***************************************************************** 10/01/07 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 15.230 ***************************************************************** 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 Reuters: Govt should lead Severn tidal barrage NUCLEAR REACTORS 2 [infowarsnews] Report: Russia Evacuates Entire Bushehr Staff 3 The Hindu: N-deal: CPI(M) warns UPA not to proceed with next step 4 GU: Nuclear industry pushes for early approval of new plants by warn 5 US: Arizona Republic: Feds begin safety inspections at Palo Verde 6 Australia & NZ: ScienceAlert: A nuclear powered world 7 The Hindu: Don't take next step on deal, says CPI(M) 8 US: North County Times: Nuclear power deserves second chance - 9 US: Times Argus: Vt. Yankee tries to limit NRC review 10 The Hindu: All decisions taken unanimously - Basu 11 US: MSNBC.com: Nuclear damage trial begins 12 US: NRC: Entergy Nuclear Operations, Inc., Indian Point Nuclear Gene 13 US: NRC: Atomic Safety and Licensing Board; in the Matter of: U.S. A 14 US: Reuters: Exelon shuts Ill. Braidwood 1 reactor for refueling 15 US: Reuters: Southern shuts Ala. Farley 1 reactor for refuel | 16 US: Reuters: FPL completes buy of 2 nuclear reactors in Wisc. 17 US: Reuters: Indian left sets new deadline in nuclear deal row 18 Reuters: France open to Vietnam civil nuclear cooperation 19 US: NRC: NRC Begins Comprehensive Inspection at Palo Verde Nuclear 20 US: Reuters: Bruce shuts Ontario Bruce 3 reactor for maintenance | 21 Reuters: Europe energy chiefs urge public to trust nuclear 22 US: Reuters: FPL shuts Fla. St Lucie 2 reactor for refueling | 23 US: Reuters: NRC begins on-site study of Arizona nuclear station 24 US: Reuters: APS Ariz. Palo Verde 3 reactor shut for refueling 25 US: Reuters: DTE shuts Mich. Fermi 2 reactor for refuel | 26 US: NRC: NRC Publishes Final Rule on Expanded Definition of Radioact 27 US: TheDay.com: Millstone Must Install Backup Switches 28 US: BH: Vt. nuke plant says cooling tower problems should not be par 29 US: Rachels: WHY IS UNCLE SAM SO COMMITTED TO REVIVING NUCLEAR POWER 30 DW: Some EU Officials Want to Resist Nuclear Power Renaissance NUCLEAR SECURITY 31 Guardian Unlimited: Kyrgzstan to Help on Nuclear Smuggling NUCLEAR SAFETY 32 US: NAS: Project: Gulf War and Health: Updated Literature Review of 33 US: NAS: Project: Beryllium Alloy Exposures in Military Aerospace Ap NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 34 ReviewJournal.com: Clinton call for Yucca hearing unfulfilled 35 ReviewJournal.com: Company awarded millions in nuclear storage lawsu 36 US: Reuters: Xcel unit wins $116 mln award in nuclear fuel suit 37 UPI: Nuclear waste transport met with protest 38 UPI: Russia eyes direct nuclear fuel supply to Western Europe 39 US: Cibola County Beacon: Navajo Nation, miners want more federal ac 40 US: Facing South: Southern plutonium shipments could begin this week PEACE 41 [NYTr] Poll: 72% of Israelis Support Using Nuclear Weapons 42 US: Star Wars Coverage Misses Key Point 43 AFP: Scores arrested at anti-nuclear protest - 44 US: Las Cruces Sun-News: Trinity opening is time to dispel myths, ta 45 Reuters: Roh hopes Koreas' summit can lead to arms cut | U.S. | 46 US: UPI: NNSA spells out nuke scrapping steps 47 US: UPI: NNSA dismantles more nukes than planned 48 donga.com: N.Korea Says It Will Not Report Nuclear Weapons Informati 49 Guardian Unlimited: 171 held in nuclear base protest US DEPT. OF ENERGY 50 Tri-City Herald: Register for Hanford tours at noon today 51 Oak Ridger: K-25/K-27 demolition project successfully achieved 2,000 52 Oak Ridger: ORNL gets new supercomputer - 53 NewsChannel6: Southeast Idaho Leaders Fight to Keep Jobs at INL ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 Reuters: Govt should lead Severn tidal barrage Mon Oct 1, 2007 3:53pm BST By Pete Harrison LONDON (Reuters) - A controversial barrage to harness tidal power in the Severn Estuary between England and Wales would cost around 15 billion pounds and should be led by the government rather than the private sector, a report said. The UK could generate 10 percent of its electricity from the tides flowing around its shores, with half of that coming from the Severn Estuary alone, said the Sustainable Development Commission (SDC), which advises the government on the environmental and social impact of new projects. The government launched a feasibility study last week into building a hydroelectric barrage across the Severn, describing it as one of the world's biggest potential construction projects. At around 8.6 gigawatts, it would put out more power than six of the next generation nuclear power stations currently under consideration in the UK. "We are issuing a challenge to government that will require a complete revision of attitudes towards a Severn barrage," said the SDC. It said a government-led project would be cheaper to fund and would avoid the risks involved in privately-run energy projects, which have had a chequered history in Britain. "This will not be comfortable territory, but we believe that a publicly-owned approach is essential for a sustainable, economically viable Severn barrage that reduces the risk to taxpayers," it added. The SDC said its poll of public opinion showed 58 percent of people across the UK were in favour and 15 percent were against a barrage, which could take around seven years to build and last for 120 years. Carbon-free power is essential to help Britain meet EU-wide goals of cutting CO2 emissions 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, but some conservationists say the local damage would outweigh the wider benefits. Environmentalists say overwintering wading birds and spawning salmon would be particularly affected. "This country needs to make brave decisions to meet its future energy requirements," said Dr Nick Baker of Lancaster University Renewable Energy Group. "Local environmental impacts need to be balanced against the more pressing issues of reducing carbon emissions and ensuring national security of energy supply," he added. If approved, the scheme would add to a growing list of big infrastructure projects in the UK, including the 2012 Olympics budgeted at 9.3 billion pounds and plans to build a 16 billion pound Crossrail link across London. © Reuters 2007. All rights reserved. | Learn more about Reuters ***************************************************************** 2 [infowarsnews] Report: Russia Evacuates Entire Bushehr Staff Resent-Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 13:04:59 -0500 (CDT) Report: Russia Evacuates Entire Bushehr Staff Iranian news outlet claims nuclear experts packed their bags Friday, increasing speculation of imminent U.S., Israeli attack Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet Monday, October 1, 2007 Iranian and Israeli news outlets are reporting that Russia has evacuated its entire staff of nuclear engineers and experts who were working at the Bushehr nuclear reactor, increasing speculation that the United States is preparing an imminent military attack on Iran. http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/october2007/011007_russia_evacuates.htm ------------------------------------------- Prison Planet.tv: The Premier Multimedia Subscription Package: Download and Share the Truth! [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type image/jpeg which had a name of 011007iran.jpg] [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type image/gif which had a name of 071106pptvbanner2.gif] ***************************************************************** 3 The Hindu: N-deal: CPI(M) warns UPA not to proceed with next step Tuesday, October 2, 2007 : 0320 Hrs Kolkata, Oct. 2 (PTI): The CPI(M) on Monday warned the Congress-led UPA government not to proceed further on the next step of the Indo-US nuclear deal till it was discussed in the winter session of Parliament. The Central Commmittee of the marxist party authorised the party Polit Bureau to take appropriate measures to ensure that its stand was implemented, according to a CPI(M) press communique here. The communique, issued after the 3-day Central Committee meeting here, reiterated the party's stand unanimously adopted at its August 22-23 convention, in which it had asked the government not to proceed with taking the next step of negotiating the text of the Safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency. It said the UPA-Left Committeee on the nuclear issue was examining various aspects of the Hyde Act and its implications for foreign policy and security-related matters. Later, asked whether the party would withdraw its support if the government went ahead with operationalising the deal, CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat said "the Polit Bureau has been authorised by the Central Committee to take apropriate measures". Elaborating further, he said "it will be dependent on what the government does. What we are asking the government is not to proceed further on the next step on the deal till it is discussed in the winter session of Parliament. "It could not be discussed in the last session of Parliament due to BJP's role. We want Parliament to disucss the deal. And till then, the government should not go ahead," he said. Faced with persistent queries on what the Politburo would do in the event of the Centre operationalising the deal, Karat said "when time comes, we will tell the country". Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. ***************************************************************** 4 GU: Nuclear industry pushes for early approval of new plants by warning of bottlenecks | Special Reports | Guardian Unlimited Government warned that energy plans could be thwarted by shortages of skills and components David Gow in Brussels Monday October 1, 2007 The government's plans to build up to 10 nuclear power plants in Britain over the next decade could be thwarted by a shortage of skilled project managers, industry executives have warned. They have told ministers that the coming nuclear renaissance in Europe and in emerging economies such as Russia, China and India - driven by the need to combat global warming and reduce energy imports - could also constrain the delivery of key reactor components unless decisions are made swiftly and the planning process is speeded up. The executives are even warning that the first new nuclear plants may not come on stream until towards the end of the next decade because of the demand for project managers to deliver the 2012 Olympic Games and other big infrastructure projects. At an energy summit at General Electric's research centre in Munich last week, Rod Christie, president of the US group's energy operations in central and eastern Europe and Russia, said that Russia alone was planning to build 40 nuclear power stations. GE is one of four manufacturers applying to build new-generation nuclear reactors in Britain and is offering its ESBWR (economic simplified boiling water reactor) which, Mr Christie claimed, has built-in safety features. It is competing with the EPR, a third-generation pressurised water reactor being built in Finland and France by the French state-owned group Areva with Siemens; the AP1000 reactor designed by Westinghouse, the former BNFL unit now owned by Toshiba; and the Candu design from Canada's AECL. About 10 operators, including British Energy, France's EDF, Germany's Eon and RWE; Centrica, owners of British Gas, and Sweden's Vattenfall, are among those mooted to have applied for certification to run the new nuclear power plants. A government consultation on the future of nuclear energy, triggered by a legal victory for Greenpeace and other green campaigners, ends on October 10 - the 50th anniversary of the fire at the Windscale atomic reactor in Cumbria. Ministers have promised a decision by the end of the year but it is a foregone conclusion that they will give the go-ahead for up to 10 reactors at five "brownfield" sites by the end of the year. Jeremy Nicholson, head of the pro-nuclear Energy Intensive Users Group, said: "It is vital for the UK to give a decision quickly and get on with getting one or two of the first schemes in the pipeline ... There's only a handful of companies worldwide capable of forging the new pressure vessels and other critical components and there will be capacity constraints there for the next 10 to 15 years so we need to get this sorted out well in advance so we are not at the wrong end of the queue behind Russia and China." In a recent capability study, the Nuclear Industries Association (NIA) insisted that competition for resources such as turbines and generators from other projects "should not be a problem" and building new plants would occur predominantly after the Olympic Games in London. But Mr Nicholson, who said the first plants could come on stream in 2016 at the earliest and probably later, would be competing for project managers when the Games were still being prepared. British Energy insists that between 70% and 80% of the manufacture can be met within Britain but, in its response to the government consultation, admitted that "there is high demand in a worldwide market for specialist skills in nuclear construction and for key components." The NIA says it is vital that Britain attracts the necessary skills as its nuclear renaissance is one of the most advanced planned so far. Useful links British Energy Department of Trade and Industry British Nuclear Fuels Ltd Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Greenpeace Come Clean WMD awareness programme UK atomic energy authority National Radiological Protection Board Friends of the Earth World Nuclear Association World Nuclear Transport Institute Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 5 Arizona Republic: Feds begin safety inspections at Palo Verde Ryan Randazzo Oct. 1, 2007 04:31 PM Twenty federal inspectors arrived at Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station on Monday to review performance problems at the facility west of Phoenix, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said. A variety of specialists will review operations, including engineering quality, communications and the "safety culture" of the facility, after incidents at the Arizona Public Service Co. plant that date back to 2004. The NRC team will spend two weeks at the facility, then take two weeks to compile its data before returning for a third week in late October before writing a final report. Those findings will be made public in December. The NRC downgraded the facility to Category 4 in February, making it the most-regulated plant in the country. "The number and significance of previous equipment problems warrants increased NRC inspection," said Elmo Collins, a regional administrator for the agency. "This particular inspection is designed to give us a very close look at the scope and effectiveness of Palo Verde's performance improvement initiatives." APS brought in a new executive in January to address the safety issues. "We've restructured the organization quite a bit," APS Chief Nuclear Officer Randy Edington said. "We've spent months evaluating and understanding the plant issues, and gone back years looking at records." APS has been conducting its own investigation into the plant's problems, using 30 to 40 people, Edington said. The utility and regulators will compare notes in December. The NRC is expected to suggest changes that could lead to a status upgrade, he said. Reach the reporter at ryan.randazzo@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-4331. Twenty federal inspectors began a lengthy review Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station on Monday, and will review a plant's “safety culture” for the first time. Copyright © 2007, azcentral.com. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 6 Australia & NZ: ScienceAlert: A nuclear powered world Tuesday, 02 October 2007 By Peter Gellatly “Nations sign on to the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership” ran the Sunday press release from politicos in Vienna. But, sign on to what, exactly? Oh yes, broad uptake of nuclear power without weapons proliferation etc, etc, but again, what exactly - at the nuts and bolts level? To tease out an answer it was best to be, not hobnobbing with suave diplomats in Vienna's splendour on a balmy Sunday afternoon, but in deep discussion with front-line nuclear “grunts” at the Centre on the Grove, in Boise, Idaho for an intensive week. For Idaho, home to a major US national nuclear laboratory and birthplace of commercial nuclear electricity, played host to more than 500 researchers from around the world attending “Global 2007”, this year's convention of the nuclear industry's premier conference series on advanced nuclear systems.  “Global”, which usually deals with far-off innovation, much of it only ready for implementation well after the presenters are dead, is traditionally hosted by rotation, and this year was not the US' turn. But US nuclear policymakers made a persuasive case that they needed a high profile venue to deliver their GNEP program to nuclear “insiders”. And so attendees were treated to a technical nuclear smorgasbord - from imminent, next-step reactors to on-the-horizon technologies - served up in a socio-economic/political milieu of third world development, energy/greenhouse concerns and constraints, and nuclear non-proliferation. The mid-term advanced nuclear reactors at the heart of “Global” are these days tagged by the label "Generation IV". Intended to put the nuclear industry on a truly sustainable footing through the end of the 21st century and beyond, these reactors are unlike present-day commercial nuclear power reactors, which primarily "burn" the uranium 235 isotope. Rather, the Generation IV class - within which there is a number of design types - by completely “burning” all uranium, and also thorium, fuelstocks, together with long-lived in-reactor created byproducts - will enable the full utilisation of uranium and thorium resources, while at the same time massively reducing both the volume and the radioactivity of waste left over from the fission process. It was clear from the conference presentations that, in many aspects, overseas researchers, whose robust funding has continued through the US nuclear power "doldrums" of recent decades, are well ahead of their US colleagues. This has significant impact on US ability to assert political leadership on the nuclear front. The most evident example of international excellence is perhaps India's work on the thorium fuel cycle. India's presenter at Global said his country's energy needs, which track an ongoing GDP growth of 8-9 per cent per annum, were extremely large, and so energy security was of primary national concern. But India's population density precluded some alternative measures, such as using arable land to grow biofuel crops - food production would always take precedence. Hence India had a three-stage plan for indigenous development of nuclear power, culminating, in about 2040, in a principally thorium-fueled reactor suite, with uranium/plutonium fueled fast reactors used as fuel breeders. India is poor in uranium resources but rich in thorium deposits, so the country's self-interest in pursuing thorium research is obvious. However, since thorium is roughly three times as abundant as uranium in the earth's crust, the promise of a viable thorium-fueled nuclear power system is of universal appeal. Generation IV is an ambitious plan, matched only by the more immediate problem of how to achieve the transition. For though a simple leap to Generation IV would be preferable, the technology - fast neutron spectrum reactors which will breed U233 from thorium and Pu239 from uranium, then burn the products - will not be commercially ready until 2030 at the earliest, and probably not before 2040. Given an intervening period of projected rapidly escalating world energy demand in the face of exacerbating greenhouse conditions sans nuclear, the world simply can't wait for Generation IV. Within the nuclear industry, present-day power reactors are referred to as "Generation II". To bridge the gap between this extant Generation II and sustainable Generation IV, much effort is being directed towards a nearer-term (circa 2010-12) roll-out of "Generation III/III+" systems. These will be "conventional" reactors, in the sense of principally burning uranium 235, plus plutonium obtained from spent fuel reprocessing. But for capital cost economy and enhanced operational reliability they will be standardised plants, and some of the designs will be tuned, not just towards electricity generation, but also towards water desalination, district heating, or the large-scale production of hydrogen for use as a transport fuel. US Government policy with respect to both