***************************************************************** 10/11/07 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 15.239 ***************************************************************** 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 The Hindu: GE to focus more on wind, solar energy NUCLEAR REACTORS 2 The Hindu: Congress dismisses threat to Govt. on nuke deal 3 US: ZDNet: The public face of nuclear power in the U.S. | 4 US: BBC NEWS: US eyes boom in nuclear reactors 5 BBC NEWS: Belarus to 'build nuclear plant' 6 US: POAC: Oyster Creek's opponents launch Web site 7 RIA Novosti: Belarus reaffirms plans for first nuclear power plant 8 Moscow Times: Duma Passes Bill on Nuclear Corporation 9 US: toledoblade.com: Prosecutor may force defendant to testify in Da 10 US: APP.COM: Relicensing opponents establish Web site 11 Hartlepool Mail: Bidding to block power plant plan - 12 US: baltimoresun.com: Bay & Environment: Calvert Cliffs protest 13 China Daily: Nuclear power plant in Jiangsu to use Russian tech 14 US: PRN: TXU Corp. Announces Completion of Acquisition by Investors 15 Reuters: INTERVIEW-Nuclear-free Sweden is still only a dream 16 US: NYT: A Coal/Nuclear/Solar Energy Faceoff That Is Almost Real - 17 US: Guardian Unlimited: Penn State Reports Minor Reactor Leak 18 IAEA: IAEA Shanghai meeting to focus on nuclear power plant life man 19 UK: In The News: Nuclear power under fire 20 Guardian Unlimited: Cost of nuclear clean-up rises to Ł73bn 21 Whitehaven News: Windscale: an accident that was waiting to happen 22 RussiaToday: Russia aims for nuclear industry development NUCLEAR SECURITY NUCLEAR SAFETY 23 US: Radiation "Mengele" Dies, Was Aided By City Of Cincinnati & U. O 24 US: Rocky Mountain News: Congress to hear nuke workers' plight NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 25 Pahrump Valley Times: Vacation for Gary (Yucca) 26 US: The State: Tritium level high in water at S.C. plant 27 US: The State: Barnwell leaks on meeting agenda 28 US: post-gazette: Radioactive groundwater found at nuke plant 29 Belfast Telegraph: MLAs urged to back Sellafield closure - 30 Reuters: Russia detains 10 at nuclear waste protest | 31 US: UPI: Tritium found in S.C. groundwater - 32 St. Petersburg Times: Police Break Up Ecological Demonstration 33 ITAR-TASS: Russia not to bring in spent nuclear fuel - official 34 US: Herald-Journal: Plutonium delays | 35 POWER Magazine: Soaring Yucca costs may prompt fee hike request 36 US: California Chronicle: Dr. Ed’s Legislation to Help with Water 37 US: Daily Sentinel: DOE looking to lease acreage for uranium 38 Pahrump Valley Times: Yucca seeks to double nuke waste PEACE 39 [NYTr] Putin: NO EVIDENCE Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons 40 Reuters: Rice faces Kremlin over missile shield and Iran 41 AFP: Rice in Russia to argue for US anti-missile system - US DEPT. OF ENERGY 42 Tri-City Herald: Exhibits give peek at Hanford's historic B Reactor 43 Tri-City Herald: Workers remove hose from radioactive spill site at 44 Tri-City Herald: Randolph Construction Services of Pasco wins radiat 45 Hanford News: Identifying make, origin of nuclear material could pre 46 Hanford News: Fluor receives awardfor cleanup work 47 DOE: Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board, Hanford 48 DOE: Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board, Nevada 49 UPI: Los Alamos investigates safety concerns - 50 lamonitor.com: Plutonium Facility paused for safety 51 KVII: Funding for Pantex 52 Oak Ridger: Uncertainty about Y-12 layoffs - 53 POWER Magazine: DOE beefs up loan guarantees, picks 16 winners 54 KNDO: Upgraded Exhibits at B-Reactor 55 NewsBlaze: Remarks As Prepared for Delivery by U.S. Deputy Sec. of E ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 The Hindu: GE to focus more on wind, solar energy Friday, Oct 12, 2007 Special Correspondent BANGALORE: GE Energy may be more actively involved in contributing its technical expertise in wind and solar energy generation, “if the Indian government also supports this”, GE Energy’s President and CEO, John Krenicki, told The Hindu here on Wednesday. Areas of concern “We are already involved with local partners in large scale wind energy projects and solar energy could be ideal for India’s growing needs and the cost factor. We also possess technology for gasification of coal, making it as easy and less polluting to use as natural gas. While the initial cost may be higher than for conventional coal-based power plants, it will be more than made-up over the years with more units of power generated and less water usage. Both should be areas of concern for India,” he said. GE Energy, which is involved as a technology provider in the revival of the Dhabol power project, along with BHEL and NTPC, feels nuclear energy can be a good option for India. “For nuclear plants, the capital cost is mostly in infrastructure and it will be less expensive in India. If there are built-in safeguards and fuel processing technology, nuclear power can help in adding to India’s power generation capability without the expense of reducing emissions as in thermal plants,” Mr. Krenicki said. Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. ***************************************************************** 2 The Hindu: Congress dismisses threat to Govt. on nuke deal Thursday, October 11, 2007 : 2020 Hrs New Delhi, (PTI): The Congress on Thursday dismissed suggestions of threat to the Government on the Indo-US nuclear deal issue, saying no one has put any deadline. "Both parties have not put any deadline," AICC Media Department Chairman, Veerappa Moily, said adding that IAEA Secretary General, Mohammed El Baradei, has also said there was no deadline on the safeguards agreement negotiations. Seeking to refute reports of problems to the Congress-led coalition, Moily said, "Allow the UPA Government to run smoothly. Put a stop to all this." He was replying to a number of questions, including whether the deal has been put on the back-burner. He said all these things should not be linked with elections. "Both parties (Congress-led UPA and the Left) have been sincere in arriving at a solution and this talk of elections should become irrelevant," he said. Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the ***************************************************************** 3 ZDNet: The public face of nuclear power in the U.S. | By Michael Kanellos, News.com Published on ZDNet News: Oct 11, 2007 4:00:00 AM NRC It's probably one of the toughest talking gigs in the country. As CEO of the Nuclear Energy Institute, retired Navy Adm. Frank Bowman serves as the public face for the U.S. nuclear industry. Although nuclear power is gaining in popularity, it remains extremely controversial. To get the industry's view across, Bowman speaks regularly at governors' conferences and local public forums. He's also well versed in the subject. He served as the director of the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program and was responsible for operation of more than 100 reactors controlled by the Navy. Currently, he also serves on the board of directors for Morgan Stanley Funds, on the BP America Advisory Council, on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Nuclear Engineering Visiting Committee and other organizations. In 2006, Bowman was made an Honorary Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. CNET News.com recently sat down with him to discuss nuclear energy's future. Q: Can you give us a snapshot of the U.S. nuclear power industry? Bowman: Sure. There are 104 nuclear reactor plants in this country on the commercial side--there are also 103 Navy nuclear power plants too, by the way. Of the 104 commercial plants, 69 of them are the so-called pressurized water reactor version and 35 are boiling water reactors. They're scattered around on 64 different sites, so many sites have two or three reactors. What is driving the resurgence in interest in nuclear? Bowman: It's is a confluence of factors. There are important leaders in the country who used to think that there was no room for nuclear who are now realizing that in this era of climate change, global warming and greenhouse gas concerns, nuclear does in fact deserve a seat at the table. There are important leaders in the country who used to think that there was no room for nuclear who are now realizing that in this era of climate change, global warming and greenhouse gas concerns, nuclear does in fact deserve a seat at the table. I won't use the word energy independence because I don't think the country will ever really get to energy independence, but secure is a different matter. The fuel necessary for nuclear generation comes either domestically or from friends like Canada, Australia--not exactly the same group of people that provide (fossil fuels). This is not an all-in love affair. They all have, not all, but many have legitimate concerns. And it's my position that we (the nuclear power industry) owe it to these people who have devoted their entire careers to public service, or to ordinary citizens who are concerned about these issues, to talk to them factually, adult to adult, and not be arrogant about it. Was attitude a problem in the past? Bowman: I think to a certain extent. After Three Mile Island happened, there was a tendency to sort of want to dive into the fox holes. I think we are taking a more serious effort in addressing peoples' concerns. Has the performance of nuclear plants improved? In the past, uptime and other factors were problems? Bowman: Beginning about 15 years ago there was a major, major upswing in key performance indicators of safety and capacity factors. Capacity has to do with the total amount of electricity generated divided by the total amount of electricity that could be generated if the plant were online 24/7. That number went from like 75 percent 15 years ago to 90 percent today. Also, we're very proud of the safety record, but at the same time we realize that we have to keep our eye on the ball and that complacency is a bad thing. As soon as we start being proud of ourselves, danger lurks around the next corner. What are some of the safety precautions? Bowman: We insist on the highest possible quality in all the components. We insist on the very best of people to hire and then we train them to the zenith. We test their qualifications periodically. We then have a very stringent and tough regulator in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that does day-to-day kinds of inspections and then full-blown inspections twice at each reactor. The plant sites have at least two resident inspectors. Some have as many as four, but these resident inspectors can come in the plant anytime they want to. This regulatory agency, unlike other regulatory agencies in the other sectors in this country, has the authority to shut down operations, to fine the plants. Layered on top of Nuclear Regulatory Commission is in the industry-initiated group called the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations. INPO inspects (a single plant) once every two years and when they finish a very detailed two-week inspection, the report goes not just to the plant operators, but to the chief executive officer of the organization and if there's a holding company involved, it goes all the way to the chairman of the holding company and then subsequently to the group of CEOs in INPO. They share data, they share lessons learned. It's a very open transparent situation even though there is some competition among some of these folks. The idea then is that if there is one shaky member... Bowman: An accident anywhere is an accident anywhere. That is sort of the mantra. Let's look at cost for a moment. Some people claim that nuclear is the only form of energy that goes up, rather than down, over time. Bowman: That's wrong. I'm not suggesting that nuclear is cheaper as time goes on, but neither are others. In fact, they're all on a very sharp up ramp because of shortages of commodities like concrete and steel. Human capital, too. I read recently about a coal plant where the cost escalated by a factor of two because of a queue for commodities. The idea now is to complete the doggone design, lock it in concrete, standardize the design for that type of plant, and then go build it. Now you get on a learning curve so that by the time you are on the fourth or fifth type of plant, there are no more change orders. Secondly, the cost of nuclear will come down because we're going to steal ideas from my nuclear neighbors in the Navy. We are now building submarines and aircraft carriers in the most modular fashion you can imagine to the point where submarines are done in hull segments. Workers can go into those hull rings and install the piping components and weld standing up in a straight position rather than upside down or hanging on monkey bars. That has saved us enormous amounts of money in the submarine business and we intend to employ that same kind of logic in building these new nuclear plants. Assuming the new applications come in, when will we see the first new plants in this country? Bowman: There are 17 companies that are supposed to have signaled intent to the NRC to file a Combined Construction and Operating License (COLR). We would expect a minimum of four of those applications this calendar year (one has been filed since the interview) and as many as seven. We would expect somewhere around eight next year. An accident anywhere is an accident anywhere. That is sort of the mantra. But you have to be careful because there's no question people are going to watch very closely how the first group goes. If they go well, it's going to be here come a whole bunch more. If they go poorly, people are going to pull their cards and hold them closer to their chests and hold back until the bugs are worked out of the system. Do we have the expertise? In the 1960s and 1970s, there were certainly a lot of nuclear engineers, but fewer and fewer people have gone into it since then. Bowman: Two years ago we recognized that there was a graying of our industry and we started doing some things to mitigate the possible fallout of not having sufficient manpower. For example, we formed a Center for Energy Workforce Development. It's a group of industry people across all energy sectors--oil and gas is involved, renewables are involved. We're trying to highlight to educators in this country that energy is a viable vocation for kids. Additionally, individual utilities have entered partnerships with community colleges in their areas. We're seeing dramatic increases in enrollment in nuclear engineering. It's risen to the level of attention of the governors. A few weeks ago in Biloxi, Mississippi, I met with the Southern Governors' Association to talk about exactly this issue of workforce. They asked me, "What can we do for you? What are we missing? How can we help?" Well, some of the answers were easy. You encourage these partnerships. I'm talking about these community college utility partnerships where utilities pay certain expenses and the students come back and work. One of the things I suggested was, all of us cringe when we hear about dropouts, we don't like that. So what are we doing to have dropouts drop back in? Maybe an idea would be to establish something like a co-op program that we use today in some colleges where you go to school for a semester and you work for a semester. Maybe that would appeal to some of these youngsters in high school who have dropped out. Another idea was, "why are we allowing able-bodied men and women of age 55 to retire? If they have the skills that we need, let's go talk to them about it and let's incentivize them." How about disposal? I grew up in Nevada. I am familiar with the Yucca Mountain and, it kind of looks like it is stuck in neutral. Bowman: Well it is, and we recognized that also a couple of years ago, and we began thinking, "Shouldn't we take Yucca Mountain and move it off the critical path. Is there another approach that we've been missing, because we have been so Yucca-centric?" Congress asks frequently, "Why does France recycle their used nuclear fuel and reduce the volume of stuff that has to be buried?" The story is that France, U.K., Russia, and Japan use a process that we invented in this country called "PUREX," which stands for plutonium uranium extraction. We devised that method at the beginning of the Cold War as a means to build nuclear weapons. Gerry Ford came along and said, "We got enough plutonium, we got enough nuclear weapons, we'll stop doing this--and if we stop, maybe we can stop the rest of the world. It's the right thing to do." Jimmy Carter often gets blame or the credit for this, depending upon the camp you're in, but it was really Gerry Ford. We haven't processed since then. But remember: this process by its very nature has plutonium coming out at one end of the pipeline. Well, that's a terrorist's dream. They have the technology, they just don't have the material. So we don't want to go that way, but that doesn't rule out the goodness of recycling. It rules out a method. So somebody then said, "What if we come up with a laboratory scale way to reprocess partially used fuels and chemically bond that plutonium to the really nasty stuff that's in here--the long lived radio nuclei that are there forever and generate a lot of heat--and make it unappealing to the terrorists?" That is, it would kill them if they came out and tried to take it. If we could do that, that would be good in and of itself because that would give us access to all of this uranium we're not using, that in the old way we would just stick in the Yucca Mountain and leave there. What if we go to the next step now and take that bound up plutonium and make fuel out of that? Now you reduce by orders of huge magnitudes the volume, the heat load and the radio toxicity of the stuff that has to go into an ultimate geological repository. The old way leaves 95 percent of the energy content in the fuel rods that would go into a Yucca Mountain. How far along is this process? Bowman: Some of it has been demonstrated. Not building the fuel but separating plutonium and chemically pinning it to other stuff--that has been done at the laboratory scale. The Department of Energy picked up this ball and started running with it and asked for communities to volunteer--unlike Nevada that didn't get a choice in that matter--to participate in developing this, which is a $30 billion R &D project. The used fuel would have to be positioned in these communities in the interim until the new process is ready to go. Do we still need a deep geological in-ground repository? Yes, because you can't make it go to zero. But we've moved the need for Yucca Mountain way the hell downstream if this is successful, and we've moved the volume requirements and the capacity requirements and the requirements of the earth to absorb this toxic waste. How about proliferation? Let me put my old Navy admiral hat back on again. I'm also interested in the global aspects of this. I'm not particularly happy that Iran is flirting around with developing nuclear weapons capability or some other country yet to be named. The Bush administration--good idea--has talked about guaranteeing fledging countries low enriched uranium so they won't be forced to develop an enrichment capability that could be turned into a bomb producing capability. If you can enrich to 3 percent, which is all a commercial plant requires, you can keep on going and enrich to 93 percent. Then you have bomb materials in the front end. If there's a global pool overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency, there's no incentive to develop enrichment on the front end. Now, to prevent the countries from being extended to develop reprocessing on the back end, the rest of the agreement would be that these countries give us back the old fuel and we'll take it home and reprocess it by ourselves. What's the reaction then overseas? RE: The public face of nuclear power in the U.S. No Nukes! What about everything used in maintenance,parts ,tools,clothing, etc. that remains radioactive for 23,000 years. Imagine the volume of more plants added to what we have now.I understand ther... (Read the rest) Print/View all Posts Posted by: ketchikan_kowboy Posted on: 10/11/07 You are Logged In | Log out The biggest hurdle *NEW* frgough | 10/11/07 The one variable that is Nuke's downfall is ... *NEW* msdead | 10/11/07 Even if it posed minimal risk *NEW* Boot_Agnostic | 10/11/07 No new nukes! *NEW* wmlundine | 10/11/07 Nukes are clean but defund oil and gas interests *NEW* GRLCowan | 10/11/07 RE: The public face of nuclear power in the U.S. *NEW* ketchikan_kowboy | 10/11/07 Copyright © 2007 CNET Networks, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Privacy ***************************************************************** 4 BBC NEWS: US eyes boom in nuclear reactors Last Updated: Thursday, 11 October 2007, 11:17 GMT 12:17 UK By Laura Smith-Spark BBC News, Washington The Three Mile Island accident cast a shadow over the nuclear industry Almost three decades have passed since the last application was filed to build a new nuclear reactor in the US. Now, up to 30 are expected in the next three years. As time has passed, memories have faded of the 1979 radioactive leak at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania that threw the US nuclear industry into disarray. Meanwhile, energy security concerns and worries about climate change have reshaped the debate, and financial incentives and a new licensing process have altered the economics. The first full application for two new reactors, in southern Texas, was submitted at the end of September. Another four are due by the end of the year and a dozen in 2008, many in south-eastern states, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said. The earliest could be in operation by 2015. A range of factors is fuelling the renewed enthusiasm: * The introduction of a new fast-track combined construction and operation permit, making new reactors easier and cheaper to build * A tax credit, introduced in the 2005 Energy Policy Act, of 1.8 cents per kilowatt hour for the first 6,000 megawatts generated by nuclear plants * Risk insurance adding up to $2bn for the first six plants to be built, protecting companies against the cost of delays in construction * Multi-billion-dollar loan guarantees * A likelihood that the cost of emitting CO2 will rise as the battle against climate change intensifies But the impending flood of applications is fuelling a new row over whether nuclear power represents a bold step to address 21st Century needs or a mistaken return to flawed 20th Century technology. 'Reliable source' Supporters say new reactors are the only way to meet a projected 40% increase in US electricity demand by 2030 - a result of the country's growing population. The nuclear fuel cycle "Our country needs the electricity and it needs clean sources of electricity that are reliable - and that's exactly what nuclear energy is," says Steve Kerekes, spokesman for industry group the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI). Thanks to improvements in efficiency, 104 reactors across 31 states already produce 20% of the nation's total electricity supply, he points out. The NEI also argues that nuclear power is cleaner than gas and coal-fired plants and says studies show that over a nuclear plant's life-cycle - including construction and the mining of uranium ore - its greenhouse gas emissions are comparable to those of wind and hydro power. "We wouldn't pretend for a second that we should be 100% of our energy supply going forward - but there is a role for us to play in a diversified energy supply that includes renewables, coal and nuclear," says Mr Kerekes. 