***************************************************************** 10/22/07 **** RADIATION BULLETIN(RADBULL) **** VOL 15.248 ***************************************************************** 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 [NYTr] Big Shoes to Fill: Al Jazeera on Iran's New Nuclear Negotiato 2 US: New York Times: Fight Against Coal Plants Draws Diverse Partners NUCLEAR REACTORS 3 US: [NYTr] The Nuke Industry: Gore's Biggest Fan 4 The Hindu: Nuclear plants shut down for want of fuel - NPCIL 5 Herald Sun: Nuclear power no certainty - Turnbull 6 US: Guardian Unlimited: Special Inspection for MIT Reactor 7 Guardian Unlimited: British engineer offers nuclear expertise to Fre 8 Sydney Morning Herald: Turnbull denies backflip on nuke policy - 9 AU ABC: Garrett pounces on apparent nuclear backflip - 10 Czech Business Weekly: Temelin upgraded, tested 11 TheStar.com: Hydrogen's role in a nuclear renaissance 12 US: NRC: NRC Issues Confirmatory Orders to Arizona Public Service Co 13 US: BBC NEWS: Nuclear woes hit British Energy 14 US: APP.COM: State wants Oyster Creek analysis sent to feds | 15 US: London Times: British Energy closes nuclear plants - 16 US: London Times: British Energy: Analysis - 17 Jakarta Post: Golkar in the gates but staying steady 18 US: NRC: NRC to Meet With Duke Energy Oct. 25 in Atlanta to Discuss 19 Green.view: Speaking across the ages 20 US: NRC: Withdrawal of Regulatory Guides 21 US: NRC: Entergy Operations, Inc.; Waterford Steam Electric Station, 22 US: NRC: Entergy Operations, Inc.; Notice of Withdrawal of Applicati 23 US: NRC: Notice of Availability of Final Environmental Assessment an 24 US: NRC: Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Meeting Notice 25 US: NRC: NRC Issues Confirmatory Action Letter to Exelon Regarding 26 AFP: Energy poses major 21st century crisis - scientists - 27 US: Reuters: Dominion's Virginia Surry 1 reactor shut 28 US: Reuters: Both Exelon Ill. Byron nuclear reactors shut-NRC 29 Reuters: British Energy plant woes return, shares dive 30 US: Reuters: Dominion's Va. Surry 1 reactor refueling | 31 US: Reuters: Entergy's NY FitzPatrick reactor back at full power | 32 US: Reuters: APS says Ariz. Unit 1 shut, return unknown | 33 US: Reuters: Exelon Pa. reactor shut for refueling | 34 Hemscott: British Energy's Hartlepool Reactor 1 start-up delayed 35 US: NRC: Atomic Safety & Licensing Board Established to Handle India 36 US: ajc.com: Says Gov. Riley of Alabama: We need that extra water fo 37 US: Patriot-News: TMI down for refueling - 38 US: Rockford Register Star: Leaks shut down Byron nuclear plant - 39 US: NRC: NRC Issues Transition Plan for Assuming Regulation of Addit 40 US: NRC: NRC Warns Public and Merchants of Fake Check Scam 41 US: NRC: NRC Orders Alaska Radiography Firm to Cease Operations Beca 42 US: NRC: NRC Begins Special Inspection at the Massachusetts Institut NUCLEAR SECURITY NUCLEAR SAFETY 43 London Times: More than 200 nuclear scares recorded at submarine bas NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE 44 US: Gallup Independent: A job she loved, a life of suffering; Grants PEACE 45 [NYTr] Iran Accuses US of Hindering IAEA Operations 46 [NYTr] Iran's chief nuclear negotiator quits 47 [NYTr] Iran's new hardline nuclear envoy causes jitters in West 48 [NYTr] It's the USA's Nuke Arsenal That Worries the World: Iran's UN 49 BBC NEWS: No breakthrough in nuclear talks 50 The Herald: Bombing Iran US DEPT. OF ENERGY 51 Seattle Times: A nuclear reactor's next life: Tourist destination? 52 DOE: DOE Recognizes Six Leading Organizations for Helping the U.S. ‘ 53 Tri-City Herald: Bulk vitrification tests show some progress 54 DOE: Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board, Idaho 55 OregonLive.com: First U.S. nuke plant at Hanford might become 56 El Paso/Las Cruces News: Vault at Los Alamos lab to help reduce secu ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** FULL NEWS STORIES ***************************************************************** ***************************************************************** 1 [NYTr] Big Shoes to Fill: Al Jazeera on Iran's New Nuclear Negotiator Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 20:43:50 -0500 (CDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Al Jazeera - Oct 22, 2007 http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/DE8FE53D-483B-4385-BC4E-181F23E4AEAC.htm Big shoes to fill By Alireza Ronaghi in Tehran Ali Larijani, the head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council and the country's top nuclear negotiator, resigned from the position he held for more than two years and was immediately replaced by Saeed Jalili, a relatively young deputy foreign minister with no experience in nuclear talks. Rajanews, a website that is known to be the unofficial voice of staunch supporters of Mahmoud Ahmadineajd, the Iranian president, calls him the perfect choice for the job. Jalili, a 42-year-old with a doctorate in political science, has served in a wide range of positions in the Iranian foreign ministry since 1989. After Ahmadinejad's victory in the 2005 presidential election he worked as an adviser to the president and has also worked as a deputy to the foreign minister in European and American affairs. Jalili will meet Javier Solana, the European Union's foreign policy chief, on Tuesday to continue talks over Iran's controversial nuclear programme. There is an obvious contrast between Jalili's stature and that of his predecessor as Larijani was clearly representing the highest authority in Iranian politics, the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Ahmadinejad's man? Indeed on Monday an adviser to the supreme leader was quoted expressing regret at Larijani's decision to stand down. "It seems that if this had not happened, it would have been better," Ali Akbar Velayati, the most senior foreign policy adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was quoted by Iran's students news agency ISNA as saying. "In the very important and sensitive situation where the nuclear issue is at the moment it would be better if this [the resignation] did not happen or at least it was prevented," he added. Jalili alternatively may be seen more as a representative of Ahmadinejad. To pre-empt speculations that the change of guard may trigger, the Iranian leadership has decided that Larijani will also be present in talks on Tuesday. "The negotiations will be held on Tuesday and Doctor [Ali] Larijani will attend the talks as the representative of the supreme leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei]," Mohammad Ali Hosseini, a spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry, was quoted by Iran's Fars news agency as saying. "He will attend the talks by the emphasis of the supreme leader and president [Mahmoud Ahmadinejad] himself." Jalili is an unknown name to many ordinary Iranians, and no one doubts that he has to prepare himself for a challenging mission: to fill the shoes of one of the most prominent figures in the Islamic republic and to maintain his foreign policy achievements. The Iran-EU talks on Tuesday for instance, are one example of Larijani's political initiatives. Larijani's main objective has been to try and force Iran's nuclear case from the UN security council's agenda and send it firmly back into the remit of the IAEA, the UN nuclear watchdog, where Iran says it belongs. 'Technical duties' That mission has not been accomplished yet, but Larijani's efforts backed by the highest level of Iranian leadership, have succeeded in paving the way for a new round of Iran-IAEA co-operation. Tehran's unexpected openness in its dealings with the IAEA has resulted in solving one of its most problematic issues with the West, concerning Plutonium traces found in Iran. That has in turn prompted the UN security council to postpone passing a third, and much tougher, resolution against Iran and imposing further sanctions. Despite such a breakthrough, and contrary to what Ahmadineajd has said on several occasions, Iran's nuclear standoff with the West is far from over, and the government will continue to have a need for experienced men like Larijani. The government, however, has played down Larijani's resignation and government officials have denied that it could be seen as a sign of growing divisions within the Islamic establishment. "Jalili, as a young and energetic yet experienced diplomat, will practically continue Larijani's work; the only difference would be that the remaining duties are mostly technical and legal in nature," Mohammad Mehdi Soltani, a national security council adviser, was quoted by Rajanews as saying. "If anybody tends to interpret Larijani's resignation as a sign of divisions among the Islamic Republic officials or a war for power within the system, they are moving in line with the psychological warfare of the enemies," he said. Source: Al Jazeera * ================================================================= 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 ================================================================= ***************************************************************** 2 New York Times: Fight Against Coal Plants Draws Diverse Partners - Robin Loznak/The Great Falls Tribune A group of potential builders look over the proposed site of a coal-fired power plant near Great Falls, Mont. By SUSAN MORAN Published: October 20, 2007 GREAT FALLS, Mont. — Richard D. Liebert turned his back against a hard wind the other day, adjusted his black cap and gazed across golden fields of hay. Explaining why he is against construction of a big coal-burning power plant east of town, Mr. Liebert sounded like one more voice from the green movement. The Energy Challenge Resistance on the Range Articles in this series will periodically examine the ways in which the world is, and is not, moving toward a more energy efficient, environmentally benign future. Previous Articles in the Series » Multimedia More Coal Plants, More Greenhouse Gases Rion Sanders for The New York Times Richard D. Liebert, who owns the Windwalker Ranch near the planned site, is a vocal, and unusual, opponent of the power plant. “The more I learn about global warming and watch the drought affect ranchers and farmers, I see that it’s wind energy, not coal plants, that can help with rural economic development. Besides, do we want to roll the dice with the one planet we’ve got?” But Mr. Liebert, despite his sentiments, fits nobody’s stereotype of an environmentalist. He is a Republican, a cattle rancher and a retired Army lieutenant colonel who travels to South Korea to train soldiers to fight in Iraq. He is also an example of a rising phenomenon in the West. An increasingly vocal, potent and widespread anti-coal movement is developing here. Environmental groups that have long opposed new power plants are being joined by ranchers, farmers, retired homeowners, ski resort operators and even religious groups. Activists say the increasing diversity of these coalitions is making them more effective. “You’re seeing a convergence of people who previously never worked together or even talked to each other,” said Anne Hedges, program director of the Montana Environmental Information Center, which is spearheading three lawsuits aimed at blocking construction of the power plant near Great Falls. “They’re saying these coal plants don’t make any sense, whether from an economic or environmental or property-rights standpoint.” Power companies concede that anti-coal coalitions are indeed becoming more effective — and they describe that as a threat to the reliability of the nation’s electric grid. In their view, building more coal-burning power plants is the most realistic way to meet the rising demand for electric power. “It’s clear new coal-fired generation is running into roadblocks,” said Rick Sergel, president and chief executive of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. “I don’t believe we can allow coal-fired generation to become an endangered species. We simply must use all the resources we have.” Natural gas is an alternative to coal for electricity generation. But Mr. Sergel said the industry worries about relying too heavily on gas because it is far more expensive, prices have become volatile and a share of the gas supply has to be imported. New nuclear power plants are on the drawing board, but they are many years from completion. And although energy conservation and efficiency, as well as renewable energy, will play larger roles in the future, they are not enough to meet the nation’s growing appetite for electricity, Mr. Sergel said. The collaboration of former strangers — even enemies in some cases — to fight coal development is largely a Western phenomenon. While medical groups, city officials, environmental groups and others have banded together to fight coal plants near cities east of the Mississippi, the power plants in the West are largely in rural areas and thus directly affect farmers and ranchers living on the plains, the prairies and near the Rocky Mountains. Government projections suggest that coal, which provides 50 percent of the nation’s electricity and a quarter of its total energy, will continue to dominate the nation’s energy mix, despite its environmental problems. As of last May, the Energy Department projected that 151 coal-fired plants could be built by 2030 to meet a 40 percent rise in demand for electricity, largely from soaring populations in Western states. “Coal is still very much alive,” said Jim Owen, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute, an industry group. But opponents of coal plants are winning some battles. Reports from the government, the industry and environmental groups show that at least three dozen coal plants have been canceled or scaled back in the last two years. Bruce E. Nilles, a lawyer who directs the Sierra Club’s national coal campaign, said his organization and collaborating groups had filed 29 lawsuits and administrative appeals against proposed coal plants. Aside from legal battles, the power industry said rising construction and labor costs and regulatory pressure were contributing to the cancellations. Ranchers and farmers have featured prominently in several recent battles over power plants. In Jerome County, Idaho, for instance, Sempra Energy of San Diego had planned to build a large plant to burn pulverized coal. A coalition that included the Jerome County Farm Bureau, a dairy association, ski resort owners, other landowners, local politicians and environmental activists defeated Sempra. They also prompted a two-year statewide moratorium on such coal plants. And in Iowa, a 77-year-old retired farmer living on the land his great-grandfather settled in 1879 has galvanized ranchers, farmers and environmentalists to fight plans by the LS Power Group of New Jersey to build a coal plant on his property. In 2003, the farmer, Merle Bell, sold LS Power an option to buy his land. He said that even though he had doubts about the wisdom of coal plants, he thought he had little choice because the company was also purchasing an option on his neighbor's land and said it would build the plant anyway. Mr. Bell later changed his mind. His coalition is pressing the Iowa Utilities Board to kill the plant, which also faces larger permitting hurdles. "I grew up here," Mr. Bell said from his home just east of Waterloo. "I rode ponies here. I farmed and raised cows, chicken and hogs here. A coal plant would be bad for the environment, and I don't want to see it harm people living here and future generations." For many farmers and ranchers, protecting the land they till hardly means that they have become environmentalists. In fact, seeing environmentalists as potential allies and not enemies has been awkward for many of them. C. J. Kantorowicz grows winter wheat on 6,000 acres near the proposed Highwood coal plant east of Great Falls. Last fall he joined other farmers in a zoning lawsuit against Cascade County commissioners to stop the plant. Until he went to an organizing meeting that another farmer, Robert Lassila, held at his house, Mr. Kantorowicz loathed environmentalists. So he winced when he was introduced to a pathologist who had started a local environmental group to fight the proposed plant. She came to talk about the public health and environmental risks. "I think global warming is a hoax, and I hate to hitch my wagon to environmentalists," Mr. Kantorowicz said recently in his living room after a hard day planting winter wheat. "I went to the meeting with the mind that I'd shoot