Generation III/III+ and Generation IV is twofold: advancement of US domestic energy security, and the promotion of nuclear power as an international energy solution without increasing the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation. It is the latter part of this policy which has given rise to the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP): an initiative to provide developing countries with nuclear energy on a turnkey basis: that is, via total provision of reactors and fuel, with full takeback, by GNEP supplier members, of spent reactor fuel for reprocessing and storage. The rationale is that the spread of material, technology and know-how considered to represent nuclear weapons proliferation risks can best be controlled by dividing the nuclear world into two tiers: those countries which already possess such means, the so-called nuclear suppliers, and those countries, the nuclear recipients, which would voluntarily eschew developing “trigger” steps in the nuclear fuel cycle. At Global, the GNEP discussions were very detailed. Presentations were made on a variety of proliferation, accident and terrorism resistant reactor types suitable for turnkey delivery. These included three very small-scale designs - 50MW to 120MW - intended for aggregated-over-time hook-up to low grade electricity grids, and also for remote locations and/or safe, unattended operation. At least one of these designs will be small enough to be delivered - fully fueled - as an integrated unit, and removed the same way - years hence, when the fuel runs out. The International Atomic Energy Agency delivered a draft report on its endeavours to find out what prospective nuclear power recipient countries actually wanted - as opposed to what the nuclear suppliers had in mind to deliver: they mostly wanted larger, centralised units. (The IAEA identified about 50 prospective recipients, and conducted in-depth research with eight “most likely” candidates for early uptake - the formal report is to be published in early 2008.) Simultaneously, other specialist groups delved into enhanced nuclear safeguards monitoring. Security will perhaps be GNEP's Achilles heel: from three perspectives. First, it is not at all clear that a multiplicity (the developers' projected aggregate demand runs to hundreds of units) of dispersed small-scale reactors can be as economically protected as a single, larger power station. Second, the US formal position - as reiterated in its presentation at Global - is that supplier countries would do their part towards non-proliferation by reprocessing plutonium only together with other in-reactor created transuranics: neptunium, americium, and so on. In this way, the “conventional” Generation III/III+ designs used to kick start GNEP could benefit from enhanced fuel utilisation, without nuclear suppliers expanding transient stocks of separated plutonium. (The constant caveat about the general unsuitability of power reactor produced plutonium - which includes some non-fissile Pu240, whereas a weapon requires high purity Pu239 - is too arcane a topic for elucidation here.) But Japan and France (plus also Russia and China) reprocess plutonium already. Presumably recognising this, and regarding a US stand-alone policy as futile, at Global it was informally allowed that US policy was in process of being changed to adopt plutonium separation. (Since the presidency of Jimmy Carter - a former US navy nuclear engineer - the US has independently refrained from the reprocessing of plutonium from Generation II spent fuel, on the grounds of enhancing non-proliferation. US reversal of this policy is a very big step.) Third, and perhaps most important from a developing-country perspective, energy security is inextricably tied to industrial progress, and full nuclear fuel cycle competence - which requires cadres of highly trained specialists across disparate, yet interlocking, disciplines - is equally seen as linked to the buildup of intellectual capital necessary to drive that progress. “South Africa won't sign on to GNEP”, ran the Reuters newsflash - also emanating from Vienna, a mere two days after the positive Sunday pronouncement. Again, Global attendees were treated to a detailed country report. South Africa, having under its previous regime voluntarily admitted to and dismantled its former successful nuclear weapons program, is now determined to reap the benefit of its expensively-nurtured nuclear expertise in a legitimate way. It has independently matured a variant of one of the most promising Generation III+ types: the Pebble Bed Reactor, and identified the commercialisation of this design as a national strategic program. South Africa intends to be optionally self-sufficient in the nuclear fuel cycle, to deliver 30 per cent of its electricity from nuclear by 2030 (the present figure is 6 per cent), and to enter the nuclear marketplace as a reactor supplier. The inferred message is clear: South Africa will not be autocratically relegated to second-class nuclear - and, by implication, industrial - status. It is extremely plausible that other former weapons developers - Brazil, for instance - as well as present-day nuclear novice nations will similarly see GNEP, not as an energy facilitator, but as an imposed retardation of their industrial growth. And as their economies mature, it might be expected that even some initially willing GNEP recipients will naturally, having emulated South Korea's recent blistering economic progress, chafe against nuclear constraints which they consider no longer reasonable, appropriate or acceptable. Yet - disparaging whispers (and shouts) about US grasping for retrieved nuclear power hegemony aside - GNEP's essential purpose is benign: without early, broadscale adoption of nuclear power, unremitting world energy demand will make a mockery of greenhouse amelioration. The crucial question therefore becomes: can GNEP work as a 21st century stopgap, and can a post Generation IV reactor class be implemented in such a way that, eventually, no nation requires either uranium enrichment or ex-reactor spent fuel reprocessing? That is, can nuclear plant reach a stage of sophistication where natural fuel is fed in, and fissile-free waste comes out? Of the six Generation IV technologies preselected in 2002 (and reaffirmed in 2006) by the Generation IV International Consortium, only one - the Molten Salt Reactor - has this potential. Much derided and mocked because it was originally, indeed during the 1950s and 60s, developed for aircraft propulsion, the MSR dissolves its fuel in a liquid salt solution which also acts as the reactor coolant. The potential of this liquid fuel design type is for continuous in-reactor recycling and burning of actinides, and for continuous waste extraction. MSR, though further along its development path than other Generation IV types, is not well funded under the Generation IV Roadmap, and received scant attention at Global 2007. MSR, perhaps eventually conceived in conjunction with an accelerator-driven neutron source to maintain criticality, might really be considered a “Generation V/V+” technology. It is towards this nominally “Generation V+” end-point, well beyond the majority focus even of Global 2007, that nuclear fission technology must strive if GNEP's altruistic goal of a proliferation-free nuclear powered world is to be fully realised.  Peter Gellatly is a freelance writer/ technology analyst who covered Global 2007 for Australian and Canadian media. He holds formal qualifications in nuclear science and environmental toxicology, and was formerly employed in an industrial liaison capacity by the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO). An opinion provided by OnlineOpinion.com.au - Australia's e-journal of social and political debate.  Click here to read & post comments on this article. Copyright © 2004-2007 ScienceAlert.com.au - About Us ***************************************************************** 7 The Hindu: Don't take next step on deal, says CPI(M) Online edition of India's National Newspaper Tuesday, Oct 02, 2007 Special Correspondent KOLKATA: The Communist Party of India (Marxist) cautioned the government against “taking the next step of negotiating the text of a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency” on the nuclear deal with the United States. “The UPA government should not proceed further on the next steps with regard to the nuclear deal till it can be discussed in the winter session of Parliament. That is where matters stand,” party general secretary Prakash Karat said here on Monday at the end of the three-day meeting of the party’s central committee. The committee “authorised the Polit Bureau to take appropriate steps to see that its stand is implemented.” Mr. Karat declined to comment on what the “appropriate steps” might be but said: “They will be dependant on what the government does. I do not know what the government will say.” “Yes, an attempt is being made to grapple with the issues we have posed before the UPA-Left committee [set up to examine the various aspects of the Hyde Act and its implications on foreign policy and security related matters]. Both sides are trying to resolve our different perceptions; it will be unfair to say this will not achieve anything but we are clear that they [the government] should not proceed without resolving the matter,” he said. The committee is to meet again on October 5 and 14 “but we would like Parliament to discuss the issue.” Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the ***************************************************************** 8 North County Times: Nuclear power deserves second chance - Last modified Sunday, September 30, 2007 9:17 PM PDT By: GEORGE BUZZELLI - Commentary Bravo to Assemblyman Chuck DeVore for his proposal ("Initiative seeks more nuclear plants in region," Sept. 24). There are three good reasons to go forward with this initiative. First, each nuclear unit at San Onofre replaces the consumption of 1 million barrels of oil per month. That avoids the release of 1 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere per month ---- thus reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Second is the economic persuasion. At the current cost of oil at $80 per barrel, oil as a fuel would cost $80 million per month. And, likely, because of current increased Asiatic demand for oil, the price will continue to increase. Compare this to nuclear fuel: The fuel core cost is $100 million and would provide power for four years, which equates to $2 million per month. Third, it would provide byproduct heat that could be used for seawater desalination. Each unit could produce 100 million to 200 million gallons of fresh water per day, or perhaps more, all at a price far less than conventional desalination methods. The San Diego County fresh water consumptiion is currently around 625 million gallons per day. Considering that 90 percent of this water is imported, one has to be concerned about the price increase if the recent court judge's ruling regarding the Sacramento Bay smelt would cut water import from the north by 40 percent, and then there is the impending water rationing threat. Let me offer some thoughts on the nuclear waste issue ---- this should not be an issue! DeVore is mistaken about reprocessing and long-term storage. The original nuclear power plant fuel plan was to operate the plant until half of the fuel was consumed. Remove that portion of the spent fuel for reprocessing. Replace the first half and shuffle fuel around to maximize consumption of the second half. The spent fuel would be processed to remove the plutonium generated for use as second-generation fuel. The removal of the plutonium removes the multi-thousand-year isotope, which is the major concern for long-term storage. The remaining hot waste would contain shorter-lived radioactive isotopes and should not concern the public about long-term storage. In addition, the total amount of hot waste generated per plant per year would fill a pay-telephone booth, about 70 cubic feet. This material would be transformed into a porcelain material and then contained in triple-layered barrels for storage in an area like Yucca Mountain in Nevada. These units would be surrounded by many radiation monitors for surveillance in case of leakage. The burial caves are isolated and insulated so leakage threat is minimized. As a footnote to the Yucca Mountain storage facility: The federal government has spent some $70 billion over the past 40 years developing the facility, so perhaps if the officials in Nevada don't want this in their backyard, perhaps they should return the money and a similar burial site could be developed in Idaho, where they already have closely related facilities and would welcome the program. Escondido resident George Buzzelli is a retired nuclear scientist who worked at the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station until 1995. He helped write the plant's emergency plan for off-site responders. webmaster@nctimes.com © 1997-2007 North County Times ? Lee Enterprises editor@nctimes.com ***************************************************************** 9 Times Argus: Vt. Yankee tries to limit NRC review October 01, 2007 By Susan Smallheer Rutland Herald BRATTLEBORO – Despite last month's dramatic collapse of a portion of one of its two cooling towers, Entergy Nuclear has repeated its claim that the cooling towers and their problems should not be part of the federal review on whether Vermont Yankee's operating license should be extended 20 years. In a brief letter and engineering report dated Thursday sent to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Entergy Nuclear said that because the cooling towers are not strictly considered "safety" equipment at the nuclear reactor, they are outside the scope of federal review and should continue to be so. The NRC had asked Entergy for additional information after the Aug. 21 collapse to justify the company's earlier claim that they were outside federal review, and had given Entergy 30 days to respond. NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said Friday that the NRC would be studying the Entergy response and determine whether additional information was needed. The NRC had asked Entergy for any details of age-related degradation of the tower components, and the impacts of the collapse on the two safety-related cells of the affected cooling tower on the overall safety of the plant. The company has blamed the collapse on "iron salt attack" from iron-based hardware which "attacks" the lumber, which makes up the frame of the cells, and a "fungal attack" made worse by the moist environment, as well as the wetting and drying cycles inherent in the operation of the cooling towers. The towers don't operate in the cold weather months. While the cooling towers are not directly associated with the nuclear side of the plant, two of the 11 cells in the affected west cooling tower provide a backup emergency cooling system to the reactor. And below the towers are a giant reservoir of cooling water. The collapsed portion of the tower is immediately adjacent to those two safety cells. But despite the problems, Entergy maintained in Thursday's response to the NRC that the cooling towers should not be included in the NRC license renewal. "A conclusion and basis as to whether the scoping results documented in the (license renewal amendment), which initially determined that 9 of the 11 cooling tower cells were not within the scope of license renewal, are still valid," the company wrote. The claim by Entergy that the cooling towers would not be reviewed by the license renewal review, which until the Aug. 21 collapse was not challenged by the NRC, has caught the attention of the state's congressional delegation. They wrote to Wayne Leonard, the chairman and chief executive officer of the New Orleans-based Entergy, the parent company of Entergy Nuclear, a week ago, asking for additional information about the cooling towers and their inspection history. "The lack of oversight certainly raises questions about the adequacy of NRC's reactor oversight process," they wrote. "We continue to have many questions regarding the events leading up the cooling tower collapse on Aug. 21 and the Aug. 30 shutdown." The delegation had earlier written a similar letter to the NRC, seeking information about its role in the problems. The reactor was forced into an immediate shut down a week after the cooling tower collapse because of a problem with a large, motor-operated valve on a steam line which hadn't been lubricated properly. The plant, which had been at 50 percent power at the time, shut down for about two days. Entergy Nuclear had filed for a 20-year license extension for Vermont Yankee in January 2006, and originally had expected a decision by this fall. But that schedule has already been pushed back because of additional information requested by the NRC. Entergy Nuclear spokesman Robert Williams said Friday he was unaware whether the company had filed its response to the NRC, but he noted that the plant was back up to 100 percent power. It took the plant about a month to make the necessary temporary repairs to the damaged cooling tower before it could resume full energy production. Entergy has maintained ever since the cooling tower collapse that there were no nuclear safety issues involved, since the towers themselves are not involved in the nuclear side of the plant, or even with the generation of power. Because of that, the company maintains that the cooling towers are outside federal review. The towers are used by the plant to cool the reactor's cooling water during the late spring, summer and early fall. Under a state environmental discharge permit, the plant is allowed to discharge water close to 100 degrees back into the Connecticut River after being cooled in the towers. Entergy's permit to do so is being challenged by several environmental groups. Entergy wanted to increase its thermal discharge so it didn't have to use the cooling towers as much, saving energy and money. The cooling towers operate because of environmental and aesthetic concerns, not because of nuclear issues, both Entergy and the NRC have said in the past. The state doesn't want the Connecticut River to warm to the point that it is affecting the fish and other life in the river. And the Vermont Public Service Board forced the company to install heftier fans in the past two years, to dispel more of the giant clouds of steam that can erupt from the towers on a summer day. Contact Susan Smallheer at susan.smallheer@rutlandherald.com. © 2007 Times Argus ***************************************************************** 10 The Hindu: All decisions taken unanimously - Basu Monday, October 1, 2007 : 1430 Hrs Kolkata, Oct. 1 (PTI): Veteran CPI(M) leader Jyoti Basu said that all major decisions taken at the party's Central Committee meeting, which entered its last day today, were taken unanimously by the members. Emerging from the meeting, Basu told reporters, "All decisions on the crucial nuclear deal have been taken unanimously." Yesterday, conflicting signals emerged with Basu willing to wait for the outcome of the UPA-Left committee meeting next month before deciding the next course of action. On the other hand, hardliner and party Politburo member M K Pandhe was in full favour of stopping the deal. Basu had also ruled out any compromise on the issue and warned of appropriate action if the government went ahead in operationalising the deal. Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. ***************************************************************** 11 MSNBC.com: Nuclear damage trial begins AFX TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) - An engineer and a contractor accused of hiding information about the most extensive corrosion ever found at a U.S. nuclear reactor first misled regulators and then lied to them, a federal prosecutor said Monday. Attorneys for both men denied the charges, saying the two never were in a position to know how bad an acid leak had become at the Davis-Besse nuclear plant near Toledo. Rodney Cook, a private contractor, and David Geisen, the plant's former engineering design manager, are the first to go to trial over the damage found at the plant in 2002. The acid leak nearly ate through the reactor vessel's 6-inch-thick steel cap. It's not clear how close the plant was to an accident. Following the discovery, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission beefed up inspections and training and began requiring detailed records of its discussions with plant operators. The plant's operator, Akron-based FirstEnergy Corp., paid a record $28 million in fines a year ago while avoiding federal charges. None of the company's senior leaders were charged in the investigation. Cook and Geisen and a third former Davis-Besse employee have been accused of misleading regulators in the fall of 2001 into believing the plant was safe so inspectors would delay visits until the spring of 2002, during a scheduled shutdown for refueling. Shutting down the plant earlier would have been costly to the company. Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material ***************************************************************** 12 NRC: Entergy Nuclear Operations, Inc., Indian Point Nuclear Generating Unit Nos. 2 and 3; Notice of Opportunity for Hearing Regarding Renewal of Facility Operating License Nos. DPR-26 and DPR-64 for an Additional 20-Year Period: Extension of Time for Filing of Requests for Hearing or Petitions for Leave To Intervene in the License Renewal Proceeding FR Doc E7-19311 [Federal Register: October 1, 2007 (Volume 72, Number 189)] [Notices] [Page 55834] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr01oc07-97] NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION AGENCY: U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. ACTION: License renewal: Extension of time for the filing of requests for hearing or petitions for leave to intervene in the license renewal proceeding. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- SUMMARY: On August 1, 2007 (72 FR 42134), the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) announced its acceptance for docketing of the application and notice of opportunity for hearing for the renewal of Operating License Nos. DPR-26 and DPR-64, which authorize Entergy Nuclear Operations, Inc. to operate Indian Point Nuclear Generating Unit Nos. 2 and 3, respectively, at 3216 megawatts thermal (MWt) for each unit. A sixty-day period was provided for the filing of written requests for a hearing or petitions for leave to intervene with respect to the renewal of the license. The period for the filing of requests for a hearing or petitions for leave to intervene was to have expired on October 1, 2007. The period for the filing of requests for a hearing or petitions for leave to intervene has been extended and now expires on November 30, 2007. The period for filling answers to such requests or petitions has also been extended. DATES: The period for the filing of requests for a hearing or petitions for leave to intervene has been extended and now expires on November 30, 2007. Answers to such requests or petitions are now due on January 11, 2008, and replies to those answers are due on January 18, 2008 (see 10 CFR 2.309(h)). Non-timely requests and/or petitions and contentions will not be entertained absent a determination of the Commission, the presiding officer, or the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board that the petition, request and/or contentions should be granted based on a balancing of the factors specified in 10 CFR 2.309(a)(1)(i)-(viii). ADDRESSES: A request for a hearing or a petition for leave to intervene must be filed by: (1) First class mail addressed to the Office of the Secretary of the Commission, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, Attention: Rulemaking and Adjudications Staff; (2) Courier, express mail, and expedited delivery services to the Office of the Secretary, Sixteenth Floor, One White Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland 20852, Attention: Rulemaking and Adjudications Staff; (3) E-mail addressed to the Office of the Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, HEARINGDOCKET@NRC.GOV; or (4) facsimile transmission addressed to the Office of the Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC, Attention: Rulemaking and Adjudications Staff at 301-415-1101 (verification number: 301-415-1966).\1\ A copy of the request for hearing or petition for leave to intervene must also be sent to the Office of the General Counsel, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, and it is requested that copies be transmitted either by means of facsimile transmission to 301-415-3725 or by e-mail to OGCMailCenter@nrc.gov. A copy of the request for hearing or petition for leave to intervene should also be sent to the Assistant General Counsel, Entergy Nuclear Operations, Inc., 440 Hamilton Avenue, White Plains, NY 10601. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ If the request/petition is filed by e-mail or facsimile, an original and two copies of the document must be mailed within 2 (two) business days thereafter to the Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, Attention: Rulemaking and Adjudications Staff. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Detailed information about the license renewal process can be found under the Nuclear Reactors icon at http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/licensing/renewal.html on the NRC's Web site. Copies of the application to renew the operating licenses for Indian Point Nuclear Generating Unit Nos. 2 and 3 are available for public inspection at the Commission's Public Document Room (PDR), located at One White Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike (first floor), Rockville, Maryland 20852- 2738. The same documents may also be viewed and downloaded electronically via the applications Web site, http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/licensing/renewal/applications.html , while the application is under review. The application may be accessed in ADAMS through the NRC's Public Electronic Reading Room on the Internet at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html under ADAMS Accession Numbers ML071210507, ML071280700, and ML071800318. Persons who do not have access to ADAMS or who encounter problems in accessing the documents located in ADAMS may contact the NRC PDR Reference staff at 1-800-397- 4209 or 301-415-4737 or by e-mail to pdr@nrc.gov. The NRC staff has verified that a copy of the license renewal application is also available to local residents near Indian Point Nuclear Generating Unit Nos. 2 and 3 at the White Plains Public Library, 100 Martine Avenue, White Plains, NY 10601; the Field Library, 4 Nelson Avenue, Peekskill, NY 10566; and the Hendrick Hudson Free Library, 185 Kings Ferry Road, Montrose, NY 10548. Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 25th day of September 2007. For the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Annette L. Vietti-Cook, Secretary of the Commission. [FR Doc. E7-19311 Filed 9-28-07; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 13 NRC: Atomic Safety and Licensing Board; in the Matter of: U.S. Army (Jefferson Proving Ground Site); Notice of Hearing (Application for a License Amendment) FR Doc E7-19313 [Federal Register: October 1, 2007 (Volume 72, Number 189)] [Notices] [Page 55834-55835] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr01oc07-98] NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION [Docket No. 40-8838-MLA; ASLBP No. 00-776-04-MLA] September 20, 2007. Before Administrative Judges: Alan S. Rosenthal, Chairman; Dr. Paul B. Abramson, Dr. Richard F. Cole. This Atomic Safety and Licensing Board hereby gives notice that, pursuant to 10 CFR Part 2, Subpart L, it will convene an evidentiary hearing on October 22, 2007 to receive testimony and exhibits concerning the adequacy of the Field Sampling Plan (FSP) in the application submitted by the Department of the Army (Licensee) for an amendment to its NRC materials license (License No. SUB-1435) for an alternate decommissioning schedule. See 10 CFR 40.42(g)(2). Between 1983 and 1994, under the auspices of that license, the Licensee [[Page 55835]] conducted accuracy testing of depleted uranium (DU) tank penetration rounds at its Jefferson Proving Ground site located in Madison, Indiana. It now seeks a license amendment that would provide an alternate schedule (i.e., a five-year additional period) for the submittal of a decommissioning plan for that site. Such a plan is required because there is currently amassed on the JPG site approximately 70,000 kilograms of DU munitions. This Board has found one contention presented by Save the Valley, Inc. (Intervenor) regarding the alternate decommissioning schedule to satisfy the admissibility requirements imposed by 10 CFR 2.309(f)(1). LBP-06-6, 63 NRC 167 183-85 (2006). That contention asserts (id. at 183): As filed, the FSP is not properly designed to obtain all the verifiable data required for reliable dose modeling and accurate assessment of the effects on exposure pathways of meteorological, geological, hydrological, animal, and human features specific to the JPG site and its surrounding area. On December 20, 2006 and May 1, 2007, the Board rejected Intervenor's other contentions as inadmissable. See LBP-06-27, 64 NRC 438 (2006); LBP-07-07, 65 NRC--(slip op.) (2007). A. Date, Time, and Location of Evidentiary Hearing The evidentiary hearing in this proceeding, which will be open to the public,\1\ will begin on Monday, October 22, 2007 at 10:30 a.m., and will continue day-to-day, ending no later than Friday, October 26 at 5 p.m., at the location specified below: Madison City Hall, 101 W. Main Street, Madison, IN 47250. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \1\ Members of the public who plan to attend the evidentiary hearing are advised that security measures may be employed at the entrance to the facility, including searches of hand-carried items such as briefcases, backpacks, packages, etc. In addition, signs, banners, posters, and displays will be prohibited because they are disruptive to the conduct of the adjudicatory process. See Procedures for Providing Security Support for NRC Public Meetings/ Hearings, 66 FR 31,719 (June 12, 2001). In the event that a party deems it necessary to discuss protected information at the hearing, that portion of the hearing will be closed to the public. See 10 CFR 2.390(a)(4). --------------------------------------------------------------------------- B. Submitting Written Limited Appearance Statements Any person not a party to the proceeding, including persons who are affiliated with or represented by a party, may submit to the Board at any time a written limited appearance statement setting forth his or her position on matters of concern relating to this proceeding. See 10 CFR 2.315(a). Although these statements do not constitute testimony or evidence in the proceeding, they nonetheless may assist the Board and/ or the parties in their consideration of the issues. Such statements should be submitted to: Mail: Office of the Secretary, Rulemakings and Adjudications Staff, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001. Fax: (301) 415-1101 (verification (301) 415-1966). E-mail: hearingdocket@nrc.gov. In addition, using the same method of service, a copy of the written statement must be sent to the Chairman of this Licensing Board as follows: Mail: Administrative Judge Alan S. Rosenthal, c/o: Meg Parish, Esq., Law Clerk, Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel, Mail Stop T-3 F23, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001. Fax: (301) 415-5599 (verification (301) 415-6094). E-mail: map4@nrc.gov. On Tuesday July 18, 2006, this Board entertained oral limited appearance statements from members of the public in connection with this proceeding. See Notice (Notice of Opportunity To Make Oral or Written Limited Appearance Statements), 71 FR 33,776 (June 6, 2006). Another such opportunity for oral statements will not be presented in this notice at this time. C. Availability of Documentary Information Regarding the Proceeding Documents relating to this proceeding are available for public inspection at the Commission's Public Document Room (PDR), located at One White Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike (first floor), Rockville, Maryland, or electronically from the publicly available records component of NRC's document system (ADAMS). ADAMS is accessible from the NRC Web site at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html (Electronic Reading Room). Persons who do not have access to ADAMS or who encounter problems in accessing the documents located in ADAMS should contact the NRC PDR reference staff by telephone at (800) 397- 4209 or (301) 415-4737, or by e-mail to pdr@nrc.gov. It is so Ordered. For the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board \2\ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- \2\ Copies of this Memorandum and Order were sent this date by Internet electronic mail transmission to counsel for (1) the Licensee, (2) the NRC Staff, and (3) Intervenor. Dated: Rockville, Maryland September 20, 2007. Alan S. Rosenthal, Chairman, Administrative Judge. [FR Doc. E7-19313 Filed 9-28-07; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 14 Reuters: Exelon shuts Ill. Braidwood 1 reactor for refueling Mon Oct 1, 2007 12:24pm EDT NEW YORK, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Exelon Corp (EXC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) shut the 1,178-megawatt Unit 1 at the Braidwood nuclear power station in Illinois for planned refueling on Sept. 30, a spokeswoman for the company said Monday. She could not say when the unit would likely return to service due to competitive reasons. Electricity traders guessed the unit would return within a month. The unit, which is on an 18-month refueling cycle, last shut for refueling from April 16 to May 4, 2006. The 2,330 MW Braidwood station, which entered service in 1988, is located in Braceville, in Will County, about 60 miles southwest of Chicago. There are two units at the station, Unit 1 and the 1,152 MW Unit 2. Unit 2 continued to operate at full power. One MW powers about 800 homes in Illinois. Exelon, of Chicago, owns and operates more than 38,000 MW of generating capacity, markets energy commodities, and transmits and distributes electricity (5.4 million) and natural gas (480,000) to customers in Illinois and Pennsylvania. © Reuters2007All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 15 Reuters: Southern shuts Ala. Farley 1 reactor for refuel | Mon Oct 1, 2007 10:51am EDT NEW YORK, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Southern Co (SO.N: Quote, Profile, Research) has shut the 851-megawatt Unit 1 at the Farley nuclear power station in Alabama for planned refueling, a spokesman for the company said on Monday. He could not say when the unit would likely exit the outage due to competitive reasons. On Friday, the unit was operating at full power. Electricity traders guessed the unit would return in about a month. The unit last shut from April 8-May 25, 2006. It is on an 18-month refueling cycle. The 1,711 MW Farley station is located in Dothan in Houston County, about 95 miles northwest of Tallahassee, Florida. There are two units at the station, Unit 1 and 860 MW Unit 2, which entered service in 1977 and 1981, respectively. Unit 2 continued to operate at full power. One MW powers about 600 homes in Alabama. Continued... ***************************************************************** 16 Reuters: FPL completes buy of 2 nuclear reactors in Wisc. Mon Oct 1, 2007 1:40pm EDT LOS ANGELES, Oct 1 (Reuters) - FPL Group Inc (FPL.N: Quote, Profile, Research) on Monday announced the completion of the purchase of two nuclear reactors in Wisconsin totaling 1,023 megawatts from Wisconsin Energy Corp (WEC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) for $924 million. The final purchase price includes about $719 million for the plant itself and about $205 million for nuclear fuel, inventory and other items, FPL said. FPL says it will add 134 megawatts to the plant's output by 2010 and 2011. All generation from Point Beach will be sold under a long-term power purchase contract to We Energies, a subsidiary of Wisconsin Energy Group, FPL said. Current U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses for Unit 1 allow operation to 2030 and Unit 2 for 2033. Unit 1 began operation in 1970 and Unit 2 in 1973. "Point Beach provides us with a significant low-cost, emission-free, baseload generation source in the Midwest and complements our existing nuclear and wind assets in the region," said Jim Robo, president and chief operating officer of FPL Group. FPL adds the nuclear generation to its existing 800 megawatts of wind power in Wisconsin, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota and Kansas. FPL is the biggest U.S. wind power generator with more than 5,000 MW of wind turbines installed. The Point Beach nuclear power plant is in Two Creeks, Wisconsin, about 35 miles from Green Bay, Wisconsin. FPL principal subsidiary Florida Power & Light Company, operates four nuclear reactors at two sites in Florida -- Turkey Point and St. Lucie -- with a capacity of 3,064 megawatts. If regulators approve, FPL will add 400 megawatts to capacity of its Florida nuclear reactors by 2012. FPL owns 70 percent interest in the 605-MW Duane Arnold nuclear plant in Iowa and has a majority interest in the 1,244-MW Seabrook nuclear plant in New Hampshire. © Reuters2007All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 17 Reuters: Indian left sets new deadline in nuclear deal row Mon Oct 1, 2007 12:07pm BST By Bappa Majumdar KOLKATA, India, Oct 1 (Reuters) - India's main communist party issued a fresh warning to the government over a controversial nuclear pact with the United States, urging it be put on hold until parliament convenes at the end of next month. The new deadline by the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI(M), which has opposed the landmark deal and threatened to withdraw crucial support to the government over it, came at the end of four days of talks among its top leadership. The party had last month asked the government not to pursue the deal for six months and warned of a political crisis if it went ahead. But Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government had refused to buckle under that threat. The government "should not proceed further on the next steps with regard to the nuclear deal till it can be discussed in the winter session of parliament", a party resolution said. CPI(M) chief Prakash Karat said the left parties and the government were making an attempt to "grapple" with the row through a joint panel formed in August. "Let us make that effort," he told a news conference. "I am not saying this will achieve anything. But at the same time we are very clear that they should not proceed to the next step without resolving these issues before the committee. "What we will do next we will tell the country when the time comes," he said in the party's eastern stronghold of Kolkata. Continued... © Reuters 2007. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 18 Reuters: France open to Vietnam civil nuclear cooperation Mon Oct 1, 2007 7:27pm BST PARIS, Oct 1 (Reuters) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy proposed on Monday cooperating with Vietnam over civil nuclear activity, his spokesman said. Vietnam is planning to increase its overall power generation capacity to cope with increased demand as a result of rapid economic growth. "The president indicated that he was open to cooperation in nuclear matters," David Martinon said after a meeting between Sarkozy and Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung. France is not the first country to show interest. The United States said on Sept. 12 it had agreed to share up-to-date nuclear safety and non-proliferation practices with the communist nation's civilian power programme. Martinon added that Sarkozy had said France would support Vietnam's candidature to the U.N. Security Council. © Reuters 2007. All rights reserved. | Learn more about Reuters ***************************************************************** 19 NRC: NRC Begins Comprehensive Inspection at Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station News Release - Region IV - 2007-037 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, Region IV 611 Ryan Plaza Drive, Suite 400, Arlington TX 76011 www.nrc.gov CONTACT: Victor Dricks Phone: 817-860-8128 E-mail: opa4@nrc.gov The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has begun a comprehensive inspection to assess activities at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station as part of its heightened oversight as a result of performance problems there. The plant, operated by Arizona Public Service Co., is located 50 miles west of Phoenix. The 20-member team, which includes reactor inspectors, health physicists, specialists in emergency planning and other technical disciplines, began the first of two weeks onsite today. They will return to the site on Oct. 29 for a third week of in-depth inspection, then write a report which the NRC will make publicly available later this year. “Palo Verde continues to operate safely,” said NRC Region IV Administrator Elmo E. Collins. “However, the number and significance of previous equipment problems warrants increased NRC inspection. This particular inspection is designed to give us a very close look at the scope and effectiveness of Palo Verde’s performance improvement initiatives.” The inspection is intended to assess the breadth and depth of performance problems and will include a broad review to determine what processes and programs need improvement. Focus areas will include the quality of technical assessments, the timeliness and thoroughness of corrective actions, communications between technical organizations and engineering quality. This will also be the first time the NRC performs an independent safety culture assessment at a nuclear plant as part of an inspection. The effort will include NRC interviews with workers and managers onsite, observation of plant activities, and focus groups with members of various technical organizations. “This was recently added to our inspection process to help us better understand whether there are safety culture issues contributing to the root cause of problems, and if so, to ensure they are being properly addressed,” Collins said. Palo Verde has been under increased NRC oversight since the fourth quarter of 2004 following a finding for a substantial safety issue. Inspectors found that APS had incorrectly left air pockets in portions of the emergency core cooling system at each reactor that could have hindered the system’s operation during certain types of accidents. The finding remains open because APS has not effectively addressed performance problems. NRC news releases are available through a free listserv subscription at the following Web address: http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/listserver.html. The NRC Home Page at www.nrc.gov also offers a Subscribe to News link in the News & Information menu. E-mail notifications are sent to subscribers when news releases are posted to NRC's Web Site. October 01, 2007 ***************************************************************** 20 Reuters: Bruce shuts Ontario Bruce 3 reactor for maintenance | Mon Oct 1, 2007 2:39pm BST NEW YORK, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Bruce Power LP shut the 750-megawatt Unit 3 at the Bruce nuclear power station in Ontario on Sept. 28 for planned inspection and maintenance that is expected to last about two months, the company said in a release. Working closely with the Independent Electricity System Operator, which operates the province's power grid, Bruce Power said it delayed the start of the shutdown by a few days to help the province through a period of high demand brought on by unseasonably warm temperatures. The 6,192 MW Bruce station is located on the eastern shore of Lake Huron north of Kincardine about 155 miles (250 km) northwest of Toronto. There are four 750 MW Units 1-4 at the A station and three 790 MW Units 5, 7 and 8, and the 822 MW Unit 6 at the B station. Units 1 and 2 entered service in 1977, Unit 3 in 1978, Unit 4 in 1979 and Units 5-8 between 1984 and 1987. Ontario Hydro, the former province-owned power company, shut Units 1 and 2 in 1997 and 1995, respectively, because they needed extensive upgrades. All of the other units remained available for service. One MW powers about 1,000 homes in Ontario. Bruce Power LP, of Tiverton, Ontario, operates the entire Bruce complex and leases the Bruce B station from Ontario Power Generation, the province-owned generating company. Bruce Power LP is owned by uranium miner Cameco Corp (CCO.TO: Quote, Profile, Research) (1.6 percent), energy company TransCanada Corp (TRP.TO: Quote, Profile, Research) (31.6 percent), BPC Generation Infrastructure Trust, an investment entity owned by Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (31.6 percent), the Power Workers' Union (4 percent) and the Society of Energy Professionals (1.2 percent). Continued... © Reuters 2007. All rights reserved. | Learn more about Reuters ***************************************************************** 21 Reuters: Europe energy chiefs urge public to trust nuclear Mon Oct 1, 2007 1:42pm EDT By Jane Barrett MADRID (Reuters) - European energy executives urged governments on Monday to work on the attitudes of their citizens so they can reopen the door to nuclear as a carbon-free source of power for the continent over coming decades. As the European Union tries to cut emissions of greenhouse gas carbon dioxide and improve the security of its power supply, nuclear is coming back as an option, despite public fears arising from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. "We're facing a nuclear renaissance," said Anne Lauvergeon, chief executive of French nuclear energy firm Areva. "Nuclear's not the devil any more. The devil is coal," she told an energy conference in Madrid. "The problem is people see it (the choice) as coal or renewable energy and they are still keeping nuclear behind the curtain." Since the Chernobyl explosion, the world's worst nuclear accident, many people have held nuclear power on a sin list and many countries have shut atomic plants or are phasing them out. Nonetheless, France generates three quarters of its energy from nuclear sources and Britain is considering building new plants, so executives said other countries just needed to educate people about nuclear safety and technological advances. "We shouldn't rule out any source of energy but nuclear is almost a religious issue in Germany. Public opinion has to be changed before Union Fenosa CEO Pedro Lopez Jimenez agreed, saying fears over nuclear power were "beyond any rational calculation" while EDF CEO Pierre Gadonneix said politicians had a "global responsibility" to get the public to accept nuclear. Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, told the conference that there had to be a full and frank debate about nuclear power in the bloc and said the EU could help on research and safety. While the public might still view nuclear as a demon two decades after Chernobyl, executives said it could now be re-established thanks to its modern credentials as a carbon-free power source in an age of global warming worries. The fact that nuclear power plants do not depend on importing oil or gas from third countries also works in its favor at a time when geopolitical concerns and power plays can have huge effects on energy prices. "You know what the cost of electricity is going to be for the next 60 years or so when you set up a plant," said Areva's Lauvergeon. "That makes it a very competitive play." ***************************************************************** 22 Reuters: FPL shuts Fla. St Lucie 2 reactor for refueling | Mon Oct 1, 2007 10:38am EDT NEW YORK, Oct 1 (Reuters) - FPL Group Inc (FPL.N: Quote, Profile, Research) shut the 839-megawatt Unit 2 at the St. Lucie nuclear power station in Florida for planned refueling on Sunday, the company said in a release. The company expects the unit to return in mid-December. The unit last shut for refueling from April 24 to June 13, 2006. It is on an 18-month refueling cycle. In addition to the usual refueling activities (the replacement of about a third of the unit's 217 uranium fuel assemblies), the company said it plans to replace the unit's two steam generators and reactor vessel head, an investment of about $310 million in capital improvements. Hot water from the nuclear reactor circulates through thousands of tubes within the steam generators. A separate supply of water flows outside of the hot tubes, turning the water into steam that drives a turbine-generator to make electricity. A steam generator stands about 63 feet tall, 19 feet in diameter and weighs close to 500 tons. The reactor vessel head is a large metal lid secured to the reactor vessel by dozens of large bolts. It is about 8 feet high, 16 feet in diameter and weighs more than 70 tons. The company replaced the steam generators and reactor head on Unit 1 in 1998 and 2005, respectively. Continued... ***************************************************************** 23 Reuters: NRC begins on-site study of Arizona nuclear station Mon Oct 1, 2007 7:40pm EDT LOS ANGELES, Oct 1 (Reuters) - The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, citing past operational problems at the Palo Verde nuclear power plant, said it began a three-week review at the power station in Arizona on Monday. The Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, the largest U.S. nuclear plant with three reactor units capable of making about 3,850 megawatts, is under extra scrutiny by the NRC. Its majority owner and operator is Arizona Public Service, a unit of Pinnacle West Capital Corp (PNW.N: Quote, Profile, Research). The plant is about 50 miles west of Phoenix, and at full operation can supply power to more than 2 million homes. After two seeks of inspection and study of records, a 20-member team from the NRC will take a break and then conduct a third week of on-site inspections beginning Oct. 29. A report on the group's findings will be made public before the end of the year, the NRC said in a press statement. Despite the extra scrutiny called for by the NRC after operational lapses, "Palo Verde continues to operate safely," said NRC Region 4 Administrator Elmo E. Collins. "However, the number and significance of previous equipment problems warrants increased NRC inspection," Collins said in the NRC press statement issued on Monday. "This particular inspection is designed to give us a very close look at the scope and effectiveness of Palo Verde's performance improvement initiatives." The NRC is not curtailing the output of the plant. One of the three reactors is now shut for refueling and maintenance, but that is not related to the inspection. Palo Verde has been under increased NRC oversight since late 2004 following a finding for a substantial safety issue. Inspectors found that APS left air pockets in parts of the cooling system at each reactor that could have hindered the system during some types of accidents, the NRC said. Continued... ***************************************************************** 24 Reuters: APS Ariz. Palo Verde 3 reactor shut for refueling Mon Oct 1, 2007 8:33am EDT NEW YORK, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Arizona Public Service shut the 1,247-megawatt Unit 3 at the Palo Verde nuclear power station in Arizona for a planned refueling outage by early Monday, company officials and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in a report. The company said it would shut the unit on Sept. 30 for a planned refueling outage and maintenance overhaul. It was operating at 40 percent power early Friday. During the outage, the company will replace the unit's two steam generators and three low-pressure turbines in addition to the usual refueling activities. The company expects the unit to return by the end of the year. Each steam generator is about 72 feet high, 17 feet in diameter and weighs about 800 tons, the company said. The unit last shut for refueling from April 2-May 15, 2006. It is on an 18-month refueling cycle. The company could not say how much the project would cost but noted that after this work the power output of Unit 3 should be the same as Units 1 and 2. The 3,875 MW Palo Verde station is located in Wintersburg in Maricopa County about 50 miles west of Phoenix. There are three units at the station: the 1,314 MW Units 1 and 2, and 1,247 MW Unit 3, which entered service in 1986, 1986 and 1988, respectively. Continued... View article on single page Also on Reuters Radiohead tells fans to pay what they want for album Endangered coral becomes climate warning system Turner Prize: Is it art? Fans get chance to decide powered by Sphere Featured Broker sponsored link Editor's Choice A selection of our best photos from the past 24 hours. View Slideshow Environment InDepth Entertainment International: Bhutto might allow strike on Osama Health: Curb toddler TV-viewing by age 5: study Lifestyle: Ginseng picking a lucrative hobby Most Popular on Reuters 1. 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Russia 10. oil Reuters.com: Help and Contact Us | Advertise With Us | Mobile | Newsletters | RSS | Widgets | Interactive TV | Labs | Reuters in Second Life | Archive | Site Index Reuters Corporate: Copyright | Disclaimer | Privacy | Professional Products | Professional Products Support | About Reuters | Careers International Editions: Africa | Arabic | Argentina | Brazil | Canada | Chinese Simplified | Chinese Traditional | France | Germany | India | Italy | Japan | Latin America | Mexico | Russia | Spain | United Kingdom | United States Reuters is the world's largest international multimedia news agency, providing investing news, world news, business news, technology news, headline news, small business news, news alerts, personal finance, stock market, and mutual funds information available on Reuters.com, video, mobile, and interactive television platforms. Reuters journalists are subject to the Reuters Editorial Handbook which requires fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests. ***************************************************************** 25 Reuters: DTE shuts Mich. Fermi 2 reactor for refuel | Mon Oct 1, 2007 10:21am EDT NEW YORK, Oct 1 (Reuters) - DTE Energy Co (DTE.N: Quote, Profile, Research) shut the 1,111-megawatt Unit 2 at the Fermi nuclear power station in Michigan for refueling on Sept. 29, a spokesman for the company said Monday. Before the operators shut the unit, it had run for 425 consecutive days, its longest period of operation, the spokesman said. The outage will last about 30 to 40 days, he said. The unit last shut for refueling from March 25-May 8, 2006. It is on an 18-month refueling cycle. In addition to the usual refueling activities, the company plans to upgrade and overhaul the three low-pressure turbines, overhaul one of the 2 reactor recirculation pumps, and work on the pumps and motors on both emergency equipment cooling water systems. The 7,500-horsepower recirculation pump motors weigh 40,000 pounds and stand 10 feet tall. On Friday, the unit was operating at full power. The Fermi station is located in Newport in Monroe County about 25 miles northeast of Toledo, Ohio. There is one nuclear unit at the station, Unit 2, which entered service in 1988, and four distillate fuel oil units, including one 12 MW unit and three 13 MW units. Continued... ***************************************************************** 26 NRC: NRC Publishes Final Rule on Expanded Definition of Radioactive Byproduct Material News Release - 2007-124 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-0001 E-mail: opa@nrc.gov www.nrc.gov The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has published its final rule expanding the definition of radioactive materials subject to its regulatory authority, implementing provisions of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The new regulations, published today in the Federal Register, become effective Nov. 30. The Commission approved the rule by a 5-0 vote affirmed May 14, but directed the staff to incorporate several changes and to obtain approval from the Office of Management and Budget for information-collection requirements before publishing the rule. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 expanded the definition of so-called “byproduct material” subject to NRC’s authority to include discrete sources of radium-226, material made radioactive in a particle accelerator, and other radioactive material that the Commission determines could pose a threat to public health and safety or the common defense and security. Previously, these materials were regulated by the states. Although the legislation made NRC’s authority over these new materials effective immediately, the agency issued a waiver allowing states to continue to regulate them while the agency drafted regulations to implement the new requirements. The NRC soon will publish a transition plan for assuming the new authority over these materials. The 34 Agreement States - which regulate byproduct materials in their states under agreements with the NRC - will maintain authority over the new materials under their agreements with the NRC. The text of the rule and other information about the NRC’s plans for implementing its new authority are posted on the NRC Web site at this address: http://nrc-stp.ornl.gov/narmtoolbox.html NRC news releases are available through a free listserv subscription at the following Web address: http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/listserver.html. The NRC Home Page at www.nrc.gov also offers a Subscribe to News link in the News & Information menu. E-mail notifications are sent to subscribers when news releases are posted to NRC's Web Site. Monday, October 01, 2007 ***************************************************************** 27 TheDay.com: Millstone Must Install Backup Switches By Patricia Daddona Published on 10/1/2007 The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has given Millstone Power Station until Thursday to install remote backup switches that would help operators implement the second phase of any shutdown required for a major emergency at the Unit 3 reactor. The nuclear power complex owned by Dominion has switches in place in the control room at Unit 3, which is a pressurized water reactor, to throw the reactor into both “hot†and “cold†shutdown. However, if there’s a fire or other emergency in the control room and the switches cannot be reached, the only way to get to a cold shutdown and completely stop the fission process is “outside normal procedures and more challenging for operators,†said NRC Spokesman Neil Sheehan. This lack of remote backup is a design flaw original to the plant, and possibly, to others like it, Sheehan said. Dominion detected the problem in between sessions of a three-year NRC fire prevention inspection that lasted one week starting Sept. 17 and resumed this week. The company’s inspection team identified the issue Thursday at 5:30 p.m., Sheehan said, and a notice was put on the NRC Web site about the condition today. When the plant has to be shut down in an emergency, it is first closed in what’s called a “hot shutdown,†where water in a loop of coolant remains heated and under high pressure. The reactor is later put into “cold shutdown†when boron is added to the water to further cool it, said Sheehan. The NRC has imposed what’s called a “limiting condition†of one week for Millstone owner Dominion to solve the problem at Unit 3. The problem must be resolved by this Thursday at 5:30 p.m., Sheehan said. Hourly fire watches are temporarily in place until then, he said. “The good news is they’ve identified this and have time to resolve it,†said Sheehan. Lack of access to the control room “is a highly unlikely scenario.There’s never been a fire in any nuclear power plant control room. But this is exactly what these kinds of reviews are designed to detect.