We use the term “re-regulating” because it is glaringly obvious that the state’s nearly decade-long experiment with electric deregulation has been a colossal failure and must be corrected. To his everlasting credit, Mr. Strickland is expected to tackle not only the ever-thorny subject of electric rates but to do so in a context that includes clean-coal, nuclear, and other technologies and also alternative, noncarbon forms of energy, like wind and solar power. This is a tall order but one that must be addressed in a comprehensive, reasoned, and deliberate manner if Ohio is to get on a track that makes it an attractive location for the big energy users of business and industry without placing an undue cost burden on residential ratepayers. Aides to the governor have indicated that Mr. Strickland wants the General Assembly to adopt an energy package by the end of this year to give the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio time to implement new law before the rate freezes set for FirstEnergy Corp. and other utilities expire at the end of 2008. While we see the need for urgency, lawmakers will only meet with regret if they push through regulatory reform in haste and without time to consider the consequences. That’s what happened in 1999, when the Republican-dominated legislature ram-med through a deregulation law, heavily endowed with wishful ideology, which promised lower electric rates through competition among energy suppliers attracted by a new free market. It didn’t work; competition never materialized, as many critics had warned. Industrial users got lower rates, while residential electric customers found themselves locked in rate schemes that were essentially frozen to avoid a public outcry over unrestrained prices. All this came against the backdrop of what were then among the highest electric rates in the nation, especially for customers of FirstEnergy’s Toledo Edison subsidiary. Where electric rates will go as 2009 dawns is a question the governor and legislature must answer and they will have a lot of help. Lobbying forces arrayed on the issue include at least two groups representing industrial customers, plus the electric utilities trade group, and the Ohio Office of Consumers’ Counsel, representing residential ratepayers. So far, the legislative playing field appears to be heavily tilted in favor of industry, a factor Governor Strickland should feel compelled to counteract when he comes out with his energy plan next month. Simply put, the legislature should not be stampeded into a plan favoring business and industry at the expense of residential customers. Like water, electricity is a commodity that virtually all Ohioans need to survive, and its price must kept reasonable. That is the challenge Ohio faces with electric re-regulation. The Toledo Blade Company, 541 N. Superior St., Toledo, OH 43660 , (419) 724-6000 To contact a specific department or an individual ***************************************************************** 14 Rutland Herald: Yankee union ratifies contract August 28, 2007 By Susan Smallheer Herald Staff VERNON — Unionized employees at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant have a new three-year contract, ending the threat of a strike, according to Entergy Nuclear spokesman Laurence Smith. Smith said that the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 300, Unit 8, endorsed the new offer after a meeting late Monday afternoon. Smith said he got the call from union officials after 6 p.m. Monday. "We got a deal," Smith said. The second vote, this one successful, came after the 157 unionized workers rejected the company's offer last Tuesday, and set a strike deadline of Saturday afternoon. The new agreement was reached Friday night. The contract expired Aug. 19. "We're very pleased that they've ratified the tentative agreement. We said all along our goal was to reach an agreement, and I'm delighted we have a positive outcome and now it's back to work," Smith said. There are a total of 500 workers at Vermont Yankee. Smith said the company and the union agreed not to release the details of the settlement. Smith refused to comment on a press release from the union at the Pilgrim nuclear power plant last Friday that claimed union workers at Vermont Yankee had concerns about safety. Gary Sullivan, president of the union at Pilgrim, who was quoted as saying workers have safety concerns, didn't return a call for comment. Sullivan was quoted as saying, "There are serious issues of public safety surrounding the Vermont Yankee dispute. We cannot allow one bad corporate apple and corporate greed to create a global risk." The anti-nuclear watchdog group New England Coalition used the union press release as the basis of a petition filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Monday, asking the NRC to investigate the matter immediately, and to hold Vermont Yankee at 50 percent power at the very least. The coalition pointed to last week's partial collapse of one of its 22 cooling towers as proof of employees' concerns about "degrading plant conditions." Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said that any such complaints were held in strict confidentiality and he refused any further comment on that issue. But he said the coalition's petition would be handled according to federal regulations. Workers on an informational picket line last week in Brattleboro said the company wanted to give them a very small cost-of-living wage increase, and they said the company wanted to change their health insurance, making deductibles much higher and substantially increasing the cost of health care. Additionally, the workers said they were upset about something legally they could do nothing about — the health care benefits of Entergy Nuclear retirees from Vermont Yankee. Workers said that they were the lowest-paid workers of the five nuclear power plants owned by Entergy Nuclear in the Northeast, between $3 and $9 an hour less than their unionized Entergy counterparts. Union business manager George Clain didn't return repeated telephone calls. Sheehan said preparations were made to have NRC staff on hand to oversee Entergy's substitute staff if there was a strike. The company by law had to have a contingency plan to run the reactor even without its unionized licensed control room operators, and other key staff. The union's Web site said that the union had made gains in travel pay, wages and training hours, but was silent about health care insurance. Contact Susan Smallheer at susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com. © 2007 Rutland Herald ***************************************************************** 15 London Times: Public backs nuclear energy to help power Britain's future - August 29, 2007 Survey shows groundswell of support for a new generation of plants to replace ageing facilities reaching the end of their life Steve Hawkes An overwhelming majority of people believe that nuclear power will have a role to play in meeting Britain’s future energy needs, despite continued opposition from environmental campaigners. The latest in a monthly series of ethical reports compiled for The Times describes a growing groundswell of support for a new generation of nuclear power plants. Nearly two thirds of those surveyed by Populus said they believed that nuclear power will form part of an overall energy mix in the future, alongside coal, gas and “green” energy. More than one in five argued that it was the best way of tackling climate change. Only 20 per cent said that they remained opposed to the idea of nuclear power “under any circumstance”. Around 20 per cent of Britain’s energy comes from nuclear power plants, with less than half that amount generated by renewable sources. The survey reveals that 86 per cent of people believe that energy companies should do more to address environmental issues, despite a huge investment in “green” energy in the past five years. British Gas is seen as the least environmentally conscious supplier, even though it launched what it claimed was Britain’s “greenest” available energy tariff in July. The company pledged to offset all CO2 emissions from the gas and electricity used by customers signing up to “Zero Carbon”, as well as investing more money in renewable energy and cutting CO2 emissions in schools. On a scale of one to five, British Gas scores an average rating of 3.56, behind all its leading rivals and Good Energy, the self-styled “100 per cent renewable electricity supplier”, which top scores with 4.76. Populus said that British Gas’s poor score reflected a growing gap between perception and reality in consumers’ understanding of renewable energy. It pointed out that 35 per cent of those surveyed believe that all the electricity pumped into the homes of customers on “green” energy products comes exclusively from renewable sources – which is practically impossible. In fact, the “green” energy simply forms part of the overall mix sent to everyone. Consumer watchdogs cite this misunderstanding as one of the reasons why green energy products should carry a star rating. They claim that customers are often being duped, as suppliers charging a premium for “green” energy would have had to make an investment in wind farms or hydro power anyway to meet renewable targets laid down by the Government. Ofgem began industry-wide consultation on how such a ratings scheme would work in June. Concerned consumers © Copyright 2007 Times Newspapers Ltd. ***************************************************************** 16 Burlington Free Press: EDITORIAL: Vt. Yankee accident raises concerns Opinion burlingtonfreepress.com | Burlington, Vermont Tuesday, August 28, 2007 Vermont Yankee and its owner Entergy face a tough road toward regaining the public's confidence in the safety of the state's sole nuclear power plant after a part of the plant's cooling towers collapsed. Entergy says there was never a direct threat of a radiation leak from the accident, in fact no threat to public safety at all. The pipe that failed carried water that was to be cooled before being returned to the Connecticut River. But the accident at Vermont Yankee has already led to calls for closer scrutiny of the plant by state regulators and lawmakers from anti-nuclear activists who point to the failed water pipe and question the overall safety of the aging plant. With Entergy seeking to extend the plant's operating license for 20 years beyond 2012, the safety concerns are difficult to dismiss. The pipe collapsed hours before plant officials had planned to shut down that very section of the cooling tower and reduce power output in order to deal with problems including a small leak in the pipe carrying water and bowing of support beams. Entergy had already notified state and federal regulators as well as political leaders of the planned work. The company reported the accident promptly, saying that the pipe and the some of the support beams had failed and fallen to the ground. But photographs sent out next day by a nuclear watchdog group showing water gushing out of a severed pipe onto debris from a portion of the cooling tower's outside wall dealt a major setback for the carefully maintained image of Vermont Yankee as a safe source of electricity. People are skittish enough about nuclear power without seeing what appears to be major damage to a part of the plant. That fact that one part of the plant can fail despite all the precautions can only feed fears that an accident in another part of Vermont Yankee might release radioactive material into surrounding communities. Entergy spokesman Brian Cosgrove says that the cooling towers have been the subject of 36 system inspections and preventive maintenance work orders since November last year, and the company has spent $1.5 million on inspections and preventive maintenance on the cooling towers in the last three years. Entergy pledges to keep the public informed what went wrong and how it happened, and continue to share information openly as it addresses the cooling tower problem. Vermont Yankee is a critical part of the state's energy picture, proving about a third of the electricity used by Vermonters at stable, below-market prices. Yet for the nuclear power plant to remain a part of the state's energy future, Entergy, regulators and Vermont's elected leaders must restore people's confidence in the safety of Vermont Yankee and, more important, make sure that confidence is justified. ***************************************************************** 17 APP.COM: Money talks in lobbying for Oyster Creek's future | Asbury Park Press Online Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 08/28/07 BY PEGGI STURMFELS Post Comment Salmon Ventures is a public relations and lobbying firm that specializes in representing the interests of business and industry that come under regulatory control on the state and national levels. Earlier this month, they became the "front" for Exelon in its attempt to cloud the real concerns surrounding the operational, environmental and age-related safety problems surrounding its Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in Lacey. Under the guise of a new coalition, the New Jersey Affordable, Clean Reliable Energy Coalition (notice the lack of the word "safe"), Edward Salmon and his band of merry lobbyists are mounting a campaign to promote Oyster Creek as an important part of New Jersey's energy future with ratepayers' money. Exelon has paid the upfront money to create this coalition. The principal members of this coalition are pro-nuclear industry groups and the three unions that seek or have jobs directly related to these plants. There is no disclaimer to these facts on its Web site. Salmon says that he and his colleagues' reputations are on the line. I agree. As a former state Board of Public Utilities president, a former legislator and as a member of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, I would have expected more from Salmon. I would have expected such an esteemed person to be deeply concerned about Exelon's refusal to erect cooling towers, thus violating the Clean Water Act for nine years and continuing to degrade the Barnegat Bay. I would have expected such an esteemed person to have major concerns with the testimony presented by Exelon, Sandia Laboratories and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission at the last two Atomic Committee on Reactor Safety hearings with regards to the corrosion of the drywell liner of the reactor. I would have expected such an esteemed person to be as deeply troubled by the beliefs of the Ocean County freeholders and 20 surrounding towns that emergency evacuation is impossible, and the risk of terrorist threat is real. I would have expected such an esteemed person to wait until the scheduled Atomic Safety Licensing Board hearing in September allowed for citizens — the first time — to challenge the NRC and Exelon with their experts and paid for by T-shirt sales and pass-the-hat donations. And I would have hoped that if the opinion of such an esteemed person was that nuclear power is a part of the solution to our energy needs, that he would be advocating for relicensing of plants when, and only when, they are not in heavily populated areas with insufficient infrastructure; are not obsolete, corroding and embrittled; are operating within the margins of safety, and do not violate environmental laws already on the books. I would have hoped that he would have joined his voice with ours, the counties of Westchester, Putnam, Rockland in New York state and the attorneys general of New York and Connecticut in our suit in the 2nd U.S. District Court that seeks to hold the NRC accountable to the communities and people surrounding these old plants, instead of the industry lap dog it has become. But sadly, and as usual, money talks. Peggi Sturmfels is a program organizer for the New Jersey Environmental Federation, Belmar. Copyright © 2007 Asbury Park Press. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 18 Calgary Herald: Alberta nuclear future a step closer Calgary firm files for licence as site selected Shaun Polczer, Calgary Herald Published: Tuesday, August 28, 2007 The prospect of a nuclear-fuelled Alberta moved closer to reality after a Calgary-based company filed for a licence to build the province's first reactor. Energy Alberta Corp. said late Monday it has formally requested permission from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission to construct a pair of twin-unit Candu reactors about 500 kilometres northwest of Edmonton. "Building a nuclear power facility is a long and rigorous process. This is the beginning of a public and regulatory process that will include environmental, health and safety assessments," said Wayne Henuset, Energy Alberta's president and co-chairman, who termed the application a "historic moment" for the province's nuclear power industry. "We are proud to be pioneers in bringing the benefits of clean, safe, reliable nuclear power to Alberta." Energy Alberta will initially build one twin ACR-1000 that will produce 2,200 megawatts of electricity with a targeted in-service date of early 2017. The chosen site is on private land adjacent to Lac Cardinal, about 30 kilometres west of Peace River. The units will be built by Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., a federal Crown corporation charged with commercializing Canadian nuclear technology. News conferences will be held today in Calgary, Peace River and Whitecourt to provide more details about the project. Environmentalists immediately gave short shrift to the news, expressing worries over impacts a reactor might have on the area's land and water. "The nuclear power industry has a long history of over-promising and under-delivering, so I'm skeptical," said Marlo Reynolds, executive director of the Drayton Valley-based Pembina Institute. "I'm still not convinced there's a need for nuclear power given all the other resources we have here in Alberta." Reynolds said it isn't clear how the nuclear waste will be handled, and how much water will be needed to cool the reactor. The institute won't support any form of government financial support for the project and Reynolds said all environmental impacts must be fully accounted for in the final cost of the facility, which is currently pegged at $6.2 billion. "That business case has never been made clear . . . once you factor in the full cost, I don't believe nuclear power competes." The new reactors will be subject to scrutiny under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, and Energy Alberta said it welcomes a thorough environmental review. In addition, the company said it has the support of the local community after what it described as extensive consultations this summer. "We welcome Energy Alberta to our community," said Peace River Mayor Lorne Mann, who added the town sees nuclear power as an important part of a "sustainable" future. "We understand that this is just the beginning of a lengthy process and we welcome the chance to become more informed on nuclear energy." Power from the reactors would be sold to oilsands developments that use heat and electricity to generate steam, which is then pumped into the ground to enhance recovery. After Athabasca, the Peace River area hosts the province's largest oilsands reserves that remain largely untapped. According to Energy Alberta's website, nuclear power is an alternative to burning expensive natural gas to increase Alberta's oilsands production, which is expected to quadruple by 2020. In addition, Henuset said nuclear power could reduce the province's carbon dioxide levels, which are already some of the highest in the country. Henuset said public pressure to reduce Alberta's carbon dioxide emissions would inevitably lead to a nuclear future. "There's a real problem with the CO2 emissions and what's happening to our environment. This is the way to green up that growth plan." spolczer@theherald.canwest.com © 2007 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest MediaWorks ***************************************************************** 19 Brattleboro Reformer: VY tower collapse leads to calls for further safety review BRATTLEBORO, VT By BOB AUDETTE, Reformer Staff Tuesday, August 28 BRATTLEBORO -- A press release from unions representing nuclear power plant workers at Vermont Yankee and Pilgrim Station has prompted one local anti-nuclear group to request an independent safety assessment of the nuclear power plant in Vernon. "There are serious issues of public safety surrounding the Vermont Yankee dispute," wrote Gary Sullivan, president of Utility Workers Union of America Local 369, which represents workers at Entergy's Pilgrim power plant in Plymouth, Mass., in a press release dated Aug. 23. "We cannot allow one bad corporate apple and corporate greed to create a global risk." The unions had called a press conference for the afternoon of Aug. 25, during contract negotiations, and then canceled it after it appeared representatives from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and Entergy, which owns Vermont Yankee, had reached a tentative agreement. Those who were scheduled to attend the canceled meeting included representatives from Local 369, the IBEW -- representing 157 workers at Vermont Yankee -- and the AFL-CIO, which represents 1,800 workers at 11 nuclear power plants. "It was stated (that) workers were concerned that degrading conditions at Vermont Yankee had led to a decrease in margins of public safety," wrote Ray Shadis, technical adviser to the New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution, in an e-mail to the media. "What is very clear from the union's press release is that there are safety concerns at Vermont Yankee that have not made it out to the public," said James Moore, clean energy advocate for the Vermont Public Interest Research Group. "We would hope that the employees have public safety first and foremost in their minds, but we have serious concerns that Entergy Corporation is cutting corners to increase their profits, potentially at the risk of millions of people who live in the area surrounding Vermont Yankee." Last week's collapse of a cooling tower at the plant adds impetus to legislation sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., which would force an independent safety assessment on a nuclear power plant if so demanded by a state's legislature or its public service board. "The collapse of a structure at the plant is an indication we need to take a thorough look at Vermont Yankee," said Sanders. "In my mind, we have got to go the absolute extra mile to make sure older nuclear power plants -- and all others -- are as safe as they can possibly be." His legislation, said Sanders, "has not been received warmly by the NRC." NEC is asking the NRC to "act immediately to restore reasonable assurance of adequate protection of public heath and safety that is now degraded by the failure of the licensee and its employees to report adverse conditions leading to a reduction in plant safety margins." NEC would like either a "diagnostic evaluation team examination" or an independent safety assessment as well as "a safety culture assessment to determine why worker safety concerns were not previously reported." To insure public safety, NEC is also asking the NRC to derate Vermont Yankee to 50 percent of its licensed thermal output "until a thorough and detailed structural and performance analysis of the cooling towers, including the alternate cooling system, has been completed by the licensee." NEC also wants the NRC to look at safety conditions at other Entergy nuclear power plants. "I do not see any specifics in (the press release) regarding the union's safety concerns," said NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan. "We would want to learn more about what they consist of." Nuclear power plant operators are required by law to report safety issues, which they can do in a variety of ways: Bring them to the attention of plant management or NRC inspectors, file a condition report in-house, use other internal plant processes to raise concerns or submit an allegation to the NRC, "It's vital that plant employees feel comfortable raising safety concerns to us so that there are many, many more eyes keeping watch on conditions at that and other reactor facilities," said Sheehan. Reprisal might be one reason why employees at Yankee haven't spoken up about safety conditions, said Diana Sidebotham, president of NEC. "In speaking the truth, they may be doing so at their own peril." Questioned about plant conditions Monday, Vermont Yankee spokesman Larry Smith said he did not know what the union's concerns were and could not comment. "Ask the union," Smith said. George Clain, business manager with the IBEW, said he did not want to discuss the details of the union's safety concerns until after he had spoken with state and federal authorities, which he said he would do Monday night. The NRC would not comment on whether any meetings between the IBEW and members of its staff were scheduled. "We are always available to meet with licensee personnel, or members of the public, to discuss potential safety concerns," said Sheehan. "However, we go to great lengths to protect the identity of those who might raise safety concerns with us. Therefore, we do not by policy confirm or deny such conversations." In the last five years, the NRC has received 20 "reactor allegations" related to safety concerns at Vermont Yankee, but only one of them -- in 2005 -- was substantiated, said Sheehan, spokesman for the NRC. "We usually don't comment on the contents of an allegation," said Sheehan. "Even the ones we substantiate. We go to great lengths to protect the anonymity of plant employees." The NRC's allegations program is meant to "provide a mechanism for individuals to identify safety and regulatory issues directly to the agency." Bob Audette can be reached at raudette@reformer.com or 802-254-2311, ext. 273. The AP contributed to this story. ***************************************************************** 20 NRC: Southern Nuclear Operating Company Vogtle Electric Generating Plant, Units 1 and 2 FR Doc E7-16995 [Federal Register: August 28, 2007 (Volume 72, Number 166)] [Notices] [Page 49322-49324] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr28au07-149] NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION [Docket Nos. 50-424 and 50-425] Notice of Intent To Prepare an Environmental Impact Statement and Conduct Scoping Process Southern Nuclear Operating Company (SNC) has submitted an application for renewal of Facility Operating Licenses Nos. NPF-68 and NPF-81 for an additional 20 years of operation at the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant (VEGP), Units 1 and 2. VEGP is located outside of Waynesboro, Georgia. The current operating licenses for the VEGP, Units 1 and 2, expire on January 16, 2027, and February 9, 2029, respectively. The application for renewal, dated June 27, 2007 was submitted pursuant to Title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations (10 CFR) Part 54. A notice of receipt and availability of the application, which included SNC's environmental report (ER), was published in the Federal Register on August 3, 2007 (72 FR 43296). A notice of acceptance for docketing of the application for renewal of the facility operating license was published in the Federal Register on August 21, 2007 (72 FR 46680). The purpose of this notice is to inform the public that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) will be preparing an environmental impact statement (EIS) related to the review of the license renewal application and to provide the public an opportunity to participate in the environmental scoping process, as defined in 10 CFR 51.29. In addition, as outlined in 36 CFR 800.8, ``Coordination with the National Environmental Policy Act,'' the NRC plans to coordinate compliance with Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act in meeting the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA). In accordance with 10 CFR 51.53(c) and 10 CFR 54.23, SNC submitted the ER as part of the application. The ER was prepared pursuant to 10 CFR part 51 and is publicly available at the NRC Public Document Room (PDR), located at One White Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland 20852, or from the NRC's Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS). The ADAMS Public Electronic Reading Room is accessible at http://adamswebsearch.nrc.gov/dologin.htm. The Accession Number for the ER is ML071840357. Persons who [[Page 49323]] do not have access to ADAMS, or who encounter problems in accessing the documents located in ADAMS, should contact the NRC's PDR reference http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/licensing/renewal/applications/vogtle.html. In addition, the ER is available for public inspection near VEGP at the Burke County Library, 130 Highway 24 South, Waynesboro, Georgia 30830. This notice advises the public that the NRC intends to gather the information necessary to prepare a plant-specific supplement to the Commission's ``Generic Environmental Impact Statement (GEIS) for License Renewal of Nuclear Plants,'' (NUREG-1437) related to the review of the application for renewal of the VEGP, Units 1 and 2, operating licenses for an additional 20 years. Possible alternatives to the proposed action (license renewal) include no action and reasonable alternative energy sources. The NRC is required by 10 CFR 51.95 to prepare a supplement to the GEIS in connection with the renewal of an operating license. This notice is being published in accordance with NEPA and the NRC's regulations found in 10 CFR part 51. The NRC will first conduct a scoping process for the supplement to the GEIS and, as soon as practicable thereafter, will prepare a draft supplement to the GEIS for public comment. Participation in the scoping process by members of the public and local, State, Tribal, and Federal government agencies is encouraged. The scoping process for the supplement to the GEIS will be used to accomplish the following: a. Define the proposed action which is to be the subject of the supplement to the GEIS. b. Determine the scope of the supplement to the GEIS and identify the significant issues to be analyzed in depth. c. Identify and eliminate from detailed study those issues that are peripheral or that are not significant. d. Identify any environmental assessments and other EISs that are being or will be prepared that are related to, but are not part of, the scope of the supplement to the GEIS being considered. e. Identify other environmental review and consultation requirements related to the proposed action. f. Indicate the relationship between the timing of the preparation of the environmental analyses and the Commission's tentative planning and decision-making schedule. g. Identify