holes in her story, her environmentalist's view. But she and others convinced me they were right by being honest and answering our questions in detail about pollution and such." Robert Lassila's son, Daryl, lives next door to his parents. He recalled some of the neighbors bristling when the meeting started. "Many were looking at each other nervously and wondering who brought the environmentalists here and is there a back door to this place," he said. "But they stayed put and here we are, together in this fight." For many farmers and ranchers, their aversion to coal is more pragmatic than philosophical. Their crops and livestock have been plagued by severe droughts and storms lately, and some wonder whether those are linked to global warming. Whether that proves to be the case, the strain on their finances has made them more interested in renewable-energy projects, like wind turbines, on their land. Janyce and Leonard Harms, who grow wheat and millet in Hereford, Colo., near the Wyoming and Nebraska borders, last year agreed to allow eight towering wind turbines on their land. The turbines are part of the new 274-turbine Cedar Creek wind farm owned by BP, the huge energy company, and Babcock & Brown. The project is expected to churn out electricity for some 90,000 homes, mostly near Denver. The Harmses, though a bit skeptical about coal plants, have not become involved in any battles. But they typify the fascination with wind energy that is sweeping rural America. They have received about $5,000 from the wind farm's owners for leasing their land, and once the wind farm is fully operational by year's end, they will receive at least $3,500 a year per turbine. "We're not environmentalists by any means," Ms. Harms said as she gazed through her sliding glass door at the huge turbines spinning in the distance. "I see this as supplemental income. We're getting older and we'd like to retire. This is a great deal, and the fact that it's clean energy makes it even better." ***************************************************************** 3 [NYTr] The Nuke Industry: Gore's Biggest Fan Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 20:39:46 -0500 (CDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Counterpunch - Oct 20, 2007 http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn10202007.html excerpted from CounterPunch Diary Gore's Biggest Fan By ALEXANDER COCKBURN The nuclear industry decorously restrained itself from raising a public cheer when Norway's Nobel committee gave Al Gore half of this year's peace prize, but the industry's private emotions of gratitude have surely been fervent. In practical terms it has been the chief beneficiary of the uproar about man's supposed contribution to global warming. Twenty years ago, as an answer to America's energy needs, nuclear power stood at a nadir in public esteem, particularly among environmentalists and precisely that segment of the population most upset today about global warming. The objections to nuclear power are as valid today as they ever were. Nuclear power plants produce large amounts of lethal toxic waste, trundled, often by rail around the country, often through urban areas where fire or kindred accident could swiftly produce catastrophe. The storage sites have been prone to leaks and poisoning of aquifers. The plants themselves are prone to boiler explosions, also to armed assault, again with potentially catastrophic human consequences. Nuclear energy requires uranium, mined at grave human cost. It sustains the military production of nuclear weapons. It's an energy source using the centralized grid systems that environmentalists have been assailing for decades. Since they frequently break down, they have to be backed by coal-fired plants. Unless the US government assumes liability, the energy produced is extremely expensive. Finally, to those crediting the jeremiads of Gore and others about the baneful role of humanly-produced greenhouse gases, the nuclear plants do badly in this regard. Yet the immense irony is that many influential greenhouse alarmists have always been privately well aware that unless the nation shifted to energy sources and conservation measures which would be anathema to the most powerful corporate interests in the United States, the prime exit from the crisis they have been sponsoring is through a door marked "nuclear power". Gore himself has been a shil to the nuclear industry from the first day he stepped into Congress entrusted with the sacred duty to protect the budgetary and regulatory interests of the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Oakridge National Laboratory, both of them enormously powerful institutions in Gore's home state. Already the fixation on anthropogenic global warming stoked by Gore has done great damage to vital environmental clean-up work, sidetracking attention and money from work on sewers, toxic waste sites, filthy smoke stacks, not to mention the vast disaster of agricultural pollution. Bio-fuels will steal the meals of the Third nuclear World poor and put them in First World gas tanks. But nuclear power is the hysteria's prime beneficiary, as Peter Montague, a thorn in the nuclear industry's side for many years, narrates in detail our current CounterPunch newsletter, beginning with the news thay "The long-awaited and much-advertised 'nuclear renaissance' actually got under way this fall." * ================================================================= 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 ================================================================= ***************************************************************** 4 The Hindu: Nuclear plants shut down for want of fuel - NPCIL Monday, October 22, 2007 : 0945 Hrs Mumbai, (PTI): Five of the 17 nuclear power plants in the country had been shut down and the remaining are operating at an average of less than 50 per cent capacity for want of fuel, a top official of the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited said. Two units at Narora atomic power plant in Uttar Pradesh are shut down for annual maintenance work, while the newly commissioned Kaiga unit 3 in Karnataka and one unit of Kalpakkam atomic power plant near Chennai are facing closure for want of fuel, Chairman and Managing Director of NPCIL, S K Jain, said. Two units of Rajasthan Atomic Power plants are shut down as feeder pipe replacement is taking place, Jain said adding, all these may get started immediately as there was a mismatch of uranium fuel in the country. Rest of the 12 plants which had an established 95 per cent capacity are now running between 50-70 per cent making the average capacity of nuclear power production in the country less than 50 per cent, he said. The Nuclear Fuel Complex Chief Executive, R N Jairaj, said his company was able to make use of only 30 per cent of the total capacity and is being under-utilised due to the "mismatch" of fuel. The fuel "mismatch" situation has started affecting the performance of the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL). Currently operating nuclear power stations with a capacity of around 4,000 MWe, NPCIL has been forced to slash power production levels. Asked why it is called mismatch of fuel and not shortage of fuel, Jain said, India has uranium reserve but is not explored and exploited in the way it should have been. "For the last four years, a high-level council has been working to look into enhancing uranium production in the country and Atomic Mineral Division Council has conducted studies as to how to triple the production," he said, adding Prime Minister himself oversees the progress. The mismatch has been created due to NPCIL's demonstration to the World that it could have the power plant capacity up to 95 per cent and also its demonstration of reducing the gestation period of construction from 10 years to four and a half to five years, according to Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) sources. Uranium Corporation of India Limited (UCIL) will invest roughly Rs 31 billion (USD 679 million) to open new mines and set up processing plants in Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh and Meghalaya. UCIL chairman and managing director Ramendra Gupta said UCIL is investing Rs 6.5 billion (USD 142 million) in Jharkhand alone. In addition, UCIL is exploring uranium deposits in Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Karnataka, sources said. An investment of Rs 18 billion (US$ 393 million) is proposed for setting up two uranium mining and milling plants in Nalgonda and Kadapa districts in Andhra Pradesh. Jain said NPCIL is going ahead with the commissioning of two more pressurised heavy water reactors -- the fifth unit of Rajasthan Atomic Power plant and Kaiga 4 -- and both have undergone hydro test and ready for receiving fuel. Both the units are expected to be commissioned by the end of this year or early next year. Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. ***************************************************************** 5 Herald Sun: Nuclear power no certainty - Turnbull NEWS.com.au | Article from: AAP October 22, 2007 04:10pm NUCLEAR power is not a certainty in Australia, despite it being the cheapest and most tenable option, federal Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull says. More research into clean energy technologies may show nuclear energy was not the cheapest option and therefore it might never be adopted, Mr Turnbull said today. "If clean coal turns out to be a cheaper alternative then we may never have nuclear power in Australia," Mr Turnbull said. "It may be there is no nuclear power in Australia but ... we need to have nuclear power as an option. "My own feeling is it (nuclear) will be the most competitive in Australia." Mr Turnbull has previously said he believes electricity generation should have zero-emissions by 2050 and that target could be reached by using a combination of clean energy sources, including nuclear. A report by a committee headed by nuclear physicist Ziggy Switkowski suggests nuclear power may be the answer to supplying the nation's growing energy demands. The committee suggested that up to 25 nuclear power stations could be built along the east coast. Mr Turnbull repeated government assurances that the operation of such nuclear plants was at least 10 to 15 years away. Opposition environment spokesman Peter Garrett said "Just hours after the prime minister supported nuclear power in the national televised debate, Mr Turnbull is suddenly saying nuclear reactors may never be built in Australia. "The fact is you cannot have nuclear power in Australia without 25 nuclear reactors. This is a clear case of Mr Turnbull trying to walk both sides of the street - one day nuclear and the next day not." © Herald and Weekly Times. All times AEST (GMT + 10). ***************************************************************** 6 Guardian Unlimited: Special Inspection for MIT Reactor Tuesday October 23, 2007 1:46 AM By RODRIQUE NGOWI Associated Press Writer BOSTON (AP) - The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has launched a special inspection at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's research reactor after a report showed a worker there may have been exposed to a surprisingly high dose of radiation, a spokesman said Monday. On Oct. 17, the university, in Cambridge, reported that one of the reactor's operators had a radiation measurement of four rems for the period between July 1 and Sept. 30, NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said. That accounts for 80 percent of the total radiation that a worker can be safely exposed to during an entire year, Sheehan said by telephone from King of Prussia, Pa. ``In the case of this worker, they've promptly removed him from any radiation activities and he'll remain out of the radiation area pending resolution of this matter,'' Sheehan said. ``That's the appropriate step until they learn more about what could have caused this.'' All other employees' radiation exposure measurements for the same time period were normal, MIT spokeswoman Patti Richards said in a statement. The school notified its own safety officials and the federal commission, she said. Three NRC inspectors on Monday began work at the reactor - the nation's second-largest university reactor - to determine whether the reading was accurate, Sheehan said. They will also review reactor procedures, examine MIT's response and reconstruct events that could have triggered a high exposure. The special inspection is expected to be completed in two to three weeks and a report will be issued and made public approximately 30 days after that, the commission said in a statement. Research reactors like MIT's are much smaller than commercial reactors. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 7 Guardian Unlimited: British engineer offers nuclear expertise to French firms Tim Webb Monday October 22, 2007 Amec has formed an alliance with EDF and Areva to help the French companies build a new generation of nuclear reactors in the UK. The energy services group becomes the first British company to team up with one of the foreign utilities companies vying for the work. This month the government finally completed its delayed consultation on nuclear power as part of its energy review. Ministers are expected to give the green light for companies to submit proposals to build new reactors by the end of the year. EDF wants to build four reactors, probably on four separate sites, using Areva's design. Amec will help them get the design licensed by UK regulators, adding its name to their formal design application submitted last month. EDF and Areva have also granted Amec "first refusal" on any future work with the French companies to build the reactors, which is likely to be far more lucrative. The French companies want to tap Amec's experience with dealing with British regulators as a licensed UK nuclear operator. Politically, having on board a British company in a consortium is also seen as an advantage. A spokesman for Amec said: "Teaming up with EDF does not preclude us from teaming up with other companies." Westinghouse, which is owned Toshiba, holds the main rival to the Areva design. Other foreign utilities jostling to build and operate new reactors in the UK include Germany's Eon, which owns Powergen, and RWE, which operates the Npower brand. Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007 ***************************************************************** 8 Sydney Morning Herald: Turnbull denies backflip on nuke policy - www.smh.com.au October 23, 2007 - 11:09AM Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull denies any backflip over the government's nuclear energy policy by stating Australia may never have a nuclear industry. Mr Turnbull, campaigning in his seat of Wentworth in Sydney's east on Tuesday, said an Australian nuclear energy industry was still on the cards, as it was a zero carbon option. But he said his comments on Monday that clean coal technology could overtake nuclear energy as a viable option for Australia's power were no more than he had said all year. "In order to deal with climate change and to move to a zero emissions energy future ... we need to have the nuclear option on the table," Mr Turnbull said. "Clearly nuclear energy and zero emissions sources are going to have to compete. "And if clean coal technology is more efficient, more cost effective, if you can produce a megawatt hour of electricity at lower costs with zero emissions in clean coal, then it will out-compete nuclear power." His comment followed Labor criticism of what it claimed to be government indecision on Australia's nuclear energy future. Opposition environment spokesman Peter Garrett earlier called on Prime Minister John Howard to immediately clarify his party's stance on nuclear power. "When it comes to the nuclear tango that the government seems to be dancing on, we don't know who's leading and who's following, but what we do know is that the government's climate change policy ... is in total tatters," Mr Garrett said. "Mr Howard and Malcolm Turnbull are now saying entirely different things about nuclear energy and Mr Howard's plan for 25 reactors in Australia." Asked whether he had backflipped on the government's previously stated support for nuclear energy, Mr Turnbull said: "Not at all. I've said no more than I've been saying all year." He said whether nuclear plants would be built in Australia depended on environmental issues, community consent, as well economic factors. A government-commissioned report by nuclear physicist Ziggy Switkowski has recommended the construction of 25 nuclear reactors in Australia to meet the nation's growing baseload energy needs. Mr Turnbull said on Monday that if research into other clean energy, such as clean coal, proved cost-efficient there might never be a need for Australia to adopt nuclear power. Dr Switkowski, the former Telstra head who now runs the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, said community support was vital for a step as big as moving to nuclear energy. He said Australians cannot be expected to have an informed view about nuclear power just yet. "We are really only at the beginning of an extended journey of trying to update the community understanding of nuclear technology and to build support, and one year in is just not enough time," he told Southern Cross radio. "It is too early to expect Australians to have an informed view about nuclear power or indeed to have majority support." Dr Switkowski said the government had provided political leadership despite Labor claims that Mr Turnbull was avoiding a contentious issue during the election campaign. "The strength of the government commitment to putting nuclear electricity on the table has been very substantial and it has been in the face of the fact that up until now the community has been unconvinced and there remain a long list of reservations about nuclear power," Dr Switkowski said. Only a limited number of options was available to provide baseload power and that included coal, gas and nuclear, he said. "It seems to me if you don't consider nuclear you don't fully appreciate the magnitude of the greenhouse gas reduction challenges that most people now believe we have to aim for 2050." © 2007 AAP Brought to you by Copyright © 2007. The Sydney Morning Herald. ***************************************************************** 9 AU ABC: Garrett pounces on apparent nuclear backflip - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) Updated October 23, 2007 07:23:00 Nuclear battleground: Peter Garrett wants John Howard to clarify Government policy (Getty Images: Patrick Riviere) Opposition environment spokesman Peter Garrett has accused Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull of "running away" from Prime Minister John Howard's support for nuclear power. Yesterday Mr Turnbull appeared to signal a policy change when he said there might never be nuclear power in Australia if clean coal turns out to be cheaper. Labor is opposed to nuclear power in Australia and Mr Garrett is demanding that the Government clarify its stand on nuclear power before the election. "Mr Howard has made much of the fact that his climate change policy is predicated on having nuclear power introduced to Australia - 25 nuclear reactors," he said. "[There is] legislation to come into the Parliament next time around, he's said he won't walk away from it. "Now we've got his Environment Minister running away from it at a rate of knots." Mr Turnbull comments yesterday echoed similar comments he made to a conference of business economists in June. © 2007 ABC Privacy Policy ***************************************************************** 10 Czech Business Weekly: Temelin upgraded, tested Tue, October 23, 2007 Home Page Contact Us Subscribe By: CBW, 22. 10. 2007, More by this author Staff at the Temelín, South Bohemia, nuclear power station completed a six-day test of the modernized turbine of the power station’s first unit on Oct. 15, according to Marek Sviták, spokesman for power producer ÈEZ.      During a recent shutdown, technicians equipped the turbine with a new high-pressure rotor part. The tests were carried out on full output. ÈEZ has also replaced part of the second-unit turbine this year. The new part will raise the output of each unit by at least 26 megawatts to 1,020 MW and extend the life span of the turbine. The replacement of the rotors and other parts has cost almost Kè 700 million. ©2004 - 2007 Stanford, a. s. with all rights reserved. webmaster@cbw.cz www.profit.cz | www.bookoflists.cz | www.skoleni-konference.cz | www.podnikatelskesetkani.cz ***************************************************************** 11 TheStar.com: Hydrogen's role in a nuclear renaissance Tuesday, October 23, 2007 | Today's Toronto Star GO's hydrogen express Oct 22, 2007 04:30 AM Tyler Hamilton Nuclear energy is key to establishing a hydrogen-powered rail corridor in Toronto, says Greg Naterer, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT). A big issue with hydrogen, he says, is that 96 per cent of what's produced in the world comes from fossil fuels, particularly natural gas, through a process called steam reforming. This results in greenhouse gases and other emissions. The rest largely comes from a more expensive process called electrolysis, which is the use of electricity to separate water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen. Electrolysis has the potential to produce emission-free hydrogen, but only if the source electricity is itself emission-free – that is, it must come from wind, solar or hydroelectric generation. Nuclear power, if you ignore the radioactive waste, also fits the bill, and this has turned the nuclear industry into a big hydrogen-economy supporter as a way of boosting its own self-proclaimed renaissance. "A hydrogen economy doesn't make sense if we're using fossil fuels to generate the hydrogen, so we need a method that doesn't use fossil fuels," says Naterer. "And right now hydrogen from electrolysis is too costly because it has to compete against other fuels." As research chair in advanced energy systems at UOIT, Naterer is leading a 24-member team that's exploring a method of producing lower-cost hydrogen from the waste heat of nuclear plants. Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., the Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago and universities across Ontario are also participating in the research effort. Some have argued that surplus electricity from the overnight operation of nuclear reactors could be used to produce hydrogen, but UOIT and its research partners have their eye on a more economical approach. Instead of using nuclear power directly for electrolysis, they plan to use the waste heat from a nearby nuclear plant to extract hydrogen from steam. What happens is the steam reacts with copper and chlorine compounds through a five-step process that splits water. It's a closed cycle, meaning the copper and chlorine is recycled and no waste is produced. "All you have going in is water and all that comes out is hydrogen and oxygen," says Naterer, adding that the process is more than 33 per cent more efficient than electrolysis and makes hydrogen production cost-competitive with the fossil-fuel approach, once carbon taxes and the future cost of carbon capture and storage are factored in. "We think the economics are attractive," he adds. "This thermo-chemical approach can produce hydrogen below $1.40 per kilogram, compared to steam reforming at above $2 per kilogram. And this doesn't include savings from the waste heat recovery, rising natural gas prices, higher demand and declining natural gas reserves." The process doesn't rely exclusively on nuclear – waste heat from any industrial operation will do, assuming there's enough. But given the proximity of Ontario nuclear plants to the GO train corridor, and the massive amounts of waste heat that could be tapped, researchers see huge potential in McGuinty's proposal. "There's enough waste heat from a nuclear reactor plant for several commercial hydrogen plants," explains Naterer. He says an initial pilot plant would produce enough of the gas to fuel a couple of trains travelling between Oshawa and Toronto. Once the technique is proven, it could be scaled up 1,000 times – enough hydrogen for GO's entire train fleet and hundreds of thousands of vehicles. Tyler Hamilton's Clean Break appears Mondays. Part I of this two-part column ran in yesterday's Star. You may email him at thamilt@thestar.ca © Copyright Toronto Star 1996-2007 | ***************************************************************** 12 NRC: NRC Issues Confirmatory Orders to Arizona Public Service Co. & Former Employee Requiring Corrective Actions News Release - Region IV - 2007-038 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, Region IV 611 Ryan Plaza Drive, Suite 400, Arlington TX 76011 www.nrc.gov CONTACT: Victor Dricks Phone: 817-860-8128 E-mail: opa4@nrc.gov The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued Confirmatory Orders requiring Arizona Public Service Co. (APS) and one of its former senior reactor operators to take corrective actions following an incident in which the individual falsified a computer record at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station to cover up a mistake. The company operates the plant, located 50 miles west of Phoenix. APS has agreed to the terms of a Confirmatory Order that requires it to develop special training for reactor operators to emphasize the importance of reporting errors, performing independent work verifications, and deterring individuals from concealing mistakes. The terms of the Confirmatory Order were agreed to following Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), which uses a neutral mediator with no decision-making authority to assist the NRC and its licensees in resolving differences regarding enforcement actions. The Confirmatory Order also requires APS to perform assessments of independent verification processes in its operations and maintenance departments within the next year and implement a plan for ensuring that actions it takes to improve these processes are effective. A separate Confirmatory Order requires Mark Sharp, a former Palo Verde senior reactor operator who mistakenly entered incorrect information into a plant computer during a maintenance operation on Nov. 8, 2006, and subsequently attempted to cover up the mistake by falsifying the record, to take a number of corrective actions. “As a result of the Alternative Dispute Resolution process both APS and the individual involved in this incident will be required to take corrective actions to preclude this from recurring,” said NRC Region IV Administrator Elmo E. Collins. Before Sharp returned for the next shift later the same day, the error and falsification were discovered. He was immediately removed from the control room and his plant access was suspended. Sharp resigned six days later. Plant management took other prompt corrective actions by counseling Sharp as well as other operators that stand watch in the control room to report their mistakes. Sharp’s mistake caused the plant’s computers to under report thermal power by 0.3 percent, but did not endanger public health and safety. Although this was an isolated incident, it was deemed significant because the NRC places a high value on the integrity and trustworthiness of plant personnel, particularly supervisors and licensed operators. The Confirmatory Order limits Sharp’s activities in the industry until he takes certain actions. He must write an article for an industry magazine describing the incident and lessons learned and submit a written report on the incident to the Institute for Nuclear Power Operations, a nuclear industry group. Copies of the Confirmatory Orders issued by NRC to APS and the individual involved in the incident will be available on the NRC web site at: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html . The NRC also includes significant enforcement actions at: http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/regulatory/enforcement.html NRC news releases are available through a free listserv subscription at the following Web address: http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/listserver.html. The NRC Home Page at www.nrc.gov also offers a Subscribe to News link in the News & Information menu. E-mail notifications are sent to subscribers when news releases are posted to NRC's Web Site. October 22, 2007 ***************************************************************** 13 BBC NEWS: Nuclear woes hit British Energy Last Updated: Monday, 22 October 2007, 16:09 GMT 17:09 UK British Energy shares were the biggest losers in the FTSE100 index Shares in British Energy closed down 8% after problems uncovered by a routine inspection forced it to take four nuclear reactors out of service. Hartlepool Reactor 1 was scheduled to return to service in early November, but will be delayed after an inspection of its boiler closure units. British Energy also decided to close two sister units in Hartlepool and Heysham as a result of the inspection. The boiler inspection revealed a problem related to wire winding. British Energy shares had fallen as much as 10% before recovering slightly, but the firm was the biggest loser in the FTSE 100 index of the UK's top shares. The design of the boiler closure units is unique to the Hartlepool and Heysham power stations, it said. British Energy saw its profits fall for the first quarter of 2007, following stoppages at its Hinkley Point and Hunterston stations. Interest in nuclear energy has gained ground, with the UK government examining whether to build new plants. * BBC Copyright Notice ***************************************************************** 14 APP.COM: State wants Oyster Creek analysis sent to feds | Asbury Park Press Online Monday, October 22, 2007 Study to measure corrosion of nuclear plant's protective drywell shell BY TODD B. BATES ENVIRONMENTAL WRITER Post Comment A planned three-dimensional analysis of the Oyster Creek nuclear plant's corroded drywell shell should be submitted in full to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, according to state officials. "The NRC should perform a thorough review to verify that the current and projected deteriorated condition of the drywell satisfies all required safety margins," according to a letter from a state official to the NRC. AmerGen proponents have already said that the drywell meets safety standards. The barrier surrounds Oyster Creek's nuclear reactor and is designed to contain radiation during an accident. AmerGen is committed to conducting a 3-D analysis of the drywell before April 2009, according to Leslie Cifelli, Oyster Creek spokeswoman. Jill Lipoti, a top state Department of Environmental Protection official, sent a letter to the NRC this month saying in part that AmerGen should submit the full analysis to the NRC well before April 2009. That's when Oyster Creek's proposed 20-year license renewal would take effect. The 3-D analysis basically involves using "a modern computer model" to determine the thickness of the drywell shell, NRC spokesman Neil A. Sheehan said. "The NRC must confirm the drywell meets the current licensing basis" — the applicable American Society of Mechanical Engineers code, according to the letter from Lipoti, director of the DEP Division of Environmental Safety and Health. The NRC staff estimates that the safety factor in the drywell's corroded sand-bed area does not quite meet an ASME code, according to August testimony by an NRC senior mechanical engineer. That's assuming the corrosion is as bad as that depicted by an expert for six citizens' groups seeking to close the plant. The NRC staff believes that the drywell in the sand-bed area would not be susceptible to local buckling as a result of current or potential corrosion, according to the testimony by Mark Hartzman. And it's quite possible that the drywell may truly meet or exceed the safety factor, "even with degraded areas," Hartzman said at an Atomic Safety and Licensing Board hearing on drywell monitoring in September. Michael Gallagher, vice president of license renewal for Exelon, which owns AmerGen, said during the hearing that the 3-D analysis is expected to show that the drywell more than meets the safety factor. The "effective factor of safety" meets or exceeds the ASME code, according to proposed NRC staff findings released last week. If AmerGen gets "any indication (from the 3-D analysis) that the drywell liner does not meet the thickness requirements," it has to notify the NRC promptly, Sheehan said. The DEP letter also says it would be prudent for the analysis to be submitted well before April 2009 "to allow for proper reviews to be completed before Oyster Creek enters the extended operating period." The DEP expects "more than just a summary including a description of the methodology, assumptions, models and final analysis," the letter says. "We expect all calculations to be released by AmerGen as nonproprietary so the public would have full access." "I think what we've committed to do is submit a summary of the analysis" to the NRC, Cifelli said. The company is adhering to its commitment to perform the 3-D analysis by April 2009 and "if there are additional commitments . . . that the NRC decides upon . . . we'll meet those at that time," she said. "We're talking speculative right now." Lipoti also wants the analysis sent to the NRC. "Having the analysis only available at the Oyster Creek site would mean that NRC would have to send a team" there instead of having it "readily available for verification by the NRC experts in Rockville (Md.)," her letter says. Asked if the NRC wouldn't rather have the documents sent to the commission, Sheehan said that's "something we'll have to take a look at." It's not uncommon for the NRC to review copies at a nuclear plant site instead of maintaining its own copies, Sheehan said. 