'Massive subsidies' However, others dispute this. This is a renaissance that is only proposed because of massive - you could say unprecedented - federal subsidies Tyson Slocum, Public Citizen "It is absolutely not a clean energy source," says Tyson Slocum, director of energy policy for public interest group Public Citizen. "Does it produce less greenhouse gas emissions than coal or gas? Yes. "But it produces waste potentially more problematic not only from the mining aspect but from the high-level radioactive waste that a commercial nuclear reactor is going to produce." Mr Slocum says the industry's apparent renaissance is due very largely to "massive - you could say unprecedented - federal subsidies". "If you had a programme like this for wind and solar, wind and solar would be the biggest energy sources in the next 20 years," he said. Security risk? The question of how nuclear waste is stored is already a controversial issue in the US. The issue of long-term nuclear waste storage remains uncertain A planned national repository for spent fuel at Yucca Mountain in Nevada has run into sustained opposition from some local lawmakers, including Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The government is due to submit an application to the NRC to start construction at the site by 30 June next year. But while it is scheduled to open before 2020, it could still be delayed or blocked altogether. In the meantime, nuclear waste will continue to be stored on site at power plants. Critics argue that this inevitably increases the risk that plants will become a terror target, despite steps to give nuclear facilities extra protection after 9/11. Local fight Public reaction to the planned expansion in reactors has so far been fairly muted. Opponents say that is because the nuclear lobby has exploited concerns over climate change. Campaigners fear a new reactor could harm Chesapeake Bay wildlife But the NEI points to evidence that people living near existing plants are more strongly in favour of nuclear power than the general public. At least one proposal has sparked local opposition, however. This is a bid by US energy firm Constellation, in partnership with France's EDF, to build a new reactor at Calvert Cliffs in Maryland - the companies filed a partial application in July and are due to file the rest of the paperwork early next year. In June, Green Party activist Steve Warner founded the Chesapeake Safe Energy Coalition to fight the plan, bringing together local people, environmental and public interest groups. We would really like to see other forms of energy investigated Steve Warner Maryland campaigner He argues the addition of a new reactor, generating as much power as the two already at Calvert Cliffs, will push combined radioactive emissions above safe levels. Of particular concern to the campaigners is whether the reactor could have an impact on the marine wildlife in the Chesapeake Bay, known for its blue crabs. The project has been backed by the Calvert County authorities because it promises to create 700 jobs, but the coalition hopes to persuade the state legislature to oppose it. "The main focus is to not build any more reactors until we resolve the waste issues and get some reasonable assurance of how they monitor the emissions," Mr Warner said. * BBC Copyright Notice ***************************************************************** 5 BBC NEWS: Belarus to 'build nuclear plant' Last Updated: Thursday, 11 October 2007, 11:40 GMT 12:40 UK Mr Lukashenko's ties with Russia cooled during the gas dispute Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko says his country needs to build a nuclear power station. The creation of a domestic nuclear energy source was essential to guarantee "national security", Interfax news quoted Mr Lukashenko as saying. Work on the reactor would start in 2008, he said. It is expected to be ready in four to eight years. "Unfortunately, energy has been turned from a purely economic issue into a political one, into a factor affecting relations with other countries and with organisations," Mr Lukashenko was quoted as saying. Belarus' nuclear plant is expected to cost up to $2.8bn (Ł1.4bn) to build, with much of the money being raised through external borrowing. Mr Lukashenko has enjoyed closer relations with Moscow than the leaders of other post-Soviet states such as Ukraine and Georgia - both of which also rely heavily on Russian gas. All three countries have accused Russia of using its monopoly of energy supplies as a political tool. Moscow denies the charge, arguing it has had to raise gas prices because subsidies granted during the Soviet era are being phased out. * BBC Copyright Notice ***************************************************************** 6 POAC: Oyster Creek's opponents launch Web site Press of Atlantic City Friday, October 12 By DAVID BENSON Staff Writer, 609-272-7206 Published: Thursday, October 11, 2007 A group opposed to the relicensing of the Oyster Creek nuclear generating station has launched a Web site to distribute reports about the nuclear facility. Allison Cairo, executive director of New Jersey Public Interest Research Group, said Exelon Corp., owner of the plant, is misleading area residents about the reliability of the plant. "This plant poses tremendous security and public health risks to New Jersey and degrades our precious wetlands on a daily basis," Cairo said. "The people who really benefit from Oyster Creek are those in the super-subsidized nuclear industry." The Stop the Relicensing of Oyster Creek coalition is an alliance of both citizens and environmental groups: Grandmoth-ers, Mothers, and More for Energy Safety, Jersey Shore Nuclear Watch, New Jersey Environmen-tal Federation, New Jersey Public Interest Research Group, the New Jersey Sierra Club and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service. This coalition has compiled information relating to nuclear power and to the Oyster Creek plant specifically. There are about 50 reports available that examine the need of the plant, evacuation plans and its perceived vulnerability to terrorists. The Oyster Creek facility in Lacey Township is the nation's longest-running nuclear power plant. In 2009, the plant's license will expire. Exelon hopes to renew the license for another 20 years, extending the operating life of the plant to 2029. The coalition of groups launched the Web site to argue that safety and environmental concerns should force the plant to close at the end of its original operating license. "Oyster Creek should be retired next year," Cairo said. "The plant is unsafe and unhealthy. We've shown without a doubt that Oyster Creek's generation could be replaced by energy efficiency and renewable sources." truthaboutoystercreek.org Links by inform.com pressofatlanticcity.com: Contact Us | Terms of Service / Privacy © Copyright 1970- The Press of Atlantic City ***************************************************************** 7 RIA Novosti: Belarus reaffirms plans for first nuclear power plant 15:37 | 11/ 10/ 2007 MINSK, October 11 (RIA Novosti) - Belarus's president reaffirmed on Thursday plans to build the ex-Soviet state's first nuclear power plant to ensure energy security against the backdrop of depleting fuel reserves and growing energy prices. Alexander Lukashenko said the country had no alternative to nuclear power. "The republic will not survive without a nuclear power plant. The decision to build the plant was not guided by political ambitions, but by the need to ensure energy security." Lukashenko announced plans for a 2,000 MW nuclear power plant in April amid a dispute with Russia over prices for natural gas. Moscow had traditionally backed Minsk, despite the country's reputation as "the last dictatorship in Europe," supplying it with energy at heavily subsidized prices. But Russia's decision to double the price for gas supplies to the country last year dealt a heavy blow to the Belarusian economy. The plans for a nuclear power plant are not popular in Belarus, which was heavily affected by the devastating Chernobyl accident in neighboring Ukraine in 1986. In April, on the anniversary of the disaster, some 2,500 people took to streets of the capital, Minsk, to protest against the project. Lukashenko did not say who might build the plant, or provide any other details. In April, he said a contractor would be picked via an open tender. Russia and France were later mentioned as possible participants in the tender. Belarus's energy ministry earlier said the plant would be built in the eastern Mogilyov region, 100 km (62 miles) from the border with Russia, with its first reactor to be commissioned in 2017 and the second in 2020. The plant is expected to provide for 15% of the country's power consumption. Russia's nuclear agency chief, Sergei Kiriyenko, said on Thursday that Russia should "take part in and win international tenders for the construction of nuclear power plants." RIA Novosti ***************************************************************** 8 Moscow Times: Duma Passes Bill on Nuclear Corporation Friday, October 12, 2007. Issue 3763. Page 5. Duma Passes Bill on Nuclear Corporation By Anatoly Medetsky Staff Writer A bill to put the country's nuclear industry under a tightly controlled state corporation received overwhelming backing in its first reading in the State Duma on Thursday, but the Communists labeled the bill as dangerous. Unlike the existing Federal Atomic Energy Agency, the corporation would assume ownership rights over the civil and defense plants that produce weapons, nuclear fuel and electricity. The move would increase management efficiency, combined with the ability of the corporation's chief to issue orders to directors of the entities that make up the body, the agency said. The agency can now offer only recommendations, and it is the Federal Property Management Agency that currently owns the plants. The corporation will help control a national champion that is being created to run all stages of nuclear power generation, from uranium mining and enrichment to construction of reactors to running them, Federal Atomic Energy Agency chief Sergei Kiriyenko said Thursday. The national champion, Atomenergoprom, would incorporate 86 other state companies. "We had concerns that the agency would lose control over that company," Kiriyenko said, fielding questions from Duma deputies. The corporation will use Atomenergoprom to develop the internal market and compete for a greater share of foreign contracts, given renewed international interest in nuclear energy, Kiriyenko said. Russia plans to build 26 reactors by 2020. Federal budget spending on the plan will increase from 51 billion rubles ($2 billion) in 2008 to 97 billion rubles ($3.9 billion) in 2010, Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov said last week. But the industry makes money largely through its foreign contracts, said Sergei Novikov, a spokesman for the atomic agency. In the latest news on a potential export deal, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday that the Republic of Cape Verde, a group of islands off the West African coast, had been studying a deal to buy a floating nuclear power station from Russia. He made the statement after talks with Cape Verde Foreign Minister Victor Borges in Moscow. The Communists were the only faction that did not vote in favor of the bill, faction member Anatoly Lokot said. They refused to give their backing partly because they did not trust Kiriyenko, blaming him for the default in 1998 when he was prime minister, Lokot said. Communist Deputy Vladimir Kashin called the bill "dangerous," saying it gave too many powers to the corporation, including responsibilities that now fall to the Federal Security Service. Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party, veered somewhat off-topic during the debate, attacking a 1993 deal to sell uranium from dismantled Russian nuclear weapons to the United States for conversion into nuclear fuel. He said the deal, which expires in 2013, valued the uranium too cheaply. "The time will come. You will all go on trial," Zhirinovsky yelled after someone in the Duma chamber said the issue had nothing to do with the bill. © Copyright 2006. The Moscow Times. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 9 toledoblade.com: Prosecutor may force defendant to testify in Davis-Besse trial Article published Thursday, October 11, 2007 By TOM HENRY BLADE STAFF WRITER The government's case against three former Davis-Besse engineers took a bizarre twist at the end of yesterday's session in U.S. District Court when an angry defense attorney said his client, who is not on trial yet, may be forced to testify against the other two defendants. Chuck Boss of Maumee told Judge David Katz he fears his client, Andrew Siemaszko, now of Texas, will incriminate himself or be duped into committing perjury by Justice Department prosecutors if they are allowed to subpoena him as a witness in the trial of a former co-worker, David Geisen, now of Wisconsin, and Tennessee contractor Rodney N. Cook. Mr. Siemaszko was not previously identified as a potential witness in the trial, which began Oct. 1. Mr. Boss accused prosecutors of changing their strategy to "save a case that perhaps is not going as well as they would have liked." Prosecutors refused to comment. The news about a possible subpoena for Mr. Siemaszko came moments after a key government witness, Prasoon Goyal of Toledo, stepped down for the day. Goyal A federal grand jury in Cleveland recommended in late 2005 that Mr. Goyal, another former Davis-Besse engineer, be indicted with the other three on charges of lying to the government. The charges carry maximum penalties of five years in prison and the potential for separate $250,000 fines. But Mr. Goyal struck a deal with federal prosecutors in January, 2006, to accept a one-year ban from the industry in exchange for his cooperation. Mr. Goyal is midway through his eighth hour of testimony, which began Tuesday afternoon. He is expected to be on the stand for most or all of today's proceedings. The case centers on a cover-up at FirstEnergy Corp.'s Davis-Besse nuclear plant 30 miles east of Toledo. Damage never before seen at a U.S. nuclear plant was revealed when it was shut down in early 2002: a reactor head so thinned by acid that it had nearly burst. Had it ruptured, radioactive steam would have formed inside the containment building that houses the reactor. It would have been the first such breach since part of Three Mile Island Unit 2's reactor melted in 1979. Richard Poole, one of three federal prosecutors handling the trial, told Judge Katz the government is preparing to subpoena Mr. Siemaszko because it anticipates calling him as a rebuttal witness. That might not happen for a month. The two defense teams are expected to start calling their witnesses in late October. Mr. Poole said prosecutors would like Mr. Siemaszko to respond to accusations that may arise against him in the Geisen-Cook trial, if defense attorneys and their witnesses try to pass off blame on him. Mr. Siemaszko would be offered immunity to the extent that anything he says in court during the Geisen-Cook trial could not be used against him in his own trial, Mr. Boss said. Using someone about to stand trial as a witness against his alleged co-defendants is not "entirely without precedent," Mr. Poole said. Mr. Boss disagreed. He said the request is "out of left field and, frankly, it's rather absurd." Prosecutors could find out how Mr. Siemaszko might testify in advance of his own trial. Or, his client might feel compelled to lie in the Geisen-Cook case to protect the eventual defense of his case. "This is a perjury trap for Mr. Siemaszko," Mr. Boss said. The judge said he'd rule on the matter after getting briefs. Mr. Goyal's testimony so far has centered on dozens of e-mails, memos, and other internal FirstEnergy Corp. documents dating to 1996, as well as the utility's correspondence with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the fall of 2001. That was the autumn Davis-Besse was able to dodge a mandatory shutdown order. A former senior engineer, Mr. Goyal testified that FirstEnergy formed what it called a "JCO" team - one focused on the theme of "Justification for Continued Operation." He said he tried to convince FirstEnergy management to improve access to Davis-Besse's reactor head with bigger inspection ports, called "mouse holes." The modification makes it easier to do inspections and cleaning. Mr. Goyal said he sent the request up the corporate review ladder in 1996 through a document known in the industry as a "condition report." The fix wasn't made until after the lid nearly ruptured in 2002. Greg Gibbs, a onetime Davis-Besse quality-assurance director and engineering director, testified Tuesday he tried to get that modification done before he left the plant in 1994. He said he was disappointed to learn in 2001, after coming back as a consultant, that nothing had been done. A Blade investigation in 2002 showed that FirstEnergy vetoed a work order to make that fix during the early 1990s to save $250,000, even after being encouraged to do the modification by officials from a plant with a similar design in Crystal River, Fla. Mr. Goyal testified about how some records were edited or redacted, in part because officials knew the reactor head couldn't be properly inspected or cleaned; its tiny inspection ports were encrusted with boric acid that had escaped from the reactor. Contact Tom Henry at: thenry@theblade.com or 419-724-6079. © 2007 The Blade. By using this service, you accept the terms of our privacy statement and our visitor agreement. Please read them. The Toledo Blade Company, 541 N. Superior St., Toledo, OH 43660 , (419) 724-6000 ***************************************************************** 10 APP.COM: Relicensing opponents establish Web site | Asbury Park Press Online Thursday, October 11, 2007 BY TODD B. BATES ENVIRONMENTAL WRITER Post Comment Nearly two months after a pro-nuclear coalition formed, opponents of an effort to keep the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in Lacey open until 2029 announced a new Web site Wednesday. The Web site — www.truthaboutoystercreek.org — is part of the Stop the Relicensing of Oyster Creek (STROC) alliance's quest to close the plant, according to an e-mailed statement. "In an effort to change negative public opinion, the nuclear industry has launched an aggressive public relations campaign aimed (at) downplaying public concern and building support for a 20-year license extension at Oyster Creek," the statement says. "We want to be able to maintain (the Web site) so that people don't go and get information that's" many years old, said Peggi Sturmfels, program organizer with the New Jersey Environmental Federation in Belmar. Oyster Creek spokeswoman Leslie Cifelli said, "People have a right to their opinion and . . . particularly we believe that the more that people know, the more they like nuclear power and the same holds true for the plant." The announcement of the new anti-Oyster Creek Web site follows the August announcement of the creation of the New Jersey Affordable, Clean, Reliable Energy Coalition (NJ ACRE) — an Exelon-funded group. The coalition seeks to engender public support for a 20-year Oyster Creek license renewal by increasing awareness of the benefits of the 636-megawatt plant and nuclear power in New Jersey. STROC was in the process of setting up the Web site before NJ ACRE was announced, according to Sturmfels. Exelon owns Oyster Creek operator AmerGen Energy Co., which is seeking U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approval to run the plant until 2029. AmerGen's current license expires in April 2009. Oyster Creek, which opened in 1969 and is the nation's oldest commercial nuclear plant, generates enough electricity for 600,000 homes. STROC includes Grandmothers, Mothers, and More for Energy Safety (GRAMMES), Jersey Shore Nuclear Watch, New Jersey Environmental Federation, New Jersey Public Interest Research Group, New Jersey Sierra Club and Nuclear Information and Resource Service, according to the e-mailed statement. ON THE WEB: Visit our Web site, www.app.com, and click on this story in the Ocean section for links to Truth About Oyster Creek Web site, and also Oyster Creek license renewal Web site and the New Jersey Affordable, Clean, Reliable Energy Coalition and to join the online conversation about this topic in Story Chat. This story includes material from Asbury Park Press archives. Todd B. Bates: (732) 643-4237 or tbates@app.com. Copyright © 2007 Asbury Park Press. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 11 Hartlepool Mail: Bidding to block power plant plan - Chester le Street, County Durham, DH3 4NX * Published Date: 11 October 2007 By ian willis GREEN campaigners have launched a bid to de-rail the latest Government attempts to press ahead with a new generation of nuclear plants. This comes on the day Hartlepool Power Station held its first public meeting on proposals to build a new nuclear station in town. The Government was forced to start a second consultation period into the future of nuclear power in the UK back in May. This came after Greenpeace won a High Court battle by claiming its Now the green campaigners have launched a new legal challenge just hours before the second consultation period drew to a close late yesterday. John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK said: "The Government has got it seriously wrong yet again. "This consultation has been wilfully misleading, flawed and its methods are now under investigation. "The only way the Government can make the case for new nuclear power is through misinformation and a liberal dose of spin. "It has been clear from the start of this consultation that the process was designed to deliver a preordained conclusion. "We believe that the Government has failed to properly represent the facts surrounding nuclear power, including the liabilities that the taxpayer will inevitably face. Hartlepool is heavily involved in the consultation process, with the current nuclear power station in Tees Road in line to be replaced with a new build under the proposals. As reported in the Mail on Wednesday, station director Stuart Crooks is fully behind any plans for a new build. At a public meeting yesterday in the West View Community Centre. Andy Merifield, head of continuous development at Hartlepool Power Station, said: "We would like to build a new power station in Hartlepool within the next five to 10 years and transfer the skills and knowledge we have already got. "The case for nuclear is strong for the environment and contributing to the economy." Seventy people attended the meeting and there was a further presentation today at 2pm in the Baltic Suite at the Historic Quay. Tomorrow power station chiefs will give a presentation at a meeting of Hartlepool Borough Council's south neighbourhood consultative forum at the Owton Manor community centre, Wynyard Road, at 2pm. Last Updated: 11 October 2007 12:00 PM All rights reserved ©2007 Johnston Press Digital Publishing ***************************************************************** 12 baltimoresun.com: Bay & Environment: Calvert Cliffs protest Bay & Environment is The Sun’s blog devoted to news about Maryland’s environment Maryland Public Interest Research Group, which launched a campaign in March to try to stop the construction of a third nuclear reactor in Southern Maryland, is holding another protest today. MaryPIRG says it is planning an 11 a.m. event today (Oct. 11) on the Solomons Boardwalk in Solomons Island with three concerned residents of Calvert County, a Baltimore doctor from the group Physicians for Social Responsibility, and a representative of a group called Beyond Nuclear. Johanna Neumann, a spokeswoman for MaryPIRG, said her group is concerned that the evacuation routes away from the nuclear reactors at Calvert Cliff, which have been operating for three decades, are not adequate, in part because reactors are on a peninsula and there's only one major route in and out. Calvert County has strongly endorsed the construction of a third reactor, saying that the plant has proven its safety over many years of operation. Some supporters of nuclear power argue that reactors are a proven method of generating lots of electricity without producing any of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming. But skeptics of an expansion of the nuclear industry worry about the proliferation of nuclear weapons around the globe, and the issue of where spent fuel rods should be stored. Posted by Tom Pelton on October 11, 2007 10:36 AM | Permalink Bay & Environment is The Sun’s blog devoted to news about Maryland’s environment. Rona Kobell reports on the Chesapeake Bay, and in her seven years with The Sun, she's visited clam farms in Virginia, a peeler pen on Taylors Island and a small market on Smith Island that serves what many people consider the best crab cake in the world (to judge for yourself, head to the Drum Point Market in Tylerton). Rona enjoys hanging out with her husband and daughter. Tom Pelton writes about the environment and has been at The Sun for 10 years. He lives in the city with his wife, two daughters, and an exotic ecosystem that involves a cat, hamsters, hermit crabs, cacti, running shoes, drums, guitar, violins, mild cheeses and strong opinions. Tim Wheeler writes about growth and base-realignment for The Sun. A reporter and editor here since 1985, the West Virginia native has spent most of his adult life around the bay. He lives in Catonsville, one of Baltimore's older, walkable suburbs. ***************************************************************** 13 China Daily: Nuclear power plant in Jiangsu to use Russian tech BIZCHINA / Top Biz News By Wan Zhihong (China Daily) Updated: 2007-10-11 11:45 Two 1,000-MW nuclear power reactors will be built under the second phase of the Tianwan nuclear power plant in Jiangsu Province, company officials have said. Russian company Atomstroyexport (ASE) - which supplied the two reactors for Phase I that started full operation in August - and a Chinese project official who did not want to be named, confirmed the project. Aleksander Selikhov, ASE's chief representative in Lianyungang, told China Daily that the company is set to sign the framework agreement later this year for the supply of No 3 and No 4 reactors, and expects the contract to be finalized next year. Phase II will use more domestically-made equipment, according to the Chinese official. He said Tianwan will eventually become a key nuclear power base and consist of eight generating units with a total capacity of around 10,000 MW. The Tianwan project is by far the largest collaboration project between China and Russia, with investment for Phase I reportedly at 26.5 billion yuan ($3.5 billion). Neither of the parties disclosed the investment for Phase II. Construction of Phase I began in 1999 with the two reactors, each with an installed capacity of 1,060 MW, featuring Russian pressurized water technology - which will also be used in the next phase. Most nuclear reactors in operation or being built in China use second-generation technology. The exception is a contract finalized in July with US-based Westinghouse Electric Co to build four third-generation nuclear power reactors. Westinghouse's AP1000 technology will be used