any cooperating agencies and, as appropriate, allocate assignments for preparation and schedules for completing the supplement to the GEIS to the NRC and any cooperating agencies. h. Describe how the supplement to the GEIS will be prepared, and include any contractor assistance to be used. The NRC invites the following entities to participate in scoping: a. The applicant, SNC. b. Any Federal agency that has jurisdiction by law or special expertise with respect to any environmental impact involved, or that is authorized to develop and enforce relevant environmental standards. c. Affected State and local government agencies, including those authorized to develop and enforce relevant environmental standards. d. Any affected Indian tribe. e. Any person who requests or has requested an opportunity to participate in the scoping process. f. Any person who has petitioned or intends to petition for leave to intervene. In accordance with 10 CFR 51.26, the scoping process for an EIS may include a public scoping meeting to help identify significant issues related to a proposed activity and to determine the scope of issues to be addressed in an EIS. The NRC has decided to hold public scoping meetings for the VEGP, Units 1 and 2, license renewal supplement to the GEIS. The scoping meetings will be held at the Augusta Technical College, Waynesboro Campus Auditorium, 216 Highway 24 South, Waynesboro, Georgia 30830. There will be two sessions to accommodate interested parties on September 27, 2007. The first session will convene at 1:30 p.m. and will continue until 4:30 p.m., as necessary. The second session will convene at 7 p.m. with a repeat of the overview portions of the meeting and will continue until 10 p.m., as necessary. Both meetings will be transcribed and will include: (1) An overview by the NRC staff of the NEPA environmental review process, the proposed scope of the supplement to the GEIS, and the proposed review schedule; and (2) the opportunity for interested government agencies, organizations, and individuals to submit comments or suggestions on the environmental issues or the proposed scope of the supplement to the GEIS. Additionally, the NRC staff will host informal discussions one hour before the start of each session at the Augusta Technical College, Waynesboro Campus Auditorium. No formal comments on the proposed scope of the supplement to the GEIS will be accepted during the informal discussions. To be considered, comments must be provided either at the transcribed public meetings or in writing, as discussed below. Persons may register to attend or present oral comments at the meetings on the scope of the NEPA review by contacting NRC Environmental Project Manager, Mr. Justin P. Leous, at 1-800-368-5642, extension 2864, or via e-mail to the NRC at Vogtle_LR_EIS@nrc.gov no later than September 20, 2007. Members of the public may also register to speak at the meeting within 15 minutes of the start of each session. Individual oral comments may be limited by the time available, depending on the number of persons who register. Members of the public who have not registered may also have an opportunity to speak, if time permits. Public comments will be considered in the scoping process for the supplement to the GEIS. Mr. Leous will need to be contacted no later than September 17, 2007, if special equipment or accommodations are needed to attend or present information at the public meeting, so that the NRC staff can determine whether the request can be accommodated. Members of the public may send written comments on the environmental scope of the VEGP, Units 1 and 2, license renewal review to: Chief, Rulemaking, Directives and Editing Branch, Division of Administrative Services, Office of Administration, Mailstop T-6D59, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington DC 20555-0001, and should cite the publication date and page number of this Federal Register notice. Comments may also be delivered to the NRC, Room T- 6D59, Two White Flint North, 11545 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland 20852, from 7:30 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. during Federal workdays. To be considered in the scoping process, written comments should be postmarked by October 24, 2007. Electronic comments may be sent by e- mail to the NRC at Vogtle_LR_EIS@nrc.gov, and should be sent no later than October 24, 2007, to be considered in the scoping process. Comments will be available electronically and accessible through ADAMS at http://adamswebsearch.nrc.gov/dologin.htm. Participation in the scoping process for the supplement to the GEIS does not entitle participants to become parties to the proceeding to which the supplement to the GEIS relates. Notice of [[Page 49324]] opportunity for a hearing regarding the renewal application was the subject of the aforementioned Federal Register notice (72 FR 46680). Matters related to participation in any hearing are outside the scope of matters to be discussed at this public meeting. At the conclusion of the scoping process, the NRC will prepare a concise summary of the determination and conclusions reached, including the significant issues identified, and will send a copy of the summary to each participant in the scoping process. The summary will also be available for inspection in ADAMS at http://adamswebsearch.nrc.gov/dologin.htm. The staff will then prepare and issue for comment the draft supplement to the GEIS, which will be the subject of a separate notice and separate public meeting. Copies will be available for public inspection at the Burke County Library, and one copy per request will be provided free of charge. After receipt and consideration of the comments, the NRC will prepare a final supplement to the GEIS, which will also be available for public inspection. Information about the proposed action, the supplement to the GEIS, and the scoping process may be obtained from Mr. Leous at the aforementioned telephone number or e-mail address. Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 21st day of August 2007. For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Rani Franovich, Branch Chief, Environmental Branch B, Division of License Renewal, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation. [FR Doc. E7-16995 Filed 8-27-07; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 21 WNN: Energy Alberta files Candu site application 28 August 2007 Energy Alberta has chosen Peace River as the potential site for its nuclear power plant and has filed an application for a site preparation licence with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC). The application is for the siting of up to two of twin-unit plants, using AECL's ACR-1000 Advanced Candu reactors. Energy Alberta plans initially to build one 2200 MWe twin-unit plant, with a start-up target of 2017. "We are proud to be pioneers in bringing the benefits of clean, safe, reliable nuclear power to Alberta," said Energy Alberta President Wayne Henuset. According to its press release, Energy Alberta chose the Peace River region as its preferred site because of "demonstrated" community support as well as the existence of infrastructure and support services and technical feasibility. The location 30 km west of the town of Peace River was chosen after "months" of community engagement. Residents of another possible site, at Whitecourt, recently retracted an earlier letter of support for Energy Alberta's plans and voted to hold a residents' poll if Energy Alberta chose their region. Peace River's mayor, Lorne Mann, welcomed Energy Alberta to the community and described the announcement as paving the way to a "more vibrant, exciting and sustainable future" for the community. The reactor project will be subject to review under the Canadian Environmental Assessment act. Power from the reactors would be used in oil sands extraction, which uses large volumes of steam to soften and recover oil from the gritty mixtures of bitumen. Canada has huge reserves of oil sands but recovery of the oil is energy intensive - natural gas can account for up to 60% of operating costs at current recovery facilities, not to mention the associated carbon emissions. ***************************************************************** 22 Herald Sun: Australia raring to join nuclear club NEWS.com.au | Steve Lewis August 29, 2007 12:00am AUSTRALIA is eager to join a US-led global nuclear bloc to help shape the future "architecture" of nuclear power generation. Despite concerns Australia will be forced to take back nuclear waste from overseas, Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer says it "makes very good sense" to be involved in the fledgling Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. With nuclear power shaping as a key election battleground, Mr Downer's enthusiasm to take part in the global process will further expose the Government to Labor's scare campaign. Labor claims the Government is committed to building up to 25 nuclear reactors and is running a marginal seats campaign in the lead-up to the poll. In an interview ahead of the APEC summit next week, Mr Downer spoke positively of Australia joining the nuclear group but said the Government would not be "verballed" into accepting other countries' nuclear waste. The US President, who plans to raise the nuclear issue during his visit to Sydney next week, first raised the prospect of a global partnership in 2004. "It makes a lot of sense for Australia to be involved," Mr Downer said. Australia has been invited to attend a GNEP meeting in Vienna on September 16, along with Russia, Japan, China and Britain. The minister was also hopeful of APEC achieving some breakthrough on a way forward for climate change, although the 21 leaders would not embrace binding targets to cut carbon emissions. "If we can get a consensus on a commitment to action by all of the 21 economies on climate change . . . that will be an enormous achievement because that has not been achieved before," he said. "I think we will get some agreement." APEC may also herald a breakthrough on other critical issues, including agreement from China to embrace more robust energy efficiency standards. This would involve China -- which will overtake the US as the world's biggest emitter within a year -- adopting more eco-friendly standards for refrigerators, airconditioners and other energy-guzzling appliances. © Herald and Weekly Times. All times AEST (GMT + 10). ***************************************************************** 23 Prague Daily Monitor: TemelĂ­n staff puts fuel back into 1st unit, will end this week - By CTK / Published 28 August 2007 Temelin, Aug 27 (CTK) - The replacement of a quarter of fuel in the shut-down first unit of nuclear power plant TemelĂ­n will be completed at the end of this week, Václav Brom, the spokesman of the ÄŚEZ group, told ÄŚTK Monday. The staff started to place the new fuel assemblies into the reactor on Friday evening. By Monday morning, they had fifty out of all the 163 fuel assemblies returned into the reactor. The first unit will start to supply electricity to the grid again in October. The second unit is running without any limitations. The fuel replacement is being made due to problems with the original fuel assemblies which got deformed more than expected. The staff will therefore place 49 new fuel assemblies with enriched uranium into the reactor. The new fuel assemblies, brought to Temelin by US firm Westinghouse, are to have better properties. CEZ has a contract with Westinghouse for fuel supplies until the year 2010, after which Russian company TVEL will be supplying the fuel. Early in 2007, technicians placed a quarter of upgraded cartridges in the first unit's reactor. In June, they replaced the same amount of fuel also in the second unit. Through the replacements, CEZ wants to stabilise the output of the reactors. One unit in Temelin has 163 fuel cartridges containing 92 tonnes of fuel in total. The plant uses uranium dioxide with an average 4.25 percent of enriched uranium. Technicians are also replacing part of the first unit's turbine rotor because of problems with turbine vibration. The power plant removed the problem last year but CEZ has decided to innovate part of the equipment. The technicians already made the same replacement in the plant's second unit this year. Temelin's output should grow by at least 26 megawatt hours to 1,020 megawatt hours after the rotor replacements which will cost around Kc700m. This story is from the Czech News Agency (CTK). The Prague Daily Monitor and Monitor CE are not responsible for its content. Copyright 2007 by the Czech News Agency (CTK). All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 24 MySA.com: CPS Energy staff backing nuclear Web Posted: 08/27/2007 07:56 PM CDT Vicki Vaughan Express-News Business Writer The staff of CPS Energy on Monday strongly endorsed expanding San Antonio's use of nuclear power, recommending that the company's board support development of more nuclear generation. Saying the city's needs for more power will be acute by 2016, a key CPS official said nuclear power is the least expensive answer to the city's growing need for more electricity. "Nuclear generation costs appear to be the most reasonable over the long term," Mike Kotara, CPS executive vice president of energy development, said in a presentation to the city-owned utility's board of trustees. "Our study shows we will require another substantial source of electricity around the 2016 time frame," Kotara said. "We need to act expeditiously so we can keep our options open and not lose the window of opportunity." Kotara recommended that CPS take on a partner to build a nuclear generator. The board took no action Monday, but met in executive session to hear more details about the staff recommendation. "We aren't asking you to approve anything," CPS Chief Executive Milton Lee told the board in open session. "We think nuclear is the preferred option today. If you don't want us to consider nuclear, we won't." CPS Energy is a partner in the South Texas Project, the nuclear power plant near Bay City. It supplies about one-third of the city's annual demand for electricity. Kotara added that nuclear power presents less risk than other sources of power generation because nuclear plants don't release carbon dioxide. Many experts expect Congress to stiffen air-quality regulations, increasing the cost of running some generating plants, he said. Possible partners for CPS could include NRG Energy Inc. of New Jersey, which is also a partner in the South Texas Project, Kotara said. NRG has already said it wants to double the size of that plant. Or CPS could consider TXU Corp., which owns a nuclear plant in Granbury, southwest of Fort Worth. When a board member asked how much a nuclear expansion would add to customers' bills, Kotara said CPS' staff is preparing a budget that would estimate those costs. The staff recommendation came after more than a year of study by a team of 30, Kotara said. vvaughan@express-news.net About Us: MySanAntonio.com | Express-News | KENS 5 Portions © 2007 KENS 5 and the San Antonio Express-News. ***************************************************************** 25 AFP: Russia, US close to peaceful nuclear energy deal - Moscow - Tue Aug 28, 10:17 AM ET MOSCOW (AFP) - Russia and the United States could sign a deal later this year on the peaceful use of atomic energy, Russia's nuclear agency Rosatom said. "We have at last begun a fundamental renewal of the basis of our cooperation," Rosatom director Nikolai Spasky was quoted as saying by RIA Novosti news agency. "We expect this document to be signed this autumn." Talks began in July between Moscow and Washington on trimming nuclear weapon arsenals ahead of the expiry of the landmark strategic weapons agreement START in 2009. Presidents Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush said then that their countries would support peaceful use of nuclear energy, in particular among developing countries, while ensuring that nuclear weapons do not spread. His comments came after two senior US lawmakers, Senator Richard Lugar and former Senator Sam Nunn, visited Moscow and appealed for renewed cooperation between the United States and Russia on disarmament and nuclear safety. Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 26 Edmonton Journal: Nuclear plant plan draws fire edmontonjournal.com Northwest Passage in unprecedented melt Environmentalists question impact on area land and water; company touts 'clean, safe, reliable' power Jamie Hall, The Edmonton Journal; With files from the Calgary Herald Published: 6:26 am EDMONTON - Energy Alberta Corporation has chosen Peace River as the site of a proposed nuclear power plant. The Calgary-based company Monday filed an application with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission to build a pair of twin-unit Candu reactors on private land adjacent to Lac Cardinal, 30 kilometres west of the town. The move ends months of speculation about the intended site of the corporation's $6.2-billion nuclear power plant, which was said to be between Peace River and Whitecourt. View Larger Image The Bruce A and Bruce B nuclear generating stations on Lake Huron, about 250 kilometres southwest of Toronto, are one of five operating Candu nuclear power sites in Canada. Courtesy of Bruce Power, file Energy Alberta president and co-chair Wayne Henuset says the decision marks "a historic moment for Canada, for Alberta and for the nuclear power industry" and touted the benefits of "clean, safe, reliable nuclear power." Ontario currently operates five of the Candu 6 reactors, which AECL said were some of the top-performing units in the world last year, with greater than 95 per cent capacity factor rankings. But environmentalists gave short shrift to the claims, expressing worries over impacts a reactor might have on the area's land and water. "The nuclear power industry has a long history of over-promising and under-delivering, so I'm skeptical," said Marlo Reynolds, executive director of the Drayton Valley-based Pembina Institute. "I'm still not convinced there's a need for nuclear power given all the other resources we have here in Alberta." The institute won't support any form of government financial support for the project and Reynolds said all environmental impacts must be fully accounted for in the final cost of the facility. "That business case has never been made clear... once you factor in the full environmental cost I don't believe nuclear power competes." David Schindler has serious concerns, too. "There are huge issues involved in building this," says Schindler, a professor of ecology at the University of Alberta who teaches environmental decision-making, "and one of them is reactor safety. "I would want to know where the waste is going to be stored, how it's going to get there and what the use of the power is supposed to be for. "(Nuclear power plants) use a lot of cooling water, so I guess this is one reason for putting it in Peace River, so they can get water from the Peace. The needs are around a cubic metre a second, so it's like a small oilsands plant." Elena Schacherl insists the proposed plant is "a far different beast" than the existing Candu reactors currently in Canada, which are located in Ontario, New Brunswick and Quebec. "They're approximately half the size of just one of the (twin reactors) that are being proposed," says Schacherl, who represents Concerned Citizens Advocating Use of Sustainable Energy. "What's being proposed has never been built before." She fears the plant will get "fast-tracked" before "the other side" can fully air its arguments in front of an environmental assessment panel. Lorne Mann, the mayor of the Town of Peace River, says the plant would bring economic stability to the region. "Today's announcement ... has given our region an opportunity for a more vibrant, exciting and sustainable future," said Mann. The corporation has partnered with Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, the federal Crown corporation and maker of Candu reactors. Initially, Energy Alberta plans to build one twin-unit ACR-1000 that will produce 2,200 megawatts of electricity with a targeted in-service date of early 2017. "Building a nuclear power facility is a long and rigorous process," said Henuset. "This is the beginning of a public and regulatory process that will include environmental, health and safety assessments." Press conferences will be held in Calgary, Peace River and Whitecourt today to provide more details about the project. jhall@thejournal.canwest.com © 2007 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest MediaWorks ***************************************************************** 27 MarketWatch: For Argentina, finishing nuclear plant a do-it-yourself task - By Drew Benson Last Update: 7:46 AM ET Aug 28, 2007 LIMA, Argentina (MarketWatch) -- The towering orange crane near the unfinished Atucha II nuclear power reactor was among the tallest in the world back in the 1980s, nuclear engineer Roberto Quaranta says as he leads a group through the compound. A curious fact to point out, perhaps, but then the electric power plant was supposed to have been finished in 1987. Today, nearly three decades after work began on the nation's third nuclear power plant, President Nestor Kirchner's administration has vowed to have Atucha II up and running by the second half of 2010. The plant is about 80% finished and the government has budgeted $700 million to complete it, well below the $2 billion cost of a new one. Although aggressive nuclear programs raise red flags in some corners of the globe, Argentina is a signatory of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and as such has pledged to use nuclear technology for peaceful means and not for nuclear weapons. Argentina's return to atomic power comes amid a global rebirth of the industry made possible by a jump in world energy prices and, to some extent, concerns about the greenhouse gases emitted by fossil fuels. At a rally at Atucha II this month, Kirchner blamed his predecessors for derailing the plant. Rhetoric aside, the move to mothball the nation's nuclear program largely reflected a global trend brought on by accidents at Three Mile Island in the U.S. in 1979 and Chernobyl in the Ukraine in 1986. Besides Argentina, other nations are considering plans to complete some of the more than 40 nuclear plants worldwide on which work had stalled by the end of the last decade. In the region, neighboring Brazil is dusting off plans for a postponed nuclear plant from the 1980s, Angra III, which planners hope to complete by 2013. Mexico is planning a $605 million upgrade at its Laguna Verde site aimed at boosting generation by 20%. Meanwhile, energy-strapped Chile is considering a move into nuclear power amid increasingly acute natural gas shortages. Of the 439 nuclear power reactors operating worldwide, just six are in Latin America: two in Argentina, two in Brazil, and two in Mexico. For engineers at Argentina's state-run Nucleoelectrica Argentina SA, or NA-SA, the prolonged delay means the completion of Atucha II has now become a do-it-yourself project. That's because Germany's Siemens AG (SI: SI , , ) , which originally led the project, got out of the nuclear energy business, transferring active accounts to Paris-based Framatome ANP, now known as Areva NP. The Atucha II plant was not among those transferred, however. To allow Argentina to finish the project, Siemens instead agreed last year to transfer Atucha II plans and technology to NA-SA. Siemens also plans to supply non-nuclear electricity parts and services needed to complete the plant. As such, "we have become the technologists," said Atucha II project director Jose Luis Antunez, his voice echoing on a platform inside the nuclear plant's long-completed 56-meter diameter sphere. But is it safe to finish off a pre-Chernobyl nuclear plant where construction has been on hold since 1996? Atunez said yes. The finished Atucha II buildings, which lies right next to the operating Atucha I reactor, have been maintained over the years, he said. For example, engineers filled the installed water vapor generator with hydrogen and sealed it off to preserve it. Juan Schroder, an Argentine environmentalist who has been monitoring the nation's nuclear program for years, isn't convinced. "Safety in nuclear plants around the world is monitored by computer - and the (planned) computer system for Atucha II is 15 years old," Schroder said. He said he worries that any plan that matches a decades-old reactor with a modern computer system is inherently flawed. Under the agreement with Siemens, NA-SA cannot use the Siemens plans to build more nuclear power plants. Not that they'd need to. Nuclear power technology has advanced since the Atucha II plants were drawn up in the late 1970s. Indeed, in their plans for another one, maybe two, additional 740-megawatt nuclear plants, Argentine government officials are discussing more up-to-date designs with state-owned Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, or AECL. Argentina currently has two operating nuclear power plants, Atucha I, built with Siemens, and Embalse, built with AECL in the province of Cordoba. The 360 MW Atucha I came on line in 1974, while the 650 MW Embalse began operating a decade later; together they account for about 8% of the nation's electricity. Argentina re-launched its nuclear power program a year ago this month as the nation's energy woes began to gain momentum. Shortages of natural gas used to power conventional generation plants began to appear in early 2004, while the national power grid began to run out of generation capacity late last year. "If we had built the four (nuclear power plants) we originally planned, we wouldn't have the problems we do today with natural gas," Antunez said. As interest in nuclear power waned, the privatization of Argentina's energy market in the 1990s led to a boom in domestic natural gas exploration and production. But a utility rates freeze for residential clients launched in early 2002 has discouraged the continued expansion needed for gas and power supplies to keep up with demand, according to economists. Working off decades-old blueprints poses continuity problems for NA-SA, and Quaranta said the biggest challenge has been rounding up engineers familiar with nuclear plants, and getting back in touch with an array of suppliers. Last year, government planners started calling Atucha II veterans interested in coming back. Although the nation's atomic power program was largely put on ice, nuclear research has remained active. State-owned company INVAP has steadily engaged in nuclear development projects, including a 20 MW nuclear research reactor inaugurated outside Sydney, Australia, earlier this year. INVAP is also developing an exportable 27 MW-to-300 MW nuclear reactor for power generation that it aims to sell to developing nations. Among other nuclear advantages, Argentina also has inactive uranium mines and the capacity to enrich uranium, process fuel rods, and produce heavy water used in reactors. Mines were shuttered in the 1990s, when the price of uranium was as low as $20 per kilogram. But since the price has jumped to $110 per kilogram, a handful of U.S., Canadian, and Australian miners have recently sought uranium exploration rights in several Argentine provinces. The Atucha I and Embalse plants use about 120 tons of uranium a year, while Atucha II will need another 100 tons a year. For now, Argentina buys uranium on the world market, with shipments coming from Kazakhstan, the U.S. and Canada, among other nations. Walking away from Atucha II's dome, past its large red-brick generator building, Quaranta said the people and suppliers have been lined up and planners are now ready to finally get back to heavy lifting - installing the nuclear reactor and a maze of heavy water and cooling pipes. (Anthony Harrup in Mexico, Bernd Radowitz and Alastair Stewart in Brazil, and Carolina Pica in Chile contributed to this article). -Contact: 201-938-5400 End of Story The Wall Street Journal Digital Network: ***************************************************************** 28 Calgary Sun: Alberta on path to nuclear power Tue, August 28, 2007 By KATIE SCHNEIDER, SUN MEDIA Calgary-based Energy Alberta revealed plans for what could become the province’s first nuclear power plant today but remained tight-lipped on a consumer who would absorb the majority of its energy. Energy Alberta announced it has filed an application with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission for a license to own and operate a nuclear power plant site 30 km west of Peace River. The plant would eventually host two CANDU reactors and produce 2,200 megawatts of electricity, 30% of which would be returned to the grid, said its president Wayne Henuset. The remaining 70% would be consumed by a larger consumer, he said. “We have a number of customers we are dealing with,” Henuset said, adding he declined to name them for confidentiality reasons. Energy Alberta spokesman Dale Coffin suggested the customer could be a heavy industry company or one that requires a large amount of energy. “Ideally you want to have one big customer that’s going to take the most of it, and that’s what we’re working with now is one large customer,” Coffin said. “At this point it’s too early for us to talk about customers.” Henuset said nuclear energy is a cleaner alternative for Alberta as its energy needs are growing by about 400 megawatts each year. “There’s no doubt that Alberta needs a large, reliable, clean power source to meet its future needs,” he said, adding that nuclear doesn’t emit greenhouse gases. “It’s clean, it’s reliable,” uses less water and would stabilize energy prices, he said. But Leila Darwish, associate director of the Sierra Club’s Prairie chapter, said nuclear energy is neither safe, economical nor clean. “It’s actually incredibly dirty and incredibly dangerous,” she said. “Environmentally speaking the process of mining, creating a lot of the materials for the nuclear plant, are highly dangerous to the environment.” And though town councils in Peace River and Grimshaw have endorsed the proposed plant, Darwish said many residents are concerned about its health and environmental impacts. “Nuclear energy is not a fail-safe technology,” she said. Calgary geologist Jack Century questioned a proposed idea of storing waste deep underground, saying Peace River, the most fault-ridden area of the province, is potentially prone to earthquakes. Copyright © 2006, Canoe Inc. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 29 Nuclear Safeguards May Prove Undoable - Scary Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2007 17:45:43 -0500 (CDT) http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9687869 Economist.com Nuclear safeguards In pursuit of the undoable Aug 23rd 2007 The Economist Troubling flaws in the world's nuclear safeguards IF THE predictions of the nuclear industry prove correct, and concerns about carbon emissions and climate change drive more governments to start investing in nuclear power to keep the lights on, how will the world protect itself from the technology's inherent dangers? It is not just the risk of accidents that keeps people awake at night. Some materials and technologies used to generate electricity can, without a lot of extra effort, be abused for bomb-making. And with more and more nuclear material being processed and reprocessedas mostly uranium-laden reactor fuel-rods turn into mostly plutonium-laden spent fuelthe possibilities for theft or diversion can only grow. A crude nuclear device, or a dirty bomb that spews radioactive debris about, is everyone's nightmare. The scale of the potential problem is getting clearer: 31 countries already operate large nuclear-power reactors, and some of those will be adding more. Since 2005 at least 15 more governments have said they want one too. A whole clutch of theseAlgeria, Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Turkey and Yemenare in the fissile Middle East. Their plans seem to have been prompted in part by the discovery in 2003 of Iran's extensive, covert and hence suspicious nuclear activities. At one time or another in recent years officials from Egypt, Saudi Arabia and even Turkey, a member of NATO, have mused aloud about the possibility of a nuclear or strategic option. For some Muslim states, the spur to proliferate might be Israel, for others Iran. Algeria, for its part, has always been worryingly secretive about a nuclear research reactor discovered in 1991 and that it surrounds with air defences. Not all the supposedly civilian nuclear plans now being laid will come to fruition. But some will. Meanwhile a detailed two-year study by the Nonproliferation Policy Education Centre (NPEC), a Washington-based think-tank, has uncovered troubling flaws in the internationally approved verification and monitoring procedures for safeguarding nuclear materials against diversion or theft. In a new report, NPEC's director, Henry Sokolski, argues that UN nuclear inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency have too little money for the job they are asked to do. Not only that, but the yardsticks by which the IAEA measures its own safeguarding success are woefully out of date. Indeed, some of its supposed safeguarding, Mr Sokolski argues, is inherently undoable. The money problem is easier to remedy. As the chart shows, the amount of potentially weapons-usable nuclear materialeither highly enriched uranium or separated plutoniumunder inspection has increased far faster than the funds available for safeguarding it. New methods and technologies have increased the efficiency of inspections, but the IAEA's director-general, Mohamed ElBaradei, has long complained that his regular budget does not even cover all costs; it has to be topped up by less certain voluntary contributions, mostly from America. Among the few things America and Russia agree on now is that the IAEA needs more cash. Without more money, Mr ElBaradei told his agency's 35-country board in June, safeguarding capacity will diminish. Last month he said he would ask a panel of experts to look at an internal review of safeguards-spending requirementsand then come up with some ideas about ways to meet them. One improvement, suggests Mr Sokolski, would be to install more real-time remote-monitoring cameras, so inspectors can check more reliably that materials and equipment are not being diverted to covert use. According to the NPEC study, over the past six years the IAEA has learned of camera blackouts that lasted for more than 30 hours on 12 separate occasions. It found the gaps only after inspectors visited the sites and downloaded the camera recordings, as they do every 90 days. That is more than enough time to divert nuclear material and make mischief with it. The IAEA assesses these things using a measure of militarily significant quantity: the amount of highly enriched uranium (25kg) or separated plutonium (8kg) it would take to make a weapon. But these quantities were arrived at 30 years ago. The NPEC study finds them too high by between 25% and 800%, depending on the type of weapon and yield required. What is more, in each case what the IAEA considers timely detection of such diverted quantities exceeds the time needed to process the materials for weapons use. The search for MUF All the more important, then, to keep a close eye on plants that produce quantities of such dangerous materialsespecially where uranium is enriched and plutonium is extracted from spent fuel. But NPEC's conclusion is that proper verification here is impossible. At best, the report says, the IAEA can improve its monitoring techniques (those more capable cameras would help). That is because of the volume of material involved and the way the plants work. Material unaccounted for (called MUF) is often stuck in piping. Discrepancies, even at the best-run plants, can amount to many bombs' worth. And it can take months for inspectors to be confident they have it all more or less accounted for. Imagine the problems if the IAEA is attempting to monitor such plants in a country like Iran, with its past record of lying to inspectors. Mr ElBaradei and others have suggested multinational fuel centres as a way to avoid dangerous technologies being abused by individual governments. But safeguarding those would be no easier. Better that such fuel-making technology isn't spread around at all. Copyright ) 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 30 The Telegraph: Radioactive ?theft? from Tata plant Calcutta : Nation | Wednesday, August 29, 2007 | Advertise with us JAYANTA ROY CHOWDHURY New Delhi, Aug. 28: Another industrial camera with enough radioactive iridium to endanger people within a quarter-kilometre radius has gone missing, this time from Tata Steel?s Jamshedpur plant. The ?theft?, discovered yesterday, two days after the Hyderabad blasts, has sent the country?s nuclear regulators into a tizzy because of fears that such radioactive sources could be misused to make ?dirty bombs? — or conventional explosives laced with radioactive material. Experts say such bombs could cause fatalities in the immediate vicinity of detonation, and a range of health complications over a wider area. In April, an industrial camera was stolen from a factory in Uttar Pradesh. The cameras, which have a core of iridium 192 with a casing of depleted uranium 235, can cause cancer in anyone who rips the protective shell. Sources in the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) said experts, armed with a sensitive survey meter, are being rushed to Jamshedpur ?immediately?. Biswajit Sarkar, who heads the Jamshedpur-based General Industrial Inspection Bureau, which owns the camera and was using it to check for industrial wear and tear at the plant, said they had worked till late on August 25. ?We then padlocked the camera at an AERB-approved pit dug below the ground, only to find the lock broken and the camera stolen on Monday.? While the first lost camera had a curie strength of 50, which could give off radiation of 25,000 milliroentgen, causing cancer among people within a half-kilometre radius, the second, Russian-made, gadget has a curie strength of 15. If exposed, it could give off 7,500 milliroentgen of radiation, affecting people within a quarter-kilometre radius. Experts say a mere 100-150 milliroentgen of radiation can cause a miscarriage. ?We can?t say why these cameras are being stolen. No one in India could buy them and then use them. Besides these two cameras, we have had two more thefts in the previous 24 months,? said P. Samuel Mathew, treasurer, National Association on Non-destructive Testing Services Organisation. The organisation has already taken up the earlier theft with the home minister and even lobbied the Prime Minister and the Lok Sabha Speaker to intercede on its behalf. ?The lost cameras are a lingering worry for all of us,? Mathew said. Tata Steel officials said they were aware that the camera had been stolen and were asking that police ?investigate the matter thoroughly?. Intelligence sources said they would probe why these cameras are being stolen — not because they fear dirty bombs are round the corner but to rule out the possibility. Although AERB officials say it would need technologically proficient people to make dirty bombs, radiation terrorism has been a threat ever since al Qaida suspect Jose Padilla was held in America five years ago for his alleged attempts to create a ?radiological dispersion device?. Copyright © 2006 The Telegraph. All rights reserved. Disclaimer | ***************************************************************** 31 NIOSH: exposure cohort petition FR Doc E7-17025 [Federal Register: August 28, 2007 (Volume 72, Number 166)] [Notices] [Page 49281] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr28au07-99] DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health; Decision To Evaluate a Petition To Designate a Class of Employees at Texas City Chemicals, Texas City, TX, To Be Included in the Special Exposure Cohort AGENCY: National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). ACTION: Notice. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- SUMMARY: The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) gives notice as required by 42 CFR 83.12(e) of a decision to evaluate a petition to designate a class of employees at Texas City Chemicals, Texas City, Texas, to be included in the Special Exposure Cohort under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act of 2000. The initial proposed definition for the class being evaluated, subject to revision as warranted by the evaluation, is as follows: Facility: Texas City Chemicals. Location: Texas City, Texas. Job Titles and/or Job Duties: All employees. Period of Employment: January 1, 1952 through December 31, 1956. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Larry Elliott, Director, Office of Compensation Analysis and Support, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), 4676 Columbia Parkway, MS C-46, Cincinnati, OH 45226, Telephone 513-533-6800 (this is not a toll-free number). Information requests can also be submitted by e-mail to OCAS@CDC.GOV. Dated: August 23, 2007. John Howard, Director, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. [FR Doc. E7-17025 Filed 8-27-07; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 4163-19-P ***************************************************************** 32 NIOSH: Cohort Exposure Petition FR Doc E7-17026 [Federal Register: August 28, 2007 (Volume 72, Number 166)] [Notices] [Page 49281] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr28au07-98] DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health; Decision To Evaluate a Petition To Designate a Class of Employees at the Mound Plant, Dayton, OH, To Be Included in the Special Exposure Cohort AGENCY: National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). ACTION: Notice. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- SUMMARY: The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) gives notice as required by 42 CFR 83.12(e) of a decision to evaluate a petition to designate a class of employees at the Mound Plant, Dayton, Ohio, to be included in the Special Exposure Cohort under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act of 2000. The initial proposed definition for the class being evaluated, subject to revision as warranted by the evaluation, is as follows: Facility: Mound Plant. Location: Dayton, Ohio. Job Titles and/or Job Duties: All workers. Period of Employment: February 1, 1949 through the present. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Larry Elliott, Director, Office of Compensation Analysis and Support, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), 4676 Columbia Parkway, MS C-46, Cincinnati, OH 45226, Telephone 513-533-6800 (this is not a toll-free number). Information requests can also be submitted by e-mail to OCAS@CDC.GOV. Dated: August 23, 2007. John Howard, Director, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. [FR Doc. E7-17026 Filed 8-27-07; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 4163-19-P ***************************************************************** 33 Japan Times: Nationwide quake alert in offing japantimes.co.jp Web Wednesday, Aug. 29, 2007 Agency, NHK to get word out just before temblors hit By CARL FREIRE The Associated Press It's still beyond the reach of science to predict exactly when an earthquake will strike, but Japan will soon get the next-best thing — televised warnings that come before the shaking starts. Akihiko Sawamura, a field engineer of Meisei Electric Co. in Yokohama, monitors data indicating a strong level-5 earthquake will hit Tokyo in 38 seconds, during a demonstration of his company's QCAST system in April 2006. AP PHOTO In an ambitious attempt at protecting large populations from seismic disaster, the Meteorological Agency and NHK are teaming up to alert the public of earthquakes as much as 30 seconds before they hit, or at least before they can bring their full force down on populated areas. The system — the first of its kind in the world — cannot actually predict quakes, but officials say it can give people enough time to get away from windows that could shatter, or turn off ovens and prevent fires from razing homes. And in one of the most earthquake-prone countries in the world, every second counts. "If we can give people enough time to take even a few steps to protect themselves before the shaking starts, it could help reduce injuries and damage," agency spokesman Makoto Saito said. The warnings, to begin in October, will be based on data provided by the Meteorological Agency, which maintains an intricate network of sensors deep underground that estimate the intensity of a quake as soon as the ground ruptures. Alarms can go out before the shaking starts because there is a lag between the time it takes for different seismic waves to travel to the surface. Japan, which sits atop four tectonic plates, has been hit by 83 temblors strong enough to cause injury since March 1996, including one last month that killed 11 people and caused a fire and small radiation leak at the world's largest nuclear power plant. The warning system works by detecting primary waves, which spread from the epicenter of a quake and travel faster than the destructive shear waves. When waves of a certain intensity are detected, the alarms are set off. NHK will relay them almost instantaneously to its television and radio audience. The agency started issuing warnings last August to more than 500 organizations, including power companies and railways. The system is not perfect. Lightning or other interference can cause it to transmit false alarms, for example, and early warning won't work for areas directly above the ruptured fault because the two waves it detects are nearly simultaneous. Residents who are not watching television or listening to the radio when an alert goes out will not hear it. Still, the agency says the system helped it issue a tsunami alert for a magnitude-6.9 earthquake in northern Japan in March two minutes faster than its old early warning system would have. The agency was also able to put out a warning ahead of last month's magnitude-6.8 quake that