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. ***************************************************************** 15 London Times: British Energy closes nuclear plants - October 23, 2007 Steve Hawkes The country’s largest electricity generating company was thrown into turmoil yesterday after it was forced to close two of its nuclear power plants. Nearly £500 million was wiped from the value of British Energy amid fears that the group will now miss full-year output targets just two months after Bill Coley, the chief executive, insisted that performance was on an “improving trend”. The move caused a minor panic across power markets, given growing concerns of tight supplies this winter, with day-ahead electricity prices surging by nearly 30 per cent to £58 per megawatt hour. In a short statement, British Energy said it had discovered a corroded steel wire in the concrete casing of one of two reactors at its Hartlepool power station, which supplies up to 1.5 million homes with electricity. Both reactors at the site, as well as the two reactors at the similarly designed Heysham-1 power station in the North West of England, will remain closed until further tests can be carried out. British Energy shares plunged by 8 per cent, or 47p to 532p. British Energy said: “We are currently assessing our return to service dates for these units. “In determining these dates, British Energy will consider the potential to integrate any additional inspection work arising from our assessment within planned outages over the balance of the year. The company will give a further update in due course.” Hartlepool and Heysham-1 generate about 17 terawatt hours of electricity a year - 25 per cent of British Energy’s total output. The company accounts for nearly a fifth of the UK’s electricity supply. Analysts said the worst-case scenario was that both power stations would remain out of action for several months, knocking around 5TWh from British Energy’s production for 2007-2008. The group warned two months ago that its full-year output target of up to 63TWh was already “very challenging”. It was forced to close its Torness1 power station on the east coast of Scot-land over the weekend because of electrical faults. A British Energy spokesman refused to comment on how long Hartlepool and Heysham-1 would be out of service, but said the group hoped to issue an update next week. The statement revived memories of last year’s discovery of cracks in the boiler tubes at its Hinkley Point B and Hunterston B power stations. Both plants are still only operating at only 60 per cent capacity and the group’s recent first quarter profits were down 40 per cent on a year ago. Mr Coley has been desperate to draw a line under the problems at Hinkley Point and Hunterston and instead talk up the role that British Energy can play in helping to build a new fleet of nuclear power plants. Analysts said it was too soon to question the management’s credibility, but Cazenove said it expected a “material” impact on the share price. Peter Ather-ton, analyst at Citigroup, added: “Boiler closure units have been a problem for British Energy and it is feasible that it could take several months to remedy the problem. The worst-case scenario is that both stations stay off line all winter.” © Copyright 2007 Times Newspapers Ltd. ***************************************************************** 16 London Times: British Energy: Analysis - October 23, 2007 Steve Hawkes If the Government needed any reminder about the need to inject some speed into the debate over the need for new nuclear power stations, yesterday’s warning from British Energy should provide the necessary jolt. Unplanned outages at two of the UK’s oldest nuclear sites are the last thing that National Grid needs as it weighs up available generating capacity for the winter. On Friday, temporary shutdowns at three coal-fired power plants across the UK, coupled with a rise in supplies to France, forced the Grid to issue its first NISM – Notice of Insufficient Margins – since early last year. The emergency call asked power companies to bring on extra capacity as the margin of available supply over potential peak demand was becoming worryingly thin. Now in one stroke, British Energy has taken four reactors, with the potential to supply three million homes, off the market for what could be several months. The UK generates 20 per cent of its capacity from nuclear energy, but nine out of Britain’s ten nuclear power stations are due to close by 2023. Hartlepool and Heysham-1 are expected to shut in 2014. At the same time a number of coal-fired power stations are reaching the end of their life and a handful will be limited to just 20,000 hours of output a year from January under a new European directive designed to tackle climate change. Industry experts have continued to give warning that while 2023 may seem like a long time away, it takes ten years to build a new nuclear power plant, before taking into consideration extensive legal challenges and planning wrangles. The Government closed its most recent round of consultation on new nuclear this month but may not take a decision on the way to progress until early next year, more than four years after the process began. © Copyright 2007 Times Newspapers Ltd. ***************************************************************** 17 Jakarta Post: Golkar in the gates but staying steady National News October 23, 2007 Ridwan Max Sijabat, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta The Golkar Party's political engine is up an running on every level ahead of the 2009 elections, but the party seems determined to maintain political stability by refusing to announce its presidential candidates. Golkar deputy chairman and House of Representatives Speaker Agung Laksono said at a press conference Monday the party's planned leadership meeting on November 22 to 24 would evaluate its performance in the past three years rather than nominating presidential candidates. "Golkar's political machine is working to prepare the necessary hardware, particularly better political laws ... to make it ready for the presidential elections," Agung said. "Compared to other parties, Golkar is the most prepared in terms of networking and human resources." Agung said the meeting would evaluate Golkar's election-winning team by focusing on internal consolidation. "During the meeting, the team is expected to unveil the party's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats ahead of the legislative and presidential polls," he said. "The central executive board will also listen to aspirations from regional party executives on how the legislative election should be anticipated and how the party should design its strategy to win the presidential election." Agung said Golkar would not name its presidential candidates because it was politically tied up with its position as well as party chairman Jusuf Kalla -- also the country's vice president. "The meeting will set a new mechanism to net presidential candidates. "And Golkar is expected to remain open for outside political figures to be nominated for the presidential race." But he said the party had yet to decide on a possible coalition with other parties in the lead up to the elections. Taufik Kiemas, chief patron of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), said recently PDI-P had formed a so-called National League with Golkar, the United Development Party (PPP) and the National Mandate Party (PAN) to win the presidential election. PDI-P has nominated its chairwoman and Taufik's wife Megawati Soekarnoputri for the presidential race. Former Jakarta governor Sutiyoso has also announced his readiness to be nominated by political parties. Priyo Budisantoso, chairman of the Golkar faction at the House, said Golkar was committed to building a better party system in the future by allowing parties to have business units to reduce financial dependency on the state. "Golkar and other major parties are fighting to raise the electoral threshold to five percent from the current three percent and to impose a legislative threshold to build a strong legislature and government in the future," Priyo said. "All the concepts around the political bills will be discussed (before being) disseminated to party functionaries at the subdistrict level." But outspoken Golkar legislator Yuddy Chrisnandi said he and many other functionaries would propose the meeting focus on four main agendas including the evaluation of the party's performance in the past three years, Golkar's position in the government and listing candidates for the legislative and presidential elections. "It is better for Golkar to name its presidential candidates now. Not only to prepare them but to let the public get to know them," he said. "The meeting should also decide whether or not a convention will be held to net Golkar's presidential candidates." Yuddy said in addition to Kalla, Golkar had other potential presidential candidates including Coordinating Minister for People's Welfare, Industry Minister Fahmi Idris, Yogyakarta Governor Sultan Hamengkubuwono X, former party chairman Akbar Tandjung and National Resilience Institute Governor Muladi. ***************************************************************** 18 NRC: NRC to Meet With Duke Energy Oct. 25 in Atlanta to Discuss McGuire Emergency Core Cooling System News Release - Region II - 2007-049 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, Region II 61 Forsyth Street SW, Atlanta, GA 30303 www.nrc.gov CONTACT: Ken Clark (404) 562-4416 Roger D. Hannah (404) 562-4417 E-mail: opa2@nrc.gov Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials will conduct a Regulatory Conference with Duke Energy officials in Atlanta on Oct. 25 to discuss the safety significance of an apparent failure of the company to take adequate corrective action on a potential problem in the plant’s Emergency Core Cooling System (ECCS). In a letter to the company dated Oct. 4, NRC officials said the company apparently failed to take adequate corrective actions for a nonconformance involving identification that certain valves in the ECCS had a potential for clogging during high pressure recirculation because their narrow clearances were smaller than the ECCS sump screen openings. NRC officials said the condition has now been corrected and that the plant poses no threat to people or to the environment. The meeting is open to observation by the public. Interested observers will have one or more opportunities to communicate with the NRC after the business portion, but before the meeting is adjourned. A copy of this letter and its enclosure is available online from the NRC web site at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html NRC news releases are available through a free listserv subscription at the following Web address: http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/listserver.html. The NRC Home Page at www.nrc.gov also offers a Subscribe to News link in the News & Information menu. E-mail notifications are sent to subscribers when news releases are posted to NRC's Web Site. October 19, 2007 ***************************************************************** 19 Green.view: Speaking across the ages | Economist.com Oct 22nd 2007 How to design a future-proof nuclear waste bunker THE environmental lobby often laments mankind’s unfortunate obsession with the short term. People, by and large, don’t tend to think ahead (two-thirds of Britons lack wills, for example, leaving them unprepared for one of life’s few real certainties). Politicians, with one eye always fixed on surviving the next election, are particularly guilty of short-termism. That is a problem, since human time-scales don’t always match environmental ones. A razed rainforest may take decades to regrow. Climate change will remain a problem for centuries, even if carbon emissions were to cease tomorrow. One of the thorniest long-term problems is what to do with nuclear waste. Many western countries may build new nuclear plants; they see the energy as clean and secure. But their publics remain dubious, and nuclear waste tops their list of worries. APEasy reading? It is vicious stuff: high-level waste, made up of spent fuel, is lethally radioactive and remains that way for tens of thousands of years. Nevertheless, scientists believe they can dispose of it safely. Every nation that has studied the problem has decided to bury the waste deep underground in geologically stable places unlikely to be disturbed by volcanoes or earthquakes. America and Finland have chosen their sites; other nations, including Britain, are still looking. Still, while nature may not unearth the nuclear nasties that humanity has secreted away, people are much less predictable. At Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert, the site of America’s first big nuclear waste dump, scientists are wrestling with the problem of how to remind future generations what is stored there. A similar study was carried out in the 1990s, when the Department of Energy assembled a team of linguists, archaeologists and materials scientists to study how to construct warning signs around a smaller waste dump in New Mexico that would last for 10,000 years. Such a timescale presents a huge challenge. Ten thousand years is an immense, viscerally incomprehensible time, roughly equivalent to the entire history of human civilisation. Even such proverbially ancient things as Egypt’s 4,500-year old pyramids look young by comparison. Speaking across such a cavernous gulf is difficult. Languages mutate rapidly: it is difficult for a modern English-speaker to understand the works of, say, Geoffrey Chaucer. In 1,000 years’ time—let alone ten thousand—a message written in any of today’s languages might be comprehensible only to professional linguists. On longer time-scales, future archaeologists may have to reconstruct today’s tongues from whatever fragments they can dig up, using the same combination of guesswork and inference they now use to decipher some ancient languages. One method is to inscribe warnings on something large, erosion-resistant and eye-catching. Materials must be chosen carefully. Even messages inscribed on granite, one of the toughest rocks, would be unintelligible after thousands of years of erosion. And a monument with an unreadable message could be counterproductive, since future explorers may misinterpret it as marking something valuable or interesting. Past erosion, there are deeper problems with using language to convey danger. There is no guarantee that a modern, technologically advanced civilisation will exist in 12,000 AD. Simple pictures, perhaps showing human skulls or screaming faces, may be a safer bet than warnings in a language that our descendants may be unable to decode. On the other hand, attempts to scare intruders away could also do more harm than good. Future explorers will not necessarily meet a grisly death merely by wandering around on the surface. Unfulfilled promises of doom could convince people that the warnings are meaningless, encouraging them to start digging. After all, rumours of terrible curses failed to keep archaeologists and tomb-robbers from the graves of Egypt’s pharaohs. The most radical argument of all holds that the best course of action is to seal the bunker off from the surface and leave no warnings at all. The hope is that any civilisation advanced enough to detect the bunker would also know enough to identify the materials inside, while a more primitive society would remain safely ignorant. Current plans for Yucca Mountain call for a series of unnatural-looking 25-foot markers around the site entrance, designed to attract attention and to resist everything from floods to encroaching sand dunes. They would be inscribed with warnings in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish, with picture symbols as backup. Smaller, nine-inch markers would litter the site. A few larger monuments, built in the fan-shape of the international radiation symbol, would contain documents explaining what lies beneath. Much thought has gone into the scheme, but no one really knows if it will work. Scientists plan to keep refining their ideas until the depository is finally sealed, which will not happen for many decades. That, at least, is one advantage of dealing with long-term problems: there is no immediate deadline, and plenty of time to think things through. The Department of Energy maintains the storage facility at Yucca Mountain to standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency. Also see Eureka County's Yucca Mountain page. New on Economist.com Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2007. All rights ***************************************************************** 20 NRC: Withdrawal of Regulatory Guides FR Doc E7-20730 [Federal Register: October 22, 2007 (Volume 72, Number 203)] [Notices] [Page 59574] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr22oc07-112] NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission. ACTION: Withdrawal of Regulatory Guides 9.1, 9.2, and 9.3. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Marquis P. Orr, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001, telephone: 301-415- 6373 or e-mail MPO1@nrc.gov. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: I. Introduction The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is withdrawing Regulatory Guide 9.1, ``Regulatory Staff Position Statement on Antitrust Matters,'' published December 1973; Regulatory Guide 9.2, ``Information Needed by the NRC Staff in Connection with its Antitrust Review of Construction Permit Applications for Nuclear Power Plants,'' initially published October 1974, and revised June 1976; and Regulatory Guide 9.3, ``Information Needed by the AEC Regulatory Staff in Connection with its Antitrust Review of Operating License Applications for Nuclear Power Plants,'' published October 1974. The NRC is withdrawing these three regulatory guides because they are no longer required. These three regulatory guides address the antitrust review conducted by the staff during the evaluation of new plant construction and operating license applications. The review was required by Section 105.c of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended. Section 625 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (Pub. L. 109-058) removed the NRC's authority to perform these antitrust reviews for applications submitted after the date of enactment of the law. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 was passed by the U.S. Congress on July 29, 2005, and signed into law by President George W. Bush on August 8, 2005. Consequently, the staff has determined that Regulatory Guides 9.1, 9.2, and 9.3 are no longer required. II. Further Information The withdrawal of Regulatory Guides 9.1, 9.2, and 9.3 does not, in and of itself, alter any prior or existing licensing commitments based on their use. The guidance provided in these regulatory guides is no longer applicable. Regulatory guides may be withdrawn when their guidance is superseded by congressional action or otherwise no longer provides useful information. Regulatory guides are available for inspection or downloading through the NRC's public Web site under ``Regulatory Guides'' in the NRC's Electronic Reading Room at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections. Regulatory guides are also available for inspection at the NRC's Public Document Room (PDR), Room O-1F21, One White Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland 20852-2738. The PDR's mailing address is U.S. NRC PDR, Washington, DC 20555-0001. The PDR staff can be reached by telephone at 301-415-4737 or 800-397-4209, by fax at 301- 415-3548, and by e-mail to pdr@nrc.gov. Regulatory Guides are not copyrighted and NRC approval is not required to reproduce them. Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 12th day of October, 2007. For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Michael R. Johnson, Deputy Director, Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research. [FR Doc. E7-20730 Filed 10-19-07; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 21 NRC: Entergy Operations, Inc.; Waterford Steam Electric Station, Unit 3 Environmental Assessment and Finding of No Significant Impact FR Doc E7-20731 [Federal Register: October 22, 2007 (Volume 72, Number 203)] [Notices] [Page 59560-59561] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr22oc07-108] NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION [Docket No. 50-382] The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is considering issuance of exemptions from Title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations (10 CFR) Part 50, Section 50.46 and Appendix K, for Facility Operating License No. NPF-38, issued to Entergy Operations, Inc. (Entergy, the licensee), for operation of the Waterford Steam Electric Station, Unit 3 (Waterford 3), located in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana. Therefore, as required by 10 CFR 51.21, the NRC is issuing this environmental assessment and finding of no significant impact. Environmental Assessment Identification of the Proposed Action The proposed action would exempt the licensee from the requirements of 10 CFR part 50, section 50.46 and Appendix K to allow the use of Optimized ZIRLOTM fuel rod cladding as the allowable fuel rod cladding material. The proposed action is in accordance with Entergy's application dated April 24, 2007. The Need for the Proposed Action The NRC's regulations in 10 CFR part 50, section 50.46 and Appendix K, make no provision for use of fuel rod clad in a material other than Zircaloy or ZIRLOTM. Optimized ZIRLOTM has a lower tin content than either Zircaloy or ZIRLOTM; therefore, use of Optimized ZIRLOTM fuel rod clad calls for an exemption from 10 CFR part 50, section 50.46 and Appendix K. For cladding with a lower tin content, corrosive resistance has been found to improve, as indicated by available industry data from the American Nuclear Society, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Electric Power Research Institute, and Westinghouse Electric Corporation. The optimum tin level provides a reduced corrosion rate while maintaining the benefits of mechanical strength and resistance to accelerated corrosion from abnormal chemistry conditions. In addition, fuel rod internal pressures (resulting from increased fuel duty, use of integral fuel burnable absorbers and corrosion/temperature feedback effects) have become more limiting with respect to fuel rod design criteria. Reducing the associated corrosion buildup, and thus, minimizing temperature feedback effects, provides additional margin to fuel rod internal pressure design criteria. The NRC previously granted a similar exemption in July 2004 for Waterford 3 for use of Optimized ZIRLOTM in four lead-test assemblies. Environmental Impacts of the Proposed Action The NRC staff has completed its safety evaluation of the proposed action and concludes that the proposed exemptions would continue to satisfy the underlying purpose of 10 CFR part 50, sections 50.46 and Appendix K, and will not increase the probability or consequences of accidents previously analyzed and would not affect facility radiation levels or facility radiological effluents. The details of the staff's safety evaluation will be provided in the exemption that will be issued as part of the letter to the licensee approving the amendment to the regulation. The proposed action will not significantly increase the probability or consequences of accidents. No changes are being made in the types of effluents that may be released off site. There is no significant increase in the amount of any effluent released off site. There is no significant increase in occupational or public radiation exposure. Therefore, there are no significant radiological environmental impacts associated with the proposed action. With regard to potential non-radiological impacts, the proposed action does not have a potential to affect any historic sites. It does not affect non-radiological plant effluents and has no other environmental impact. Therefore, there are no significant non- radiological environmental impacts associated with the proposed action. Accordingly, the NRC concludes that there are no significant environmental impacts associated with the proposed action. Environmental Impacts of the Alternatives to the Proposed Action As an alternative to the proposed action, the staff considered denial of the proposed action (i.e., the ``no-action'' alternative). Denial of the application would result in no change in current environmental impacts. The environmental impacts of the proposed action and the ``no-action'' alternative are similar. Alternative Use of Resources The action does not involve the use of any different resources than those previously considered in the Final Environmental Statement for Waterford 3, dated September 1981. Agencies and Persons Consulted In accordance with its stated policy, on August 17, 2007, the staff consulted with the Louisiana State official, Ms. Nan Calhoun of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, regarding the environmental impact of the proposed action. The State official had no comments. Finding of No Significant Impact On the basis of the environmental assessment, the NRC concludes that the proposed action will not have a significant effect on the quality of the human environment. Accordingly, the [[Page 59561]] NRC has determined not to prepare an environmental impact statement for the proposed action. For further details with respect to the proposed action, see the licensee's letter dated April 24, 2007. Documents may be examined, and/ or copied for a fee, at the NRC's Public Document Room (PDR), located at One White Flint North, Public File Area O1F21, 1555 Rockville Pike (first floor), Rockville, Maryland. Publicly available records will be accessible electronically from the Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS) Public Electronic Reading Room on the Internet at the NRC Web site: http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html. Persons who do not have access to ADAMS or who encounter problems in accessing the documents located in ADAMS should contact the NRC PDR Reference staff by telephone at 1-800-397-4209 or 301-415-4737, or send an e-mail to pdr@nrc.gov. Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 25th day of September 2007. For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Nageswaran Kalyanam, Project Manager, Plant Licensing Branch IV, Division of Operating Reactor Licensing, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation. [FR Doc. E7-20731 Filed 10-19-07; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 22 NRC: Entergy Operations, Inc.; Notice of Withdrawal of Application for Amendment to Facility Operating License FR Doc E7-20738 [Federal Register: October 22, 2007 (Volume 72, Number 203)] [Notices] [Page 59558] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr22oc07-106] NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION [Docket No. 50-458] The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (the Commission) has granted the request of Entergy Operations, Inc., (the licensee) to withdraw its September 13, 2007, application for a proposed amendment to Facility Operating License No. NPF-47 for the River Bend Station, Unit 1, located in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana. The proposed amendment would have revised the facility Technical Specifications and the operating license. The proposed change would have added a License Condition 2.C to the Facility Operating License NPF-47 that allows River Bend Station, Unit 1, Technical Specifications surveillance intervals to be extended on a one-time basis for the 14th Fuel Cycle to account for the effects of a delayed refueling outage. The Commission had previously issued a Notice of Consideration of Issuance of Amendment published in the Federal Register on October 9, 2007 (72 FR 57354). However, by letter dated October 3, 2007, the licensee withdrew the proposed change. For further details with respect to this action, see the application for amendment dated September 13, 2007, and the licensee's letter dated October 3, 2007, which withdrew the application for license amendment. Documents may be examined, and/or copied for a fee, at the NRC(s Public Document Room (PDR), located at One White Flint North, Public File Area O1 F21, 11555 Rockville Pike (first floor), Rockville, Maryland. Publicly available records will be accessible electronically from the Agencywide Documents Access and Management System (ADAMS) Public Electronic Reading Room on the internet at the NRC Web site, http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm.html. Persons who do not have access to ADAMS or who encounter problems in accessing the documents located in ADAMS should contact the NRC PDR Reference staff by telephone at 1-800-397-4209, or 301-415-4737 or by e-mail to pdr@nrc.gov. Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 15th day of October 2007. For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Bhalchandra Vaidya, Project Manager, Plant Licensing Branch IV, Division of Operating Reactor Licensing, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation. [FR Doc. E7-20738 Filed 10-19-07; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 23 NRC: Notice of Availability of Final Environmental Assessment and Finding of No Significant Impact for Cabot Corporation Proposed Decommissioning Plan for Site in Reading, PA FR Doc E7-20746 [Federal Register: October 22, 2007 (Volume 72, Number 203)] [Notices] [Page 59558-59560] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr22oc07-107] ----------------------------------------------------------------------- NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION [Docket No. 40-9027] AGENCY: Nuclear Regulatory Commission. [[Page 59559]] ACTION: Notice of availability and finding of no significant impact. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- SUMMARY: Notice is hereby given that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is issuing a final Environmental Assessment (EA) for Cabot Corporation (Cabot or the licensee) Decommissioning Plan (DP), dated August 21, 2006, which requested authorization to commence decommissioning activities to achieve unrestricted release of a site in Reading, Pennsylvania. The final EA makes a finding of no significant impact (FONSI) for the proposed action, and is being issued as part of the NRC's decision-making process on whether to issue an amendment to license SMC-1562, pursuant to Title 10 of the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations Part 40, ``Domestic Licensing of Source Material Licenses.'' The proposed DP specifies installation of a riprap erosion barrier on the site slope. The site is owned by the City of Reading and is located in a large redevelopment area. Tentative City plans are for industrial activities in a new structure to be built on top of the slope, adjacent to the Cabot site. The site itself will not be developed. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Theodore Smith, Project Manager, Reactor Decommissioning Branch, Division of Waste Management and Environmental Protection, Mail Stop T8-F5, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555-0001. Telephone: (301) 415-6721; e- mail: tbs1@nrc.gov. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: I. Introduction Cabot Corporation (Cabot) holds U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Source Materials License SMC-1562, allowing the storage of radioactive materials at Cabot's Reading, Pennsylvania, site. Former ore processing in the 1960s at the facility generated waste slag contaminated with uranium and thorium. A smaller amount of debris from facility decontamination was added to the site in the late 1970s. In the 1980s, Cabot began onsite decommissioning activities at the main processing building at its Reading site, and began preparing for decommissioning activities at Reading site slag pile by conducting site characterization, determining slag leach rate constants, taking surface gamma measurements, and performing radiological analysis of surface and subsurface samples. Contaminated areas of the main building area were remediated in a series of cleanup actions in the early 1990s. Cabot originally submitted the decommissioning plan (DP) in 1998 and has revised it several times to address various NRC concerns. On August 21, 2006, Cabot submitted Revision 4 of its proposed DP which proposes installation of a riprap erosion barrier at the site. The NRC has prepared an environmental assessment (EA) in support of this action in accordance with the requirements of 10 CFR part 51. Based on the EA, the NRC has concluded that a Finding of No Significant Impact is appropriate. If approved, the license amendment incorporating the DP would be issued following publication of this Notice. II. EA Summary The Proposed Action Cabot requested approval of its DP, which would allow it to conduct decommissioning activities at the site. If approved and properly implemented, the DP would eventually lead to the termination of its NRC source materials license. In its DP, Cabot proposed to place a riprap erosion cover on the slag pile's slope and provided analysis to demonstrate that the site will be acceptable for license termination under unrestricted release. Need for the Proposed Action The purpose of this action is to decommission an NRC-licensed site, allowing for its unrestricted use and termination of the source material license. This action is required by 10 CFR 40.42, ``Expiration and Termination of Licenses and Decommissioning of Sites and Separate Buildings or Outdoor Areas.'' Environmental Impacts of the Proposed Action The NRC staff concluded that the proposed decommissioning activities will not result in a significant impact to the environment. No significant impacts to the site ecology are anticipated because of the proposed action. The proposed action will not adversely affect Federal or State-listed threatened or endangered species, or regional historic and cultural resources. The proposed action can be viewed as a continuation of impacts and can be evaluated based on the previous impacts from past operations. In making this determination, the staff considered impacts to such areas as public and occupational health, transportation, socioeconomics, ecology, water quality, and the effects of natural phenomena. Further details regarding the staff's environmental evaluation of the proposed action are set forth in the EA (ML072390296) Agencies and Persons Consulted The staff completed consultations with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) for consideration under Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act and with the Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) for consideration under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act. In addition the staff provided the draft EA to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP) officials for comment. An addendum to the final EA sets forth the PADEP comments and the NRC's responses, and provides a history of operations at the site. III. Finding of No Significant Impact The final EA supports the proposed action to issue a license amendment approving Cabot's DP for the Reading site. On the basis of this EA, NRC has concluded that there are no significant environmental impacts from the proposed action, and that preparation of an Environmental Impact Statement is not warranted. Accordingly, it has been determined that a Finding of No Significant Impact is appropriate. IV. Further Information Documents related to this action, including the application for amendment and supporting documentation, are available electronically at the NRC's Electronic Reading Room at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html. From this site, you can access the NRC's Agencywide Document Access and Management System (ADAMS), which provides text and image files of NRC's public documents. The ADAMS accession numbers for the documents related to this notice are: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Documents ADAMS Accession Nos. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Licensee Decommissioning Plan ML062360159, ML062360164, ML062640081, ML062210261. PADEP consultation........... ML070880408, ML072390482. [[Page 59560]] SHPO consultation............ ML070430115, ML071240260, ML071450487, ML072220371. FWS consultation............. ML06026123 , ML060730519. Environmental Assessment..... ML072390323, ML072390296. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ If you do not have access to ADAMS or if there are problems in accessing the documents located in ADAMS, contact the NRC's Public Document Room (PDR) Reference staff at 1-800-397-4209, 301-415-4737, or by e-mail to pdr@nrc.gov. These documents may also be viewed electronically on the public computers located at the NRC's PDR, O1-F21, One White Flint North, 11555 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD 20852. The PDR reproduction contractor will copy documents for a fee. Dated at Rockville, Maryland, this 12th day of October 2007. For the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Andrew Persinko, Branch Chief, Reactor Decommissioning Branch, Division of Waste Management and Environmental Protection, Office of Federal and State Materials and Environmental Management Programs. [FR Doc. E7-20746 Filed 10-19-07; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 24 NRC: Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Meeting Notice FR Doc E7-20773 [Federal Register: October 22, 2007 (Volume 72, Number 203)] [Notices] [Page 59573-59574] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr22oc07-111] [[Page 59573]] NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION In accordance with the purposes of Sections 29 and 182b. of the Atomic Energy Act (42 U.S.C. 2039, 2232b), the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS) will hold a meeting on November 1-3, 2007, 11545 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Maryland. The date of this meeting was previously published in the Federal Register on Wednesday, November 15, 2006 (71 FR 66561). Thursday, November 1, 2007, Conference Room T-2b3, Two White Flint North, Rockville, Maryland 8:30 a.m.-8:35 a.m.: Opening Remarks by the ACRS Chairman (Open)-- The ACRS Chairman will make opening remarks regarding the conduct of the meeting. 8:35 a.m.-10:30 a.m.: Extended Power Uprate Application for the Susquehanna Nuclear Power Plant (Open/Closed)--The Committee will hear presentations by and hold discussions with representatives of the NRC staff and the Pennsylvania Power & Light Company regarding the Extended Power Uprate Application for the Susquehanna Nuclear Power Plant, and the associated NRC staff's Safety Evaluation. Note: A portion of this session may be closed to protect information that is proprietary to General Electric, AREVA, and their contractors pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 552b (c) (4). ]10:45 a.m.-11:45 a.m.: Meeting with Commissioner Peter B. Lyons (Open)--The Committee will hold a discussion with Commissioner Lyons on items of mutual interest. 12:45 p.m.-2:45 p.m.: Vogtle Early Site Permit (ESP) Application (Open)--The Committee will hear presentations by and hold discussions with representatives of the NRC staff and Southern Nuclear Operating Company regarding Vogtle ESP application, and the associated NRC staff's Safety Evaluation Report with Open Items. 3 p.m.-4 p.m.: Staff's Implementation of the Lessons Learned from the Review of ESP Applications (Open)--The Committee will hear presentations by and hold discussions with representatives of the NRC staff regarding the effectiveness and efficiency of the staff's implementation of the lessons learned from the review of ESP applications. 4:15 p.m.-6:15 p.m.: Assessment of the Robustness of New Nuclear Plants (Room T-10E8) (Closed)--The Committee will hear presentations by and hold discussions with representatives of the NRC staff regarding the assessment of the robustness of new nuclear plants. Note: This session will be closed to protect information classified as National Security information as well as safeguards information pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 552b (c) (1) and (3). ]6:30 p.m.-7:15 p.m.: Preparation of ACRS Reports (Open)--The Committee will discuss proposed ACRS reports. Friday, November 2, 2007, Conference Room T-2b3, Two White Flint North, Rockville, Maryland 8:30 a.m.-8:35 a.m.: Opening Remarks by the ACRS Chairman (Open)-- The ACRS Chairman will make opening remarks regarding the conduct of the meeting. 8:35 a.m.-10:30 a.m.: Selected Chapters of the SER Associated with the ESBWR Design Certification (Open/Closed)--The Committee will hear presentations by and hold discussions with representatives of the NRC staff and General Electric regarding selected chapters of the SER with Open Items associated with the ESBWR design certification. Note: A portion of this session may be closed to protect information that is proprietary to General Electric and their contractors pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 552b (c) (4). ]10:45 a.m.-11:30 a.m.: Future ACRS Activities/Report of the Planning and Procedures Subcommittee (Open)--The Committee will discuss the recommendations of the Planning and Procedures Subcommittee regarding items proposed for consideration by the full Committee during future meetings. Also, it will hear a report of the Planning and Procedures Subcommittee on matters related to the conduct of ACRS business, including anticipated workload and member assignments. 11:30 a.m.-11:45 a.m.: Reconciliation of ACRS Comments and Recommendations (Open)--The Committee will discuss the responses from the NRC Executive Director for Operations to comments and recommendations included in recent ACRS reports and letters. 1 p.m.-3 p.m.: Draft ACRS Report on the NRC Safety Research Program (Open)--The Committee will discuss the draft ACRS report on the NRC Safety Research Program. 3:15 p.m.-7 p.m.: Preparation of ACRS Reports (Open)--The Committee will discuss proposed ACRS reports. Saturday, November 3, 2007, Conference Room T-2b3, Two White Flint North, Rockville, Maryland 8:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.: Preparation of ACRS Reports (Open)--The Committee will continue its discussion of proposed ACRS reports, as well as the draft ACRS report on the NRC Safety Research Program. 1:30 p.m.-2 p.m.: Miscellaneous (Open)--The Committee will discuss matters related to the conduct of Committee activities and matters and specific issues that were not completed during previous meetings, as time and availability of information permit. Procedures for the conduct of and participation in ACRS meetings were published in the Federal Register on September 26, 2007 (72 FR 54695). In accordance with those procedures, oral or written views may be presented by members of the public, including representatives of the nuclear industry. Electronic recordings will be permitted only during the open portions of the meeting. Persons desiring to make oral statements should notify the Cognizant ACRS staff named below five days before the meeting, if possible, so that appropriate arrangements can be made to allow necessary time during the meeting for such statements. Use of still, motion picture, and television cameras during the meeting may be limited to selected portions of the meeting as determined by the Chairman. Information regarding the time to be set aside for this purpose may be obtained by contacting the Cognizant ACRS staff prior to the meeting. In view of the possibility that the schedule for ACRS meetings may be adjusted by the Chairman as necessary to facilitate the conduct of the meeting, persons planning to attend should check with the Cognizant ACRS staff if such rescheduling would result in major inconvenience. In accordance with Subsection 10(d) Public Law 92-463, I have determined that it may be necessary to close portions of this meeting noted above to discuss and protect information classified as proprietary to General Electric, AREVA, and their contractors pursuant to 5 U.S.C 552b (c) (4) and National Security, as well as Safeguards information pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 552b (c) (1) and (3). Further information regarding topics to be discussed, whether the meeting has been canceled or rescheduled, as well as the Chairman's ruling on requests for the opportunity to present oral statements and the time allotted therefor can be obtained by contacting Mr. Giriga S. Shukla, Cognizant ACRS [[Page 59574]] staff (301-415-8439), between 7:30 a.m. and 4 p.m., (ET). ACRS meeting agenda, meeting transcripts, and letter reports are available through the NRC Public Document Room at pdr@nrc.gov, or by calling the PDR at 1-800-397-4209, or from the Publicly Available Records System (PARS) component of NRC's document system (ADAMS) which is accessible from the NRC Web site at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html or http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/ (ACRS & ACNW Mtg schedules/ CRS & ACNW Mtg schedules/ Video teleconferencing service is available for observing open sessions of ACRS meetings. Those wishing to use this service for observing ACRS meetings should contact Mr. Theron Brown, ACRS Audio Visual Technician (301-415-8066), between 7:30 a.m.-and 3:45 p.m., (ET), at least 10 days before the meeting to ensure the availability of this service. Individuals or organizations requesting this service will be responsible for telephone line charges and for providing the equipment and facilities that they use to establish the video teleconferencing link. The availability of video teleconferencing services is not guaranteed. The ACRS meeting dates for Calendar Year 2008 are provided below: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ACRS Meeting No. Meeting dates ------------------------------------------------------------------------ --.............................. January 2008 (No Meeting). 549............................. February 7-9, 2008. 550............................. March 6-8, 2008. 551............................. April 3-5, 2008. 552............................. May 8-10, 2008. 553............................. June 4-6, 2008 (Wed--Fri). 554............................. July 9-11, 2008 (Wed--Fri). --.............................. August (No Meeting). 555............................. September 4-6, 2008. 556............................. October 2-4, 2008. 557............................. November 6-8, 2008. 558............................. December 4-6, 2008. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Dated: October 16, 2007. Andrew L. Bates, Advisory Committee Management Officer. [FR Doc. E7-20773 Filed 10-19-07; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 7590-01-P ***************************************************************** 25 NRC: NRC Issues Confirmatory Action Letter to Exelon Regarding Security Program Plans for Peach Bottom Plant News Release - Region I - 2007-053 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, Region I 475 Allendale Road, King of Prussia, Pa. 19406 www.nrc.gov CONTACT: Diane Screnci (610) 337-5330 Neil A. Sheehan (610) 337-5331 E-mail: opa1@nrc.gov The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has issued a letter to Exelon confirming the company’s plans to address concerns related to the security program for the Peach Bottom nuclear power plant. Exelon operates the two-reactor plant, which is located in Delta (York County), Pa. Known as a Confirmatory Action Letter (CAL), it is being issued to the company to emphasize and confirm its agreement to take certain actions in response to inattentiveness on the part of some security officers at Peach Bottom. The company’s actions include: detailed briefings to security force personnel on acceptable behavior; round-the-clock supervisory oversight of security activities at the plant; and keeping the NRC informed of the status of the Peach Bottom transition from a contractor security force to one that is run by Exelon. “This CAL is intended to confirm the continuation of Exelon’s short-term response to the inattentive security officer situation. The NRC’s reviews are ongoing and we will not hesitate, if needed, to seek additional actions to ensure the security program is functioning as required,” NRC Region I Administrator Samuel J. Collins said. The commitments contained in the letter will remain in effect until the NRC has reviewed Exelon’s root cause analysis of the security program issues, the company’s corrective actions and implementation schedule, and the company’s method for assessing the effectiveness of the corrective actions. On Sept. 20, the NRC sent an eight-member Augmented Inspection Team (AIT) to Peach Bottom to look into information that security officers at the facility may have been inattentive while on duty. The inspection was concluded on Sept. 28 and a public meeting with Exelon held in Delta on Oct. 9 to provide preliminary results of that review. Among other things, the inspection confirmed that multiple security guards were inattentive on multiple occasions and that Exelon and Wackenhut, the contract security force provider, missed opportunities to identify such behavior. However, the inspection team also found that security at the plant was not significantly degraded as a result and that Exelon took prompt action to address inattentiveness issues once they were identified. The NRC plans to conduct a follow-up review to assess Exelon’s root cause analysis and corrective actions. The team inspection is tentatively scheduled for early November. Consideration of appropriate enforcement measures will be undertaken upon completion of the NRC reviews. The Confirmatory Action Letter will be available in the NRC’s electronic document system at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/adams.html NRC news releases are available through a free listserv subscription at the following Web address: http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/listserver.html. The NRC Home Page at www.nrc.gov also offers a Subscribe to News link in the News & Information menu. E-mail notifications are sent to subscribers when news releases are posted to NRC's Web Site. October 19, 2007 ***************************************************************** 26 AFP: Energy poses major 21st century crisis - scientists - Mon Oct 22, 2:42 PM ET PARIS (AFP) - Energy poses one of the greatest threats facing humanity this century, the world's leading academies of science warned Monday, highlighting the peril of oil wars and climate change driven by addiction to fossil fuels. Nations must provide power for the 1.6 billion people who live without electricity and wean themselves off energy sources that stoke global warming and geopolitical conflict, the scientists demanded. "Making the transition to a sustainable energy future is one of the central challenges humankind faces in this century," they said. Their report, "Lighting the Way: Toward A Sustainable Energy Future," is published by the InterAcademy Council, whose 15 members include the national science academies of the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Brazil, China and India. It was authored by a 15-member panel whose co-chaired was 1997 Nobel Physics laureate Steven Chu of the United States. "Overwhelming scientific evidence shows that current energy trends are unsustainable," the report said bluntly. Its authors sounded a special alarm over the surge in the building of conventional coal-fired power plants in China and other developing countries, as such infrastructure will doubtless be entrenched for decades to come. "The substantial expansion of coal capacity that is now under way around the world may pose the single greatest challenge to future efforts aimed at stabilising carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere," the report warned. Managing the greenhouse-gas "footprint" of these plants while encouraging a conversion to carbon capture and storage (CCS) will be a mighty technological and economic challenge, it said. CCS means piping off CO2 at a plant and then pumping it into geological chambers deep underground, such as disused oilfields, rather than releasing it into the atmosphere. Many scientists view this pilot technology warily, waiting to be convinced that CCS is safe, for a chamber breach could have potentially catastrophic consequences for the climate system. The report also appealed for a planet-wide drive in favour of energy efficiency to reduce carbon emissions. And it spoke loudly in favour of renewable energy, describing its potential as "untapped" and offering "immense opportunities" for poor countries that are rich in sunlight and wind but poor in cash to buy oil and gas. Nuclear power, as a low-carbon resource, "can continue to make a significant contribution to the world's energy portfolio in the future, but only if major concerns related to capital cost, safety and weapons proliferation are addressed," it cautioned. Turning to biofuels, the scientist said that these sources hold "great promise", but only through a switch to second-generation sources. At present, feedstocks such as sugar cane and corn are the main source for biofuels, which is having an effect on global food prices. A more promising, but as yet uncommercialised, goal is using lignocellulose stocks from timber chips and agricultural residues, which microbes digest into fuel. Other dawning technologies, such as plug-in hybrid cars and hydrogen fuel cells for energy storage, can make an important niche contribution, the scientists said. But they cautioned that the move to sustainable energy could only happen if nations work together to free up the necessary financial resources and expertise -- and setting a price for carbon to punish pollution and waste and reward clean energy was a key part of the mix. A 2006 report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) suggested world oil consumption would rise by nearly 40 percent by 2030 as compared with 2005 levels, and CO2 emissions would increase by 50 percent over 2004 levels, under a "business-as-usual" scenario. Copyright © 2007 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The ***************************************************************** 27 Reuters: Dominion's Virginia Surry 1 reactor shut Mon Oct 22, 2007 7:53am EDT NEW YORK, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Dominion Resources Inc's (D.N: Quote, Profile, Research) 799-megawatt Surry 1 nuclear power unit in Virginia was shut by early Monday, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in its power reactor status report. The unit, in Gravel Neck, Virginia, about 45 miles northwest of Norfolk, had been running at full power on Friday. It was slated to shut for a planned one-month refueling and maintenance outage on Oct. 21, based on historical outages at the plant. Meanwhile, the adjacent 799-MW Unit 2 continued to run at full power on Monday, the NRC report said. Separately, the NRC in March 2003 renewed the original 40-year operating licenses for both units for another 20 years. The licenses for Units 1 and 2 will now expire in 2032 and 2033. One MW powers about 800 homes in Virginia. Dominion owns and operates more than 28,000 MW of generating capacity, markets energy commodities, and transmits and distributes electricity and natural gas to more than five million customers in eight states. © Reuters2007All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 28 Reuters: Both Exelon Ill. Byron nuclear reactors shut-NRC Mon Oct 22, 2007 1:01pm BST NEW YORK, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Both units at Exelon Corp's (EXC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) Byron nuclear power station in Illinois were shut late Friday and remained shut early Monday, according to reports from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Both units at the plant, in Ogle County, about 100 miles west of Chicago, had been running at full power early Friday prior to the shutdown. The NRC said in an event report that the units were shut due to "inoperability of ultimate heat sink system due to structural integrity failure of ASME Class 3 piping through wall leakage of the 0C Essential Service Water riser piping of the mechanical draft cooling tower." No further information was immediately available. There are two units at the station, the 1,164-MW Unit 1 and the 1,136-MW Unit 2, which entered service in 1985 and 1987. One MW powers about 800 homes in Illinois. Exelon, of Chicago, owns and operates more than 38,000 MW of generating capacity, markets energy commodities, and transmits and distributes electricity (5.2 million) and natural gas (470,000) to customers in Illinois and Pennsylvania. © Reuters2007All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 29 Reuters: British Energy plant woes return, shares dive Mon Oct 22, 2007 9:57am EDT LONDON, Oct 22 (Reuters) - British Energy Group's (BGY.L: Quote, Profile, Research), shares dived on Monday as problems at two of its nuclear power stations threatened to slash output a year after boiler cracks forced two of its other plants to close all winter. British Energy shares led the FTSE 100 (.FTSE: Quote, Profile, Research) index down after the UK's biggest power generator said it had shut two more reactors after finding an "issue" with the boiler closure unit at its Hartlepool-1 plant, which is currently closed for work. The wiring problem at Hartlepool-1 prompted the company to close the other reactor at the plant in northeast England and the similar Heysham-1 reactor one in northwest England over the weekend to check their boiler closure units. The Heysham-1 reactor two shut to refuel last week and its restart will also be delayed by the checks, the company said. "We are currently assessing our return to service dates for these units," British Energy said in a statement, adding that Hartlepool-1 would not be able to restart as planned in early November. British Energy said the boiler closure unit design was unique to Hartlepool and Heysham, so any problems with them should not mean closing any of its other plants. But the company also shut its Torness-1 reactor over the weekend because of an electrical fault, two days after stopping the other reactor at the plant in eastern Scotland because of a similar problem in the conventional part of the unit. The weekend closures left almost half of British Energy's nuclear power reactors offline on Monday morning and revived memories of its Hinkley Point and Hunterston nuclear power stations being closed throughout last winter. Continued... ***************************************************************** 30 Reuters: Dominion's Va. Surry 1 reactor refueling | Mon Oct 22, 2007 1:59pm EDT NEW YORK, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Dominion Resources Inc's (D.N: Quote, Profile, Research) 799-megawatt Surry 1 nuclear power unit in Virginia shut on Sunday to refuel, a spokesman said. The unit, in Gravel Neck, Virginia, about 45 miles northwest of Norfolk, had been running at full power on Friday, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. No equipment upgrades are planned during the shutdown, said a Dominion spokesman. In addition to refueling the reactor, other planned maintenance includes modifications to water drains in the containment facility, inspection of low and high-pressure turbines, and replacement of seals on three coolant pumps. The spokesman would not say how long the unit would be shut, but electricity traders guessed the unit would return in about a month. Meanwhile, the adjacent 799-MW Unit 2 continued to run at full power on Monday, the NRC report said. Separately, the NRC in March 2003 renewed the original 40-year operating licenses for both units for another 20 years. The licenses for Units 1 and 2 will now expire in 2032 and 2033. One MW powers about 800 homes in Virginia. Dominion owns and operates more than 28,000 MW of generating capacity, markets energy commodities, and transmits and distributes electricity and natural gas to more than five million customers in eight states. © Reuters2007All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 31 Reuters: Entergy's NY FitzPatrick reactor back at full power | Mon Oct 22, 2007 7:37am EDT NEW YORK, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Entergy Corp's (ETR.N: Quote, Profile, Research) 852-megawatt FitzPatrick nuclear power unit in New York was back at full power early Monday from 65 percent of capacity early Friday, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in its power reactor status report. The unit, in Scriba, New York, about 90 miles east of Rochester, had been reduced for a planned control rod pattern adjustment, a spokeswoman for the plant said previously. One MW powers about 800 homes in New York. Entergy in August 2006 filed for a 20-year extension of the unit's original 40-year operating license. It usually takes the NRC about 22 months (May 2008) to make a decision on a license renewal without a hearing and about 30 months (Jan 2009) with a hearing. Entergy owns and operates about 30,000 MW of generating capacity, markets energy commodities, and transmits and distributes power to 2.6 million customers in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. © Reuters2007All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 32 Reuters: APS says Ariz. Unit 1 shut, return unknown | Mon Oct 22, 2007 7:58pm EDT LOS ANGELES, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Arizona Public Service said the 1,315-megawatt Unit 1 at the Palo Verde nuclear power station shut at 5 a.m. Monday for an undetermined period due to work on a valve in the units' feedwater cooling system. Now two of the three units at the 3,850-MW power station are off line. Unit 3 was shut on Sept. 29 for a refueling that is expected to last until mid-December. An auxiliary feedwater steam supply on Unit 2 needs repair, said an APS spokesman. "The unit will be offline until we make the repairs and perform the inspection to make sure the repairs took," said Jim McDonald of APS. "We're not talking about months (of outage). We're probably talking days," said McDonald. The outage coincides with the outage of both nuclear units at the San Onofre power station in San Diego County in California. Together, they can make about 2,150 MW of electricity. That Southern California Edison plant took its Unit 2 off line on Sunday for what it expects is a short-term outage. Unit 3 was already off line and will remain off line until it returns from a planned outage to last until mid-November. Palo Verde is the largest nuclear power plant in the United States. APS is the principal subsidiary of Pinnacle West Capital Corp (PNW.N: Quote, Profile, Research). © Reuters2007All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 33 Reuters: Exelon Pa. reactor shut for refueling | Mon Oct 22, 2007 11:36am EDT NEW YORK, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Exelon Corp's (EXC.N: Quote, Profile, Research) 810-megawatt Three Mile Island nuclear power unit in Pennsylvania shut very early Monday to refuel, a spokesman said. The outage will include refueling and normal maintenance activity, said the spokesman, who would not comment on the duration of the shutdown. In 2009, operators plan to replace the unit's two steam generators during a refueling outage. The unit, in Londonderry Township, Pennsylvania, about 10 miles southeast of the state capital Harrisburg, had been operating at 88 percent of capacity on Friday, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Chicago-based Exelon notified the NRC that in the first quarter of 2008 it planned to file for a 20-year extension of the original 40-year operating license for the plant. It usually takes the NRC about 22 months to make a decision on a license renewal without a hearing and about 30 months with a hearing. One MW powers about 800 homes in Pennsylvania. Exelon's AmerGen Energy Co. subsidiary owns the station. Exelon owns and operates more than 38,000 MW of generating capacity, markets energy commodities, and transmits and distributes electricity (5.2 million) and natural gas (460,000) to customers in Illinois and Pennsylvania. © Reuters2007All rights reserved ***************************************************************** 34 Hemscott: British Energy's Hartlepool Reactor 1 start-up delayed LONDON (Thomson Financial) - The start-up of British Energy Group's Hartlepool 1 Reactor has been delayed due to complications during a planned inspection of its boiler units, the company said today. As a precaution, the company has also closed sister units at Hartlepool and Heysham. In all, four units are down. British Energy did not say when the units would be back in operation. Heysham and Hartlepool produce 8.6 TWh and 9 TWh a year respectively. If out for five months over winter, the reactors would lose between 7.5 and 8 TWh said Citigroup in an analyst note today. The impact on FY 2007/08 EBITDA would be 215-230 mln stg Citigroup said. Total dividend would drop from 29.5 pence per share to 18 pence per share. 