to build the four reactors, two of which will be in Sanmen, Zhejiang Province, and the other two in Haiyang, Shandong Province. Westinghouse outbid its competitors - France's Areva and ASE - after two years of negotiations. At the end of last year, nuclear power accounted for 1.1 percent of the nation's total installed power capacity, according to the State Electricity Regulatory Commission. The target is to increase nuclear power capacity to 40,000 MW by 2020, or 4 percent of the total generation capacity. ***************************************************************** 14 PRN: TXU Corp. Announces Completion of Acquisition by Investors Led by KKR and TPG 10.10.07 DALLAS, TX - o 15% Retail Price Cut Being Implemented o Eight Coal Plant Air Permits To Be Withdrawn o Secretary Donald L. Evans Becomes Chairman TXU Corp. (NYSE: TXU) today announced the completion of its merger agreement with Texas Energy Future Holdings Limited Partnership (TEF). TEF is led by a group of investors including Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR), Texas Pacific Group (TPG) and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners. TXU shareholders overwhelmingly approved the merger at the company’s Annual Meeting on September 7, 2007. With the completion of the merger, TXU Corp. has changed its name to Energy Future Holdings Corp. Shares of TXU common stock, which are listed on the New York Stock Exchange and the Chicago Stock Exchange, ceased trading at close of market today and will be delisted. Under the terms of the merger agreement, TXU shareholders are entitled to $69.25 in cash for each share of TXU common stock held. Lehman Brothers, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley became equity investors at closing. Completion of the merger agreement marks the final step in the transformation into a privately held company that is already delivering price cuts, price protection and low-income customer benefits, as well as taking actions to provide affordable power for years to come. In addition, the company will seek to achieve top environmental performance in the industry and greater involvement and dialogue with environmental, government and community leaders. “Our investment horizon allows the board, management and employees to formulate and implement a long-term strategy to meet customer needs and to respond to the significant energy challenges in Texas,” said Marc Lipschultz of KKR. Since the announcement of the merger transaction on February 26, 2007, TEF’s plans for the company’s new direction have received support from consumer groups, environmental groups, labor unions, business leaders and elected officials from communities across Texas. “We have maintained open and productive dialogues with legislators, regulators, customers and consumer advocates. Together, we are proud to be part of a transformation that will benefit - and in fact already is benefiting - customers and residents of the state of Texas,” said Michael MacDougall of TPG. New Leadership With the close of the transaction, Donald L. Evans becomes non-executive chairman of Energy Future Holdings Corp. Evans previously served as U.S. Secretary of Commerce for four years under President George W. Bush. “We are excited about the opportunities that the completion of this merger provides. This transaction is not only good for TXU shareholders, but also for employees, customers and residents across the state of Texas,” said Evans. “I look forward to working with management and employees to demonstrate our commitment to being a leading corporate citizen, to implementing stronger environmental policies and to providing reliable and affordable power.” As non-executive chairman, Evans will lead the company’s board of directors, which as previously announced will include: William Reilly, Chairman Emeritus of the World Wildlife Fund and former EPA Administrator; Lyndon Olson, former U.S. Ambassador to Sweden; James Huffines, Chairman of the Central Region Plains Capital Bank; and Kneeland Youngblood of Pharos Capital Group, LLC. Former U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker, III will serve as advisor to the company. “This company and its employees are ready for the next step. We look forward to implementing additional separation of our three businesses so each can focus on the distinct customers they serve,” said Tom Baker, Vice-Chairman of TXU Corp. who will transition to Chairman Emeritus of Energy Future Holdings Corp. As previously announced, with the successful completion of the transaction, C. John Wilder has resigned as TXU Corp. Chairman and CEO. Since his arrival in February 2004, Wilder led the company to substantial performance improvements including: outstanding shareholder returns; a successful business turnaround; and a major restructuring of the operations and growth program. “I am proud of what TXU has become and confident that the company is in good hands. Because of the hard work of TXU employees, these businesses are operating at safe, high-performance levels across many dimensions,” said Wilder. Evans concluded, “I’d like to thank John Wilder and the outgoing board of directors for their years of service to the company. They leave a company of outstanding men and women, dedicated to excellence in customer service and energy reliability. We wish them well in their future endeavors.” Three Separate and Distinct Companies Energy Future Holdings Corp., a holding company, will continue the transition of its businesses into three separate and distinct business units with separate boards, management teams, and headquarters. Each business will operate independently under the leadership of a CEO: * Jim Burke will serve as CEO of TXU Energy, a competitive electricity retailer; * Mike Greene will serve as CEO of Luminant, a competitive power generation business, including mining, wholesale marketing and trading, and construction; and * Bob Shapard will serve as CEO of Oncor, a regulated electric distribution and transmission business. To maintain smooth ongoing operations, current business unit management and organizational structures will remain in place at least through a transition period, which is expected to be complete in the first half of 2008. Beyond the further separation of the three primary businesses, most employees will experience few differences in their day-to-day jobs. The transition will be seamless to customers. Headquarters for each of the three businesses will remain in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Price Cuts As a result of the close of the transaction, TXU Energy will reduce retail prices by an additional 5%, resulting in a total 15% price reduction in 2007 for residential customers who had not already chosen one of TXU Energy’s lower-priced or environmentally friendly options. With this additional reduction TXU Energy will continue to offer the lowest prices of any incumbent competitive retailer in Texas. The value of TXU Energy’s lower prices, innovative range of products to meet customer needs, and focus on customer service have contributed to an increase in customer count over the past few months. $150 Million Commitment to Low-Income Assistance TEF and TXU Energy have announced the creation of TXU Energy Access, a comprehensive program representing a commitment of more than $150 million over 5 years to assist low-income customers. Environmental Benefits As part of the transaction, TEF made a range of commitments to strengthen environmental policies, make significant investments in alternative energy and institute corporate policies tied to climate stewardship. Those efforts helped earn the endorsement of Environmental Defense and the Natural Resources Defense Council, two of the nation’s largest and most respected environmental organizations. In keeping with the commitment to reduce the number of planned coal-fueled generation units from 11 to three, the eight air permit applications will be withdrawn by Luminant. The eight air permit applications were suspended shortly following the announcement of the merger agreement. In addition, Energy Future Holdings Corp. will create a Sustainable Energy Advisory Board comprised of individuals who represent the following interests: the environment; customers; Texas economic development; and ERCOT reliability standards. Board member William Reilly, Chairman Emeritus of the World Wildlife Fund and former Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, will lead the effort to make climate stewardship central to corporate policies. Oncor In advance of the close of the transaction, Oncor and TEF reached an agreement in principle with the key parties that would resolve all outstanding issues in the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC) review under Public Utility Regulatory Act Section 14.101 related to the change in control of Oncor. The agreement includes provisions under which the PUC would dismiss Oncor’s pending rate case. The agreement is subject to approval by the PUC. Following the close of the acquisition of TXU Corp. and as previously disclosed, TEF will sell a twenty percent stake in Oncor. Now that the acquisition is complete, the minority stake sale process will commence shortly and is an important element of the investor group’s plan. The sale of a twenty percent minority stake in Oncor has long been part of TEF’s plan to enhance Oncor’s independence and separation from TXU Corp., TXU Energy and Luminant. The purchaser of the twenty percent stake will not be affiliated with any of the companies owned by TXU Corp. or the parties involved in this transaction, and will have meaningful representation on the Oncor board of directors. In addition, Oncor plans to secure all of its currently existing long-term debt. This does not include the $800 million principal amount of floating rate senior notes that were redeemed upon completion of the merger as required by the terms of the notes. Oncor’s $2 billion credit facility is also secured. Shareholder Information Shareholders of record of TXU Corp. common stock who have stock certificates will receive instructions and a letter of transmittal from Mellon Investor Services LLC, the disbursing agent for the merger, concerning how and where to forward stock certificates for exchange and payment. Shareholders of record whose shares are held in book entry (electronic) form will receive a check from Mellon without needing to take any action. For shares held in “street name” through a broker, bank or other nominee, shareholders need not take any action to have shares exchanged for cash through the broker, bank or other nominee. For street name shareholders, questions about the receipt of compensation for shares should be directed to the appropriate broker, bank or other nominee. For all other questions regarding the exchange of TXU Corp. common stock shares, please call Mellon Investor Services LLC toll free at 1-877-277-9913. * * * About Energy Future Holdings Energy Future Holdings Corp., formerly named TXU Corp., is a Dallas-based energy holding company, with a portfolio of competitive and regulated energy subsidiaries, primarily in Texas, including TXU Energy, Luminant and Oncor. TXU Energy is a competitive retailer that provides electricity and related services to 2.1 million electricity customers in Texas. Luminant is a competitive power generation business, including mining, wholesale marketing and trading, construction and development operations. Luminant has over 18,300 MW of generation in Texas, including 2,300 MW of nuclear and 5,800 MW of coal-fueled generation capacity. Luminant is also the largest purchaser of wind-generated electricity in Texas and fifth largest in the United States. Oncor is a regulated electric distribution and transmission business that uses superior asset management skills to provide reliable electricity delivery to consumers. Oncor operates the largest distribution and transmission system in Texas, providing power to three million electric delivery points over more than 101,000 miles of distribution and 14,000 miles of transmission lines. Visit www.txucorp.com for more information. About TEF Texas Energy Future Holdings Limited Partnership is the holding company formed by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., Texas Pacific Group and other investors to acquire TXU Corp. Forward Looking Statements This release contains forward-looking statements, which are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Discussion of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from management's current projections, forecasts, estimates and expectations is contained in Energy Future Holdings Corp. or TXU Corp.’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Specifically, TXU Corp. makes reference to the section entitled “Risk Factors” in its annual and quarterly reports. In addition to the risks and uncertainties set forth in the SEC reports or periodic reports, the proposed transactions described in this release could be affected by, among other things, the occurrence of any event, change, market conditions or other circumstances that could prevent TEF from completing the sale of the 20 percent interest in Oncor. Media Jeff Eller (Energy Future Holdings) 214-812-1176 Brian Tulloh 214-812-8395 Investor Relations Tim Hogan 214-812-4641 Bill Huber 214-812-2480 Back to the News Releases Index TXU Energy (REP Certificate No. 10004) and Luminant are not the same company as Oncor Electric Delivery and are not regulated by the Public Utility Commission of Texas, and you do not have to buy TXU Energy's or Luminant's products to continue to receive quality regulated services from Oncor Electric Delivery. © 2007 TXU. All rights reserved. Privacy Statement. Site Terms and Conditions. TXU Energy (REP Certificate No. 10004) and Luminant are not the same company as Oncor Electric Delivery and are not regulated by the Public Utility Commission of Texas, and you do not have to buy TXU Energy's or Luminant's products to continue to receive quality regulated services from Oncor Electric Delivery. ***************************************************************** 15 Reuters: INTERVIEW-Nuclear-free Sweden is still only a dream Thu Oct 11, 2007 12:14pm BST By Barbara Lewis STOCKHOLM, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Nearly thirty years after Sweden voted to phase out nuclear energy, firms are quietly increasing plant capacity and there is no end in sight for a power source still providing half of the nation's electricity. Sweden's Centre party was at the forefront of demands for a referendum on scrapping nuclear power after a partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island plant in the United States in 1979. But Energy Minister Maud Olofsson, a member of the Centre party, toned down the party's anti-nuclear stance to build the current ruling coalition. Her State Secretary Ola Altera has a similarly tolerant view of nuclear power, despite a raft of problems at Sweden's own nuclear plants in the past two years. "In the short term, it is not really realistic, especially since the climate issue has stepped forward as the main priority," Altera told Reuters on Thursday when asked about a timetable for a nuclear phase out. "If you analyse nuclear, it has a lot of drawbacks, the future is not in expanding nuclear," he said. But for now nuclear is here to stay, especially as its main advantage is that it generates power without carbon emissions. Continued... © Reuters 2007. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 16 NYT: A Coal/Nuclear/Solar Energy Faceoff That Is Almost Real - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog October 11, 2007, 9:37 am By Stephen J. Dubner Seth Schiesel wrote a fascinating piece in the Times about a new collaboration between game maker Electronic Arts and the energy company BP in designing the latest version of E.A.’s SimCity computer game. In case you don’t know, SimCity “focuses on building and managing a modern metropolis.” As Schiesel tells us, “coping with environmental pollution has long been part of the series.” That’s where BP comes in: helping to design game choices for generating electricity, which means considering cost, capacity, public response, and various externalities such as pollution. So while designing your city, you choose between coal-fired plants, solar power, and nuclear power: For instance, for most players the most economically efficient way to power their virtual cities may be with coal plants, which produce 500 units of electricity and cost 3,000 simoleons, the game’s currency, to build. Coal plants, however, produce large amounts of pollution, which can lead to natural disasters like droughts, and they also reduce the happiness of the city’s nearby citizens, which in turn causes them to produce less tax revenue. On the other hand, a solar farm in the game has no negative side effects and also costs 3,000 simoleons but produces only 100 units of electricity, a mere fifth of the coal plant’s output. (A nuclear plant costs a whopping 30,000 simoleons, produces 1,500 units of power and zero emissions, but reduces the happiness of nearby citizens nonetheless.) I don’t know how much a nuclear plant reduces happiness, but as we wrote recently, that number may be falling, whatever it is. To me, the most interesting part of Schiesel’s article concerns the issue that prompted us to write the nuclear article linked above: for all the attention paid to transportation emissions in this country, it is the generation of electricity that should probably be at the top of any carbon-reducing agenda: “We want people to understand the climate issue a bit better and understand that there are twice as many greenhouse emissions from generating electricity than from all forms of transport combined,” [Carol] Battershell [a BP vice president for alternative energy] said in an interview. If you want to be skeptical, you’d say, “Well, of course it serves BP well to point to electricity as a bigger villain than transportation” — and you might also note, as Schiesel does, that “relatively clean systems like wind farms, natural gas plants and solar farms are branded with the BP logo [in SimCity], while the dirty options like coal are not.” Furthermore, Ms. Battershell — and boy oh boy, is that an aptonym or what? — seems to be considerably overstating her argument, at least for the U.S. According to the Energy Information Administration data found here, electricity produces about 40 percent of our energy-related CO2 emissions versus the 33 percent produced by the transportation sector. Still, it will be interesting to see if SimCity users can help lead the charge to recognize that a few fewer coal-burning plants would probably do away with as many emissions as a few million Priuses. On a broader scale, it will be interesting to see how the millions of people who spend time in SimCity, Second Life, and other virtual worlds contribute to solving real-world problems. Experimenting virtually with the costs and benefits of different energy sources is a great start. Along the same lines, it is encouraging to see that the Wii — its shortages notwithstanding — is being put to use helping elderly and handicapped people engage in physical activities that they otherwise wouldn’t. Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company ***************************************************************** 17 Guardian Unlimited: Penn State Reports Minor Reactor Leak Thursday October 11, 2007 11:16 PM STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) - Penn State University has reported a minor leak of ``slightly radioactive water'' at its Breazeale nuclear reactor. The leak occurred in the pool in which the reactor sits, but the water posed no health risk to workers, the community or the environment, the university said Thursday. The reactor will be out of service until the leak is found, the university said. Reactor staff noticed ``a small reduction of several hundred gallons over the past several days'' from the pool that holds 71,000 gallons of water, according to Penn State. The leak rate is about 10 gallons per hour. The pool shields the core's radiation and cools the reactor. It is comprised of tap water with most of its minerals and impurities removed. State and federal officials have been notified, Penn State said. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 18 IAEA: IAEA Shanghai meeting to focus on nuclear power plant life management Media Advisory 2007/17 11 October 2007 | An international symposium will gather more than 300 experts next Monday in the Chinese city of Shanghai to discuss world experiences in effectively managing nuclear power plants beyond their initial design lives. The four-day scientific event from 15 to 18 October is organized by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), in cooperation with China Atomic Energy Authority (CAEA) and China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), and comes at a time of renewed interest in and rising expectations for the use of nuclear power for generating electricity. Participants from 35 countries and 5 international organizations will focus on the integrity and reliability of system structures and components in assuring economical, safe and reliable long term operation. "This is especially important as the world's fleet of 439 nuclear power plants has been operating, on average, for more than 20 years," said Yuri Sokolov, IAEA Deputy Director General for Nuclear Energy, ahead of the event. "Even though the design life of a nuclear power plant is typically for 30 or 40 years, it is quite feasible that many nuclear power plants will be able to operate in excess of their design lives," he added. Detailed information on the Shanghai symposium, the second such event following the one held in 2002 in Budapest, Hungary, can be found at Second International Symposium on Nuclear Power Plant Life Management . Interview requests with experts attending the event should be sent to Mr. DOU Yikang, from Shanghai Nuclear Engineering Research and Design Institute (SNERDI), at douyk at snerdi.com.cn, Tel: +86 (21) 648 502 20 29 111, Mobile: +86 (130) 231 803 25. For general media queries, please contact the IAEA Division of Public Information at Press Contacts Press Office Division of Public Information [43-1] 2600-21273 About the IAEA The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) serves as the world's foremost intergovernmental forum for scientific and technical co-operation in the peaceful use of nuclear technology. Established as an autonomous organization under the United Nations (UN) in 1957, the IAEA carries out programmes to maximize the useful contribution of nuclear technology to society while verifying its peaceful use. NOTE TO EDITORS: For additional information visit the Press Section of the IAEA's website (http://www.iaea.org/Resources/Journalists/), or call the IAEA's Division of Public Information at (431) 2600-21270. Copyright ©, International Atomic Energy Agency, P.O. Box 100, Wagramer Strasse 5, A-1400 Vienna, Austria Telephone (+431) 2600-0; Facsimilie (+431) 2600-7; E-mail: ***************************************************************** 19 UK: In The News: Nuclear power under fire Wednesday, 10 Oct 2007 11:46 The government has launched a consultation into nuclear power Environmental campaigners have spoken out about more nuclear power stations being built in the UK on the 50th anniversary of the worst nuclear accident to occur in the west. Half a century ago today the graphite core of the British nuclear reactor at Windscale, now called Sellafield, caught fire and released substantial amounts of radioactive contamination into the surrounding area. Today is also the final day of the government-run public consultation into whether the private sector should be allowed to build new nuclear power stations. The government has argued that nuclear power can play an important role in reducing the UK's carbon emissions and subsequently the effects of climate change. But environmental groups and some politicians have expressed anger at the proposal, saying there are other energy sources which can meet the country's energy needs while being less dangerous. Friends of the Earth director Tony Juniper said that nuclear power amounts to just four per cent of the UK's energy needs while producing highly dangerous radioactive waste that will remain a threat for generations to come. "Nuclear power will never be a major or cheap solution to climate change as claimed by it supporters," he explained. "It's time to invest instead in clean and safe alternatives that could underpin a genuinely sustainable energy future." Scotland's energy minister Jim Mather said the billions which could be spent on nuclear technology should instead be invested in developing safer renewable power. "We completely reject the development of dangerous, unnecessary and costly new nuclear power stations in Scotland," he said. "We already have clean, green and reliable alternatives. Scotland has massive renewables potential, as well as significant opportunities for clean fossil-fuel technologies and carbon storage. Harnessing that potential can meet our future energy demands several times over, while tackling climate change. "I believe that our position has the clear support of the majority of MSPs and public opinion. The UK government now needs to accept the weight of evidence and abandon its disastrously short-sighted and unwanted proposals." © 2007 Advertise | Privacy | Terms of Use ***************************************************************** 20 Guardian Unlimited: Cost of nuclear clean-up rises to Ł73bn Terry Macalister Thursday October 11, 2007 The official cost of cleaning up 20 of Britain's nuclear facilities will be more than Ł73bn, 16% higher than estimated last year, according to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority yesterday. The latest rise in clean-up costs came as the government completed consultation on whether to proceed with a new generation of atomic plants, with one potential operator arguing there was a "moral imperative" to allow more to be built. The NDA blamed the soaring cost estimates for clean-up on obtaining more detailed estimates for dismantling buildings and clearing sites from individual operators managing locations such as Sellafield in Cumbria for the state-owned agency. Greenpeace claimed last night that the cost of nuclear clean-up would be closer to Ł100bn because there would be a Ł10bn bill for the disposal of legacy waste, a further Ł9bn for getting rid of uranium, plutonium and spent fuel plus Ł5bn from the costs of dismantling British Energy plants. The NDA says the Ł73bn in its accounts is less relevant than the "discounted" figure of Ł37bn which takes account of inflation and other factors, though it admits even that number has increased by 22% since it was calculated a year ago. "There is always going to be a significant degree of uncertainty when you are dealing with trying to assess the cost of work that will be done over 100 years. The majority of the increases are connected with Sellafield where more accurate assessments are coming in on the cost of managing contaminated land and dealing with spent fuel left in ponds and silos for the last 40 to 50 years," said a spokesman. As those dealing with clean-up and decommissioning get closer to carrying out the work of bringing down the buildings and storing radioactive materials, it becomes easier to assess the cost more accurately, added the spokesman, who said "discounted" costs at Sellafield were up by Ł4bn, Magnox sites had risen by Ł2.5bn and Dounreay by Ł800m. This month the NDA put a halt to competitive tendering of the Magnox South management licence in response to a lack of interest from the private sector. The authority said yesterday it expected to come up with a new policy initiative, probably early in the new year, and admitted it was considering bundling up more sites together to make them more attractive. Fears that the NDA budget was going to be cut in the comprehensive spending review appear to have been misplaced, with Alistair Darling announcing a further Ł338m for 2010/2011. Some of this will be needed to account for a shortfall in income from the Thorp reprocessing plant, closed after a fire and so not able to earn an expected Ł112m annual income. Greenpeace said the nuclear industry has been characterised by soaring cost estimates. "I have a feeling that the figures are going to continue to ratchet upwards not downwards as the industry has a history of cost increases not decreases," said Jean McSorley, a consultant to the group. "The NDA says it is going to save money through efficiency gains, but the lack of interest by companies in the Magnox South tender suggests it will have to make profit margins more attractive for them." Eon, one of the largest gas and electricity providers in Britain, said last night that the government should give the green light to new nuclear - and quickly. "New nuclear power stations can play a significant role in stabilising and then reducing carbon emissions, which is a moral imperative in its own right if we are not going to leave an even more severely impaired climate to future generations. The risks ... are small when compared with the benefits that can be gained now and for the future." If new nuclear power stations were to fill the expected gap in generation as existing plant retires, there needs to be an "ambitious but achievable" timetable for planning and licensing. "To achieve operation of the first power station in 2017, the consents and licences need to be in place by the end of 2012." This could only be done by encouraging further engagement and transparency by regulators so more resources needed to be made immediately available to the regulators, the utility argued. Useful link Government's report on the energy review Have your say Email your comments for publication to: politics.editor@guardianunlimited.co.uk Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 21 Whitehaven News: Windscale: an accident that was waiting to happen Published on 11/10/2007 better to have shut the piles down: Vic Goodwin, who was a physicist at Windscale at the time of the fire John Story IF WINDSCALE had not been a bomb-making factory, the fire of 1957, which in the years ahead caused potentially hundreds cancers, would not have happened. According to at least one expert in the field, it was an accident waiting to happen. Since 1951, in top secret on an isolated part of the Cumbrian coast, the twin 400ft Windscale piles had been producing plutonium for Britain to make its own atomic and hydrogen bombs – until October 20, 1957, when the first of the piles caught fire, spewing radioactivity over the countryside in the general direction of Lancashire. This week it was even revealed that the radiation might have spread much farther than previously thought. The explosive material from the operation of the first reactor was used for the UK’s first nuclear weapons test in Australia on October 3, 1952, but five years later came the Windscale disaster, at the time believed to be the world’s most serious nuclear accident. Nearly 200 cancers, half of them fatal, resulted but although neither of the Windscale Pile reactors ever worked again, the accident did not stop the government from continuing to use the site as its bomb factory – Calder Hall, in the national interest, was a close-at-hand alternative for Britain’s defence in the cold-war arms race. But most of the nuclear industry experts generally agree that weapons production could have been switched over to Calder at least 12 months sooner. With the cause of the fire not entirely unexpected, one of those experts, Lorna Arnold, concluded that “the operation of the Windscale Piles was an accident waiting to happen”. Others agree, including Vic Goodwin, who as a young physicist was sent to Sellafield to work directly on the Windscale Piles exactly one year before the accident. He readily admits it was a baptism of fire at the start of a distinguished nuclear career but in the course of events he was part of an heroic Sellafield team under Tom Tuohy which fought day and night to put out the blaze. Was it really an accident waiting to happen? – “I am afraid that while it might not have been true when the piles were first built I fear it was true in ’57.” If that was so why weren’t the warnings heeded? – “I think there was growing unease, the military programme tended to be dominant. Capable and successive men at Sellafield called for improvements and changes, particularly in measuring temperatures.” Was there a case in 1956 for shutting down the piles? – “Oh, hindsight is a wonderful thing but I am sure that with the knowledge we have now and obtained fairly quickly after the fire, it would have been better if these old piles had been shut down after the Queen opened Calder Hall, which had a much more secure design. But, as I said, the military programme was very demanding, the country decided it would go nuclear in the sense of making its own bomb. “Collaboration with the Americans had stopped at the end of 1946, as they thought we were riddled with spies. So the Atlee administration decided it would make a do-it-yourself bomb. The British researchers who were in the States came back here and they effectively repeated what they had been doing over there, designing these Windscale Piles with more than a glance at the Handford reactors which had had some problems. Not much of that was known to us at the time. “So, yes it would have been very desirable I think to shut ours down in ’56 but the next administration (Harold Macmillan’s) was racing to get the hydrogen bomb going, because America and Russia had already done it. The military programme was paramount.” So effectively Sellafield was a bomb-making factory long before it became a civil nuclear plant for peaceful purposes? – “Entirely. A great deal of effort was rightly put into work which would underpin the military programme. It was just that, in doing so, other work that should have been done to show how close to the edge the Windscale Piles were was not done until after the fire itself. “Now one realises the military programme could have been met and the piles could have been shut down. Calder Hall and Chapelcross were in business with a better design capability for producing plutonium as well as producing electricity for the country. We came to realise that, while this particular design was really quite dodgy, Cinderella to some extent, we had no knowledge that it would actually catch fire in this way.” On the build up to the fire, Mr Goodwin said: “You could see it was red hot at first, white hot later. In the area where we could not discharge the fuel, the fire was getting worse. Carbon dioxide did not do anything, so Tom Tuohy took the decision that water had to go on. There was a good big flow of water which just carried away the heat and doused the fire. “In the first place an awful lot of hard work was done by the discharge team in getting about 90 per cent of the fuel away from the fire into a canal or pond, but then we had to find some way of dousing the fire which wasn’t easy either. My own task was to get a water injection system made. I already had some tubes for another purpose but they proved ideal for making long lances which Eddie Davies and his little engineering workshop quickly lashed on to conventional fire hoses. “We got water injection points installed up near the top of the reactor core and connected to a fire engine to give a jolly good flow.” Do you think the Windscale Piles helped in the prevention of a Third World War in what was a cold war arms race? – “That might well be a fact. We were really only a small country compared to America and Russia and I suppose could have been trodden underfoot in that respect. We could easily have been pig in the middle between American and the Russians, so going it on our own did enable us to have a say and stick up for ourselves at a time when the Soviet Union did appear to be terribly threatening. “Earlier in the very same month of the Windscale Fire, Russia had launched a Sputnik. They had what nobody else had: an inter-ballistic missile, at least a year ahead of the Americans, so it made everybody sit up and think. So the Americans decided it would be good to have a bit of British know- how after all to help them catch up.” The Windscale Piles and Calder Hall were operated at the time by the UK Atomic Energy Authority but the exacting task of decommissioning the reactors has been in the hands of BNFL. One of the company’s former leading scientists, Richard Wakeford, now at Manchester University, has written a paper about the reactor accident in which he concludes that whatever the actual cause of the fire that it was one waiting to happen. “The Windscale Piles posed problems to their operators throughout their service. Indeed, even before construction was completed, Sir John Cockcroft, on the basis of information received from the USA, insisted that filters be installed to remove radioactive material potentially present in the exhaust cooling air.” Researchers concluded that the fire caused or would case 100 fatal cancers and 90 non-fatal cancers. Polonium-210, which was largely ignored in early environmental assessments, was considered to have had the greatest radiological impact of the radionuclides discharged. Vic Goodwin, who was later to head up Sellafield’s environmental, monitoring and protection programmes, said the consequences of the fire would have been much worse but for “Cockcroft’s follies”. “Cockcroft was an amazing man who found out that things were not as good as they looked with the United States reactors. He said it would be highly desirable to put on filters to stop the possible release of radioactivity. “The piles were at the construction stage and the funding of the filters would be awkward, having to go somewhere on top rather than at the bottom of the piles – not a simple matter in itself, but they would also have cut output of the pile. But in the end Cockcroft had enough clout to get the filters fitted top-hat style.” Otherwise could the accident have been as bad as Chernobyl? “Not quite, because the Chernobyl station was such a lot bigger. Nevertheless, for a small densely-populated county like ours it would have been a darn size worse but for the filters, which prevented a lot more radioactivity going out into the atmosphere. Catastrophe? “No I think that would be too strong a word but it was serious enough, obviously. We measured the radioactivity in the pile afterwards – I can’t remember how much there was but it was quite a lot, so if the filters hadn’t been there the stuff would have got out onto the grass and into the milk. Cattle were still outside at the time. “The people up here knew it would take 48 hours for iodine 131 to start to show in the grass, so the decision to impose a ban on the consumption and distribution of the local milk was a good piece of work.” Richard Wakeford wrote: “The half century that has elapsed since the Windscale fire has provided some perspective on the accident – the quantity of iodine 131 released was 1,000 times less than that released from the Chernobyl accident almost 30 years later. Nonetheless the Windscale accident can hardly be considered trivial, it is rated as a Level 5 on the International Nuclear Event Scale, and it could have been a lot worse. “The extensive environmental monitoring that took place during and after the fire provided the evidence upon which the authorities decided that a milk distribution ban should be enforced in the West Cumbrian coastal strip running from 10km north of Windscale to some 20 km to the south. “Iodine 131 had been quickly identified as the major radiological hazard arising from the accident, although the health physicists had little guidance available as to what constituted an acceptable limit for the level of iodine 131 in milk. They derived such a limit to constrain thyroid doses, particularly to infants and young children. A milk ban based on these ad hoc calculations was a courageous but wise decision which prevented a significant enhancement of the local thyroid dose and limited individual thyroid doses.” But was the accident played down at the time? Vic Goodwin: “Locally, people by and large knew what was going on, medical officers in white suits stood up and said things which, with the milk ban, was reassuring. You have to remember that for the rest of the county Windscale was a long way away. People had experienced worse things in recent memory: only 10 years previously 130 men were lost in the William Pit disaster, and further away industrial towns were still looking derelict from war time bomb damage. Rightly or wrongly, something that happened up here like a ban on milk did not really seem like big news.” Do you think the operation of the Windscale Piles was justified? “In the context of 50 years ago then â€yes’ but if anyone suggested it now it would probably be â€no’...it is just too dodgy.” View this story and the latest newspaper in full digital reproduction, just like the printed copy at www.whitehaven-news.co.uk/digitalcopy ***************************************************************** 22 RussiaToday: Russia aims for nuclear industry development October 11, 2007, 23:33 Russia is pushing forward with plans for energy alternatives to oil and gas. The number of nuclear power plants is set to double in the coming years, while a bill has been passed that will see a state-owned corporation uniting the entire industry. Halted after the Chernobyl blast, the construction of NPPs is now gathering pace, with two reactors initiated every year. To promote a new, clean and safe image of the industry, the head of the country’s Federal Agency for Nuclear Energy, Sergey Kirienko, has even taken a dive in a lake which is located near a nuclear power station. “This lake is absolutely clean and safe, even though it’s close to a nuclear power station,” Mr Kirienko commented. Sergey Kirienko is trying to persuade State Duma deputies that the nuclear industry is what Russia needs. However to develop it, the state has to gather all its nuclear assets under one umbrella. “The goal is to create a state-owned corporation uniting all branches of the nuclear industry, including the military segment, power generation, science and safety,” Mr Kirienko insisted. The move will allow the centralisation not only of power but also of money. Profits generated by the industry will stay within it in order to finance new projects. In addition to building scores of nuclear reactors at home, Russia also hopes to secure at least a 20% share of the international nuclear market. But the idea of exporting Russian know-how met with some criticism. “We shouldn’t build nuclear stations abroad, let’s just sell them electricity. It’s better than selling oil and gas,” claimed Vladimir Zhirinovsky, State Duma deputy. “Well, if we have a choice, then indeed it’s better to sell electricity than building stations, but we cannot export electricity to Latin America or India - the cost is too high - but we do need their markets,” responded Sergey Kirienko. The bill was approved in the first reading. The next reading in the State Duma is scheduled for November. If the second and the third ones go as smoothly as the first, Russia’s state nuclear corporation could be created before the end of the year. Copyright © Autonomous Nonprofit Organization "TV-Novosti" 2007, ***************************************************************** 23 Radiation "Mengele" Dies, Was Aided By City Of Cincinnati & U. Of Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2007 01:38:41 -0400 Mothersalert Home: http://www.mothersalert.org http://www.mothersalert.org/moreinfo.html By WILLIAM DICKE Published: October 11, 2007 Dr. Eugene L. Saenger, who set off a dispute over medical ethics by leading a cold-war research study that exposed patients in Cincinnati to intense doses of radiation, died there on Sept. 30. He was 90. Patrick Reddy/The Enquirer, via Associated Press Dr. Eugene L. Saenger His death was announced by the University of Cincinnati, where he taught for more than three decades. Dr. Saenger was a radiologist and an expert in nuclear medicine whose research contributed to the establishment of radiation safety standards for patients and medical personnel, the university said. In 1960, he became among the first to report on the development of tumors in children after irradiation for benign conditions. But it was a Pentagon-sponsored radiation study that brought him unwanted national attention. The study was intended to answer a question for battlefield commanders: In the event of a nuclear explosion, how much radiation could a soldier withstand before becoming disabled or disoriented? One goal was to develop a test that would quickly indicate a person's radiation exposure level. From 1960 to 1971, researchers at the University of Cincinnati exposed at least 90 cancer patients to large radiation doses, many over their whole bodies, and recorded their physical and mental responses. Most were poor or working-class people being treated at General Hospital, affiliated with the university; about 60 percent were black. Twenty-one died within a month or so, and some suffered severe nausea or mental disorientation. Dr. Saenger later defended the research, saying one purpose had been to improve treatments and survival rates or to relieve symptoms. But critics like Dr. David Egilman, a clinical associate professor of community health at Brown University, have argued that it was known that total body radiation was not effective for the types of solid tumors the patients had. "What happened here is one of the worst things this government has ever done to its citizens in secret," Dr. Egilman said. Martha Stephens, now an emeritus professor of English at the University of Cincinnati, helped bring the research to light in the early 1970s and wrote a book about it. She said documents showed that many of the patients had received radiation doses that reduced their white blood cell counts to nearly nothing. At one time, Dr. Saenger said the deaths of eight patients had been caused by radiation, but later he said that none had been caused by it. In 1994, when government-sponsored radiation experiments that had been conducted during the cold war attracted renewed attention, the Cincinnati study came under new scrutiny, and a graduate student working with Professor Stephens began tracking down the families of the patients. A class-action suit was filed on behalf of the families against the researchers, the university, the federal government and the City of Cincinnati, which ran the university at the time of the experiments. In a settlement in 1999, most families were awarded $50,978 each, a dozen others $85,318. The university released documents showing that members of faculty committees that reviewed clinical research had argued privately for years about the safety and morality of the study, but it had been allowed to continue. The papers also show that the National Institutes of Health expressed doubts in 1967, rejecting, for ethical reasons, Dr. Saenger's proposal to expand his experiment. Eugene Lange Saenger was born in Cincinnati on March 5, 1917. He received a bachelor's degree from Harvard in 1938 and a medical degree from the University of Cincinnati in 1942, then completed his residency at General Hospital. He joined the medical faculty at the university in 1949, became a full professor in 1962 and was director of the medical college's radioisotope laboratory from 1962 until his retirement in 1987. He was awarded the Gold Medal by the Radiological Society of North America, its highest honor. He is survived by a son, Eugene Jr., of Cincinnati, and four grandchildren. His wife, Susan, whom he married in 1941, died in 1995, and a daughter, Katherine Soodek, died in 1993. One critical issue in the dispute over the radiation study was whether the patients were ever fully informed about what was being done. In the first five years, the researchers said, they obtained oral consent, and later various written consent forms. But Professor Stephens recounted that "none of them ever said: 'You may die of this radiation. Do you wish to participate?'" "If they had," she said, "there would have been no experiment." ***************************************************************** 24 Rocky Mountain News: Congress to hear nuke workers' plight By Laura Frank, Rocky Mountain News October 11, 2007 A Congressional hearing Oct. 23 will assess whether ill workers from Rocky Flats and other nuclear weapons sites are being treated fairly by a federal program that is supposed to compensate them for work-related illnesses. Sen. Ted Kennedy heads the committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, which will try to determine whether the program is "friendly to our Cold War heroes." Coloradan Terrie Barrie is getting ready to go. The Craig woman became a national advocate for ill workers like her husband George, a former Rocky Flats worker. She is not set to testify, but plans to meet with lawmakers' staff members. "It's very important that we go," Barrie said. "They need to know that this program is not fair to claimants." Two top officials of the Energy Employees Occupational Illness and Compensation Program confirmed they will testify. They are Shelby Hallmark, director of the program for the U.S. Department of Labor, and John Howard, director of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. A spokesman for Howard said the director will be testifying about efforts to make the program "claimant friendly." Currently there are no workers scheduled to testify. However, Ken Silver, an advocate from Oak Ridge, Tenn., said he was soliciting input from workers at several sites for his testimony. The program has been under fire, most recently after a government contractor found officials had ignored evidence trying to prove a link between ailments and exposures from the nuclear weapons work. "If they're ignoring evidence, it's not claimant friendly," Barrie said. © 2007 The E.W. Scripps Co. ***************************************************************** 25 Pahrump Valley Times: Vacation for Gary (Yucca) Nye County's Largest Newspaper Circulation Oct. 10, 2007 Letters to the Editor Gary Hollis completed his fact finding trip for the Department of Energy. How thrilling. The rooms only cost $264 per night. Not to worry, it was "Nuclear Waste Oversight Money." I think another term for that is taxpayer funded. Your tax money at work to give Gary another vacation. If Yucca Mountain Repository ever gets up and running it will be the greatest disaster that this country has ever seen. Nobody in the DOE ever reads the reports of railroad accidents. If it was so safe to ship this poison across our country, I would suggest that they build a landing strip at Yucca and fly it in. The inspection group should have gone to France and observed the four mile long nuclear waste recycling facility instead of looking at another hole in the ground that's predestined to poison the environment. You must remember