hit Niigata Prefecture. How the larger public will react has been a concern. "Chaos and injuries could result, for example, if an urgent earthquake warning is sent to a facility with large numbers of customers and a crush forms at the exits as people rush to get out," an agency study group wrote in a report last year. The warnings, it was decided, must come with explanations of what viewers can do — stop cars and elevators, get away from things that can fall and, most of all, protect their heads. "We realized the warnings won't work if confusion is the result," said the agency's Saito. "The public needs to be educated about how and how not to react." Since early last month, NHK has begun preparing the nation for the alerts, running promotional spots accompanied by skits that show how to respond. Officials say the system is unprecedented in scale, and may serve as a model for others. "A lot of the injuries in an earthquake come from secondary damage, like fires started from open gas lines," said Barry Drummond, who oversees seismic monitoring for Canberra's Geoscience Australia. "If you've got enough time to shut the gas valve, you're that much farther ahead." Small-scale warning systems exist in parts of Mexico, Taiwan and Turkey. In the United States, commercially available, battery-powered seismic gadgets can warn a limited region, while a group of seismologists at the University of California, Berkeley, is working on a system inspired in part by the one in Japan. "The implementation in Japan is most important to us as a test of the concept," said Richard Allen, who heads the group. "We are particularly interested to see how the public reacts to the information and (who) starts to make use of the information and how." The Japan Times ***************************************************************** 34 NAS: Project: Radiation Source Use and Replacement Project Title: PIN: NRSB-O-05-03-A Major Unit: Division on Earth and Life Studies Sub Unit: Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board RSO: Lowenthal, Micah Subject/Focus Area: Project Scope The principal task of this study is to review the current industrial, research, and commercial (including medical) uses of radiation sources to identify uses for which: (1) the radiation source can be replaced with an equivalent (or improved) process that does not require the use of radioisotopes; or (2) the radiation source can be replaced with another radiation source that poses a lower risk to public health and safety if it is involved in an accident or used in a terrorist attack. The study should explicitly consider technical and economic feasibility and risks to workers from such replacements. The National Academies will issue a public report at the conclusion of the study. The report will contain a review of radiation source use, potential replacements for sources that pose a high risk to public health or safety, and findings and recommendations on options for implementing the identified replacements. The project is sponsored by the U. S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. A report will be issued at the end of the project in approximately 15 months. The project start date for the project was January 13, 2006. Note: The project duration has been extended and the report is expected to be issued in the fall of 2007. Project Duration: 15 months Provide FEEDBACK on this project. Contact the Public Access Records Office to make an inquiry or to schedule an appointment to view project materials available to the public. Committee Membership Meetings Meeting 1 - 07/10/2006 Meeting 2 - 09/11/2006 Meeting 3 - 10/26/2006 Meeting 4 - 12/08/2006 Meeting 5 - 02/01/2007 Meeting 6 - 03/15/2007 Reports Reports having no URL can be seen at the Public Access Records Office Email: info@nas.edu ***************************************************************** 35 asahi.com: NIIGATA: New fault survey for quake-hit plant - 08/28/2007 THE ASAHI SHIMBUN KASHIWAZAKI--Tokyo Electric Power Co. on Monday started a geological survey in waters close to its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant, which was damaged in the earthquake that hit July 16. The survey is expected to last until around October. It will be conducted in a much wider area than in the past because the electric utility might have failed to find an active fault in previous surveys. A survey ship will check the sea area up to 50 kilometers offshore.(IHT/Asahi: August 28,2007) The Asahi Shimbun Asia Network * The Asahi Shimbun Company ***************************************************************** 36 [progchat_action] Australian uranium sales to India may breach treaty Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2007 07:21:07 -0500 (CDT) Uranium sales: "Australia will be in breach of accord" The Hindu August 28, 2007 Melbourne: Australia will be in breach of an international anti-nuclear treaty as well as specific undertakings given by its Foreign Minister if the Government goes ahead with plans to sell uranium to India, the world's largest NGO working against nuclear proliferation has claimed. Experts from the James Martin Centre for Non-Proliferation Studies (CNS) at the Monterey Institute of International studies in California have seized on a statement made by Foreign Minister Alexander Downer 10 years ago, in which he said Australia could only sell uranium to countries that had signed up to "full scope safeguards" on their nuclear plants, according to a report published in 'The Age'. According to the NGO, the proposed sales to India will be subject to a regime that falls well short of "full scope safeguards". Under a draft US-India deal, without which Australian sales to India would not go ahead, only civil nuclear plants will be subject to inspection, while military installations will not. Experts from CNS said Australia will be in breach of the South Pacific Nuclear Free Treaty, signed in the 1980s, and points to an answer Downer gave 10 years ago to a parliamentary question on notice as proof. http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/000200708281001.htm This email was cleaned by emailStripper, available for free from http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm ***************************************************************** 37 Platts: Uranium spot price appears to stabilize in $90-$95/pound range 2007-08-28 Washington (Platts)--28Aug2007 The spot price of uranium appears to have settled for now in a range of $90 to $95/pound U3O8, according to Ux Consulting and TradeTech. Both price-reporting companies said they are seeing indications of renewed buying interests at these levels, as well as signs that sellers are growing increasingly resistant to offer material at fixed prices below those levels. If the price stabilizes, both companies said they expect buyer interest to increase. The rapid decline in the price over the past two months--from a high of $136 to $138 a pound at the end of June--left buyers hesitant to commit to a fixed price today if they believed the price was going to continue to fall. Separately, the long-term price continues to hold at $95/pound U3O8, both price reporting companies said. Ux Consulting late Monday kept its price at $90/pound U3O8, the same level it published a week earlier. TradeTech lowered its price late Friday to $95/lb, a drop of $10 from its previous price. --Mike Knapik, newsdesk@platts.com The Platts NuclearFuel range for the week is $82-$97/lb U3O8. For more news, request a free trial to Platts Nucleonics Week at http://www.platts.com/Request%20More%20Information/index.xml?src=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 ***************************************************************** 38 Tri-City Herald: Crowd says no to more waste at Hanford Published Tuesday, August 28th, 2007 ANNETTE CARY HERALD STAFF WRITER TROUTDALE, Ore. -- A standing-room-only crowd near Portland had a clear message for the Department of Energy on Monday night: Send no more radioactive waste to the Hanford nuclear reservation. It's different than the usual "not in my backyard," said Ken Niles, assistant director of the Oregon Department of Energy. "We're saying no more in our backyard because it is so horribly contaminated already," he said. DOE is looking at Hanford as one option for disposing of an estimated 7,280 cubic yards of radioactive waste generated through 2062. It's a relatively small volume of waste compared with the vast amount of waste already planned to be disposed of at Hanford. But the amount of radiation it contains is significant. It has an estimated 130 million curies of radioactivity. That compares to the 190 million curies of radioactivity in the millions of gallons of waste held in underground tanks from the past production of plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program, much of which DOE plans to dispose of off Hanford. DOE officials faced a crowd of about 80 people Monday who ranged from skeptical to hostile. "I'm outraged. It's a lie. Isn't it?" demanded Gerald Pollet, executive director of Heart of America Northwest, when a DOE official identified a pictured waste container that was apparently abandoned as one that was being used. Similar waste vaults are being considered for disposal at Hanford, eight other sites or undetermined commercial facilities. "We're being massaged with a lot of statistics," said Ruth Currie of Portland, who also said she didn't think DOE knows what it is doing. Problems at Hanford and other DOE sites were a recurring theme, with public comment hitting on delays in construction at the Hanford vitrification plant, last month's spill of high level radioactive waste at the Hanford tank farms and doubts that DOE would ever open the Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada. Given DOE's long history of waste and cleanup mismanagement, a proposal to bring more waste to Hanford is essentially a plan to turn Hanford into a permanent national sacrifice zone, according to comments by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, read into the meeting record by a congressional staffer. "Hanford should be cleaned up, not dumped on," according to Wyden. Some of the waste proposed to be sent to Hanford is extremely long-lived and must be isolated for eternity, said Bill Mead, director of the Public Safety Resources Agency in Portland. The meeting was an early step in determining what to do with radioactive waste that includes activated metals from decommissioning nuclear power plants and high-activity radioactive materials used for medical diagnosis and treatment. More than half would be from DOE nondefense work, with much of that coming from a West Valley, N.Y., project. DOE is considering sending the waste to a geological repository deep underground, such as Yucca Mountain, or burying it at a site such as Hanford in a deep bore hole or waste containers closer to the surface of the ground. The international nuclear community has settled on deep bore hole disposal as the preferred option for similar waste, said Christine Gelles, director of DOE's environmental management office of disposal operations. Keeping the waste on site where it is generated and adding protection to keep it safe from terrorists is a better option, said Angela Crowley-Koch, executive director of the Oregon Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility. Keith Harding of Hood River had another suggestion for where to store the waste -- a certain ranch in Texas, he said, alluding to President Bush's home. Another public meeting will be held at 6 p.m. today at the Red Lion Hotel, 2525 N. 20th Ave., Pasco. © 2007 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press & Other Wire Services ***************************************************************** 39 cantonrep.com: River cleanup costs $62 million Tuesday, August 28, 2007 ASHTABULA, Ohio (AP) - A river that was nearly declared a U.S. EPA Superfund site is being dredged at a cost of $62 million, which could make the toxic waterway swimmable in five years. Giant sluglike sacks are filling up outside Ashtabula Harbor, holding in their bulging bellies the toxic dregs of past industrial decades. The Ashtabula River, about 50 miles northeast of Cleveland, has long been considered among the most polluted sites along the Lake Erie shore. It hasn't been dredged since 1962. In the subsequent 45 years, its bottom was soiled by cancer-causing polychlorinated biphenyls, low-level radioactive materials, heavy metals, and oil and grease from chemical plants and other heavy industry that has since scaled back, cleaned up or simply shut down and left the economically depressed area. But the polluted soil left behind on the riverbed rose all those years so high that Canada geese could actually wade across in some places, observers said. The increasingly shallow waters limited shipping and boating. Sport anglers also were warned not to eat contaminated fish _ an awful irony for a city whose very name means "river of many fish" in its American Indian tongue. But by next month, the Ashtabula River should be halfway home toward a full cleanup. Two dredging barges scour the river bottom 24 hours a day, sucking in 5,000 gallons of water and mud each minute and piping it 2 1/2 miles away into the giant plastic bags now piled 29 feet high in a permanent holding facility. "It's been a long time coming, but it's happening," said Rick Brewer, one of the 1994 originators and now coordinator of the Ashtabula River Partnership, a public-private organization managing the project. "This river is being cleaned up, and this town is excited about it." All of the soil from the dredges is pumped into the seven-layer-thick filter bags, which allow the water to seep out. The toxic dirt, however, stays behind in the landfill, which is lined with thick, plastic sheeting to keep any sludge from leaching out. The site, now 29 feet high with six layers of filter bags and growing weekly, will be monitored for 50 years, according to its Environmental Protection Agency permit. The cleaned water is then returned to the river through a pipe. "Now, we think this river could be swimmable in three to five years," Brewer said. "That's probably hard to imagine for some people, but I think it could happen." The Ashtabula River was in danger of being listed as a U.S. EPA Superfund cleanup site in the early 1990s, said Joe Mayernick, executive director of Growth Partnership for Ashtabula County. "This could have ended very badly and cost millions and millions more," Mayernick said. "When the partnership formed to talk about cleaning up this river, it involved people that could have been suing each other, but instead found a way to work it out." ___ Information from: The Plain Dealer, http://www.cleveland.com © 2007 The Repository webmaster@cantonrep.com ***************************************************************** 40 The State: McMaster doubts nuclear dump is safe 08/28/2007 Attorney general, state regulators fail to agree on how dangerous leaking landfill is By SAMMY FRETWELL - sfretwell@thestate.com Attorney General Henry McMaster said Monday he’s not convinced a leaking nuclear-waste dump near Barnwell is safe, even though state regulators say it is. Responding to recent questions about the 36-year-old site, McMaster met with S.C. environmental officials to discuss the landfill’s impact on water quality near the state-owned site. McMaster wants to know the extent of the contamination — and the state’s liability for it. He plans to talk Wednesday with officials from Energy Solutions of Utah, the site’s operator. “We are quite concerned that (the site) may be doing permanent and serious damage to the state and its people,’’ McMaster said after Monday’s meeting with officials from the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control. Recently released pollution maps show tritium in the dump’s groundwater exceeds the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s safe drinking water standard in more than 30 monitoring wells, The State newspaper reported Aug. 19. The records had been sealed until the newspaper appealed for their release. “I think it’s pretty clear, if all this information had been available as it was being accumulated, there would be a lot more knowledge about the operations at Barnwell,” McMaster said. Tritium is a radioactive material that can increase a person’s chances of cancer, but it’s also an indicator of other toxic pollutants that could leak from the landfill. The dump, which takes all classes of low-level nuclear waste from across the country, is the only one of its kind in the nation. Materials buried in the landfill range from lightly contaminated hospital clothing to more radioactive nuclear reactor parts. McMaster said he needs to know more “to see if there are legal steps that the state should be taking.’’ The attorney general’s office would represent the state in civil or criminal proceedings. McMaster said he is not pursuing a criminal case at this time but is concerned about the state’s liability if the site operator leaves. Thom Berry, a spokesman with DHEC, declined comment when asked about his agency’s meeting with McMaster. Attempts to reach a spokesman for Energy Solutions Inc., which owns Chem-Nuclear, were unsuccessful. Chem-Nuclear claims the landfill is safe and much of the information reported recently by The State has been part of the public record. But McMaster, state legislators, environmentalists and people who live near the landfill say they were not aware of the contamination levels until the newspaper reported about the pollution maps. McMaster, who toured the landfill last spring, said he was not told by the site operator about the maps documenting the location of wells and contamination levels at the 235-acre waste dump. Last week, eight state representatives said they had not seen the groundwater contamination maps while their legislative committee debated whether to keep the landfill open to the nation beyond 2008. The Legislature eventually killed the bill, a major financial blow to Energy Solutions. One 2006 landfill map shows the location of each monitoring well and the average concentrations of radioactive tritium detected in the wells. More than a third of 98 monitoring wells had tritium levels over the Environmental Protection Agency’s safe drinking water standard, the map shows. Some levels exceeded the standard by hundreds of times and were higher than on parts of the nearby Savannah River Site nuclear weapons complex, the newspaper found. A 2004 map reflects similar findings. For years, DHEC and Chem-Nuclear have conceded a leak occurred on the landfill property in the 1970s. But they have insisted the site complies with federal radiation standards and does not threaten anyone’s drinking water in rural Barnwell County. A DHEC regulator told state lawmakers last March that tritium levels at the dump “are well below the regulatory limit.’’ McMaster said the limit DHEC used was for radiation exposure by people who walk on or near the site. The state and landfill operator should tell the public how tritium levels compare with the EPA’s safe drinking water standard, which is far more restrictive, he said. “The danger comes from the water,’’ McMaster said. Contaminated groundwater beneath the landfill trails off the site and is seeping into a creek just north of a small community. The creek drains to the Savannah River, a major drinking-water source in the Hilton Head Island area. After The State chronicled the pollution levels beneath the nuclear waste dump, DHEC began testing private wells in a community south of Chem-Nuclear’s landfill to see whether they register unsafe levels of radioactive contaminants in drinking water. Berry said he did not know when the results would be in, but McMaster said DHEC officials told him it would be this week. McMaster said he doesn’t think DHEC has misled the public about the groundwater contamination levels intentionally but that it has placed too much emphasis on the less-restrictive radiation standard. “The main issue right now is the safety of the people and legal consequences for our state.’’ Reach Fretwell at (803) 771-8537. ***************************************************************** 41 AU ABC: PM told to 'come clean' on nuke dump deals - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) Posted August 28, 2007 12:41:00 Northern Territory Environment Minister Delia Lawrie has asked Parliament to pass a motion calling on the Prime Minister to promise a referendum on a nuclear waste dump in the Territory. John Howard, who is visiting the Northern Territory today, has promised that nuclear power stations will not be imposed on communities unless residents agree to it in a binding referendum. The Territory Government wants him to make the same promise for nuclear waste facilities. Environment Minister Delia Lawrie says she wants Mr Howard to reveal details of any secret agreement about a nuclear waste dump at Muckaty Station near Tennant Creek. "We suspect deals have been done, we suspect they'll come out with an announcement just off the back of the federal election," she said. "So we're saying Prime Minister, you're in the Territory, come clean on any deals you've done for a nuclear waste dump," she said. "Let Territorians have a referendum. You've promised a referendum in terms of nuclear waste facilities, we say that includes a nuclear waste dump." ***************************************************************** 42 sacbee.com: McClellan cleanup in fresh hands - By Chris Bowman - Bee Staff Writer Last Updated 12:57 am PDT Tuesday, August 28, 2007 McClellan, one of the Defense Department's earliest toxic cleanup projects, has become the first military site to relinquish environmental restoration to private hands. In a signing ceremony Monday, officials gathered at the former Air Force base in North Highlands to mark the first in an anticipated series of transfers of contaminated property. "The Air Force is wildly enthusiastic about this project -- early transfer with privatized cleanup of land," said Kathryn Halvorson, who attended the ceremony as director of the Air Force Real Property Agency, which directs base cleanups and redevelopment. "We're going to look at broader application of what we've created here for McClellan, not only at McClellan, but at other (Superfund) sites throughout (the Department of Defense)." McClellan was a major aircraft repair depot and supply base from 1936 through June 2001. It was placed on the federal Superfund list of most polluted sites in 1987 after it was determined that hundreds of acres on the 3,000acre base were contaminated. The Air Force has spent about $500 million in the past 26 years to contain and remove groundwater and soil at hundreds of sites tainted with degreasing solvents, paint sludge, spent fuels and other chemicals. Monday's inaugural transfer has the Air Force paying McClellan Park LLC $11.2 million to decontaminate a 62-acre parcel planned for office buildings and light industry. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will retain oversight of the cleanup and hold public hearings on the developer's proposed remedies. Portions of the parcel's topsoil contain industrial contaminants, mainly polychlorinated biphenyls that were used as coolants and lubricants. Air Force, EPA, and state and county officials took four years to negotiate the agreement on the parcel because they saw the deal as a template for additional transfers of contaminated lands at McClellan and other closed military bases across the country. "This will now catapult us into looking at the entire base," said Linda Geissinger, spokeswoman for the Air Force redevelopment agency. Negotiators have drafted papers for the next transfer of polluted land: three parcels totaling 640 acres, officials said. The Air Force will continue pumping and treating polluted groundwater beneath McClellan, a process expected to last decades. The agency also has vowed to maintain earthen caps it has proposed to seal decades-old landfills containing radioactive waste. The military, which has dozens of polluted sites in California alone, traditionally digs up tainted soil and fills the holes with clean dirt. The privatization arrangement is designed to hasten cleanup and redevelopment. The private developer will remove the tainted dirt as it excavates for building pads and underground utilities, said Alan Hersh, senior vice president of McClellan Park. "The whole process will happen at once. It's a much more efficient way to go," Hersh said. About the writer: * The Bee's Chris Bowman can be reached at (916) 321-1069 or cbowman@sacbee.com. sacbee.com | SacTicket.com | Sacramento.com | Capitol Alert Copyright © The Sacramento Bee 2100 Q St. P.O. Box 15779 Sacramento, CA 95816 (916) 321-1000 ***************************************************************** 43 Outside View: Betting on Bulava -- Part 1 United Press International - International Security - Industry - Published: Aug. 28, 2007 at 12:11 PM By YURY ZAITSEV UPI Outside View Commentator MOSCOW, Aug. 28 (UPI) -- Four of the first six flight tests of the Bulava-M missile (where "M" stands for morskoi, or naval) were a failure. However, Adm. Vladimir Masorin, commander in chief of the Russian navy, said the Bulava-M -- NATO designation SS-NX-30 -- a naval derivative of the land-based Topol missile -- NATO designation SS-27 -- had been approved for mass production. Did he mean that a batch of missiles would be produced for more tests? Masorin said the trial period of the Bulava would end in 2008 after two more tests this year. The outcome of these tests is not clear. In Soviet times, 16 to 20 ground tests and then naval launches were stipulated for each new missile. Americans did likewise when designing the Trident I and Trident II missiles. The decision of the Bulava designers to begin trials with submarine launches, bypassing ground tests and launches from a sea-based stand, appears opportunistic. This has never been done in naval missile designing before. Anatoly Perminov, head of the Russian Space Agency, which is responsible for designing and supplying strategic missiles to the armed forces, said the Bulava could be delivered to the navy after at least 12-15 tests. Yury Solomonov, director and chief designer of the Moscow-based Heat Technology Institute, which had developed the ground-based Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missile -- ICBM -- said after the second successful launch of the Bulava that the trial had confirmed the design characteristics of the missile's interaction with the submarine. However, he said it needed at least 10 more trial launches. Trials are held to improve onboard systems, notably microchips, astro-correction systems, the warhead, the engine, and the like. Flight tests show what degree of the product's exploitation stability can be expected, and also its modernization potential, notably the ability to adjust to a grazing trajectory and increase resistance to external destructive factors. No mathematical models can replace live trials. The RSD-10 Pioneer mobile ICBM -- NATO designation SS-20 Saber -- is a relevant example. It was put on combat duty after all the bugs were cleaned out in 21 successful trials. It was a very good missile. Unfortunately, it was liquidated in keeping with the Soviet-American INF treaty on intermediate- and shorter-range missiles. Other examples are the RS-12M Topol -- NATO designation SS-25 Sickle -- and the RS-12M2 Topol-M -- NATO designation SS-27 -- missiles, which suffered only one failure in a series of 13 trials. In the early 1980s, it took 16 missiles to hold the submerged and surface trials of the RSM-52 -- NATO designation SS-N-20 Sturgeon -- a solid-fuel ballistic missile designed to carry 10 nuclear warheads, including nine launches from a naval stand and seven from a submarine. The missile was later supplied to six Akula-class -- NATO designation Typhoon -- submarines. The missile's warhead comprises 10 charges, command systems and a liquid-fuel multiple warhead dispensing mechanism, as well as air defense evasion systems. -- (Next: The need for more testing) -- (Yury Zaitsev is an academic adviser at the Russian Academy of Engineering Sciences. This article is reprinted by permission of RIA Novosti. The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.) -- (United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.) © Copyright United Press International. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 44 Hanford News: Lampson tests device for Hanford vit plant This story was published Monday, August 27th, 2007 Annette Cary, Herald staff writer A bright blue Lampson crane slowly lifted 430,000 pounds of concrete blocks off the dirt at the Port of Pasco late last week. The work was a test of an adjustable lifting frame designed and built by Lampson International to be used to lift spaghetti-like mazes of piping into the Pretreatment Facility at Hanford's vitrification plant. Lampson, winner of the $750,000 contract for the project in a competitive bid process, is just one area business that has benefited from the $690 million the Department of Energy has received in recent years to spend on building the vit plant at the Hanford nuclear reservation. Bechtel National, the contractor for the project, has awarded $589 million in subcontracts to small and large Tri-City businesses since December 2000, according to Bechtel's figures. The subcontracted amount spent in Washington and Oregon is close to $849 million. Subcontracts awarded just to small businesses in all locations has totaled almost $768 million, according to Bechtel. "We've been pretty fortunate to work with Bechtel from the start of the vit plant," said Randy Stemp, engineering projects manager at Lampson, as he watched the test lift Friday. Lampson's most recent challenge has been to build a lifting frame to be suspended from the crane to pick up piping configurations, which include some of the 160 miles of piping to be installed at the vit plant. The piping modules the frame will be required to lift into the building range from 54,000 to 339,000 pounds, and each has a different center of gravity. Complicating the task is the nuclear grade construction requirements of the project. The vit plant is being built to turn millions of gallons of radioactive waste left from weapons production of plutonium into a stable glass form for disposal. The piping modules for its Pretreatment Facility are being built outside the building on the vit plant campus. "Those pipes are so tightly clustered you can imagine how difficult it would be to work on them in such a tight space" if the work were done in cells within the plant, said Drew Slaton, spokesman for Bechtel National. They'll be used to carry high-level radioactive waste, including in areas that will become so contaminated that humans cannot enter again once the plant starts