†Privacy Policy | Contact Us at 1 (860) 442-2200 | New London, CT | © 1998-2007 The Day Publishing Co. 102 ***************************************************************** 28 BH: Vt. nuke plant says cooling tower problems should not be part of licencse review - BostonHerald.com By Associated Press Monday, October 1, 2007 - Added 12h ago BRATTLEBORO, Vt. - The company that owns the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant says the collapse of a portion of a cooling tower should not be looked at by federal officials considering whether to extend the plant’s operating license for 20 years. In a letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Entergy Nuclear says the cooling towers are not strictly considered "safety" equipment and so are outside the scope of federal review. The NRC had asked Entergy for any details of age-related degradation of the tower components following the Aug. 21 collapse and gave Entergy 30 days to respond. NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said the commission would be studying the Entergy response and determine whether additional information was needed. The company said the collapse was due to an "iron salt attack" on the lumber that makes up the frame of the cells. The cooling towers are not directly associated with the nuclear side of the plant. But two of the 11 cells in the affected tower provide a backup emergency cooling system to the reactor. Entergy Nuclear has asked for permission to extend the operating license of Vermont Yankee for 20 years beyond the current license expires in 2012. Entergy has maintained that since the towers are not involved in the nuclear side of the plant, or even with the generation of power, they outside federal review. © Copyright 2007 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This ***************************************************************** 29 Rachels: WHY IS UNCLE SAM SO COMMITTED TO REVIVING NUCLEAR POWER? Rachel's #926: Nuclear Renaissance Thursday, September 27, 2007 By Peter Montague The long-awaited and much-advertised "nuclear renaissance" actually got under way this week. NRG Energy, a New Jersey company recently emerged from bankruptcy, applied for a license to build two new nuclear power plants{1} at an existing facility in Bay City, Texas -- the first formal application for such a license in 30 years. NRG Energy has no experience building nuclear power plants but they are confident the U.S. government will assure their success. "The whole reason we started down this path was the benefits written into the [Energy Policy Act] of 2005," NRG's chief executive, David Crame, told the Washington Post{2}. In other words, the whole reason NRG Energy wants to build nuclear power plants is to get bundles of free money from Uncle Sam. Who could blame them? Other energy corporations are nuzzling up to the same trough. The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is expecting to receive applications for an additional 29 nuclear power reactors at 20 sites{3}. The NRC has already hired more than 400 new staff{4} to deal with the expected flood of applications. But the question remains, Can investors be fooled twice? Financially, the nuclear power industry has never stood on its own two feet without a crutch from Uncle Sam. Indeed, the nuclear power industry is entirely a creature of the federal government; it was created out of whole cloth by the feds in the 1950s. At that time, investors were enticed by offers of free money -- multi-billion-dollar subsidies, rapid write-offs, special limits on liability, and federal loan guarantees. Despite all this special help, by the 1970s the industry was in a shambles. The British magazine, the Economist, recently described it this way{5}: "Billions were spent bailing out lossmaking nuclear-power companies. The industry became a byword for mendacity, secrecy and profligacy with taxpayers' money. For two decades neither governments nor bankers wanted to touch it." Now the U.S. federal government is once again doing everything in its power to entice investors, trying to revive atomic power. First, Uncle Sam is trying hard to remove the financial risk for investors. The Energy Policy Act, which Congress approved in 2005, provides four different kinds of subsidies{6} for atomic power plants: 1. It grants $2 billion in insurance against regulatory delays and lawsuits to the first six reactors that get licenses and begin construction. Energy corporations borrow money to build plants and they must start paying interest on those loans immediately, even though it take years for a plant to start generating income. The longer the licensing and construction delays, the greater the losses. Historically, lawsuits or other interventions by citizens have extended the licensing timeline, sometimes by years, costing energy corporations large sums. Now Uncle Sam will provide free insurance against any such losses. 2. Second, the 2005 law extends the older Price-Anderson Act, which limits a utility's liability to $10 billion in the event of a nuclear accident. A serious accident at a nuclear plant near a major city could create hundreds of billions of dollars in liabilities. Uncle Sam has agreed to relieve investors of that very real fear. 3. The 2005 law provides a tax credit of 1.8 cents per kilowatt-hour for the first 6,000 megawatts generated by new plants. Free money, plain and simple. 4. Most important, the law offers guarantees loans to fund new atomic power reactors and other power plants using "innovative" technology. Investors need no longer fear bad loans. One obvious conclusion from all this is that, more than 50 years into the nuclear enterprise, atomic power still cannot attract investors and compete successfully in a "free market." This industry still requires an unprecedented level of subsidy and other government support just to survive. An energy corporation's motives for buying into this system are clear: enormous subsidies improve the chance of substantial gain. However, the federal government's reasons for wanting to revive a moribund nuclear industry are not so clear. If the "free market" won't support the revival of nuclear power, why would the federal government want to pay billions upon billions of dollars to allay investor fears? It certainly has little to do with global warming. At the time the 2005 energy bill was passed by a Republic-dominated Congress the official position of the Republican leadership was that global warming was a hoax. Even now when some Republicans have begun to acknowledge that perhaps we may have a carbon dioxide problem, science tells us that nuclear power plants are not the best way to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions. They're not even close to being the best way. (Lazy journalists are in the habit it repeating the industry mantra that nuclear power produces no greenhouse gases. This is nonsense. Read on.) Substantial carbon dioxide emissions accompany every stage of nuclear power production, from the manufacture and eventual dismantling of nuclear plants, to the mining, processing, transport, and enrichment of uranium fuel, plus the eventual processing, transport, and burial of nuclear wastes. A careful life-cycle analysis{7} by the Institute for Applied Ecology in Darmstadt, Germany, concludes that a 1250 megaWatt nuclear power plant, operating 6500 hours per year in Germany, produces greenhouse gases equivalent to 250,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. In other (unspecified) countries besides Germany, the same power plant could produce as much as 750,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents, the Institute study shows. (See Figure 3, pg. 5) The study concludes that, in the emission of global warming gases (measured per kilowatt-hour of electricity made available), nuclear power compares unfavorably to... ** conservation through efficiency improvements ** run-of-river hydro plants (which use river water power but require no dams) ** offshore wind generators ** onshore wind generators ** power plants run by gas-fired internal combustion engines, especially plants that use both the electricity and the heat generated by the engine ** power plants run by bio-fuel-powered internal combustion engines Of eleven ways to generate electricity (or avoid the need to generate electricity through efficiency and conservation) analyzed by the Institute, four are worse than nuclear from the viewpoint of greenhouse gas emissions, and six are better. [For a great deal of additional solid information showing that nuclear power is no answer to global warming, check in with the Nuclear Information and Resource Service{8} (NIRS)]. A study completed this summer{9} by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER) in Takoma Park, Maryland concluded that it is feasible, within 35 to 60 years, to evolve an energy system to power the U.S. economy without the use of any nuclear power plants or any coal plants. See the IEER study, Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free; A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy{10}. So the rationale for the U.S. government's Herculean efforts to revive a decrepit nuclear power industry cannot be based on concern for global warming or energy independence. The facts simply don't support such a rationale. Whatever its motivation, the U.S. federal government is doing everything in its power to revive atomic power. In addition to removing most of the financial risk for investors, Uncle Sam has removed other obstacles like democratic participation in siting and licensing decisions. Throughout the 1970s, energy corporations complained that getting a license took too long. In response, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has spent more than a decade "streamlining" the process for building nuclear plants. Most of the "streamlining" consists of new ways to exclude the public from information and decisions. For example, members of the public used to be able to question witnesses during licensing hearings. No more. There used to be two sets of hearings -- one for siting the plant, and another for constructing the plant. No more. These two set of issues have been rolled into a single license and a single hearing. The purpose is to accommodate the needs of the nuclear industry, to help it survive. As attorney Tony Roisman observed recently{11}, "The nuclear industry has come to the agency [the NRC] and said, 'If you don't make it easy for us to get a license, we are not going to apply for one.'" So the agency is making it easy. Perhaps it is natural for NRC commissioners to justify a strong bias in favor of keeping the nuclear industry alive even if safety and democracy have to be compromised. After all, if there were no corporations willing to build new nuclear power plants, soon there would be no need for a Nuclear Regulatory Commission. So NRC commissioners know in their bones that their first priority must be to keep the nuclear industry alive. Every bureaucracy's first priority is self-perpetuation. Furthermore, historically a position as an NRC commissioner can lead directly to a high-paying job, often in the nuclear industry itself. To grease the skids for a nuclear revival, the most important change the NRC has made has been to creatively redefine the meaning of the word "construction." This change was enacted in April, 2007, with lightning speed -- six months from initial proposal to final adoption. By way of comparison, it took the NRC eleven years to adopt regulations requiring drug testing for nuclear plant operators. "Construction" has traditionally included all the activities undertaken to build a nuclear power plant, starting with site selection, evaluation, testing and preparation, construction of peripheral facilities like cooling towers, and so on. Even the earliest stages of siting are crucially important with a facility as complex and dangerous as a nuclear power plant. In April of this year, the NRC officially redefined "construction" to include only construction of the reactor itself -- excluding site selection, evaluation, testing and preparation, construction of peripheral facilities and all the rest. At the time, one senior environmental manager inside NRC complained in an email that NRC's redefinition of "construction" would exclude from NRC regulation{12} "probably 90 percent of the true environmental impacts of construction." Under the new rules, by the time the NRC gets involved, a company will have invested perhaps a hundred million dollars. Will NRC commissioners have the backbone to toss that investment into the toilet if they eventually find something wrong with the site? Or will they roll over for the industry and compromise safety? The lawyer who dreamed up the redefinition of "construction" is James Curtiss, himself a former NRC commissioner who now sits on the board of directors of the nuclear power giant, Constellation Energy Group. This revolving door pathway from NRC to industry is well-worn. One NRC commissioner who voted in April to change the definition of construction is Jeffrey Merrifield. Before he left the NRC in July, Mr. Merrifield's last assignment as an NRC commissioner was to chair an agency task force on ways to accelerate licensing. In April, while he was urging his colleagues at NRC to redefine "construction," Mr. Merrifield was actively seeking a top management position within the nuclear industry. In July he became senior vice president for Shaw Group, a nuclear builder that has worked on 95% of all existing U.S. nuclear plants. Mr. Merrifield's salary at NRC was $154,600. Bloomberg reports{13} that, "In Shaw Group's industry peer group, $705,409 is the median compensation for a senior vice president." No one in government or the industry seems the least bit embarrassed by any of this. It's just the way it is. Indeed, Mr. Merrifield points out that, while he was an NRC commissioner providing very substantial benefits to the nuclear industry by his decisions, his concurrent search for a job within the regulated industry was approved by the NRC's Office of General Counsel and its Inspector General. From this, one might conclude that Mr. Merrifield played by all the rules and did nothing wrong. Or one might conclude that venality and corruption reach into the highest levels of the NRC. Or one might conclude that after NRC commissioners have completed their assignment inside government, everyone in the agency just naturally feels they are entitled to a lifetime of lavish reward from the industry on whose behalf they have labored so diligently. As recently as this summer, Uncle Sam was still devising new ways to revive nuclear power. In July the U.S. Senate allowed the nuclear industry{14} to add a one-sentence provision to the energy bill, which the Senate then passed. The one sentence greatly expanded the loan guarantee provisions of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The 2005 Act had specified that Uncle Sam could guarantee loans for new nuclear power plants up to a limit set each year by Congress. In 2007 the limit was set at a paltry $4 billion. The one-sentence revision adopted by the Senate removed all limits on loan guarantees. The nuclear industry says it needs at least $50 billion in the next two years. Michael J. Wallace, the co-chief executive of UniStar Nuclear, a partnership seeking to build nuclear reactors, and executive vice president of Constellation Energy, said: "Without loan guarantees we will not build nuclear power plants." The Senate and the House of Representatives are presently arm- wrestling over the proposed expansion of loan guarantees. In June, the White House budget office{15} said that the Senate's proposed changes to the loan-guarantee program could "significantly increase potential taxpayer liability" and "eliminate any incentive for due diligence by private lenders." On Wall Street this is known as a "moral hazard{16}" -- conditions under which waste, fraud and abuse can flourish. All these subsidies to revive a dead duck run directly counter to free market ideals and capitalism's credo of unfettered competition. So the intriguing question remains, Why? Why wouldn't the nation go whole-hog for alternative energy sources and avoid all the problems that accompany nuclear power -- routine radioactive releases, the constant fear of a serious accidents, the unsolved problem of radioactive waste that must be stored somewhere reliably for a million years, and -- the greatest danger of all -- the inevitable reality that anyone who can build a nuclear power plant can build an atomic bomb if they set their minds to it. The recent experience of Israel, India, North Korea and Pakistan in this regard is completely convincing and undeniable. So why is Uncle Sam hell-bent on reviving nuclear power? I don't have a firm answer and can only speculate. Perhaps from the viewpoint of both Washington and Wall Street, nuclear power is preferable to renewable-energy alternatives because it is extremely capital- intensive and the people who provide the capital get to control the machine and the energy it provides. It provide a rationale for a large centralized bureaucracy and tight military and police security to thwart terrorists. This kind of central control can act as a powerful counterweight to excessive democratic tendencies in any country that buys into nuclear power. Particularly if they sign a contract with the U.S. or one of its close allies for delivery of fuel and removal of radioactive wastes, political control becomes a powerful (though unstated) part of the bargain. If you are dependent on nuclear power for electricity and you are dependent on us for reactor fuel, you are in our pocket. On the other hand, solar, wind and other renewable energy alternatives lend themselves to small- scale, independent installations under the control of local communities or even households. Who knows where that could lead? Then I think of the present situation in the Middle East. Saddam Hussein started down the road to nuclear power until the Israelis bombed to smithereens{17} the Osirak nuclear plant he was building in 1981. That ended his dalliance with nuclear power and nuclear weapons --but that didn't stop Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney from using Saddam's nuclear history as an excuse to invade his country and string him up. And now something similar is unfolding in Iran. Iran wants nuclear power plants partly to show how sophisticated and capable it has become, and partly to thumb its nose at the likes of Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney -- and perhaps to try to draw us into another war that would indelibly mark us for the next hundred years as enemies of Islam, serving to further unite much of the Arab world against us. Is this kind of thinking totally nuts? I don't think so. Newsweek reported in its October 1, 2007 issue{18} that Dick Cheney has been mulling a plan to convince the Israeli's to bomb the Iranian nuclear power plant at Natanz, hoping to provoke the Iranians into striking back so that the U.S. would then have an excuse to bomb Iran. I'm not making this up. So clearly there are more important uses for nuclear power than just making electricity. Arguably, nuclear reactors have become essential tools of U.S. foreign policy -- being offered, withheld, and bargained over. They have a special appeal around the world because they have become double-edged symbols of modernity, like shiny toy guns that can be loaded with real bullets. Because of this special characteristic, they have enormous appeal and can provide enormous bargaining power. Witness North Korea. And, as we have seen, nuclear reactors can provide excuses to invade and bomb when no other excuses exist. So perhaps Uncle Sam considers it worth investing a few hundred billion dollars of taxpayer funds to keep this all-purpose Swiss army knife of U.S. foreign policy available in our back pocket. In the past five years, we've already devoted $800 billion to splendid little wars{19} in Afghanistan and Iraq, at least partly to secure U.S. oil supplies{20}. Uncle Sam's desperate attempts to revive nuclear power can perhaps best be understood as part of that ongoing effort at oil recovery{21}. Meanwhile, investors should think twice before buying into the "nuclear renaissance" because there's another "renaissance" under way as well: A powerful anti-nuclear movement is growing again and they will toss your billions into the toilet without hesitation. Indeed, with glee. {1} http://www.precaution.org/lib/nuke_revival_kicks_off.070925.htm {2} http://www.precaution.org/lib/nuke_revival_kicks_off.070925.htm {3} http://www.precaution.org/lib/nuke_power_second_act.070925.htm {4} http://www.precaution.org/lib/flood_of_nuke_proposals_expected. 070907.htm {5} http://www.precaution.org/lib/nuke_powers_new_age.070906.htm {6} http://www.precaution.org/lib/nuclear_renaissance.070922.htm {7} http://www.precaution.org/lib/nuke_ghg_emissions.060224.pdf {8} http://www.nirs.org/climate/background/backgrndhome.htm {9} http://www.precaution.org/lib/07/prn_ieer_roadmap.070822.htm {10} http://www.precaution.org/lib/07/prn_ieer_roadmap.070822.htm {11} http://www.precaution.org/lib/redefining_one_word_ploughing_ ahead.070925.htm {12} http://www.precaution.org/lib/redefining_one_word_ploughing_ ahead.070925.htm {13} http://www.precaution.org/lib/redefining_one_word_ploughing_ ahead.070925.htm {14} http://www.precaution.org/lib/energy_bill_expands_nukes.070731. htm {15} http://www.precaution.org/lib/lawmakers_revisit_energy_bills. 070905.htm {16} http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard {17} http://www.precaution.org/lib/israelis_destroy_iraqi_atomic_ reactor.19810609.htm {18} http://www.precaution.org/lib/cheney_wanted_israel_to_bomb_iran. 071001.htm {19} http://www.homeofheroes.com/wallofhonor/spanish_am/01_intro.html {20} http://www.precaution.org/lib/will_fight_for_oil.koppel.060224. txt {21} http://www.precaution.org/lib/greenspan_says_oil_caused_iraq_ war.070916.htm :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: URL: http://www.precaution.org/lib/07/ipcc_feb_2007_report_findings. 