though, recycling is more expensive that burying and the Department of Energy is extremely cautious how they spend our taxes. Like sending county commissioners around the world. Hollis said that as congressional delegation is working against Yucca Mountain. Isn't it strange that the US Congress is against it and our county commissioner is for its support? I wonder, if and when the Pahrump Valley gets incorporated, who will get the Focus Group funding behind their mayoral campaign, Peter or Gary? RICHARD A. BROWN webmaster@pahrumpvalleytimes.com Copyright © Pahrump Valley Times, 1997 - ***************************************************************** 26 The State: Tritium level high in water at S.C. plant Posted on Thu, Oct. 11, 2007 Radioactive material at Catawba nuclear site above EPA safe-drinking standard By SAMMY FRETWELL - sfretwell@thestate.com State and federal authorities are investigating the discovery of radioactive tritium in groundwater at a Duke Energy nuclear power plant in York County. Tritium was detected at twice the Environmental Protection Agency’s safe drinking water standard in a test well on the Catawba nuclear site, according to an incident report filed this week with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control plans to test private wells near the plant to see if any show levels of the radioactive material, agency officials said Wednesday. Testing will occur in the Bethel Community of York County. “We want to know whether any tritium is in the groundwater used by wells outside of the plant’s boundary,” DHEC’s Patrick Walker said. Tritium is a radioactive material produced by nuclear power plants and weapons complexes. It isn’t considered as toxic as other radioactive pollutants, such as plutonium, but tritium can increase a person’s chances of developing cancer. It also can foreshadow the eventual flow of more toxic radioactive materials in groundwater, said David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety expert with the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington. Strontium was found in groundwater at a New York nuclear plant about six months after tritium was discovered, Lochbaum said, referring to the discovery during the past two years. Lochbaum, who tracks nuclear power plant safety issues, said it’s too early to say how substantial the contamination is at Catawba. NRC spokesman Roger Hannah said the agency has no reason to believe it is public health threat, at least for now. Duke Energy found the leak in York County while testing groundwater in the area of the nuclear plant, according to the NRC. It was the only one of 30 test wells to show tritium levels above the EPA’s standard of 20,000 picocuries per liter. “We don’t know the source; that is part of the investigation,” said Duke Energy spokeswoman Valerie Patterson. Tritium contamination has been a concern in South Carolina and across the country recently because of leaks at other nuclear plants and from Barnwell County’s low-level nuclear waste landfill. The Barnwell site takes nuclear refuse from atomic power plants. Lochbaum praised Duke for checking the groundwater. The groundwater check is part of a national initiative by the nuclear industry to identify problems in the wake of leaks at other power plants. One plant in the Midwest leaked tritium for an extended period before it was discovered. The Catawba plant has had at least three leaks of radioactive material since 1992, according to a report Lochbaum compiled. Most nuclear plants have had some sort of leak since their inception, he said. In South Carolina, Lochbaum noted nearly 50 “groundwater events,” including leaks, at the state’s four nuclear plant sites. Reach Fretwell at (803) 771-8537. ***************************************************************** 27 The State: Barnwell leaks on meeting agenda 10/11/2007 By SAMMY FRETWELL After two months of questions about a leaking nuclear garbage dump, state regulators will try to explain why Barnwell County residents aren’t in danger of drinking polluted water. The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control holds a reception and public meeting tonight for people living near Chem-Nuclear’s 36-year-old atomic waste landfill at Snelling. Agency officials will go over the results of tests they say show drinking water around the landfill is safe from radioactive contamination. The reception starts at 6:30 at the S.C. Advanced Technology Park off S.C. 64 in Snelling. “We wanted to meet directly with the community to talk about the results and address any questions they have,’’ DHEC spokesman Thom Berry said. For Kevin Zorn, the state’s efforts are too little, too late. He is one of a handful of residents near the landfill whose drinking water was found by DHEC to contain tritium contamination. Zorn said state regulators told him the levels are well within safe drinking water limits, but he can’t understand why his well contains any tritium, which can increase a person’s chances of cancer. Zorn said DHEC is holding a reception before its meeting “to try and butter everybody up’’ so they won’t complain about the landfill. “My water is contaminated, and I don’t want it contaminated,’’ he said. “I don’t want none of that in my water.’’ Agency records, obtained recently by The State newspaper, show more than 30 monitoring wells at the landfill with tritium levels that exceed the Environmental Protection Agency’s safe drinking water standard — in some cases by hundreds of times. The readings are in some cases higher than those found on the Savannah River Site nuclear weapons complex, which has a well-documented history of groundwater pollution, the newspaper wrote Aug. 19. Since then, state regulators have tested 39 private wells, finding no tritium contamination in all but a handful of the wells. The agency plans to begin testing private wells regularly to make sure they remain clean. Critics say the landfill still presents a threat to drinking water, even though recent tests show private wells are clean. The state-owned landfill takes low-level atomic waste from across the nation. It is one of three commercial low-level atomic waste landfills in the U.S., but the only one that buries the most radioactive low-level waste from every state. State legislators voted last spring not to keep the landfill open past its 2008 deadline to close to the nation. Chem-Nuclear had lobbied to keep the landfill operating for all states through 2023. Without a change in the law, only South Carolina, Connecticut and New Jersey can use the landfill after next summer. The company, a division of Energy Solutions of Utah, announced recently it would not again seek to keep the landfill open. Reach Fretwell at (803) 771-8537. ***************************************************************** 28 post-gazette: Radioactive groundwater found at nuke plant Thursday, October 11, 2007 A groundwater monitoring well has tested positive for radioactive contamination at First Energy Corp.'s Beaver Valley Nuclear Power Station in Shippingport, but the levels do not threaten public health or safety, according to the company and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. FirstEnergy voluntarily reported the contamination to the NRC, which said the radioactive material could be coming from a buried liquid waste line on Unit One, which was idled Sept. 24 for unrelated routine maintenance and refueling. Water drawn Aug. 28 from well 12, near the power plant's north parking lot, contained 11,457 picocuries per liter of tritium in a sample taken 68 feet below ground level, and 14,371 picocuries of tritium in a sample taken 40 feet below the surface. The amount is well below the standard of 30,000 picocuries per liter for nonpotable water that would require the company to make a formal report to the NRC. Tritium is a radioactive form of hydrogen and a byproduct of the nuclear power generation process. First published on October 11, 2007 at 12:00 am Copyright ©1997 - PG Publishing Co., Inc. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 29 Belfast Telegraph: MLAs urged to back Sellafield closure - Thursday, October 11, 2007 By Noel McAdam THE Assembly is to be urged to back calls for the closure of Sellafield. SDLP MLAs Carmel Hanna and PJ Bradley yesterday tabled a motion demanding the former Windscale site in Cumbria, England, should be run down and shut under an agreed timetable. Their move came 50 years to the day from the notorious fire on October 10, 1957, which recent research suggests may have released up to twice the volume of nuclear debris into the atmosphere as previously estimated. The motion states the fall-out from Windscale may have caused more cancers in the UK and northern Europe than previously estimated and there remains concern among communities in South Down and Louth that clusters of cancers and birth defects may have been directly attributable to the disaster. It also calls on the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety to make public all information it has on the issue. It adds: "Bearing in mind that those living in the proximity of nuclear reactors have no means of protecting themselves should a disaster happen, this Assembly calls on the UK government to close down Sellafield within an agreed time-table acceptable to the Irish government and the Northern Ireland Executive." Mrs Hanna, the party's health spokesperson, said: "The Windscale disaster was the world's worst nuclear disaster up to that point and the recently-published research is deeply worrying. "I was born in Warrenpoint and my colleague, PJ Bradley, was born in nearby Burren. "I have a memory as a young child of hearing about the incident. "Both of us have heard many, many stories of cancer clusters, birth defects and animals born with abnormalities in the South Down and Louth areas." * © Independent News & Media (NI) ***************************************************************** 30 Reuters: Russia detains 10 at nuclear waste protest | Thu Oct 11, 2007 8:59am EDT ST PETERSBURG, Russia, Oct 11 (Reuters) - Police in Russia's second city of St Petersburg detained around 10 people on Thursday protesting against the arrival of a ship carrying nuclear waste from Europe. "Stop nuclear transport," said a 10 metre long banner unfurled by protesters in front of the city's parliament. Police warned the protesters that their rally had not been sanctioned and was therefore illegal. About 20 minutes later the police pushed into the group, tore down the banner and dragged around 10 people into waiting vans. "I came because I want to live, Europe should store this stuff on their own soil," said Yelena, who described herself as an anarchist. The ship had sailed from the Dutch port of Rotterdam with around 500 tonnes of nuclear waste from a European enrichment firm. Greenpeace said Russia accepts around 10,000 tonnes of nuclear waste a year which is then transported by train to sites in the Urals and Siberia. "It's extremely dangerous, starting here in St Petersburg where it is loaded on to trains for its onward journey," said Vladimir Tchouprov, head of the energy section at Greenpeace in Russia. © Reuters2007All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 31 UPI: Tritium found in S.C. groundwater - UPI.com Published: 11, 2007 at 2:52 PM COLUMBIA, S.C., Oct. 11 (UPI) -- U.S. and state officials were investigating radioactive material in the groundwater at a nuclear plant in South Carolina. Tritium levels were at twice the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's safe drinking water level on the Catawba site at a Duke Energy nuclear power plant in York County, The State (Columbia, S.C.) reported. Though not as toxic as other radioactive pollutants such as plutonium, the newspaper said, tritium can increase the risk of cancer. Tritium is a radioactive material produced by weapons complexes and nuclear power plants. There have been at least three leaks of radioactive material at the Catawba plant since 1992, a report filed by David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety expert with the Union of Concerned Scientists in Washington, said. Most nuclear power plants have some sort of leak, he added. Duke Energy found the leak in York County while testing groundwater in the area of the nuclear plant, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said. © Copyright United Press International. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 32 St. Petersburg Times: Police Break Up Ecological Demonstration Overview Issue #1314 (80), Friday, October 12, 2007 By Galina Stolyarova Staff Writer Alexander Belenky / The St. Petersburg Times An ecological demonstrator is carried away by a policeman as a protest on St. Isaac's Square, in front of the Legislative Assembly building, was broken up on Thursday. The police on Thursday disrupted an environmental picket outside the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, detaining more than 10 activists from local and international ecological groups campaigning against the import of spent nuclear fuel and depleted uranium hexafluoride. The picket was held in the wake of a hefty cargo of depleted uranium arriving in the city. At 1 p.m., activists from the environmental groups Bellona, Ecodefence and Greenpeace and the environmental faction of democratic party Yabloko lined up outside the city parliament holding a long yellow banner which called for an end to the import of radioactive materials. Within minutes, the protesters were surrounded by a police detachment. The officers declared the gathering illegal and demanded that the protesters pack up the banner and leave. "You are holding an illegal picket, and I ask you to stop it. If you continue, you will be detained and taken to the nearest police station," a police officer told the protesters. "You failed to give three-day's notice for your picket." According to the Russian law, to hold a street picket the organizers must give the local authorities three days' notice. The officer had a printout with him of a document which said that City Hall received the picket request on 8 October. The protesters disagreed with the officials' calculation, asking the officer to count the three days with them. "You do not have to follow orders that contradict the law," argued Andrei Ozharovsky, a leading expert with Moscow-based environmental organization Ecodefence. "You can count the three days using your own fingers: October 8, 9 and 10; today is October 11." After the activists refused to withdraw, the police took the banner by force and detained most of the activists. Also on Thursday, the Doggersbank cargo ship carrying about 80 containers with a total of 1,000 tons of depleted uranium hexafluoride from the Gronau uranium enrichment facility, which belongs to Urenco Deutschland, arrived at the St. Petersburg city port. The radioactive load on board the Doggersbank is due to be sent by rail to the town of Novouralsk in Siberia for reprocessing and storage. Olga Tsepilova, deputy head of the environmental faction of liberal party Yabloko, was bewildered by the police intervention. "The picket was peaceful and also quite small - about several dozen people were present - so from a security point of view it was absolutely harmless," she said. "What would harm the authorities indeed was what those people had to say to local citizens: that every month many tons of spent nuclear fuel pass through St. Petersburg putting many thousands of people at risk of radioactive contamination." In 1999, Russian environmentalists failed in their attempts to have a ban put on the import of spent nuclear fuel from abroad. In December 2000, the State Duma voted overwhelmingly to adopt the practice of importing irradiated fuel from other countries. Supporters of the project then said that the money the business would raise would be used to develop Russia's nuclear industry, as well as improve its safety record and help clean up contaminated areas. Ecodefence and other pressure groups argue the transportation is not safe, as the containers are not completely leak-proof and the freight travels across the country unguarded, with the drivers of the trains that carry the dangerous cargos not being informed about the radioactive content of the containers. They are not given anytraining to deal with any emergencies or accidents that may arise. "The cargo passes through residential districts of the city and if a leak occurs thousands of people within a distance of half a kilometer to several kilometers would suffer," said Dmitry Artamonov, head of the local branch of Greenpeace. "There have already been cases of leaks and on one occasion in 2006 an entire container stocked with radioactive materials sank in the Baltic Sea and was never located," Tsepilova said. Environmental groups complain that they are not officially informed about the nuclear traffic and when they find out about a particular load and check the containers for radiation levels they often find the containers unattended. The Russian activists found out about the Gronau shipments from their counterparts in Germany. Matthias Eickhoff, spokesman of the Widerstand gegen Atomanlagen (WIGA) group in Munster, Germany, also alerted several Russian environmental journalists about new shipments. At present, cargo containing radioactive material passes through St. Petersburg at least 10 times a month, said Alexander Shishkin, director of Isotope, a state-owned enterprise responsible for such shipments. Arriving by sea, the nuclear loads are then sent to treatment facilities in Siberia. For security reasons, any information about the transfer is difficult to obtain from officials, with their main concern being that the release of such information would spark mass panic. "Naturally, the state would rather not tell the people; in Germany, rail transportation of radioactive material was banned for three years very recently because the drivers refused to be involved," Eickhoff said. "The official reason was that close proximity to these containers would put them at an increased risk of impotence. And labor unions nationwide supported the appeal," he said. Eickhoff said it costs German companies three times less to send irradiated left-overs to Russia than to reprocess them at home and blamed his home country for being immoral. "This is unethical; every country that decides to use nuclear technologies has to be responsible for any costs and consequences involved," the expert said. "Burdening other countries with it and choosing one state as the world's nuclear waste storage site, however difficult the circumstances of the state may be, is despicable." In June 1999, the Nuclear Power Ministry and a U.S.-based Non-Proliferation Trust (NPT) signed a letter of intent stating Russia would accept at least 10,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel from Switzerland, South Korea and Taiwan for reprocessing and storage for at least 40 years. For its services, Russia would charge between $1,000 and $2,000 per kilogram of spent fuel - much cheaper than other countries which store and reprocess foreign nuclear fuel. The activists accused the authorities of deliberately stifling their critics by banning street protests on technicalities. Earlier in October, Yabloko wanted to organize a meeting to mark the anniversary of the murder of journalist Anna Politkovskaya on Oct. 7 but failed to receive permission from the authorities. "At first the city officials told us that holding such an event on President Putin's birthday - the Russian president's birthday is Oct. 7 - would be inappropriate, " Tsepilova recalls, "But then they probably realized how silly and absurd that sounds and officially turned us down on the grounds that a team of the city's landscape designers will be working in the garden we had requested for the meeting on that day. In general, City Hall always finds a superficial reason to turn us down, whether it be busy traffic, gardening works, road repairs or someone else getting the permission first." © Copyright The St. Petersburg Times 1993 - 2007 ***************************************************************** 33 ITAR-TASS: Russia not to bring in spent nuclear fuel - official 11.10.2007, 12.20 MOSCOW, October 11 (Itar-Tass) - Director of the Federal Agency For Nuclear Power /Rosatom/ Sergei Kiriyenko said Russia is neither bringing in spent nuclear fuel, nor planning to do so. At present, Russia stores and recycles only the spent fuel of Russian origin, Kiriyenko said on Thursday, answering lawmakers' questions at the State Duma lower house of the Russian parliament. He underlined that "Russia has not been bringing in foreign fuel, nor does it intend to," according to PRIME-TASS. © ITAR-TASS. All rights reserved. You undertake not to copy, store ***************************************************************** 34 Herald-Journal: Plutonium delays | GoUpstate.com | Spartanburg, S.C. Editorials Environmental groups' action could keep plutonium in S.C. longer Published: Thursday, October 11, 2007 A couple of environmental groups that claim to be protecting South Carolina are endangering it by opposing the best chance the state has to get rid of the plutonium that's been shipped here. Nuclear Watch South and the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League have filed a petition with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, trying to delay a mixed oxide fuel plant at the Savannah River Site. Their long-term goal is to prevent the plant from ever becoming operational. If they succeed, South Carolina is likely to be stuck with the nation's plutonium indefinitely. This state will have to keep this dangerous material in a location that is not properly sighted or built for the long-term storage of plutonium. The federal government has sent at least 34 tons of plutonium to SRS and plans to send even more. The material comes from nuclear weapons and military facilities. It is not in South Carolina's interest to hold onto this material for long. The Savannah River Site, named for the major river that flows along it, is an environmentally sensitive site. Contamination that happens there won't stay there. And SRS was not designed for long-term storage of plutonium. That's why the state insisted on financial penalties if the federal government doesn't get rid of the plutonium according to schedule. But that schedule won't be met. Federal officials have two plans to get rid of the plutonium. One is to immobilize it in glass and bury it at a permanent disposal facility in Yucca Mountain, Nev., that is uniquely located, designed and built for the purpose. But politicians in Nevada don't want that facility to be used. As long as Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., is the Senate Majority Leader, no plutonium will be leaving South Carolina for Yucca Mountain. The only other hope for getting rid of this hazardous material is the construction of a mixed oxide fuel plant at SRS that will reprocess the plutonium into fuel for commercial nuclear power plants. It's a good plan. It would get the plutonium out of South Carolina. The plant would bring jobs to the state. And the nuclear power industry, which creates electricity without contributing to global warming, would benefit. But these environmental groups, which reflexively oppose nuclear power, are trying to delay and eventually kill the mixed oxide plant. Their current argument is that modifications to the plans for the plant should require the U.S. Energy Department to repeat its environmental impact assessments. They should drop their efforts. If they achieve their goal, they will hurt South Carolina and endanger its environment. All material ©Spartanburg Herald-Journal and GoUpstate.com Our Address Street: 189 West Main Street, Spartanburg, S.C. | Mailing: P.O. Box 1657, Spartanburg, S.C., 29304-1657 Our Family The Spartanburg Herald-Journal is a member ***************************************************************** 35 POWER Magazine: Soaring Yucca costs may prompt fee hike request The head of the DOE’s Yucca Mountain program has revealed that the full cost of the troubled nuclear waste disposal project appears to be 35% higher than most recently thought and that—in a proposal that utilities and state regulators would loathe—the DOE may soon recommend a hike on surcharges that nuclear ratepayers pay to fund Yucca. After a House Budget Committee hearing that produced lots of fresh information about the stalled project, Ward Sproat, director of the DOE’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, told reporters that projected costs for the underground repository in Nevada are soaring. That is because the energy department will have to store 25% more spent nuclear fuel at Yucca than previously expected, Sproat told reporters, noting that reactors are operating for longer periods of time and at higher output than contemplated when the DOE estimated costs in 2001. Although the DOE is still crunching cost numbers, Sproat indicated that the department now thinks Yucca’s lifetime costs will be $75.6 billion, dating back to 1983—when analysis of the Nevada repository site began—and running through construction, operation, and closure of the repository. “The costs are about 35% higher than they were in 2001,” when the DOE estimated a life cycle cost of $56 billion, Sproat said. That is only the latest price increase for a project that was initially intended to open in 1998 as a permanent disposal site for spent commercial nuclear fuel and defense- related nuclear waste. Sproat now says that Yucca could open as soon as 2017, but that 2020 or 2021 