operating. "The pipe is nuclear grade so they were very worried about bending and distorting it as it is lifted," Stemp said. When any material is picked up, it bends or deflects. Imagine a PVC pipe suspended between two benches, bowing slightly toward the ground. Because of the nuclear-grade materials involved in the vit plant project, Lampson was limited to a third an inch of deflection in every 100 inches of length. "That was an overwhelming challenge to meet and do for 13 pipe modules," Stemp said. Making a frame for each module was too expensive to consider. The design Lampson developed working with Bechtel engineers uses an adjustable steel beam frame that can have pieces inserted or removed to change its size from 10 feet-by-10-feet square at the smallest to as large as 75-by-52 feet. It's hung with stands for attaching the load that were machined within thousandths of an inch. The test Friday was to determine if Lampson had met deflection tolerances on the lifting frame. A crane, loaded with 1.8 million pounds of counterweight, slowly lifted concrete blocks weighing a total of 430,000 pounds and arranged to simulate a piping module with an offset center of gravity. The test was designed to use an extra 25 percent load in addition to the weight of the most difficult of the modules that need to be placed in the Pretreatment Facility, said Nelson Moya, Bechtel rigging engineer. After the crane slowly lifted the concrete blocks about 10 feet off the ground, an optical leveler was used to check for deflection. Moya was all smiles when he heard the results. "The results are approximately half of the allowable deflections," Stemp said. "What it means is we are going to be able to lift those modules without inducing any additional stress into the piping." The frame is expected to be used this fall to move some of the piping modules within the vitrification plant campus. The first piping module is expected to be lifted into the plant's Pretreatment Facility in mid 2008. © 2007 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 45 Hanford News: PNNL researchers share progress This story was published Tuesday, August 28th, 2007 John Trumbo, Herald staff writer Two researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland who are exploring new areas in basic chemistry analysis through the William R. Wiley Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory shared their progress reports at a recent national meeting of American Chemical Society in Boston. Yuehe Lin described how his team is working to improve a portable biomonitor testing system so it can rapidly evaluate blood and saliva samples for exposure to nerve agents. Bert de Jong talked about how the supercomputing capabilities of EMSL helped him and associates at Wichita State University and the Idaho National Laboratory better understand the physical and chemical properties of heavy metals such as lanthanide and actinide complexes. De Jong said using the PNNL computers for the massive calculations is an "invaluable supplement to the current, very expensive and often hazardous" experimental studies. The scientists are discovering how actinides, such as uranium in solution, interact with magnetite and other mineral surfaces, noted Geoff Harvey, spokesman for PNNL. What de Jong and his research team learn through computational actinide chemistry could be very important in cleanup of radioactive waste and design and operation of future nuclear facilities, Harvey said. Lin's work focused on improving sensitivity in a nano-based immno-assay technology involving chemical or nerve agents. The key is to quickly detect biomarkers that signal the presence of a foreign antibody. Lin's group found that by labeling a particular biomarker with a metal ion, the signal was amplified, increasing the sensitivity to a foreign antibody. Existing immo-assay technology can only give a positive or negative response. But Lin's approach yields much higher sensitivity in identifying biological samples exposed to nerve agents, making it easier to quickly distinguish between people who have been exposed and those who think they may have been exposed. © 2007 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 46 Tri-City Herald: Emergency drill under way at Richland nuclear plant Published Tuesday, August 28th, 2007 By the Herald staff Energy Northwest declared a drill alert earlier today at its Columbia Generating Station in Richland. The drill simulated an emergency scenario and a mock shutdown of the reactor. As part of the drill, local, state and federal officials were notified and Energy Northwest, county and state emergency centers were also activated. The quarterly drills help evaluate emergency preparedness of station's response teams, said Gary Miller, Energy Northwest's communication specialist. About 150 employees were involved in the exercise. A critique is planned later. For more about the drill, read Wednesday's Herald. © 2007 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press & Other Wire Services ***************************************************************** 47 DOE: Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board, Nevada FR Doc E7-17032 [Federal Register: August 28, 2007 (Volume 72, Number 166)] [Notices] [Page 49272] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr28au07-80] 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), Nevada Test Site. The Federal Advisory Committee Act (Pub. L. 92-463, 86 Stat. 770) requires that public notice of this meeting be announced in the Federal Register. DATES: Wednesday, September 12, 2007, 5 p.m. ADDRESSES: 7710 West Cheyenne Avenue, Suite 130, Las Vegas, Nevada. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Rosemary Rehfeldt, Board Administrator, 232 Energy Way, M/S 505, North Las Vegas, Nevada 89030. Phone: (702) 657-9088; Fax: (702) 295-5300 or E-mail: ntscab@nv.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: 1. Update on the Transuranic Waste Sub-Project. 2. Approval of Fiscal Year 2008 Committee Work Plans. 3. Chair and Vice-Chair Elections. Public Participation: The meeting is open to the public. Written statements may be filed with the Board either before or after the meeting. Individuals who wish to make oral presentations pertaining to agenda items should contact Rosemary Rehfeldt at the telephone number listed above. The request 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 through Friday, except Federal holidays. Minutes will also be available by writing to Rosemary Rehfeldt at the address listed above. Issued at Washington, DC on August 22, 2007. Rachel Samuel, Deputy Advisory Committee Management Officer. [FR Doc. E7-17032 Filed 8-27-07; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 6450-01-P ***************************************************************** 48 Knoxville News Sentinel: ORNL, BWXT doing their share to conserve power Officials monitoring facilities to cut energy usage By Frank Munger (Contact) Tuesday, August 28, 2007 OAK RIDGE — Conservation measures in recent days at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant have reduced power use by more than 2 megawatts. According to information provided Monday by Herb Debban, ORNL’s director of facilities management, the lab has cut power usage between 1 and 1.2 megawatts since TVA’s conservation request last Wednesday. ORNL spokesman Billy Stair said the precise number is difficult to calculate because in some cases the total power usage reflects the energy use avoided as well as the energy use that was reduced. About 4,100 people work at ORNL. A megawatt is enough power for about 600 homes. At two of the lab’s major research facilities — the Spallation Neutron Source and the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences — the temperature settings in offices and research labs were increased by 5 degrees to save energy, Stair said. The temperature “set point” was raised by 8 degrees in utility areas, he said, and lighting in offices and general work areas was reduced to the safe minimum. “In the hallway outside my office all the lights are turned out except for the emergency (signs),” Stair said Monday. “I haven’t been in all the buildings on campus, but I think that is the case in the majority of them.” Bill Wilburn, a spokesman at BWXT, the contractor at Y-12, said the plant had reduced its power load by about a megawatt following TVA’s request for industrial conservation. BWXT employs about 4,500 workers. Unused copiers and computers were turned off, as were lights in offices that have windows, he said. “We also checked the thermostats to make sure they were at a good setting,” Wilburn said. Y-12 officials inspected a number of recently vacated buildings to make sure all air-conditioners and unused equipment had been turned off or disconnected. Dennis Hill, a spokesman for Bechtel Jacobs Co., the Department of Energy’s cleanup manager in Oak Ridge, said the contractor was cutting energy use wherever possible. Those efforts were limited, however, because much of the cleanup work takes place outdoors or requires internal lighting for safety, he said. Senior writer Frank Munger may be reached at 865-342-6329. © 2007, Knoxville News Sentinel Co. ***************************************************************** 49 Oak Ridger: Y-12 union workers reject 4/10 schedule - Story last updated at 12:19 am on 8/28/2007 By: John Huotari | john.huotari@oakridger.com Hourly workers at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge have rejected a proposal to switch to a four-day workweek. About 60 percent of the 950 workers who cast ballots on Friday voted against the proposal to try working 10 hours a day, four days a week, said Garry Whitley, president of the Atomic Trades and Labor Council. Five hundred and sixty workers voted against the proposal while 390 voted for it, he said. A little more than 80 percent of the eligible workers — maintenance and operations personnel — cast ballots, Whitley said. If the trial proposal had been accepted, workers would have voted on it again in December, he said. Most of the union members now work eight hours a day, five days a week, he said. Meanwhile, salaried workers at the plant, operated by BWXT Y-12 for the National Nuclear Security Administration, have been on the so-called 4/10 schedule for several years. Whitley said he could not speculate on why union workers rejected the 4/10 proposal. The union leadership had not made a recommendation on it. The vote means Y-12 hourly workers don’t want to discuss the issue until the next contract talks in June 2009, Whitley said. He said BWXT Y-12 officials brought the issue back up. Since at least 2005, BWXT officials have said a four-day work week could improve efficiency and increase productivity, saving money. BWXT Y-12 spokesman Bill Wilburn declined to discuss the company’s possible reaction to the union vote or potential policy outcomes. | © 2004 The Oak Ridger | Conditions of Use ***************************************************************** 50 DOE: DOE Official Touts Bush Administration’s Efforts to Modernize our Nation’s Electric Grid August 28, 2007 Louisiana to increase energy efficiency with upgrades between the LaBarre and Metaire electric substations NEW ORLEANS, LA – The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) newly confirmed Assistant Secretary for the Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability Kevin M. Kolevar today highlighted the Bush Administration’s efforts to increase the use of advanced technologies in the Nation’s power delivery system equipment, as well as DOE’s recent announcement to invest up to $51.8 million to modernize and secure our nation’s electric grid. Mr. Kolevar visited the Entergy Louisiana Operations Center in Gretna, LA. The Entergy Corporation, DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and nkt cables of Germany joined the Southwire Company’s team, which was selected by the DOE in June to receive up to $13.3 million to install a high-temperature superconducting cable to solve real-world electrical congestion near downtown New Orleans. “As demand for electricity continues to grow, so too must our commitment to identify solutions and deploy new technologies that will help us realize President Bush’s goal of a modern, reliable and affordable electricity system,” Mr. Kolevar said. “New Orleans understands first hand the importance of a safe and reliable supply of energy. The Department of Energy is tremendously pleased to support Southwire and Entergy’s innovative project to help transform how this city transmits power.” The Southwire power delivery project will install a 13.8-kilovolt superconducting cable to connect the existing LaBarre and Metaire substations, owned by Entergy Corporation, a member of Southwire’s project team. This project will advance the development and application of high-temperature superconductors, which help to alleviate congestion by transmitting more electricity with greater energy efficiency. Superconductors - solid ceramic compounds that conduct electricity more efficiently than traditional copper wires - can be a key to improving the capacity, efficiency, and reliability of electric power equipment. A major challenge prior to commercialization is to develop superconductors that can operate at relatively “high” temperatures, from approximately -320 to -370 degrees Fahrenheit (50 to 77 Kelvin), and in magnetic fields from 1 to 4 Tesla. The Southwire Company was among four other consortia selected by DOE to receive a total of up to $51.8 million for cost-shared projects that will help accelerate much-needed modernization of our Nation’s electric grid. Other companies selected by DOE to receive funding are as follows: American Superconductor - (DOE cost share: $9 million); American Superconductor - (DOE cost share: $12.7 million); SC Power Systems - (DOE cost share: $11 million); and SuperPower Inc. - (DOE cost share: $5.8 million). For more information on all of these projects, read the Superconductor Research press release. The selected projects will help advance the future generation of power delivery equipment and aid the development of a highly efficient electricity grid system for the Nation. Two research projects selected will help increase reliability and efficiency of power delivery cables, and the remaining three projects will place an emphasis on fault current limiters. DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory will manage these projects, which are expected to last two to five years. Projects will be equally cost-shared between DOE and selected teams, totaling $103.6 million in DOE/team project cost. DOE funding is expected to be allocated in Fiscal Years (FY) 2007-2012, subject to appropriations from Congress, with $10 million from FY2007, and $7 million requested in FY2008. DOE’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability (OE) will oversee the research projects announced today. OE leads national efforts to modernize the electric grid; enhance the security and reliability of the energy infrastructure; and facilitate recovery from disruptions to the energy supply. Media contact(s): Julie Ruggiero, (202) 586-4940 U.S. Department of Energy | 1000 Independence Ave., SW | Washington, DC 20585 1-800-dial-DOE | f/202-586-4403 ***************************************************************** NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: *****************************************************************