070927.htm Environmental Research Foundation P.O. Box 160, New Brunswick, N.J. 08903 dhn@rachel.org ____________________________________________________________ rachel-text@pplist.net To be removed from the list, send any message to: rachel-text-unsubscribe@pplist.net ***************************************************************** 30 DW: Some EU Officials Want to Resist Nuclear Power Renaissance | Europe | Deutsche Welle | 01.10.2007 Politicians questioned the actual benefits nuclear energy would bring the environment High-ranking European government officials, representing seven anti-nuclear states called Monday for alternatives to nuclear energy, which is experiencing a renaissance as attention turns to lowering greenhouse gases. Representatives from Germany, Austria, Ireland, Norway, Italy, Luxembourg, and Latvia started a two-day meeting in Vienna on Sunday, Sept. 30, to forge a joint declaration against nuclear energy. Participating politicians called for more investments in energy-efficiency measures and renewable energies rather than nuclear power. "We are no anti-nuclear coalition, but we want to show alternatives," said Austrian Environment Minister Josef Pröll. The declaration, focusing on the safety and security risks surrounding nuclear energy, said this form of energy was not the best way to fight climate change. Matthias Machnig, German deputy minister for environment, criticized the alleged positive role of nuclear energy in reducing global greenhouse gases as a "myth," adding that the world's combined power plants would only contribute with 8 percent to carbon dioxide reduction. The discussion on nuclear energy only slowed down investment into energy efficiency and alternative energy forms, he said. Nuclear renaissance? Bildunterschrift: The Chernobyl disaster led some countries to rethink their nuclear power strategy Support for nuclear energy dropped after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster but the energy source has come back into fashion as governments and officials look at strategies toward lowering greenhouse gas emissions. Recent increases in gas and oil prices as well as questions about the reliability of Russian energy supplies have also raised European energy concerns. European Union Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs said in an interview published in Spanish daily El Pais on Monday that the EU should aim to generate 30 percent of its electricity from nuclear sources in order to ensure member states' energy security. Industry officials are promoting third-generation pressurized water reactors which provide greater energy, improved security and reduced waste compared to earlier versions of nuclear reactors. These new reactors are still rejected by environmentalists. Long-term ecological effects Bildunterschrift: Nuclear power opponents question what will become of radioactive waste But Italy's Environment Minister Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio warned of the long-term ecological effects -- his country is still dealing with nuclear waste, 20 years after quitting nuclear energy. Latvia was the only country in the group that is actively moving ahead with expanding its nuclear energy capabilities, while all other seven members either have no nuclear energy or are planning a phase-out, like Germany. The cooperation was no contradiction, Latvia's deputy environment secretary Martins Jirgens said, as he hoped the planned Latvian involvement in the construction of the Lithuanian nuclear reactor Ignalina would not go ahead. An issue for national governments European Commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso urged EU nations on Monday to hold a "total and frank debate" about the use of nuclear energy. "Member states can not avoid the question of nuclear energy," he said Monday during an energy conference in Madrid. "It is not the EU's role to decide if they should or should not use nuclear power." DW staff (sms) * Germany's Nuclear Phase-Out Ignites Fresh Political Row Although Germany decided years ago to phase-out nuclear power, politicians from the country's governing parties continue to argue about how and when it will happen. (02.09.2007) * Concerns Mount Over Nuclear Energy After Series of Scares Irregularities at nuclear reactors in Germany and Japan in recent weeks have rekindled safety fears and raised tough questions about nuclear energy amid increasing environmental concerns. (27.07.2007) * Merkel Calls for Policy Change After Energy Summit After talks with leaders of Germany's energy sector, Chancellor Angela Merkel said Tuesday that her government will present a new energy policy later this year. Industry representatives called her plans "unrealistic." (03.07.2007) © 2007 Deutsche Welle ***************************************************************** 31 Guardian Unlimited: Kyrgzstan to Help on Nuclear Smuggling Sunday September 30, 2007 11:46 PM By MATTHEW LEE Associated Press Writer NEW YORK (AP)- Kyrgyzstan on Sunday signed on to a U.S. program to curb nuclear smuggling, becoming the fourth former Soviet state to join the initiative. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Kyrgyz Foreign Minister Ednan Karabayev signed an agreement that will help the Central Asian nation improve its capability to prevent, detect and respond to the smuggling of dangerous nuclear and radioactive material. The deal commits Washington and Bishkek to taking 20 steps, including police and border security guard training, setting up radiation sensors and preparing an inventory of nuclear material in Kyrgyzstan, to combat growing concerns about the illicit trade. ``With this agreement, the U.S. and Kyrgyz governments are significantly enhancing their collaborative efforts combating the threat that nuclear or highly radioactive materials could be acquired by terrorists or others who would use them to harm us,'' the State Department said. Although Kyrgyzstan did not host atomic weapons during the Soviet era, it does have nuclear power plants and there have been several incidents of smuggling of radioactive material through the country, some from sites to the north in Siberia, U.S. officials said. Kygyzstan is the fourth ex-Soviet republic to join the U.S. Nuclear Smuggling Outreach Initiative. The other three are Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Georgia. The United States hopes to sign another 20 similar agreements with countries where nuclear smuggling is a concern, the State Department said in a statement. --- On the Net: The U.S. Nuclear Smuggling Outreach Initiative: www.nsoi-state.net Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 32 NAS: Project: Gulf War and Health: Updated Literature Review of Depleted Uranium Project Title: PIN: PHPH-H-06-01-A Major Unit: Institute of Medicine Sub Unit: Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice RSO: Mitchell, Abigail Subject/Focus Area: Project Scope A committee of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) will review, evaluate, and summarize scientific and medical literature regarding the association between exposure to depleted uranium and chronic human health effects. The study committee will focus on literature published since the IOM's 2000 report, Gulf War and Health, Volume 1: Depleted Uranium, Pyridostigmine Bromide, Sarin, and Vaccines was written. The committee will make determinations on the strength of the evidence for associations between exposure to depleted uranium and human health effects. The report might include recommendations for additional scientific studies to resolve areas of continued scientific uncertainty. The findings will not be limited to veterans of the 1991 Gulf War. They also will be applicable to veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. This project is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The start date for the project is September 18, 2006. A report will be issued at the end of the project in approximately 15 months. 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 - 03/22/2007 Meeting 2 - 06/28/2007 Meeting 3 - 09/27/2007 Reports Reports having no URL can be seen at the Public Access Records Office Email: info@nas.edu ***************************************************************** 33 NAS: Project: Beryllium Alloy Exposures in Military Aerospace Applications Project Title: PIN: BEST-K-05-03-A Major Unit: Division on Earth and Life Studies Sub Unit: Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology RSO: Martel, Susan Subject/Focus Area: Project Scope An ad hoc committee under the oversight of the standing Committee on Toxicology (COT) will conduct this study. In its first report, the committee will provide an independent review of the toxicologic, epidemiologic, and other relevant data on beryllium. The committee will also review carcinogenic and non-carcinogenic effects. In its second report, the committee will estimate chronic inhalation exposure levels for military personnel and civilian contractor workers that are unlikely to produce adverse health effects. The committee will provide carcinogenic risk estimates for various inhalation exposure levels. The committee will consider genetic susceptibility among worker subpopulations. If sufficient data are available, the committee will evaluate whether beryllium-alloy exposure levels should be different than those of other forms of beryllium because of differences in particle size. The committee will identify specific tests for workers surveillance and biomonitoring. The committee will also comment on the utility of the beryllium lymphocyte proliferation test (BeLPT). Specifically the committee will determine (1) the value of the borderline or a true positive test in predicting CBD, (2) its utility in worker's surveillance, (3) further follow up tests for workers with positive BeLPT (thin slice CT bronchoscopy, biopsy, etc.), (4) the likelihood of developing CBD after a true positive test, and (5) a standardized methodology to achieve consistent test results from different laboratories. The committee will evaluate whether there are more suitable tests that would have more accuracy as screening or surveillance tools. The committee will also identify data gaps relevant to risk assessment of beryllium alloys and make recommendations for further research. The project is sponsored by the U.S. Air Force. Start date: September 29, 2006. The first report will be issued in 12 months, and the final report in approximately 24 months. Project duration: 24 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 - 02/05/2007 Meeting 2 - 04/05/2007 Reports Reports having no URL can be seen at the Public Access Records Office Email: info@nas.edu ***************************************************************** 34 ReviewJournal.com: Clinton call for Yucca hearing unfulfilled Oct. 01, 2007 By MOLLY BALL REVIEW-JOURNAL Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., shown Friday in Washington, has not made progress on her effort to conduct a congressional hearing into the planned nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. Photo by The Associated Press In last week's Democratic presidential debate, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., flattered Nevadans by mentioning her opposition to the planned nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. She did not mention what might have served as strong evidence of her stance: that in July, she called for congressional hearings on the project, the sooner the better. Perhaps that is because there's no evidence Clinton has made any progress in bringing those hearings about. When she called for the hearings, she said she was doing so because the issue was urgent, and "I'm not going to be president for 18 months." She also said she had the ability to get the hearings scheduled as a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. At the time, the committee's chairwoman, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., was reported to have agreed to schedule the hearings soon after the Senate reconvened in September. September has come and gone and there has been no word on the proposed hearings. Nothing on Yucca is on the committee's published agenda. The agenda goes only through Wednesday. But preparations for hearings typically begin further in advance, and aides said there does not appear to be any Yucca hearings in the works. "At this time, we are unaware of any plans for the committee to hold hearings on Yucca Mountain," Republican committee staffer Matt Dempsey said. Clinton spokeswoman Hilarie Grey said Clinton put in a request for the hearings and is "hoping to get a date very soon." "She requested the hearings, and she wants to have the hearings," Grey said. Clinton's Senate office is "working with Senator Boxer's office to get the hearing scheduled." Boxer's Senate office referred inquiries to the committee office. Over two days of repeated inquiries, a Democratic committee spokesman did not follow through on a promise to find out the status of the request for Yucca hearings. Clinton clearly is following the issue. In Wednesday's debate, she picked up on a remark by Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, that he was "one of the few up here who actually spoke against having a nuclear dump in Nevada." When it was her turn to answer moderator Tim Russert's question about nuclear power, Clinton said she wouldn't rule out expanding it, "but it would not be one of the options that I favor unless, No. 1, the cost can get down for the construction and operation; No. 2, that we have a viable solution for the nuclear waste." She continued, "I voted against Yucca Mountain. I've spoken out against Yucca Mountain. I think that recently the discovery (that) there's an earthquake fault going under the proposed site at Yucca Mountain certainly validates my opposition." Clinton's commitment to stopping Yucca has been questioned before. When she first called for Senate action, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., accused her of having been "missing in action" when two hearings on Yucca and nuclear waste were held in 2006. Inhofe, who backs the Yucca repository, chaired the committee at that time. Since Republicans became the minority in the Senate this year, he has been the committee's top Republican. Clinton's campaign responded that she had scheduling conflicts with the 2006 hearings, including a hearing on assistance for AIDS patients and a meeting on international women's rights. Clinton also said that Democrats were in a better position than before to "ask the hard questions" now that they have the majority in both houses of Congress. Links powered by inform.com Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2007 Stephens Media, LLC Privacy Statement ***************************************************************** 35 ReviewJournal.com: Company awarded millions in nuclear storage lawsuit Oct. 01, 2007 Delays opening Yucca Mountain cited THE ASSOCIATED PRESS MINNEAPOLIS -- A court has awarded Xcel Energy Inc. $116.5 million over the federal government's failure to open the Yucca Mountain nuclear storage facility on time. Yucca Mountain was designated in the 1980s as the country's nuclear waste repository. Under the law, the Energy Department was required to open the Nevada site for nuclear waste storage by 1998, but the project has been bogged down in controversy, and the earliest possible opening date would be 2017. Northern States Power Co., a predecessor company to Xcel Energy, sued the Department of Energy, claiming breach of contract. In a decision dated last Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims sided with the Minneapolis-based utility. Charles Bomberger, general manager of Nuclear Asset Management for Xcel Energy, said his company was pleased with the court decision. "The government, just like everybody else, is obligated under this high level waste policy act of 1982 to be the federal repository for the spent fuel," Bomberger said. "We know now that the courts have upheld that we did have a binding contract, and held them accountable." A Department of Energy spokeswoman declined to comment. The case involved Xcel Energy's three nuclear power plants in Minnesota. Minnesota state Sen. Ellen Anderson, chairman of the State Senate's Environment, Energy and Natural Resources Budget Division, said the ruling won't make up for the millions of dollars Minnesota ratepayers already have spent on nuclear waste storage. Doug wrote on October 01, 2007 05:01 PM: Yucca Insider and Ray, Thanks for your comments.You can obviously tell that I am not as well versed on nuclear energy as either of you are.I just know something has to be done,and as soon as possible,as our old fossil fuel plants have outlived their life expectancy.I also know there are other alternatives such as wind,solar,and geothermal.It is just a shame we can't move ahead on this issue and get something done.If the people don'y understand what's going on,they certainly deserve to be educated.No one likes the unknown forced on them.With the way the politics and all have been,people have lost trust in just about anything that the government is involved with.Again,thanks for your input. yucca_insider wrote on October 01, 2007 04:13 PM: Doug, great comments. I can't answer your first question with certaintly, but I hope I could at least investigate the facts and use some common sense to decide for myself. As for the tonnage going up, every ton of spent fuel going into Yucca Mountain saved us all from literally MILLIONS of tons of CO, mercury, sulphur, and God knows what else going into our atmosphere from a fossil fuel power plant. Compare the two options... what's worse? I agree that reprocessing is better, but even then, there is leftover waste. I disagree that nuclear waste is the worst there is. Every last pellet is completely accounted for and isolated. Unlike fossil fuel wastes, not one pellet has escaped into the atmosphere or killed thousands of people every year through lung cancer or asthma. It, unlike other poisons, has a half-life and does eventually decay. Those other poisons are deadly forever. Finally, you have to looks at risks, probabilities of those risks, and the benefits you get in exchange. Electricity is arguably the key to better quality of life for Billions of people worldwide. But if we pollute the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels... well I don't want to go there. Ray wrote on October 01, 2007 03:54 PM: Doug: While I agree with your arguement for reprocessing, you're forgetting one important item: the waste left after reprocessing will still need to be sequestered away from the environment. Currently, pyroprocessing is one of the most promising reprocessing techniques available to us. In it, the long-lived actinides are removed and can be burned as fuel in fast reactors, reducing the waste stream by as high a factor of 8. The remaining waste will need to be stored for 300-500 years, a vast improvement over the quarter of a million years untreated spent fuel would require. Likewise, it will also eliminate the need for additional repositories. With the need for a stable and secure energy source to supply our nation's growing needs, nuclear is the obvious choice, something that cannot be said for alternative sources, such as solar, geothermal and biomass. Technologies exist to handle the nuclear waste issue. The real problem lies with those groups who spread inaccuracies, half-truths and outright lies about nuclear energy. Oh, and, of course, those in Washington and those lobbyists who prefer to live in the past and not serve this nation's needs by embracing the future. Doug wrote on October 01, 2007 01:58 PM: Yucca Insider,I think your post is pretty much rigth on.If yucca wasn't your bread and butter,would you feel the same about building a dump in your backyard? A dump is a dump.How long does it take to fill up a dump?You are well aware that the original tonnage numbers have escalated considerably sense the design started.It makes more sense to me to reprocess the spent nuclear fuel than store it.The public would probably be more receptive to reprocessing than dumping or storage.It makes more sense to recycle the waste and make some revenue than to leave it for future generations to deal with.Nuclear power is good clean power,nuclear waste is the the worst kind of waste there is. yucca_insider wrote on October 01, 2007 11:16 AM: This does not bankrupt Yucca. The money to pay this award comes from taxpayers-- in many cases the same ratepayers who have already bought and paid for Yucca Mountain. Note, I said ratepayers. The people who use electricity generated from nuclear plants have been paying for Yucca Mountain through their utility bills since 1982. Those people now get to pay twice. If you want to blame someone, here are your choices. 1. Congress. Congress has overwhelmingly approved Yucca Mountain time after time, and passed the law that makes these lawuits enforceable. 2. People who spout falsehoods and irrational fears of things they don't understand. When you compare the risks of Yucca Mountain to the risks of coal-fired electricity-- which stores its waste in our lungs-- you can only laugh. 