is more likely. And in order to stay on track for those targets, Sproat floated the possibility of a funding mechanism change that most utilities, ratepayers, and state regulators would likely strongly oppose: raising surcharges paid by nuclear ratepayers into the Nuclear Waste Fund (NWF), a pot of money legally intended for use in developing Yucca. Ratepayers currently pay 1 mil, or one-tenth of penny, on each kilowatt-hour of nuclear-generated electricity they use. The NWF has long frustrated the DOE, the nuclear industry, and ratepayer groups because Congress has spent the fund—which now stands at nearly $20 billion—on projects other than Yucca. For years the DOE has tried and failed to shepherd legislation through Congress that would have improved its access to NWF monies. Based on the belief that federal appropriators will be particularly loathe to provide access to the existing $20 billion in the NWF, or to the interest earned on the fund, the DOE has recently focused on getting access only to the NWF’s cash intake, which is $750 million to $800 million annually. But Sproat suggested that may not be enough, and that if the DOE has to rely on that funding source, ratepayers would have to pay more for Yucca to get adequate monies. “Funding from the annual Nuclear Waste Fund fees alone at the current 1 mil per kilowatt hour level will not be sufficient to fund the program,” Sproat said, adding that the DOE will “address the program’s funding needs in the context of developing the president’s annual budget.” The hearing also focused not just on the costs of developing Yucca but also on the growing costs faced by the federal government as a result of the repository’s delay, including damages the DOE owes utilities for breaching contracts to begin picking up utilities’ spent fuel in 1998 for disposal at the repository. In the latest of those cases, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington last week awarded Minneapolis-based Northern States Power $116 million to cover the utility’s costs of managing waste from its Prairie Island and Monticello nuclear plants between 1998 and 2004. That is somewhat more than courts have awarded other nuclear utilities for comparable time periods because Northern States faced unusual state compliance costs to continue storing nuclear waste in Minnesota, including requirements that the utility fund state renewable and efficiency efforts. Overall, the DOE’s liability to utilities “currently stands at $710 million,” from eight judgments in favor of the utilities and seven settlements, according to testimony from Deputy Assistant Attorney General Michael Hertz of the Justice Department. Fifty utility lawsuits are still in the courts and have not been ruled upon; two more have been ruled upon but could still be appealed, Hertz said. Hertz said the DOE estimates a total liability of about $7 billion, based on the highly optimistic assumption that Yucca will open in 2017. Hertz also cited industry estimates that utility claims will reach $50 billion, although it is unclear what time period that covers. The courts have generally limited utility lawsuits to cover the periods between 1998 and the time that each lawsuit was filed. As a result, utilities are expected to file a second round of lawsuits, to cover the subsequent period of time in which utilities bore additional spent fuel management costs. The first of the second round of suits came in August, when Xcel Energy filed to recover spent fuel management costs between 2004 and 2007. Although the DOE has fared poorly in courts in the utility breach-of-contract cases, Hertz pointed out in written testimony a few “major” issues before appeals courts that could trim the DOE’s financial exposure. For instance, he noted that courts have yet to reach a final conclusion on whether the energy department could invoke a clause in its contracts with the utilities that would give it some relief if performance delays were “unavoidable.” ***************************************************************** 36 California Chronicle: Dr. Ed’s Legislation to Help with Water Cleanup is Signed into Law California Political Desk October 10, 2007 Sacramento, CA – California State Assemblymember Dr. Ed Hernandez (D-West Covina) saw his bill to help continue groundwater cleanup in the San Gabriel Valley signed into law by Governor Schwarzenegger today. “This bill is essential to the San Gabriel Valley having its own source of safe, clean water and I am glad the Governor has signed it into law” said Hernandez. Assembly Bill 1010 is of critical importance to groundwater cleanup efforts in the San Gabriel Valley and would extend the sunset date of the San Gabriel Basin Water Quality Authority (WQA) to July 1, 2017, allowing time for the WQA to further its efforts. “The Water Quality Authority has worked to ensure that we have a safe and reliable source of drinking water for local residents of the San Gabriel Valley,” added Hernandez, “despite the success of the cleanup effort to date, the WQA remains more than $420 million short of accomplishing its mission. We need to take the time to do the job right. With the potential for a water shortage on the horizon for our region, it is essential we continue the cleanup of our own source of water here in the San Gabriel Valley.” The WQA in the last 6 years has secured over $300 million in legal settlements to fund cleanup efforts in the San Gabriel Valley, and has also procured $71 million through the federal appropriations process in the last five years. The WQA has now secured the first $620 million needed to restore the basin. These sources of funding have allowed the WQA to build 6 treatment facilities in the basin that total over $230 million in construction costs. “This extension allows us to continue the progress and seek additional sources of revenue.” said Gabriel Monares, Director of Resource Development for the San Gabriel Basin Water Quality Authority, “Assemblyman Hernandez’s efforts on this extension will benefit all residents of the San Gabriel Valley for the next 30 years.” If the WQA had been allowed to sunset the San Gabriel Valley would have lost its primary advocate for groundwater cleanup. Of the water used in the San Gabriel Basin, 92% comes from local groundwater. “We must retain a stable rate structure to ensure economic vitality and quality of life for local residents”, said Hernandez, “without additional funding local rate payers may see their water bills increase and potentially triple.” The San Gabriel Basin Water Quality Authority was established by the State Legislature (SB1679) on February 11, 1993 to develop, finance and implement groundwater treatment programs in the San Gabriel Basin. Working with local water agencies the WQA has removed over 20 tons of contaminants and their sponsored projects are responsible for removing perchlorate, nitrates, Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC’s) and other industrial contaminants in the basin since discovery of the contamination in 1979. California Political Desk The California Political Desk provides information, news releases, and announcements obtained from communication and public relations offices throughout the state. The American Chronicle and its affiliates have no responsibility for the views, opinions and information communicated here. The contributor(s) and news providers are fully responsible for their content. In addition, the views and opinions expressed here are not necessarily those of the American Chronicle or its affiliates. California Chronicle is a trademark of Ultio LLC. ***************************************************************** 37 Daily Sentinel: DOE looking to lease acreage for uranium By GARY HARMON Thursday, October 11, 2007 The U.S. Energy Department is beginning the process of leasing as many as 21,000 acres in western Colorado for uranium mining. The lands in what is known as the Uravan Mineral Belt were set aside under the old Atomic Energy Commission, now the Energy Department, to ensure a domestic uranium mining program. The tracts are now being evaluated, and the department has “quite a bit of work” to do before sending out solicitations to bid, Schiesswohl said. Lessees now hold 13 leases in Mesa, Montrose and San Miguel counties, and the department concluded after an environmental study it will extend those leases for 10 years. The department determined on July 5 that leasing out the lands would have no significant environmental impact, clearing the way for officials to study the leases. Leaseholders are required to post reclamation performance bonds with the Energy Department that are sufficient to fund the ultimate reclamation of their operations, the department says on its Web site. Officials with the department have noted that uranium prices have risen over the past three years, and they have monitored the growth in leasing of lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management, Schiesswohl said. “This is just a small piece of the overall uranium-mining program,” he said. More information on the leasing program is available at www.lm.doe.gov/land/sites/uranium_leasing/uranium_leasing.htm. • Gary Harmon can be reached via e-mail at gharmon@gjds.com Copyright 2007 Grand Junction Newspapers, Inc. All rights reserved. - The Daily Sentinel - Our Partners ***************************************************************** 38 Pahrump Valley Times: Yucca seeks to double nuke waste Nye County's Largest Newspaper Circulation Oct. 10, 2007 THEY'RE DREAMING, SAYS REID OF 150,000-TON PLAN The Department of Energy is proposing doubling the size of a national nuclear waste repository it plans to build deep below an ancient volcanic ridge in the Nevada desert. Citing ongoing production of waste at nuclear power plants around the country, the Energy Department has revealed plans to entomb almost 150,000 tons of highly radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain. Nevada's senators and a state official said Friday they doubt Congress would revise a law that caps the Yucca Mountain project at 77,000 tons of radioactive waste, and will balk at a price tag that now tops $77 billion. "If they think they are going to get more money for an irresponsible plan to ship nuclear waste across the country and into Nevada's backyard, they're dreaming," Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid said. Bob Loux, head of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects and the state's chief anti-Yucca administrator, branded an environmental study outlining the proposal as "invalid and likely illegal.'' He said it went beyond Congressional authorization under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, and sought exemptions from transportation regulations and hazardous waste laws. The release of the environmental study, which triggers a 90-day public comment period, came as the Energy Department ramps up efforts to meet a self-imposed June 30 deadline to submit an application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a license to operate the repository in tunnels 1,000 feet below the desert surface. On Thursday, project chief Edward F. "Ward" Sproat III, in testimony before the House Budget Committee, raised the projected cost of the project to more than $77 billion, or about 35 percent more than the $57.5 billion the Energy Department projected in 2001. Energy Department spokesman Allen Benson in Las Vegas said the revised figure reflected an "update" of an environmental study that Congress relied upon in 2002 when it picked the site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas to bury the nation's commercial, military and research nuclear waste. "It reflects the new repository design," Benson said, calling it "prudent and wise" to analyze a larger repository to contain waste being generated by 121 reactors in 39 states. The federal government is mandated by law to dispose of the nation's nuclear waste, and the Energy Department was supposed to open the Nevada site by 1998. But the Yucca Mountain project has been slowed by lawsuits, quality control concerns and funding shortfalls. Project officials have pushed back the target date for opening to 2017 or later. Nevada's congressional delegation is united in opposition to the project, and Tory Mazzola, spokesman for Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., called passage of any bill increasing the storage limit "unlikely.'' "This is just another example of DOE's attempt to move this project forward, but objective observers aren't so sure," Mazzola said. The environmental study makes crucial projections on radiation emissions, and airs plans for transporting and burying waste that scientists say will remain radioactive for millions of years. The study predicts "no adverse health effects to individuals" from radiation levels of up to 0.24 millirem per year measured 11 miles from the site for the first 10,000 years and no more than 2.3 millirem per year after 10,000 years. By comparison, a chest X-ray exposes a patient to 10 millirem while a mammogram results in a 30 millirem exposure. The projected emissions would be well below a standard proposed by the federal Environmental Protection Agency after a federal court in 2004 threw out an earlier radiation standard. The study calls for utilities operating nuclear power plants to be responsible for loading and sealing waste "transport, aging and disposal" canisters at sites in 39 states around the country. The canisters would be shipped by rail and remain sealed during handling and entombment at Yucca Mountain. webmaster@pahrumpvalleytimes.com Copyright © Pahrump Valley Times, 1997 - ***************************************************************** 39 [NYTr] Putin: NO EVIDENCE Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2007 17:41:31 -0500 (CDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit [As Seymour Hersh said recently, today the alarmist anti-Persians are screeching that Iran is 5 years away from nuclear arms; twenty years ago they were saying Iran was 5 years away from nuclear arms. -NYTr] The Washington Post - Oct 11, 2007 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/10/AR2007101002437.html?nav=rss_world 'No Real Data' on Iranian Nuclear Ambitions By Peter Finn and Robin Wright Washington Post Foreign Service MOSCOW, Oct. 10 -- President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday there is no evidence that Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons, reiterating a Kremlin position that has hamstrung efforts by the United States and European Union countries to impose tougher U.N. sanctions on Tehran. "We have no real data to claim that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, which makes us believe the country has no such plans," Putin said after a meeting in Moscow with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who suspects the opposite and supports a third and much harsher round of U.N. sanctions. After being invited repeatedly by the Iranians, Putin is to make his first visit to Tehran next week, for a meeting of Caspian Sea nations. The nuclear issue is likely to dominate one-on-one talks with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other Iranian officials. According to Russian officials and experts, Putin will probably reiterate his proposal that Russia enrich uranium for Iran's nuclear energy program, insist that Iran cooperate with international inspectors, and privately warn Iranian leaders that they cannot expect Russia to act as a shield in the face of sharpening Western concerns. The Bush administration is counting on Putin to convey a tough message during his visit, U.S. officials said in Washington. But privately, officials have expressed concern, saying that Russia and China are blocking an escalation of Security Council pressure on Iran. In Moscow, Russian officials and experts expressed skepticism about a major breakthrough, citing what they called Iran's ability to promise much while doing little. Russia's calculations on Iran are quite different from those of Western countries, which want to punish the Tehran government into abandoning what they see as a barely concealed drive to obtain a bomb. Russia, for now, is largely playing for time and attempting to avoid a breach with either the West or Iran, a country it regards as a difficult but important partner. "We are deeply convinced that there is unexhausted space for the use of diplomacy," said Dmitri Peskov, Putin's deputy spokesman, in an interview at the Kremlin. His government is counseling patience until the release of a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog organization, in November. Iran agreed in August to cooperate with the IAEA, and officials from the agency are currently in Tehran for talks. "Iran is our friend," Peskov said. "We want to avoid a situation where a country is pushed into a corner [but] it's not a secret for Iran that Russia is determined to stay with the international community in ensuring nonproliferation and our own security." In the Security Council, Russia has backed two rounds of mild sanctions in response to Iran's program to enrich uranium, a step toward obtaining weapons-grade material for a nuclear weapon. Russia has also stalled construction of a civilian nuclear power plant in Iran, ostensibly over a financial dispute. Analysts here said Russia halted work on the Bushehr nuclear plant because of anger at Iran's snubbing of Putin's proposal to enrich uranium on Russian soil, a plan the Russian president believed Ahmadinejad was open to after the two men met in China last year. They also said the move signaled to Iran that Russia, now flush with cash from oil and gas, is no longer as dependent on trade with Iran as it was in the 1990s. "Putin was very disappointed, and he is not a man to forgive or forget this," said Georgy Mirsky of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations. "There was a distinct cooling in relations after the meeting in China." Putin is deeply suspicious of Iran's nuclear ambitions despite his public statements that there is no evidence of a nuclear weapons program in Iran, according to Russian experts on the Middle East. But he is also skeptical of the West's prescription of immediate and overwhelming sanctions, believing they will act as a catalyst for an Iranian nuclear military program rather than as a disincentive. "To introduce artificial red lines or deadlines will not contribute to a constructive atmosphere," Peskov said. Moreover, while he is wary of Ahmadinejad and finds his statements on Israel and the Holocaust loathsome, Putin is reluctant to simply fall into line with the West because of strains in that relationship caused by other issues. "There is an old Soviet tradition that is still a part of Russian foreign policy: Whoever is against America automatically must be our friend," Mirsky said. "Some remnants of that still persist." Evgeny Satanovsky, president of the Institute of the Middle East in Moscow, said Russia's sense of alienation from the West has been deepened by the conviction that the United States is indifferent to Russian concerns about issues such as expansion of the NATO alliance and U.S. plans to put a missile defense system in Eastern Europe, even as the United States insists that others help protect its interests. "What's on our side of the balance" sheet? he asked. An Asian diplomat said in an interview that Russian officials he speaks to believe military strikes on Iran are likely and would have the same kind of unintended and bloody consequences as the invasion of Iraq. Russian officials and analysts insist that military action would bolster Iran's hard-liners, destabilize the region and inflame the Islamic world, including Muslims in Russia's restive southern republics, where the Kremlin fears Iranian meddling. For the United States, the timing of Putin's remarks is awkward, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice scheduled to leave Thursday for Moscow and then the Middle East. The Bush administration tried to play down their significance. "We've had some tactical differences with Russia as to the timing of the sanctions resolution," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack acknowledged Wednesday. But he added that the Russians had "not fallen off the idea that if Iran does not comply with Security Council demands -- and the IAEA demands, for that matter -- that there's going to be consequences . . . in the form of another Security Council resolution." But the five veto-wielding powers on the Security Council are now deeply split on Iran, after a year of acting more or less in unison. The United States, Britain and France are ready to impose tough new sanctions in a third U.N. resolution. But "the Russians don't want to make the hard choices they have to," a European diplomat said. Rice had hoped to push for a new resolution during talks at the opening of the U.N. General Assembly last month, but she ended up having to agree to a two-month delay because of objections from Russia and China. "Now Russia and China -- having told us to try diplomacy and having accepted diplomacy as the way forward -- are still seeking commercial advantage and kudos with Iran," the European envoy said. "They don't understand the implications. The credibility of Moscow and Beijing is being destroyed because of their belligerent approach." Wright reported from Washington. B) 2007 The Washington Post *** AP - Oct 10, 2007 http://apnews.myway.com/article/20071010/D8S6FF6G0.html Putin: No Proof Iran Seeks Nuclear Arms By ANGELA CHARLTON MOSCOW (AP) - President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday there is no proof Iran is seeking to build nuclear weapons, but emphasized that Tehran must be encouraged to make its nuclear program fully transparent. "We are sharing our partners' concern about making all Iranian programs transparent," Putin said at a news conference after talks with visiting French President Nicolas Sarkozy. "We agreed yesterday, and the president confirmed it, that Iran is making certain steps toward the international community to achieve that." Putin is to make his first visit to Iran early next week for a summit of Caspian Sea nations. Sarkozy said Putin's trip to Tehran could encourage Iran to be more cooperative. "After the trip, there could be a will to cooperate - that is essential," he said. Russia has opposed the U.S.-push for tougher sanctions against Iran and called for more checks and inspections of Iranian facilities by International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog. "We have worked cooperatively with our partners at the United Nations Security Council, and we intend to continue such cooperative work in the future," Putin said. But he said that with no "objective data" showing Iran is developing nuclear weapons, "we proceed from an assumption that Iran has no such plans." Iran's past clandestine activities - and its refusal to heed U.N. Security Council demands that it suspend uranium enrichment - have stoked suspicion among the U.S. and its allies that country is trying to create the fissile material for nuclear weapons. Iran says its nuclear program is intended only to develop an alternative source of energy. The IAEA says that it has not been able to detect signs that Iran has a weapons program, but has withheld judgment on what the Islamic Republic's ultimate aims may be. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said it would be "absolutely irresponsible to make any sharp moves" involving Iran in the absence of an IAEA determination that its nuclear program has military elements, the Interfax news agency reported. Sarkozy has hardened France's stance on Iran in recent months, shifting closer to the United States in his insistence on tough Security Council sanctions and even his mention of the possibility of war. While the U.S. and European nations are pressing for greater sanctions, Russia and China have resisted. Sarkozy had criticized Russia of late, recently accusing it of "brutality" in exercising its energy dominance, and courting central and eastern European leaders who bristled at Moscow's renewed influence. But on his first presidential visit to Russia, he struck a decidedly upbeat note after hours of talks with Putin on many touchy subjects. Sarkozy pointed to opportunities of bilateral cooperation in such areas as space and nuclear energy, and added that France wants to be a "privileged partner of Russia." Touching on France's presidency in the European Union next year, he said that Russia and Europe were "natural partners." Speaking after talks with Putin, he pointed to the need for transparency and respect for free-market rules in bilateral economic ties and promised to take a non-discriminatory attitude toward Russian companies willing to purchase assets in France. Putin, questioned by reporters on Russian authorities' attitude toward non-governmental organizations, also sought to moderate his tone. Western critics long have accused Putin of backsliding on democracy, muffling dissent and free media and harassing NGOs - claims the Kremlin has angrily denied. Sarkozy was set to meet Wednesday with representatives of Russian NGOs. Putin said NGOs were important and his government was trying to cooperate with them, but in a steely note warned against foreign interference in Russia's affairs: "It's bad when such organizations are being used by one state against others to achieve some goals." * ================================================================= 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 ================================================================= ***************************************************************** 40 Reuters: Rice faces Kremlin over missile shield and Iran Thu Oct 11, 2007 6:40pm EDT By Guy Faulconbridge MOSCOW (Reuters) - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will push U.S. plans for a missile shield in Europe despite Kremlin opposition and argue for tougher sanctions on Iran when she meets top Russian officials in Moscow on Friday. Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates are set to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov in the so-called "2+2" meeting. Topping the agenda is the U.S. plan to put radar in the Czech Republic and interceptors in Poland. Washington says they are needed to protect against missiles from "rogue" states, such as Iran and North Korea. Russia sees the plan as a threat. Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed the two countries use Russian-operated early warning radar in Azerbaijan instead. "We have been very clear that we need the Czech and Polish sites," Rice said on her way to Moscow. "But we are interested in other potential sites as well and ... we may be able to find ways to put that together. "The real central point is that there isn't a threat from the United States to Russia and from Russia to the United States any longer," said Rice, who was trained as a Soviet specialist during the Cold War. Putin is expected to host a short meeting with the ministers, Kremlin deputy spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. "Undoubtedly there will be an exchange of views on the missile defense issue and on the other, most critical questions on which there are differences," he said. Continued... ***************************************************************** 41 AFP: Rice in Russia to argue for US anti-missile system - by Sylvie Lanteaume Thu Oct 11, 6:00 PM ET SHANNON, Ireland (AFP) - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice flew to Moscow on Thursday determined to defend US plans to extend an anti-missile rocket system into Poland and the Czech Republic against stiff Russian opposition. "We have been very clear that we need the Czech and Polish sites," Rice told reporters on her plane prior to a stopover in Shannon, Ireland, en route to Moscow. Once in the Russian capital, she and US Defence Secretary Robert Gates will discuss the thorny issue in a combined meeting with their respective Russian counterparts, Sergei Lavrov and Anatoly Serdyukov. Washington says the system would protect against "rogue states" such as Iran and wants to build a radar tracking base in the Czech Republic and house interceptor missiles in Poland. Moscow sees the system as a threat to its own security and has warned it would create a "new Berlin wall," with President Vladimir Putin suggesting siting it in Azerbaijan instead. The Kremlin has also threatened to re-deploy nuclear missiles if the US forges ahead with the project. Rice made it clear that she was willing to discuss various options. "There is considerable interest in both Azerbaijan and some of the possibilities in Russia itself," she said. "We really do have to pursue missile defence and we have to pursue it in a way that our technical experts say it is going to work," she said. "And for the threats that we see coming, that means the kind of sites that we have been talking about with Poland and the Czech Republic. "But we are interested in other potential sites as well. And you know, we may be able to find ways to put that together," she added. Rice sought to play down bilateral differences on other subjects, such as democratic reforms in Russia, which Washington believes are moving to slowly, and how best to deal with the Iranian nuclear issue. "We don't see eye to eye on everything but in juxtaposition to the way the relationship was with the Soviet Union ... this is a very different relationship," she said. The most important sea change, she insisted, was that the two former Cold War rivals were no longer a threat to one another. "There are disagreements and differences, sometimes quite wide, sometimes pretty narrow. But this is a relationship that has a lot of benefits as well," she said. During her two days in Moscow, Rice will hold separate talks with Foreign Minister Lavrov, with whom she is known to have a somewhat frosty relationship. As well as Iran, she is likely to raise the issue of the Middle East peace summit the United States is hoping to host, possibly next month. One subject she looks set to steer clear of is Putin's political future, following his recent shock announcement that he might seek to run for prime minister. "I am not going to get into speculations with Putin about what he will or will not do," she said. Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 42 Tri-City Herald: Exhibits give peek at Hanford's historic B Reactor (w/slideshow) Tour the B Reactor Published Thursday, October 11th, 2007 By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer Some familiar voices are being heard in historic B Reactor nearly 40 years after it stopped operating. In a leap of faith that the reactor will be saved, the Atomic Heritage Foundation finished installing museum-quality displays in the reactor this week. They use interactive video and audio recordings of retired Hanford workers and B Reactor's earliest leaders to tell its story. The more visitors who see the reactor and have the benefit of exhibits that explain its important role in World War II, the more likely the reactor is to be preserved, said Cynthia Kelly, president of the Atomic Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. "Build it and they will come. They will keep it," she said. Now the only way for most people to see the reactor and its new exhibits is on the occasional public tours offered by the Department of Energy. But supporters are working to open the reactor to the public more often, possibly on bus tours that would leave from the planned Hanford Reach Interpretive Center. The reactor looks much today like it did when it was powered up for the first time on Sept. 26, 1944. Visitors can gaze up at the face of the reactor, where uranium fuel slugs were loaded. They can see the small office off the control room where physicist Enrico Fermi retired to figure out why the first chain reaction fizzled shortly after it began. Nearby they can look through windows to see the cooling pond where irradiated fuel was pushed out of the back of the graphite reactor block. In recent years, equipment and tools have been collected and displayed. Bulletin boards have been covered with World War II safety posters and a July 10, 1944, letter from the undersecretary of war. He assured mystified workers who did not know what they were building that the very secrecy of the project was their "surest guarantee of its great value." But the new displays bring the information available on a tour of the reactor into the electronic age. The Atomic Heritage Foundation has installed seven large-screen televisions to show a dozen vignettes and longer videos. Other new information stations in the reactor allow visitors to play audio recordings explaining work that was done and the equipment used in different parts of the facility. Visitors can learn about the hectic work to build the reactor in just 11 months, with the design that started just three months after Fermi demonstrated the first sustained nuclear reaction in a laboratory. It would produce plutonium for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, helping end World War II and ushering in the atomic age. To help people touring the reactor better understand how the reactor core was built and used, the foundation commissioned a scale model from Lockheed Martin. A tour guide can use it to demonstrate how nine horizontal control rods were pulled from the reactor to start a chain reaction. The control rods were made of boron, which absorbs neutrons and prevents them from colliding with uranium to start a reaction. Visitors can see the layers of shielding used to surround the reactor's graphite core and push buttons to control lights that identify different features for the reactor core, including process tubes that were loaded with uranium fuel and the safety rods that could be dropped into the core in an instant to stop a reaction. "We ran into some of the exact same problems they did building the reactor," said Lynn VerSteeg, lead for Lockheed's physical media group. Lockheed workers had to machine and assemble 2,000 pieces of plastic to simulate the graphite blocks in the reactor core, then painstakingly glue them together. The real graphite stack had more than 75,000 blocks that had to be carefully machined to fit together as tightly as possible. The work made Mike Botu of Lockheed Martin a third-generation reactor constructor, he said. His grandfather came to Hanford in the 1940s to help build the initial facilities. The B Reactor's new video displays include recordings that Kelly began making five years ago as she began to fear that few early workers might still be living by the time the reactor is saved as a museum. In those interviews and archival footage, the people who worked at the reactor describe how it worked and recount stories from its earliest days. Col. Franklin Matthias recalls transporting the first delivery of Hanford plutonium to Los Alamos, N.M., where weapons were being tested and produced. He traveled by train to Los Angeles, carrying the plutonium in a specially designed box to hand off to an officer who would carry it on the next leg of the journey. At the railroad station, Matthias asked the officer if he had a locked room on the train. No, the officer said, he had booked an upper berth. Do you know how much this is worth? It cost $350 million to produce, Matthias told him. "(The officer) got a little shaky and went back to the station and came back with a locked room," Matthias said. The videos also include graphics produced by Meier Enterprises of Kennewick. The Atomic Heritage Foundation received a $350,000 grant from the Murdock Charitable Trust to create the displays after the trust visited the Tri-Cities in late 2005. It was impressed with community's enthusiasm for saving the reactor, Kelly said. The foundation also received $10,000 from the B Reactor Museum Association and $57,000 in support of the project as part of a Congressional appropriation arranged by Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash. Participants on Hanford tours scheduled for later this month and early November will have a chance to see the new exhibits. Seats on those tours filled quickly, but if cancellations are received, the registration will reopen without notice at www.hanford.gov. No more Hanford tours are expected to be scheduled until spring. © 2007 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press & Other Wire Services ***************************************************************** 43 Tri-City Herald: Workers remove hose from radioactive spill site at Hanford Published Thursday, October 11th, 2007 ANNETTE CARY, HERALD STAFF WRITER CH2M Hill Hanford Group workers have removed the broken hose that caused radioactive waste to spill at a Hanford tank farm in July. "They pulled it out without a hitch," said Joy Shoemake, spokeswoman for CH2M Hill. "Nothing spilled out." Workers spent weeks preparing for the work. They completed six rehearsals using a full-scale mock up built to resemble the equipment and conditions they would encounter. "This was a challenging task because of the high dose rates from the waste in the hose and also because of the liquids still in the line that had to be safely captured," said Terry Hissong, CH2M Hill director of closure operations surveillance and maintenance, in a statement. The July 27 spill occurred as workers were emptying underground Tank S-102 of radioactive waste to transfer it to a sturdier double-shelled tank. When a pump clogged, workers ran it in reverse, forcing radioactive waste up a water line. The water line ruptured, spilling about 85 gallons of diluted waste onto the soil above the tank. One of the first steps in cleaning up the spill was to remove the 40-foot hose. CH2M Hill's goal was to minimize the time spent removing the hose to limit worker exposure to radiation. The work was completed in three graveyard shifts ending earlier this week. Three-foot-long tools with J-shaped hooks at one end and handles at the other were made from steel rods so workers could keep their distance while they manipulated the contaminated hose. Workers also wore full radiation protection gear, including supplied-air respirators. After the hose was disconnected and its ends capped, it was placed on a piece of plastic rigged with Velcro closures. Heating blankets were used to keep the waste from gelling inside the hose. The hose was drained by connecting one end to a 30-gallon drum that had been placed inside a lead-lined 55-gallon drum. The other end was elevated using scaffolding. An empty cable spool was placed under the hose, and workers used a steel rod inserted through the spool to roll it down the length of the hose to force the liquids into the drum. The emptied hose then was placed inside a lead-lined container. Even with the lead lining, the drum showed radiation readings of 240 millirem per hour. A reading of 100 is high enough for an area to be considered a high radiation area, according to CH2M Hill. Worker radiation exposure was kept below regulatory limits and within the limits set by the work plan, Shoemake said. The liquid has been sent to the 222-S Laboratory for analysis. Determining exactly what is in the water and waste may help with cleanup of the contaminated soil. Eventually the waste will be returned to an underground tank to await treatment. The contaminated hose will be disposed of at a low-level waste burial ground at Hanford. Within two weeks, work will begin to remove additional hoses, barricades and equipment from the spill site. That will clear the way to begin excavating contaminated soil. The spill covered about 200 square feet. © 2007 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press & Other Wire Services ***************************************************************** 44 Tri-City Herald: Randolph Construction Services of Pasco wins radiation detection work Published Thursday, October 11th, 2007 PRATIK JOSHI, HERALD STAFF WRITER Pasco-based Randolph Construction Services was selected recently as one of three small businesses nationwide to perform work to help prevent global trafficking in nuclear materials. The business will bid on contracts worth $700 million to install radiation detection equipment and communication systems in more than 30 countries for the National Nuclear Security Administration, said agency spokeswoman Julianne Smith. "A minimum amount of work is guaranteed," she said. The companies will work at border crossings, airports and seaports to support the agency's Second Line of Defense program, in collaboration with foreign governments. Specific projects haven't been determined yet, Smith said. Randolph Construction Services perhaps was selected because of its experience in deploying radiation detection systems nationwide, said Khris Judy, company president. The Small Business Administration named Randolph the Region 10 family-owned business of the year a few months ago. Judy said it's the first time her company is working with NNSA, a semi-autonomous agency within the U.S. Department of Energy, which works to promote nuclear safety within the U.S. and abroad. The biggest challenge will be to do the job without disrupting operations at international locations, Judy said. "You've got to be efficient," so as to not impede commerce, she said. The company, which was started by Judy's parents in 1982, may hire additional help in the future, said Judy, who expects to complete legal formalities for an agreement with NNSA this week. NNSA spokeswoman Smith said the contract runs for three years and offers two possible extensions of two years each. Once the radiation detection equipment is installed, NNSA trains foreign agencies to run it. So, far the program has helped set up equipment at more than 160 sites around the world. © 2007 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press & Other Wire Services ***************************************************************** 45 Hanford News: Identifying make, origin of nuclear material could prevent attack, officials say This story was published Thursday, October 11th, 2007 By Eileen Sullivan, Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - If terrorists use nuclear weapons to attack the U.S., Americans immediately would want to know who is responsible. But the nation is ill equipped now to quickly track down the make and origin of nuclear materials. It could take months to analyze and identify nuclear material, officials said Wednesday - too long in today's threat environment. Security officials say a nuclear attack by terrorists is the No. 1 threat facing the U.S., and one key to preventing such a strike is to define the nature and source of a nuclear device. "I think the jury is out in terms of how fast we're ever going to be able to do this," said Vayl Oxford, the Homeland Security Department's top counterproliferation official. In the past year, the government has paid greater attention to the importance of nuclear forensics, a subject not previously given high priority, Oxford said. Oxford and other nuclear experts in the government testified before a House subcommittee about how the departments of Energy, Homeland Security, State and Justice, as well as national laboratories, are working on the issue. Reaching agreements with other countries to share sensitive information about their nuclear materials is a priority, said Steven Aoki, a counterterrorism official at the Energy Department. Congress is considering a bill that would ask the president for agreements with other countries to share information on the makings of their nuclear materials. Maintaining a database with this information would help identify nuclear material before or after an attack and serve as a deterrent to nations that continue to produce these weapons. "Highly capable forensics and attribution would enable this nation to stop follow-on attacks and serve to deter states that may assist nuclear terrorists," said Michael K. Evenson, associate director for operations at the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. While the Bush administration and lawmakers may recognize the importance of tracing nuclear materials back to their origins, fewer people are entering the field of nuclear forensics, said Carol Burns of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Most of the experts are older than 50 and there are few radiological chemists left who have analyzed debris from a nuclear explosion, Burns said. © 2007 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 46 Hanford News: Fluor receives awardfor cleanup work This story was published Thursday, October 11th, 2007 the Herald staff Fluor Corp. has received the Project Management Institute's 2007 Project of the Year Award for its work to clean up and close the Department of Energy's nuclear site in Fernald, Ohio. The Fernald site near Cincinnati supplied uranium to the Hanford nuclear reservation to be made into fuel for its reactors that produced plutonium. Con Murphy managed the final stages of cleanup of Fernald for Fluor before coming to Hanford as president of Fluor Hanford in April. The Project of the Year Award is the Project Management Institute's highest award and the competition includes nominations from around the world. Fernald was transformed from a Cold War weapons facility into wetlands, savannas and forests 12 years ahead of schedule and $7.8 billion below initial estimates, according to Fluor. Nuclear society group to review Yucca Mountain An update on the status of Yucca Mountain, Nev., is planned at the Tuesday meeting of the Eastern Washington Section of the American Nuclear Society. Abraham Van Luik, Department of Energy senior policy adviser on the project, will speak. Yucca Mountain is being built as the nation's repository for spent nuclear fuel from commercial power plants and high-level radioactive waste, including waste glassifed at Hanford's vitrification plant. Van Luik will speak at 7 p.m. at the Shilo Inn, Richland. The talk is free but the social hour and dinner at 6 p.m. is $22. Dinner reservations should be made by 4 p.m. Friday by calling 376-3162. © 2007 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 47 DOE: Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board, Hanford FR Doc E7-20032 [Federal Register: October 11, 2007 (Volume 72, Number 196)] [Notices] [Page 57920-57921] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr11oc07-38] DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY AGENCY: Department of Energy. ACTION: Notice of open meeting. SUMMARY: This notice announces a meeting of the Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board (EM SSAB), Hanford. The Federal Advisory Committee Act (Pub. L. 92-463, 86 Stat. 770) requires that public notice of this meeting be announced in the Federal Register. DATES: Thursday, November 1, 2007. 9 a.m.-5 p.m.; Friday, November 2, 2007. 8:30 a.m.-4 p.m. ADDRESSES: Red Lion Hanford House, 802 George Washington Way, Richland, Washington, Phone: (509) 946-7611, Fax: (509) 943-8564. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Erik Olds, Federal Coordinator, Department of Energy Richland Operations Office, 2440 Stevens Drive, P.O. Box 450, H6-60, Richland, WA, 99352; Phone: (509) 372-8656; or E- mail: Theodore_E_Erik_Olds@orp.doe.gov. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Purpose of the Board: The purpose of the Board is to make recommendations to DOE in the areas of environmental restoration, waste management, and related activities. Tentative Agenda Debrief from Tri-Party Agreement Negotiations Public Workshop. Update on Demonstration Bulk Vitrification System Critical Decision 2. Discussion on the Hanford Advisory Board Process Manual. Tank Waste Committee Updates, includes Tank S-102 Spill event and investigation update; Mission Completion Study; Tank Waste Program Path Forward System Integration; Department of Energy (DOE) Office of River Protection's input to the draft Technology Roadmap and alternatives within; and Tank Closure and Waste Management Environmental Impact Statement. River and Plateau Committee Updates, includes draft advice to DOE on readability of technical reports, Comprehensive Land Use Plan and Groundwater and Vadose Zone . Budget and Contracts Committee Updates, includes Fiscal Year 2008 Budget Appropriations and Request for Proposals due mid- September. Debrief from the EM SSAB Chairs meeting. Public Participation: The meeting is open to the public. Written statements may be filed with the Board either before or after the meeting. Individuals who wish to make oral statements pertaining to agenda items should contact Erik Olds' office at the address or telephone number listed above. Requests must be received five days prior to the meeting and reasonable provision will be made to include the presentation in the agenda. The Deputy Designated Federal Officer is empowered to conduct the meeting in a fashion that will facilitate the orderly conduct of business. Individuals wishing to make public comment will be provided a maximum of five minutes to present their comments. Minutes: Minutes will be available by writing or calling Erik Olds' office at the address or phone number listed above. Minutes will also be available at the [[Page 57921]] following Web site http://www.hanford.gov/?page=413&parent=397. Issued at Washington, DC, on October 4, 2007. Rachel Samuel, Deputy Committee Management Officer. [FR Doc. E7-20032 Filed 10-10-07; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 6450-01-P ***************************************************************** 48 DOE: Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board, Nevada FR Doc E7-20034 [Federal Register: October 11, 2007 (Volume 72, Number 196)] [Notices] [Page 57921] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr11oc07-39] DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY AGENCY: Department of Energy. ACTION: Notice of open meeting. SUMMARY: This notice announces a meeting of the Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board (EM SSAB), Nevada Test Site. The Federal Advisory Committee Act (Pub. L. 92-463, 86 Stat. 770) requires that public notice of this meeting be announced in the Federal Register. DATES: Tuesday, November 6, 2007. 6 p.m. ADDRESSES: Amargosa Community Center, 821 East Amargosa Farm Road, Amargosa Valley, Nevada 89020. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Rosemary Rehfeldt, Board Administrator, 232 Energy Way, M/S 505, North Las Vegas, Nevada 89030. Phone: (702) 657-9088; Fax (702) 295-5300 or E-mail: ntscab@nv.doe.gov. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Purpose of the Board: The purpose of the Board is to make recommendations to DOE in the areas of environmental restoration, waste management, and related activities. Tentative Agenda 1. Presentation on the Undergound Test Area Committee's Well Recommendation Reports. 2. Review of EM SSAB Chairs Meeting in Paducah, Kentucky. 3. Review of recommendation letter for expansion of Community Outreach program. Public Participation: The meeting is open to the public. Written statements may be filed with the Board either before or after the meeting. Individuals who wish to make oral presentations pertaining to agenda items should contact Rosemary Rehfeldt at the telephone number listed above. The request must be received five days prior to the meeting and reasonable provision will be made to include the presentation in the agenda. The Deputy Designated Federal Officer is empowered to conduct the meeting in a fashion that will facilitate the orderly conduct of business. Individuals wishing to make public comment will be provided a maximum of five minutes to present their comments. Minutes: Minutes will be available by writing to Rosemary Rehfeldt at the address listed above or at the following Web site http://www.ntscab.com/MeetingMinutes.htm . Issued at Washington, DC, on October 5, 2007. Rachel Samuel, Deputy Committee Management Officer. [FR Doc. E7-20034 Filed 10-10-07; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 6450-01-P ***************************************************************** 49 UPI: Los Alamos investigates safety concerns - UPI.com Published: 10, 2007 at 11:58 PM LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Oct. 10 (UPI) -- Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico has suspended some nuclear work because of safety concerns. Spokesman Kevin Roark told The New Mexican the move was precautionary and there was no danger of an accident. The newspaper said there was concern there wasn’t adequate radiation shielding inside storage areas to prevent a nuclear chain reaction from occurring accidentally in fissile material, such as enriched plutonium. Some operations were halted on Sept. 21. While some of the work has resumed, Roark said he did not know when operations would be back to normal. © Copyright United Press International. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 50 lamonitor.com: Plutonium Facility paused for safety The Online News Source for Los Alamos ROGER SNODGRASS Monitor Assistant Editor During the third week in September, officials at the Plutonium Facility of Los Alamos National Laboratory put a hold on all movements of fissile material, except for a few routine processes, a laboratory official said. Two weeks earlier, according to a report by a site representative of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB), LANL first began restricting activities based on uncertainties about criticality safety, the possibility that an unlikely set of circumstances might converge and cause a chain reaction. The Plutonium facility is in a highly restricted area of the laboratory, known as Technical Area 55. A lab official said Tuesday that there was never any danger to employees, the public or the environment. "Some questions that came out of a routine criticality safety review led the laboratory to temporarily suspend some but not all of the plutonium operations, to do a comprehensive review and confirm the adequacy of safety controls centered around storage of nuclear material at TA-55," said laboratory spokesperson Kevin Roark. "This is preventive and precautionary only, and did not constitute a shutdown of TA-55." The issue was raised by Jim Williams, a reporter at KUNM radio in Albuquerque. The Los Alamos Study Group, a disarmament group, quickly compiled a history of information about criticality events, with a focus on LANL and ongoing DNFSB documentation over the last 14 months (www.lasg.org/criticality .htm). The DNFSB site report of Aug. 31 that preceded the partial suspension at TA-55 said, "The roughly 20 existing critical safety evaluations (CSEs) for the TA-55 vault are convoluted, occasionally contradictory and heavily reliant on judgment; these are among 300 CSEs that LANL has identified as missing, technically deficient or having some other problem that LANL has committed to address during the next few years." The weekly site reports by the DNFSB are the only independent window on safety issues related to nuclear processes within the laboratory. The reports are reviewed for classification issues and then normally posted by the board about three weeks after the date submitted. The Sept. 21 report, describing the circumstances of the partial hold, has yet to be posted. A call to E.J. Eggenberger, chairman of the safety board on Tuesday was not returned. In its report to Congress in February this year, the board included nuclear criticality safety among its priorities for the previous year at LANL, "the DOE weapons laboratory with the largest number of defense nuclear facilities and weapons related activities." A letter by Eggenberger to Linton Brooks, former administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), on Sept. 22, 2006, cited improvements since Oct. 2005, when a criticality review team found LANL's Nuclear Criticality Safety program was "noncompliant with several requirements of the American National Standards Institute/American Nuclear Society Series 8 standards on nuclear criticality safety." The letter called, among other things for quick and effective resolution of criticality deficiencies. On July 2, 2007, the laboratory celebrated delivery of its first replacement pit, or plutonium trigger, the main project at the Plutonium Facility. On Sept. 27, the NNSA announced that the pit had been successfully incorporated in a W88 nuclear warhead and certified for use in the nuclear weapons stockpile. Roark said the laboratory and Technical Area 55 had completed its goal for this year, to manufacture 10 "diamond-stamped" pits, ready to be used as replacements. In fact, he said, eleven were produced and are in the pipeline to replace pits from additional W88 warheads at Pantex. The partial suspension occurred at the close of business on Friday, Sept. 21, Roark said, in conjunction with other routine maintenance activities. "We began resuming some operations on the following Thursday, Sept. 27, and additional operations almost daily," Roark said. "We do not expect this to be long or to impact the pit manufacturing schedule." © 2003 Los Alamos Monitor All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 51 KVII: Funding for Pantex Posted: Wednesday, October 10, 2007 at 12:43 p.m. Funding for Pantex is another story that ProNews 7 has been following. You might remember that congress has not yet passed a budget this year that will keep Pantex funded.  Tuesday the DOE, the NNSA and Pantex announced that they have begun work on a draft workforce restructuring plan.  This will figure the impact of any possible workforce reductions at the plant. This is actually just required by law anytime there could be a workforce restructuring.  ProNews 7 did check with two different sources who say they really don't think Pantex will be impacted by this in anyway. ***************************************************************** 52 Oak Ridger: Uncertainty about Y-12 layoffs - Story last updated at 12:07 am on 10/11/2007 By: John Huotari | John.huotari@oakridger.com Wyatt Officials at the Y-12 National Security Complex on Wednesday said they do not know whether there will be layoffs at the nuclear-weapons site. “That’s yet to be determined,” said Steve Wyatt, spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the site. Wyatt also said he could not say how many employees might be affected, if there are layoffs. “That’s just not known at this point,” he said. Y-12 officials and executives are facing an uncertain financial future because the U.S. Congress has not yet passed a budget for fiscal year 2008, which began Oct. 1. Instead, Congress has passed a continuing resolution that funds the U.S. Department of Energy at fiscal year 2007 levels through Nov. 16. BWXT Y-12 operates the Y-12 plant for the NNSA, a semi-autonomous agency within the U.S. Department of Energy. On Tuesday, DOE and NNSA officials announced they are working on a required restructuring plan that is supposed to reduce the impact of any potential Y-12 workforce reductions. “The Department (of Energy) recognizes that any planned reduction in employment levels at Y-12 could cause a high level of anxiety within the workforce,” the draft plan says. “To minimize this anxiety, Y-12 Site Office contractors will communicate frequently, openly and honestly with employees.” Among other things, the draft plan calls for employees to be notified 120 days before they are laid off. Meanwhile, company spokesman Bill Wilburn said BWXT Y-12 is planning for operations that will be funded at the lower of the budgets proposed by the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. The House has already passed an energy appropriations bills, but the U.S. Senate has not, U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp said earlier this month. Wilburn said BWXT Y-12 is controlling spending by reducing overtime, travel and procurements. “This budget situation will not affect Y-12’s ability to remain compliant and able to safely and securely complete its missions,” he said in an e-mailed statement. Wamp has said he thinks the prognosis for local DOE facilities is good, despite the current financial uncertainties. Wyatt said Y-12 employment levels fluctuate, but recently there have been about 7,000 workers at the site, including roughly 4,500 BWXT Y-12 employees. The draft workforce restructuring plan is available on the Y-12 Site Office’s Web site at www.yso.doe.gov. Public comments will be accepted through Oct. 19. John Huotari can be contacted at (865) 220-5533. © 2004 The Oak Ridger | Conditions of Use ***************************************************************** 53 POWER Magazine: DOE beefs up loan guarantees, picks 16 winners After Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) wrestled promises from the Bush administration, and following aggressive lobbying by energy and financial companies, the Department of Energy issued final rules on its loan guarantee program that allow for greater federal backing of clean energy projects than would have been permitted under the DOE’s initial plan for the high-profile initiative. The department also announced that it had selected 16 out of 143 “pre-applications” from companies seeking loan guarantees to proceed with full-blown applications for the $4 billion in loan guarantees authorized by Congress for fiscal year 2007. The 16 winning applicants include four cellulosic ethanol plants, one biodiesel production facility, and one biomass gasification project; three integrated gasification combined-cycle (IGCC) projects to gasify coal for use in power generation; two advanced solar energy projects; two initiatives to improve industrial energy efficiency; one electricity reliability technology effort; one battery-powered car project; and a large fuel cell generation project. In picking those projects, DOE officials said they were seeking to provide support for a diverse range of energy projects that appeared to have the best potential for meeting the goals of the loan guarantee program, which is aimed at commercializing cutting-edge technologies that can reduce, avoid, or capture air pollutants and greenhouse gases more effectively than technologies that are currently used in the private sector. The officials said that specific dollar allocations to each of the 16 projects would depend on--among other factors--DOE’s evaluation of project feasibility, the equity investment made by applicants and the likelihood that the government’s financial interests would be protected. The issuance of the final loan guarantee rules follows an extended battle over the coverage provided by the loan guarantees, with the White House Office of Management Budget (OMB) fighting with both Democratic and Republican lawmakers who enacted the program as a centerpiece of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPACT). At the OMB’s direction, the DOE initially proposed that the loan guarantees could cover no more than 80% of loans obtained by clean energy project sponsors, citing federal budget rules. However, lawmakers and energy and financial industry officials cried foul, saying EPACT was designed to provide loan guarantees covering 100% of loans and 80% of total clean energy project costs. Under pressure, the DOE then proposed that loan guarantees cover up to 90% of loans and 80% of total project costs. But that plan failed to satisfy lawmakers and industry officials, who said 100% federal coverage of loans is key to the ability of clean energy project sponsors to get lender backing for their commercially unproven technologies. Applying particular pressure to the DOE were nuclear industry officials, who argued that the department was still providing less backing than Congress intended and less than they needed to undertake financially risky construction of new nuclear reactors. In the end, it was Domenici, senior Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and an ardent nuclear supporter, who forced the White House to cave on the issue, saying he would hold up the nomination of Jim Nussle to be director of the OMB unless the administration agreed to letting the loan guarantees cover 100% of loans. In a new twist to the loan program, however, under the final rule, if the DOE issues a guarantee for 100% of a loan, that loan “must be issued and funded by the Treasury Department’s Federal Financing Bank,” the DOE said in a press release announcing the final rule. In a prepared statement, Domenici said he was pleased that the DOE was making changes in the loan guarantee program so that it was “consistent with our intent in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. “In particular, I would note that the administration has kept its commitment to me to guarantee up to 100% of a loan, subject to the overall cap of 80% of the project cost. This represents a significant and important change from the proposed draft rule,” he added. “While alternative energy projects have attracted strong interest and growth, they have not yet secured the stable debt financing necessary to ensure their long term success. It is my belief and hope that a robust loan guarantee program will provide these projects the stability that will allow them to flourish, starting with the 16 pre-applicants that will now be invited to submit full applications.” In another key change from its proposed rules, the energy department said that under its final loan guarantee rules, the guaranteed portion of a partially guaranteed loan may be separated from or “stripped” from the nonguaranteed portion, except in cases where the guarantee exceeds 90% of the loan amount. The change was sought by nuclear industry officials and investment firms, who said it would make it easier to market clean energy project debt on Wall Street. Michael Wallace, president of Constellation Energy Generation Group, said the newly revised loan guarantee program will likely prove to be “the watershed event that really allows those who want to pursue new nuclear to be able to do so much more aggressively, because this has been such a huge uncertainty.” Baltimore-based Constellation, in partnership with French companies Areva and EDF, is pursuing several possible new reactor projects in the United States. Department officials noted that, going forward, the loan guarantee program is expected to grow rapidly, with the department asking Congress for $9 billion in loan guarantee authority for fiscal year 2008. However, they said it was still not clear how they would proceed on loan guarantees for one key sector, nuclear power, which was not included in the DOE’s first-round solicitation for projects. With nuclear industry officials having indicated they will seek tens of billions of dollars in loan guarantees, DOE officials said they were still awaiting guidance from Congress on how much total loan authority they would have. In particular, the officials said they were awaiting decisions by Congress on Senate-passed legislation that could provide the DOE with unlimited budgetary authority for loan guarantees. However, they added that the department’s position is that Congress must set budgetary parameters of some sort in an appropriations bill. The winning pre-applicants for biomass projects were Alico Inc. for a cellulosic ethanol plant in Florida; Blue Fire Ethanol Inc., for a cellulosic ethanol plant in California; Choren USA, for a biomass gasification and diesel fuels production facility in the Southeast; Endicott Biofuels LLC, for a biodiesel facility in Virginia; Iogen Biorefinery Partners LLC, for a cellulosic ethanol plant in Idaho; and Voyager Ethanol LLC, for a cellulosic ethanol plant in Iowa. For the IGCC plants, the winners were Mesaba Energy Project, for a plant in Minnesota; Mississippi Power Co., for a project in Mississippi; and TX Energy LLC, for a plant in Texas. For the industrial energy-efficiency projects, the winners were GR Silicate Nano Fibers and Carbonates, for a new paper plant in Washington, and Sage Electrochromics, for an “electrochromic window manufacturing project” in Minnesota. For the solar projects, the winners were Luz II, for a concentrated solar-thermal facility in Nevada, and Solyndra Inc., for a California plant to manufacture highly efficient thin-film photovoltaic modules. The other winning projects were Beacon Power, for an electricity reliability project in New York; Bridgeport Fuel Cell Park LLC, for “the largest single-site installation of fuel cells in the world” in Connecticut; and Tesla Motors, which plans to build advanced battery-electric powered vehicles in New Mexico. ***************************************************************** 54 KNDO: Upgraded Exhibits at B-Reactor KNDO/KNDU Tri-Cities, Yakima, WA | RICHLAND, Wash.- Hanford's historic B-Reactor is getting upgrades in the effort to preserve it as a museum. The organizations trying to save the reactor just unveiled a series of new exhibits and educational videos setups. The exhibits are part of the Atomic Heritage Foundation's latest push to stop the federal government from tearing down the historic reactor, and instead make it a tourist spot. Activists say the reactor that made the ingredients for the world's first nuclear bomb is a part of history too important to ignore. "It tells an important story. Without it, you're losing as a nation and as a world, kind of the reality, the physical reality of this old project," said Cynthia Kelly, a leading activist. "Not too many people know about, and I think the information needs to be spread," said tourgoer Pat Rovell. Organizers hope the project can be combined with tours of the planned Hanford Reach Interpretive Center and possibly wine tasting trips, but a decision has to be made soon because Congress has only postponed cocooning the reactor until 2009. All content © Copyright 2000 - 2007 WorldNow and KNDO/KNDU. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 55 NewsBlaze: Remarks As Prepared for Delivery by U.S. Deputy Sec. of Energy Clay Sell Vilnius Energy Secretary Conference 2007: Responsible Energy for Responsible Partners Thank you Excellencies, fellow Ministers, and distinguished ladies and gentlemen. And thank you, President Adamkus and President Kaczynski, for hosting this important international discussion on the energy challenges and opportunities we collectively face. I am honored to represent the President of the United States and to personally deliver his commitment to expand our collaboration to achieve a more secure energy future for all of our nations. When Vice President Cheney was here in May of 2006, he made clear that in today's world our values and our strategic interests are one and the same. This is as true for our belief in democracy as it is for our pursuit of energy security. We are facing a new energy reality which compels cooperation among neighbors, new options for suppliers and consumers, and transparent engagement in the global marketplace. That is why I was so pleased to participate in yesterday's 10th Anniversary of the GUAM organization. Regional partnerships like GUAM provide the backbone and the unity necessary for like-minded and interdependent nations to jointly pursue mutually beneficial policies that increase economic prosperity, regional stability, and enhanced energy security. And in my view, enhanced energy security cannot appropriately be discussed without a recognition of the new energy reality that we are all facing a reality that poses challenges requiring new solutions and vigorous engagement with new regional and international partners. The facts are simple, we are in a high priced environment, where world-wide demand has outstripped supply. Over the next 25 years, we estimate that this robust global energy consumption will increase by an additional 50 percent. Also, world conditions are changing. The energy infrastructure of today is more extensive and expansive than ever and as such, it is more vulnerable to terrorism and disruption. Further, opportunities for exploration and production are limited by an increasing trend toward resource nationalism. Consider this, two thirds of the world's oil and gas reserves are in countries that substantially limit or prohibit any foreign companies from investing there. We know that the world is not running out of energy resources, but above ground risks like resource nationalism, limited access and infrastructure constraints may effectively limit production to something far less than what is required. We have seen conditions like this before but now we must consider them in the context of tackling the issue of global climate change and the future reality of a carbon constrained environment. That makes this a very new energy reality now the question is, how do we together address it. We know that it takes technology. We know that it takes strong economies. We know that it takes investment. And we know that it takes new levels of collaboration. No single solution, no single supplier, no single technology will answer this call we need to invest in all potential economic options. That is why I am pleased that so many of the nations represented here today have joined together with the U.S. in the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), which aims to increase the availability of environmentally sound nuclear power. Coupled with last year's agreement among Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, and Poland to pursue the development of a new nuclear facility in Lithuania, this regional support of nuclear power is a positive step toward enhanced cooperation. The U.S. supports Poland and Lithuania resolving remaining differences and moving forward with this important project. Another step in addressing the challenges presented by the new energy reality is the importance of ensuring fair access to affordable, reliable, and diverse supplies of energy. Transportation and distribution options, such as the Nabucco and Odessa-Brody pipelines, are critical to the access equation. Competition in this area provides incentives for efficiency, is good for consumers, and enhances energy security. But security and stability require cooperation and transparency. That is why America's aim for European and Central Asian energy development has long been to ensure reliable, unfettered flows of oil and natural gas from the Caspian region to the global marketplace, and from multiple economic transit routes not only through Russia. In the absence of diverse supplies with multiple transit options, nations are vulnerable to the whims and dictates of their overdependence on one supplier. Producing nations have legitimate interests in security of their markets. But those same nations who choose to use their natural resources for short term political and economic gain, are doing so to the long term detriment of their people and the overall world energy system. That approach may hold short term appeal, but it is ultimately economically unsustainable. As we learned in the U.S. it is imperative that a country or a region not be dependent on a single supplier. A diersity of fuels from multiple sources is vitally important in addressing this new energy reality. Energy security cannot occur with the European and Caspian nations each pursuing separate paths and separate arrangements. Solidarity is paramount. Energy security can only occur in the context of a shared vision, regional cooperation, common interests, and more importantly common actions. Building a more secure energy future for all the nations represented here today is important for the U.S. and the rest of the world. And I want you to know that we will support you in that endeavor. Finally, the advantages of competition, fair pricing, and multiple supply options to transport that energy cannot be overstated. Future energy development requires new technology, huge sums of capital perhaps $20 trillion over the next 25 years, and the experience and best practices of the world's leading energy companies. In order to be successful, all nations must embrace a transparent marketplace, a responsible investment climate, and fair and predictable regulatory regimes. The U.S. will continue its strong partnership wih European and Central Asian nations. I am here because the President of the United States supports your vision of a democratic, prosperous, and stable region. Participation in the global energy market requires responsible options among responsible partners. The U.S. government and U.S. commercial industry will assist you in achieving these goals. Thank you. Source: U.S. Department of Energy judythpiazza@newsblaze.com Copyright © 2007, NewsBlaze, Daily News ***************************************************************** NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. 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