3. DOE ineptitude and cowardice. The design has changed many times, sometimes because of #2. These lawsuits point to one of the biggest ripoffs of our time. Those people have been paying since 1982 and they have nothing to show for it, except another bill. Build Yucca, begin safely storing the waste. oldlawdawg wrote on October 01, 2007 10:05 AM: This has to be at least a nominee for "most stupid statement from a spokesperson" award: "the government, just like everybody else, is obligated under the high level waste policy act of 1982 to be the federal depository for the spent fuel." While Mr. Bomberger, the spokesman for Xcel Energy may have been brain-spent from thinking about the $116 million judgment in favor of his company when making this statememnt, his statement makes abosolutely no sense whatsoever, and cannot have any sense made of it by adding additional facts or context as it its complete gibberish to begin with. Why the RJ included it in the article is baffling as a statement from one of the parties adds nothing to the article if that statement is incomprehensible from any perspective (except, perhaps, for the sake of humor or to embarass somebody). Roger wrote on October 01, 2007 07:38 AM: Well at least this bankrupts Yucca even more... Roger wrote on October 01, 2007 07:38 AM: Well at least this bankrupts Yucca even more... Doug wrote on October 01, 2007 07:01 AM: What a crying shame the taxpayers are left to pay for this boondoogle.Looks like the feds signed a contract with these folks before the facility was even permitted or licensed to operate.If Yucca Mountain was designated in the 1980's,that was before they had collected the "sound science" for Yucca Mountain.In fact,aren't they still looking for the sound science?Bottom line is,why should we suffer from their mistake? Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal, 1997 - 2007 Stephens Media, LLC Privacy Statement ***************************************************************** 36 Reuters: Xcel unit wins $116 mln award in nuclear fuel suit Mon Oct 1, 2007 10:45pm BST NEW YORK, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Power company Xcel Energy (XEL.N: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Monday its subsidiary North States Power Co won $116.5 million in damages in a breach of contract suit against the U.S. government over disposal of spent nuclear fuel. The damage award includes approximately $43.1 million for construction and operation of on-site storage facilities, approximately $48.7 million for compliance with legislative mandates and approximately $24.7 million to cover expenses. Xcel said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it was uncertain whether the government will appeal the decision by the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. The specific regulatory treatment related to the award will likely not be known until a final resolution is reached, but any ultimate recovery will benefit NSP-Minnesota's customers, Xcel said. © Reuters 2007. All rights reserved. | Learn more about Reuters ***************************************************************** 37 UPI: Nuclear waste transport met with protest United Press International - NewsTrack - Top News - Published: 1, 2007 at 12:57 PM NYKOPING, , 1 (UPI) -- A ship that arrived in Sweden to collect waste from the country's nuclear weapons program and transport it to Britain was met with Greenpeace protests. The Atlantic Osprey, which arrived Monday at Studvik's plant near Nykoping, is bringing the decades-old nuclear waste from the R1 research reactor at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm aboard for transport to a British reprocessing plant, The Local reported Monday. Police and coast guard vessels were on hand to escort the ship to England's Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant. Also in attendance were about 30 Greenpeace activists in six boats. The organization opposes the transport of nuclear waste and claims the Sellafield plant contaminates the sea and air with radioactive materials. However, the Swedish government said it has to send the waste to Sellafield due to a lack of alternatives within its own country. © Copyright United Press International. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 38 UPI: Russia eyes direct nuclear fuel supply to Western Europe United Press International - International Security - Published: Oct. 1, 2007 at 5:42 PM By KRISHNADEV CALAMUR UPI International Security Editor The head of Russia’s nuclear power company has said Moscow is ready to supply nuclear fuel directly to nuclear power plants in Europe. "Russian fuel for nuclear power plants is high quality and often superior to Western fuel,” Rosatom chief Sergei Kiriyenko said last Friday. “We supply nuclear fuel to nuclear power plants in Ukraine and Eastern Europe, but ... we want to do business directly with Western energy companies, and not through middlemen." The comments were reported by RIA Novosti. At present, Rosatom delivers nuclear fuel to Western European nuclear plants in cooperation with France’s Areva. Separately, Kiriyenko said Russia was weighing an intergovernmental deal with Japan on the peaceful uses of nuclear energy with Japan; Russia plans to construct 26 new nuclear power units by 2020, he said. Closing oil prices, Oct. 1, 3 p.m. London Brent crude oil: $78.87 West Texas Intermediate crude oil: $81.36 (e-mail: energy@upi.com) © Copyright United Press International. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 39 Cibola County Beacon: Navajo Nation, miners want more federal action Monday, October 1, 2007 4:51 PM MDT GALLUP - One hundred and fifty residents of the Navajo Nation's Gallup region gathered to hear the Nuclear Regulatory Commission explain in detail the procedures for commenting on the Generic Environmental Impact Statement (GEIS) for new uranium mining. The meeting was held at the Best Western Hotel in Gallup last week, hosted by the NRC. The Navajo Nation has passed a ban on all uranium mining and milling on its property. Francis Cameron, legal adviser for the NRC, stated the tribal ban had not yet been tested. He said the law needed closer scrutiny to see if the NRC could respect it. Some tribal members objected to the ban, stating it interfered with their rights to use their land as they saw fit. Danny Charley, an allotee from near Crownpoint, claimed the land leases could provide large cash royalties, and that needed jobs would benefit the region. After a history of the Navajo Nation's attempts to have the sites and mills cleaned up to pre-contamination conditions, the audience expressed frustration with too many words and not enough effective action. Joe Murietta, mayor of the City of Grants, reminded the group that his administration had come out in full support of the uranium industry, that citizens understood the industry and realize an alternative fuel source is needed to lessen U.S. dependence on foreign fuels. Cibola County and the Village of Milan also have passed resolutions supporting the industry. An NRC spokesman said the generic status of the reports would include several states' clean ups and not be “case specific”. An unidentified participant reminded the crowd that his interest was not to allow the government to gloss over site-specific issues. Navajo land issues were not the same as Wyoming's, he said George Byers, vice president of public affairs with Neutron Energy Inc., talked of his company's uranium development in the Seboyeta area and reassured the audience that royalties would be paid to the land grant and scholarship programs, already being put together for the locals of that area. The mine would use the conventional method of operation, he added. Art Gebeau, an industry veteran, told the group that the Homestake Mining Company's clean-up efforts of groundwater had spread the contamination. He insisted the industry focus on clean up before any new mining could begin. Larry J. King, of Churchrock, shared his opposition to any new mining because contamination remains from the last mining effort. He challenged the government representatives with the idea of them speeding up the licensing process to make their lives easier. He suggested they must consider each region separately. He reminded the group that more than a third of the people had uranium mining related illness and there were still more than 1,000 sites not cleaned up. He stressed that many Dines still practiced the “old ways”, the traditional values of a belief in the Mother Earth, the sacred water and the plants. A representative of Rep. Tom Udall's (D-NM) office read a statement: “With a troubled history with the Navajo Nation, economic benefit was promised to the people but they didn't mention the health effects. Navajo people filed suit, an act was passed by the older Mr. Udall. . . The federal government still hasn't paid total compensation agreed upon. . . Brutal reminders of the approval process of the federal government, compromised water supply. . . they must assure local communities to protect the water. . . Poisoning some of the most beautiful land in the nation, I urge you to be cautious.” The commission is accepting comments until Oct.31. The website is URLGEIS@nrc.gov (Please refer to “Uranium Recovery GEIS). By Janis Derrick Beacon staff writer Copyright © 2007 Cibola Beacon. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 40 Facing South: Southern plutonium shipments could begin this week Blogging for a Progressive South PO Box 531 • Durham,NC 27702 • Telephone: (919) 419-8311 • Fax: (919) 419-8315 Monday, October 01, 2007 If you plan to drive along Interstate 40 through Tennessee over the next few years, you might want to be extra careful. The U.S. Department of Energy plans to begin shipping plutonium to the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C. as early as Friday -- but state and local authorities won't know any details about the shipments unless there's a serious accident, the Knoxville News Sentinel reports:The routes that will be used to transport the strategic nuclear material across the country are hush-hush and won’t be shared in advance of the project. "It's extremely classified," said Jonathan Shradar, assistant press secretary with the U.S. Department of Energy in Washington. "We definitely don't confirm." Shipments could begin as early as Friday, according to the decision DOE announced Sept. 5.The shipments are so secret that not even the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency -- which usually works with agencies transporting nuclear material -- has been given any information about them, according to the paper. The shipments are part of the government's effort to consolidate the nation's surplus supply of weapons-grade plutonium in South Carolina. The material will be coming from the Hanford Site in Washington, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. In all, the government plans to transport some 2,300 plutonium storage containers from Hanford and almost 700 from Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos. Some have speculated that Interstate 40 across Tennessee would be a likely route for the material. The shipments are scheduled to continue through 2010. Plans call for the plutonium to be either converted into a mixed-oxide fuel, or MOX, for use at commercial nuclear power plants or be enclosed in glass logs for eventual transfer to the Yucca Mountain high-level nuclear waste repository being planned in Nevada. A radioactive metal that was manufactured in large amounts during the Cold War for weapons, plutonium is extremely toxic if handled incorrectly and particularly damaging to the bone marrow. Labels: radioactive waste, South Carolina posted by Sue Sturgis at 3:46 PM | Email this post | Post a Comment ***************************************************************** 41 [NYTr] Poll: 72% of Israelis Support Using Nuclear Weapons Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 22:25:11 -0400 (EDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit sent by mart Ha'aretz - Oct 1, 2007 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/908725.html Poll: 72% of Israelis back use of nuclear arms in certain circumstances By Haaretz Service Some 72 percent of Israelis support the use of nuclear weapons in certain circumstances, according to the results of a Canadian survey released Monday, Army Radio reported. The number of Israeli respondents in favor of destroying the world's nuclear arms was lower than any of the six countries questioned in the Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies poll, the radio said. Pollsters said the Israeli response demonstrated that the public is primarily concerned with national defense mechanisms in the face of a threat from a nuclear Iran. About half of the Israeli respondents who back using nuclear weapons said they saw it as a possible way of preventing war; the other half said they supported using nuclear arms during a war. The poll also showed that 75 percent of Israelis would feel safer if they knew with certainty that Israel has atomic weapons. Israel has maintained an official veil of secrecy on rumors that it has in its possession nuclear weapons. * ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us Our main website: http://www.blythe.org List Archives: http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ Subscribe: http://blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================= ***************************************************************** 42 Star Wars Coverage Misses Key Point Resent-Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2007 13:05:57 -0500 (CDT) STAR WARS COVERAGE MISSES KEY POINT Just in time for Keep Space for Peace Week, Rolling Stone Magazine has just come out with a long article on "missile defense" entitled "The Shield." Written by Jack Hitt, the extensive article concludes that the Pentagon's missile defense system will never be finished and is completely unnecessary. Hitt reports that "missile defense is the single most-expensive weapons system in the American arsenal. The Bush administration nearly tripled Clinton's average missile defense budget, to $11-billion a year -- a sum almost four times larger than the U.S. government's total spending on energy research." By 2013 research and development is expected to grow to $19-billion a year. The article is largely set around the Missile Defense Agency's (MDA) new X-band radar, or SBX, that was built to sit on a former oil rig platform. Constructed in Texas, the sea-going radar was too big to get through the Panama Canal and had to be shipped to Hawaii the long way - around the tip of South America. Its ultimate destination is Alaska where it will then be tied in with other U.S. Star Wars radars dotted around the planet in Greenland, California, Massachusetts, and England giving the military full spectrum visibility of the entire planet. Hitt reviews the MDA's plan for a "layered missile defense shield" that would theoretically intercept offending "evil weapons of mass destruction" in their boost phase, midcourse, and terminal stages of flight. Various space weapons systems are now under development by the MDA for each of these three phases of flight and include the Airborne laser (a converted Boeing 747 with a laser on it's nose), Kinetic Energy Interceptor, Navy Aegis destroyers outfitted with interceptor missiles, PAC-3 (latest upgrade of the Patriot interceptor), Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (interceptors mounted on Army trucks), and more. Hitt astutely notes that "As with its complex technology and multiple military rivalries, the missile defense system is also 'layered' in another way -- as a series of receding and lucrative private contracts." Hitt spends much time in his article discussing the testing program for missile defense. He shares the Pentagon's new testing philosophy called "spiral development" which "means that you build a weapons system not with a fixed design and completion date in mind, but with a more flexible idea of what you are shooting for, one that is subject to endless change and revision." Thus the program never ends, the money flows forever as new upgrades to the system keep the aerospace corporation profits high and dry. Hitt says, "In the procurement business, it's called 'kicking the can down the road' -- slowly working your way to a goal without ever really getting there. Instead of building a missile defense shield, what gets constructed is a full-employment policy for defense [military] contractors." There are some things that Hitt does not talk about. He never considers that "missile defense" is not really supposed to work because the program is not about defense - it is an offensive, Star Wars program to give the U.S. "control and domination" of space and the Earth below. Ample evidence has existed for years that the real intent of the MDA's work is to create this kind of offensive system that would give the Pentagon the ability to "deny" other powers military access to space. The U.S. well understands that those who have military "space assets" in place will win the wars on the planet below. When the Pentagon launched the 2003 "shock and awe" attack of Iraq in 2003, 70% of the weapons used in the initial attack were guided to their targets by military satellites now in space and working quite effectively. Space weapons technology is now functioning and according to Pentagon documents no one else should be allowed to have that same capability. If they did have it they might be able to challenge the U.S.'s notion of "full spectrum dominance." Thus spending on "missile defense" allows research, development, testing, and deployment of a host of "offensive" space programs. In the recent Air Force Space Command's Strategic Master Plan: FY06 and Beyond, the space warriors say, "This capability (space) is the ultimate high ground of U.S. military operations. Today, control of this high ground means superiority in information and significant force enhancement. Tomorrow, ownership may mean instant engagement anywhere in the world." Hitt also generally gives a pass to the Democratic Party in his article. He does briefly mention that Bill Clinton changed Ronald Reagan's "Strategic Defense Initiative - SDI" to the "Ballistic Missile Defense Organization - BMDO" but he ignores the strong bipartisan nature of the whole Star Wars program. The Democrats have been full partners in keeping the program alive and fully funded since the 1980's. In the end Hitt's article fails to outline the real U.S. military doctrine that exists today - preemptive first strike attack. His article determines that "missile defense" is about endless corporate welfare. He is right about that. But he leaves out the true military role for space technology, which is to enhance and ensure U.S. military control of the entire Earth and all of its diminishing resources on behalf of corporate globalization. Preemptive attack, directed by space technology, is the future of U.S. military doctrine. The sooner we all understand that, and openly debate the policy, the sooner we put an end to the expansion of U.S. empire. Bruce K. Gagnon Coordinator Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space PO Box 652 Brunswick, ME 04011 (207) 443-9502 http://www.space4peace.org globalnet@mindspring.com http://space4peace.blogspot.com (Blog) http://www.myspace.com/brucekgagnon (MySpace profile) ***************************************************************** 43 AFP: Scores arrested at anti-nuclear protest - Mon Oct 1, 6:16 AM ET LONDON (AFP) - Scores of people were arrested Monday as police moved on hundreds of anti-nuclear protestors at a submarine base in Scotland gathered for the culmination of a year-long campaign. Police made the arrests as they removed protestors blockading the main entrance to the Faslane Naval Base on the River Clyde by gluing themselves to the tarmac outside as well as chaining themselves together and to the fence. They said they arrested 94 people by 10 am, three hours after the first of an estimated 500 demonstrators arrives in buses at the base which hosts the Trident fleet of nuclear-armed submarines. Witnesses said there was "continuous" stream of people being carried off by teams of officers. The year-long campaign has led to more than 940 arrests. Politicians from around Britain, including Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) and Members of the European Parliament (MEP), attended what was dubbed the "Big Blockade". Scottish Green Party co-leader Robin Harper MSP was among the first to arrive at Faslane. "The use, the threat of use, and the planned replacement of Trident are all illegal," he said. "We should take a lead in fighting the wars of this century -- the war against poverty, injustice and environmental destruction -- not spend 25 billion (pounds) on weapons of mass destruction aimed at civilians. A spokesman for Faslane Naval Base said the protests had not affected the main operations at the base. The parliament voted in March to renew the country's Trident nuclear deterrent. Tony Blair, before he stepped down on June 27, had pushed plans to modernise the Trident nuclear weapons system at a cost of about 25 billion pounds. The current deterrent consists of four Royal Navy submarines, one of which is always on patrol, fitted with US-built Trident missiles. It will become obsolete in the mid-2020s. Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 44 Las Cruces Sun-News: Trinity opening is time to dispel myths, tall tales WHAT'S UP AT WHITE SANDS? By White Sands Missile Range Article Launched: 10/01/2007 12:00:00 AM MDT These two plaques are affixed to the 12-foot lava rock obelisk that marks exact ground zero at Trinity Site. The top plaque was placed when the obelisk was erected in 1965. It says, "Trinity Site where the first nuclear device was exploded on July 16, 1945." Under that is a second plaque that was added in 1975 when the National Park Service designated Trinity Site a national historic landmark. White Sands Missile Range will open the Trinity site to the public on Saturday. The Trinity site is where the world's first atomic bomb was tested at 5:29:45 a.m. Mountain War Time on July 16, 1945. The open house seems like a good time to dispel some misinformation about the site. The following information is taken from the White Sands Public Affairs Web site called "Rumors, Misinformation, and Lies about Trinity Site" which is found at: www.wsmr.army.mil/pao/TrinitySite/trnrum.htm. Much of the misinformation about Trinity is related to its location. Reporters, webmasters, historians and sellers on eBay often talk about the Trinity site being near Alamogordo, in Otero County and part of the Tularosa Basin. The site is actually 85 road miles away on the north end of White Sands Missile Range in Socorro County. This misunderstanding dates to World War II when the Army sent out a news release following the test of the first atomic bomb that an ammo dump had exploded at the Alamogordo Bombing Range. It was a cover story meant to explain the flash of light people saw and the rumbling shock wave they heard. The location is correct. People just don't understand that the bombing range extended almost to Socorro just as the missile range does today. Some people claim a visit to Trinity will fog film. Over the decades the range's Public Affairs Office has escorted hundreds of professional photographers to Trinity and no one has complained or noted any fogging or any effect on film — even the fastest stuff. Years ago the office staff taped a roll of slide film to a plastic bag of Trinitite for 24 hours, had it developed, and didn't see any fogging. Occasionally someone asks about the soldiers in trenches around ground zero. They ask where the trenches are located. They are confusing Trinity Site with much later testing at sites in Nevada and elsewhere. The Trinity Site test was a scientific test to see if the bomb would work. Soldiers and civilians alike were either in bunkers or at base camp (10 miles away) and Compania Hill (20 miles away). Sometimes even the people who should know better make mistakes. The Public Affairs staff once saw a prominent Web site that had several individual pages dealing with Trinity Site. One page was titled "The First Atomic Device" and showed a photograph of Jumbo being transported across the desert. Jumbo was simply a 214-ton container that was to be used to hold the bomb at detonation. If the bomb fizzled, Jumbo would have prevented plutonium from being spread across the countryside. In the end it was not used. It helps explain why Trinity visitors often walk by the remains of Jumbo and say to others, "There's the bomb." There are two ways to get into Trinity site on Saturday. The most flexible is to enter the range through the Stallion Range Center gate located five miles south of U.S. Highway 380. The turnoff is 12 miles east of San Antonio, nd 53 miles west of Carrizozo. The Stallion gate is open during each open house from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. The other way to attend the open house is to drive in with the caravan organized by the Alamogordo Chamber of Commerce. The caravan forms at the Tularosa High School parking lot in Tularosa. starting at 7 a.m. and leaves at 8 a.m. It is an 85-mile drive to the site from Tularosa and there are no services on the route or at the site. The caravan is led by White Sands personnel once it gets onto the missile range. It is scheduled to leave for the return trip between 12:30 and 1 p.m. All adults must show a photo ID when entering the missile range. All vehicles are subject to search and should be carrying proof of insurance and current registration papers. There are no ceremonies or speakers at the site. Food and souvenirs are sold at the site. For more information, call the White Sands Missile Range public affairs office at (505) 678-1134. "What's Up at White Sands" is a regular feature written by missile range staffers. Copyright © 2006 Las Cruces Sun-News, a MediaNews Group Newspaper. ***************************************************************** 45 Reuters: Roh hopes Koreas' summit can lead to arms cut | U.S. | Mon Oct 1, 2007 9:45am EDT By Jack Kim SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea's president said on Monday he would use the second ever summit between the leaders of the divided Koreas to press for peace and an eventual arms cut along one of the world's most heavily militarized borders. Roh Moo-Hyun will lead a motorcade from Seoul on Tuesday, which includes business leaders, bureaucrats and clerics, across the border for a historic 150-minute trip to Pyongyang for a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il that runs through Thursday. "It will not be an uneventful course, but once discussions on a peace regime get under way in earnest, we can take up building military confidence and a peace treaty, and furthermore the issue of arms reduction," Roh said in a televised speech. South Korean officials have said they do not want to spoil the mood of the summit between the states technically still at war by pressing Pyongyang on its nuclear weapons program or its widely condemned human rights record. They are not sure if Kim will greet Roh when he arrives. Roh said his top summit agenda item would be establishing greater peace along the Cold War's last frontier. South Korea's ability to seek a peace treaty is limited because it was not a signatory to the ceasefire that ended the 1950-1953 Korean War. U.S.-led forces signed the agreement. U.S. President George W. Bush has said he is ready to discuss a peace treaty once the reclusive communist country scraps its atomic arms, which are considered one of the region's greatest security threats. Continued... ***************************************************************** 46 UPI: NNSA spells out nuke scrapping steps United Press International - International Security - Published: Oct. 1, 2007 at 3:13 PM WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 (UPI) -- The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration Monday spelled out its procedures for dismantling nuclear weapons. The NNSA, an agency of the U.S Department of Energy, said in a statement that taking apart nuclear weapons was "a lengthy process that involves almost all of the sites within the nuclear weapons complex." "First, NNSA’s design labs work with the production facilities to identify and mitigate any hazards that may arise before a particular weapon type is to be dismantled. The labs are able to apply the unique knowledge they gained during the original design process for each weapon in the stockpile," the agency said. "When a weapon is retired, it is brought to NNSA’s Pantex Plant, where the high explosives are removed from special nuclear material, and the plutonium core is removed from the weapon. The plutonium is placed in highly secure storage at Pantex. Eventually, the excess material will be turned into fuel at Mixed Oxide -- MOX -- Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River Site. Construction on the MOX facility began Aug. 1, 2007," the NNSA said. "Part of the weapon then moves to the Y-12 National Security Complex where the uranium components are removed. Then, other non-nuclear components are sent to the Savannah River Site -- e.g., gas storage devices -- and the Kansas City Plant -- e.g., electrical components -- for final processing," it said. "To ensure that the special nuclear material is safe and secure during transport from site to site throughout the entire dismantlement process, NNSA relies on its Office of Secure Transportation, which assists in the timeliness of the process by ensuring that the shipments are always on-schedule," the agency said. "Last year, NNSA permanently dismantled the last W56-type nuclear weapon in the U.S. stockpile. Currently, NNSA is dismantling the W62 and the B61 modifications 3 and 4, which will continue for several years," the agency said. © Copyright United Press International. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 47 UPI: NNSA dismantles more nukes than planned United Press International - International Security - Published: Oct. 1, 2007 at 2:31 PM WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 (UPI) -- The United States has stepped up its rate of taking apart nuclear weapons during the current fiscal year. The National Nuclear Security Administration, an agency under the U.S. Department of Energy, said in a statement Monday that the number of nuclear weapons it took apart in Fiscal Year 2007 has been 146 percent above the figure for FY 2006. That increase was almost three times higher than the agency's goal of boosting the numbers by 49 percent over FY 2006, it said. NNSA Administrator Thomas D'Agostino praised the number of nuclear weapons dismantled during FY 2007 as "an outstanding achievement." "This is an outstanding achievement by our dedicated employees," he said. "By greatly exceeding our dismantlement goal, NNSA is supporting the U.S. leadership role in global non-proliferation and disarmament efforts." "Our success ensures that these weapons cannot be used again, and sends a clear message to the world that this administration remains committed to reducing the number of nuclear weapons in the U.S. nuclear stockpile," D'Agostino said. The NNSA noted that in 2004, U.S. President George W. Bush "directed that the stockpile be reduced nearly 50 percent by 2012, making it the smallest level since the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s. This means that in five years the stockpile will be one-quarter of its size at the end of the Cold War." © Copyright United Press International. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 48 donga.com: N.Korea Says It Will Not Report Nuclear Weapons Information OCTOBER 02, 2007 03:05 North Korea reportedly said during the second phase of the sixth round of the six-party talks that adjourned on September 30 that it would not report details related to nuclear weapons, including the number of nuclear weapons, and amount of plutonium used to make the weapons and triggering devices, when it reports on its nuclear program at the end of this year. Kim Kye Kwan, chief North Korean delegate to the talks, reportedly said, “If we report such information while disabling our weapons, that will reveal the technological level of our nuclear weapons. Therefore, it is hard to report information related to nuclear weapons now.” Instead, Pyongyang accepted Washington’s demand on three areas: the communiqué of this round of the talks will not specify that the U.S. will remove the North on the list of terrorism supporting states by the end of this year, while the North will clarify suspicions over its uranium enrichment program when it reports. The six parties of the talks, including Korea and the U.S., were supposed to win promises from North Korea that it would “fully report” its nuclear facilities and past nuclear activities by the end of this year, but Pyongyang’s opposition deterred their plan. Meanwhile, the disablement technology team led by the U.S. and participated in by China, Russia, Korea, and Japan, is expected to visit the North. The team will finalize a disablement plan and begin disablement work on the three nuclear facilities in North Korea starting in November, including the 5-megawatt nuclear reactor, re-treatment facility, and nuclear fuel rod manufacturing plant. Some 10 core parts separated from three nuclear facilities will be collected and sealed at a designated facility in the North and put under special management by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Copyright 2002 donga.com.All rights reserved. Contact english@donga.com for more information. Privacy policy contact newsroom@donga.com ***************************************************************** 49 Guardian Unlimited: 171 held in nuclear base protest Press Association Monday October 1, 2007 6:53 PM A year of protest at a submarine base came to an end as hundreds of anti-nuclear campaigners staged a blockade in front of its gates. More than 170 people were arrested as they marked the end of 365 days of protest at Faslane Naval Base on the Clyde. The demonstrators brought their year of action to a close by forming a human circle in front of the gates at around 3.30pm, which was then dispersed by police. Strathclyde Police said 73 men and 98 women were arrested. An estimated 500 demonstrators descended on the main gate of the base, home of the UK's Trident fleet of nuclear submarines. Many started blockading the main entrance, called the north gate, by gluing themselves to the Tarmac outside and chaining themselves to the fence while others linked themselves together with concrete tubes. Police moved in quickly to start removing the demonstrators, making 94 arrests by 10am. Witnesses spoke of a "continuous" stream of people being carried off by teams of officers. Faslane 365, the year-long campaign against the hosting of the Trident fleet in Scotland, has led to more than 940 arrests and a recent report showed the cost of policing the base has exceeded £5 million. Organisers of the latest action vowed to mark the occasion through "colourful, creative and dramatic actions" at the base. The event ended at around 3.30pm, when the protesters surged peacefully towards the entrance to the base and formed a circle in front of the gate. They were then dispersed by police. A spokesman for Faslane Naval Base said the protests had not had an effect on the main operations and people inside. Copyright (c) Press Association Ltd. 2007, All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 50 Tri-City Herald: Register for Hanford tours at noon today (about) Monday, October 1st, 2007 10:18 PDT By the Herald staff Registration for bus tours of the Hanford nuclear reservation and a walking tour of the historic B Reactor will start promptly at noon today and Tuesday at www5.hanford.gov/publictours/. The free tours are so popular that the last time they were offered, seats filled and registration closed in less than a minute. Registrants will be limited to two tickets. Today's registration is for tours Oct. 24 and 25. Tuesday registration is for tours Oct. 31 and Nov. 1. Tours start at 7:30 a.m.,10 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. each day at the HAMMER training center, 2890 Horn Rapids Road, Richland. Participants must be U.S. citizens at least age 16 and show valid photo identification the day of the tour that exactly matches the name and spelling given during registration. As any cancellations are received, registration will reopen without notice, so people who fail to get tickets are encouraged to check back. The tour includes a narrated driving tour past the original Hanford town site, the 300 Area where fuel was manufactured, central Hanford where irradiated fuel was processed to recover plutonium and the $12.3 billion vitrification plant being built to turn radioactive waste into a stable glass form for disposal. The highlight of the tour is a look inside B Reactor, the world's first production-scale reactor. © 2007 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press & Other Wire Services ***************************************************************** 51 Oak Ridger: K-25/K-27 demolition project successfully achieved 2,000,000 safe work hours - Story last updated at 11:55 pm on 9/30/2007 About 800 workers on the K-25/K-27 demolition project at East Tennessee Technology Park (former K-25 site) put in more than 2 million man-hours or 600 work days without an accident or injury that resulted in an employee missing work. Work inside the deteriorating structures that were the first to enrich uranium using the gaseous diffusion method for the first atomic bomb requires not only special skills but great care to manage the hazards associated with the buildings and the work that is being done there. “Even with all the protective equipment and safety gear required to work on these structures, and all the precautions we take to make this work as safe as possible,” said Bechtel Jacobs Co. Vice President and Deputy General Manager Kelly Trice, “the most important element remains the individual worker’s personal commitment to keep himself safe and to help keep those around him safe. “This accomplishment on such a complex and hazardous large-scale project deserves special recognition and appreciation for those who achieved it,” Trice said. But, he added, safety can still be improved. “Minor injuries that may require only first aid are no more acceptable than more serious mishaps. “We truly believe that our success in preventing accidents that result in lost work days can be applied across the board to prevent any accidents. All accidents are preventable and we won’t be completely satisfied until we achieve the goal of zero accidents overall.” | © 2004 The Oak Ridger ***************************************************************** 52 Oak Ridger: ORNL gets new supercomputer - Story last updated at 11:56 pm on 9/30/2007 By: From Staff Reports | The Oak Ridger Submitted Mark Seager of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory inspects the world's fastest supercomputer, a 64-rack Blue Gene complex. Click to view all photos The Oak Ridge National Laboratory has purchased its first IBM Blue Gene/P supercomputer, Thomas Zacharia, the lab’s associate director for computing and computational sciences, confirmed to The Oak Ridger. The low-power, high-density computer is ideally suited for materials and biological calculations, he said. “We are excited about the possibility of new scientific discoveries using this machine,” Zacharia said. The Blue Gene/P supercomputer is the second generation of the Blue Gene supercomputer, and it is at least seven times more energy-efficient than any other supercomputer, according to a press release from Text 100 Public Relations. ORNL’s new system was accepted in late September, and Zacharia said it is one of the first shipped by IBM. He said the computer has about 8,000 processors in two small cabinets. A news release stated the supercomputer will be capable of more than 27 trillion calculations a second — or 27 teraflops. The Blue Gene/P system will allow ORNL to answer crucial questions about magnetoelectronics and spintronics, among other things. | © 2004 The Oak Ridger | Conditions of Use ***************************************************************** 53 NewsChannel6: Southeast Idaho Leaders Fight to Keep Jobs at INL Reporter: Tammy Scardino Officials from Southeast Idaho traveled to Washington D.C. September 25th through the 28th to let leaders there know they support the Department of Energy's work at the Idaho National Lab. After all, the INL is the state's third largest employer. Representatives from Rexburg, Idaho Falls, Blackfoot and Pocatello met with key officials of the D.O.E. and with senators and congressman of Idaho. Brian Underwood with Pocatello says their message was well received and that city leaders will continue to fight to keep D.O.E. research in our region. Brian Underwood, President Pocatello City Council: "I think the future is always in jeopardy. I always think every year you have to go and sell what it is you do. I think this year we did a good job and it really wasn't us as elected officials, the people that actually work out there do a great job. We're just going back there to send their praises." Every year, INL employees earn more than $638 million dollars, pay $85 million dollars in taxes and contribute more than $44 million dollars to charitable organizations in Idaho. All content © Copyright 2000 - 2007 WorldNow and kpvi. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 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: *****************************************************************