'Boiler closure units have been a problem for BE and it is feasible that it could take several months to remedy the problem. The worst case scenario is that both stations stay off line all winter,' Citigroup added. edward.mcallister@thomson.com ejm/jrr/ejm/jrr COPYRIGHT Copyright Thomson Financial News Limited 2007. All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** 35 NRC: Atomic Safety & Licensing Board Established to Handle Indian Point License Renewal Application Proceeding News Release - Region I - 2007-054 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs, Region I 475 Allendale Road, King of Prussia, Pa. 19406 www.nrc.gov CONTACT: Diane Screnci (610) 337-5330 Neil A. Sheehan (610) 337-5331 E-mail: opa1@nrc.gov A three-judge board has been established to review requests for a hearing on the license renewal application for the Indian Point nuclear power plant, located in Buchanan (Westchester County), N.Y. Should a hearing regarding the application take place, the board would also conduct that proceeding. The board is drawn from the Atomic Safety & Licensing Board Panel (ASLBP), which is a judicial component of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) tasked with conducting all licensing and other hearings as directed by the presidentially-appointed Commission that oversees the NRC. The ASLBP operates independently of the NRC technical staff. The judges named by ASLBP Chief Administrative Judge E. Roy Hawkens to preside over the Indian Point proceeding are: Lawrence G. McDade, who will serve as chair; Dr. Richard E. Wardwell; and Dr. Kaye D. Lathrop. Brief biographical information for the judges is available at: http://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/organization/panel-members.html . Most boards are composed of one judge who is qualified in conducting administrative proceedings, who is a lawyer, and two judges who have technical qualifications appropriate to the issues in the proceedings, who are scientists or engineers. Under NRC regulations, the original operating license for a nuclear power plant has a term of 40 years. The license may be renewed for up to an additional 20 years if NRC requirements are met. The current operating licenses for Indian Point Units 2 and 3 expire, respectively, on Sept. 28, 2013, and Dec. 12, 2015. Entergy’s license renewal application for Indian Point was received by the NRC on April 30, 2007. NRC news releases are available through a free listserv subscription at the following Web address: http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/listserver.html. The NRC Home Page at www.nrc.gov also offers a Subscribe to News link in the News & Information menu. E-mail notifications are sent to subscribers when news releases are posted to NRC's Web Site. October 22, 2007 ***************************************************************** 36 ajc.com: Says Gov. Riley of Alabama: We need that extra water for a nuke plant, not mussels. | Political Insider | Have a news tip? E-mail or CallJim Galloway/ 404-526-5520 or Bob Kemper/ 202-887-8380 . Monday, October 22, 2007, 03:57 PM The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Alabama Gov. Bob Riley has asked President Bush to deny a request by Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue for a disaster declaration, saying it would put Alabama people and jobs at risk, according to the Birmingham News. We just got a copy of Riley’s letter ourselves a few minutes ago. Among the highlights: — “While Alabama understands that it must bear its fair share of the pain from the drought, Alabama does not believe that it should bear more than it’s fair share.” — “Georgia, in essence, wants you to suspend all releases out of Lake Lanier beyond those needed for Atlanta-area water supply. That would be a radical step that would ignore the vital downstream interests of Alabama.” — “Georgia has repeatedly framed its request as a contest between people in the Atlanta area and endangered mussels in Florida. Nothing could be further than the truth….Georgia ignores the fact that the Farely Nuclear Plant sits on the banks of the Chattahoochee River and requires cooling water.” — Riley also takes issue with Georgia’s estimation that it has 80 or so days before toilets run dry. Actually, the Alabama governor said, it’s more like 260 days — and we’re coming up on the rainy season. Both governors are Republican, and one’s tempted to wonder which one has more clout with Bush — remember that Perdue is chairman of the Republican Governors Association. But when it comes to water, there is no Republican and there is no Democrat. There’s only thirsty and not-yet thirsty. © 2007 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution | Customer care | Advertise ***************************************************************** 37 Patriot-News: TMI down for refueling - PennLive.com Posted by Garry Lenton/The Patriot-News October 22, 2007 11:25AM The atomic reactor at Three Mile Island went off line today for refueling and maintenance, plant operator AmerGen Energy announced. Nuclear plants shut down every two years to replace fuel and perform maintenance that can not be done when the reactor is running. To reduce the impact on the Pennsylvania Maryland New Jersey power grid, shutdowns are scheduled for fall or spring when demand for electrify is lowest. TMI Unit 1 generates enough electricity to heat about 300,000. The shutdown kicks off a labor-intensive review of the plant's mechanical systems. More than 13,000 inspections and maintenance activities will be conducted during the two- to three-week period the reactor is off line, officials said. The shutdown creates about 1,500 temporary jobs in the region, most taken by nuclear workers who travel from plant to plant working during outages. About a third of the plant's fuel will be replaced. The spent fuel will be stored in a large pool of water next to the reactor building. All of the spent fuel ever used at the facility, including that from the Unit 2 reactor destroyed in the 1979 accident, are kept at the site because a permanent storage location has yet to be built. The U.S. Department of Energy is developing a national high-level nuclear waste storage site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. It has yet to open. | Permalink (Learn More) Share: Reddit | Digg | del.icio.us | Google | Yahoo | What is this? ©2007 pennlive.com. All Rights Reserved. RSS Feeds | Complete Index ***************************************************************** 38 Rockford Register Star: Leaks shut down Byron nuclear plant - Rockford, IL - rrstar.com Oct 21, 2007 @ 09:09 PM RRSTAR.COM STAFF REPORTS BYRON - Repairs will continue this week on a leaky water-cooling pipe that has kept the Byron nuclear power plant shut down since Friday. The shutdown is the first time both power generators have been offline at the same time since the mid-1990s, said Bob Kartheiser, the communication’s director for the Byron Generating System. Kartheiser said the power station could be down for an extended period, but he declined to speculate how long. “I can’t even go there, because I really don’t know,” he said. He said the leaks did not constitute an emergency situation, but other pipes would be inspected to see if they too needed repairs. The faulty pipe was found during an inspection Friday morning and the power station was shut down later that day. Copyright © GateHouse Media, Inc. Some Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** 39 NRC: NRC Issues Transition Plan for Assuming Regulation of Additional Radioactive Material News Release - 2007-135 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-0001 E-mail: opa@nrc.gov www.nrc.gov The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has published its transition plan for assuming regulatory authority over certain radioactive materials under provisions of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. The act expanded the definition of “byproduct material” subject to NRC’s regulatory authority to include discrete sources of radium-226, material made radioactive in a particle accelerator, and other radioactive material that the Commission determines could pose a threat to public health and safety or the common defense and security. Currently, most of these materials are regulated by the states. Although the legislation made NRC’s authority over these new materials effective immediately when the bill was enacted in August 2005, the agency issued a waiver allowing states to continue to regulate them while the agency drafted regulations to implement the new requirements. A final rule on the expanded definition of byproduct material was approved by the Commission May 14 and published Oct. 1 in the Federal Register. Those regulations become effective Nov. 30. The governors of the 34 Agreement States that already regulate byproduct material under agreements with the NRC have submitted certifications that they are prepared to continue exercising regulatory authority over the new materials. Those certifications are currently before the NRC for approval. Approximately 400 entities currently using these materials in non-Agreement States, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories will require new NRC licenses under this regulation. In these jurisdictions, the NRC waiver will be terminated in phases, and these applicants will have one year to apply for an NRC license. Current NRC licensees who also use these materials will have six months following waiver termination to apply for license amendments to cover the new material. The transition plan and the final rule on the expanded definition of byproduct material are available on the NRC Web site at this address: http://nrc-stp.ornl.gov/narmtoolbox.html NRC news releases are available through a free listserv subscription at the following Web address: http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/listserver.html. The NRC Home Page at www.nrc.gov also offers a Subscribe to News link in the News & Information menu. E-mail notifications are sent to subscribers when news releases are posted to NRC's Web Site. October 18, 2007 ***************************************************************** 40 NRC: NRC Warns Public and Merchants of Fake Check Scam News Release - 2007-136 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-0001 E-mail: opa@nrc.gov www.nrc.gov The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is warning members of the public and merchants of a new twist on an old check-cashing scam involving fake “NRC checks.” The scam starts when the criminal spots a classified ad on a Web site such as Craigslist. The criminal offers to buy the advertised item, then overnights a “Nuclear Regulatory Commission” check for thousands of dollars more than the purchase price. The seller is then convinced to cash the check and send the “extra” money back to the criminal, leaving the seller liable for the worthless check. The NRC never uses checks, and any check bearing the agency’s name is a fake. NRC Inspector General Hubert Bell and NRC Chief Financial Officer William McCabe want the public and merchants to beware of this scam and avoid falling prey to it. Anyone receiving a “Nuclear Regulatory Commission” check should immediately contact the NRC’s IG by calling 800-233-3497 or visiting the agency’s Web site here: http://www.nrc.gov/insp-gen/oighotline.html . NRC news releases are available through a free listserv subscription at the following Web address: http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/listserver.html. The NRC Home Page at www.nrc.gov also offers a Subscribe to News link in the News & Information menu. E-mail notifications are sent to subscribers when news releases are posted to NRC's Web Site. October 19, 2007 ***************************************************************** 41 NRC: NRC Orders Alaska Radiography Firm to Cease Operations Because of Repeated Violations of Safety Requirements News Release - 2007-137 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-0001 E-mail: opa@nrc.gov www.nrc.gov The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has ordered Alaska Industrial X-Ray, Inc. (AIX), to cease licensed radiography operations immediately because the company repeatedly violated NRC requirements that two qualified individuals conduct industrial radiography at a temporary job site. The suspension order, issued Oct. 19, is effective immediately and until the company implements measures that reassure the NRC its regulations will be met. AIX, based in Anchorage, routinely performs radiography at a client’s industrial facility, using a makeshift “vault.” The company applied to the NRC to have the vault approved as a permanent radiography installation in 1999. The agency determined the vault did not meet safety standards, and the company was unwilling to make improvements. Since the vault is considered a temporary job site, the company is required to have two qualified individuals (either two radiographers or one radiographer and a radiography assistant) present when performing radiography operations to guard against inadvertent exposures to the radiographers or others. An NRC inspection and investigation from June through October determined that AIX employees routinely violated the two-person requirement by having one radiographer present while the second went to a separate facility to develop film. This practice occurred regularly for up to three years, even though the company was cited by the NRC for similar violations in 2001 and had pledged to follow the two-person requirement. “The safety and health of the public and workers are at risk whenever industrial radiography is conducted and these safety requirements are not being followed,” said Cynthia Carpenter, NRC’s director of enforcement. NRC news releases are available through a free listserv subscription at the following Web address: http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/listserver.html. The NRC Home Page at www.nrc.gov also offers a Subscribe to News link in the News & Information menu. E-mail notifications are sent to subscribers when news releases are posted to NRC's Web Site. October 22, 2007 ***************************************************************** 42 NRC: NRC Begins Special Inspection at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Research Reactor News Release - 2007-138 - U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Office of Public Affairs Telephone: 301/415-8200 Washington, DC 20555-0001 E-mail: opa@nrc.gov www.nrc.gov The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has begun a special inspection at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s research reactor facility in Cambridge, Mass., after the facility reported an unexpectedly high dosimeter reading for one of its operators. Although the dosimeter reading was below the NRC occupational exposure limit of 5 rem, the actual reading of about 4 rem was substantially higher than expected. Typically, readings of less than 0.5 rem would be expected for the type of work being performed. Dosimeters are badges worn by nuclear workers to measure radiation exposure when working near radioactive material. MIT reported the reading to the NRC on Oct. 17. The NRC special inspection team will attempt to determine if the dosimeter reading was accurate. The team will develop a sequence of events and activities the operator performed to assess whether the operator’s actions may have resulted in the high dosimeter reading. It will also review licensee records and the implementation of its radiation protection program, and look for other factors that may have caused the abnormal reading. The special inspection is expected to be completed in two to three weeks. An inspection report will be issued and made public approximately 30 days following completion of the inspection. NRC news releases are available through a free listserv subscription at the following Web address: http://www.nrc.gov/public-involve/listserver.html. The NRC Home Page at www.nrc.gov also offers a Subscribe to News link in the News & Information menu. E-mail notifications are sent to subscribers when news releases are posted to NRC's Web Site. October 22, 2007 ***************************************************************** 43 London Times: More than 200 nuclear scares recorded at submarine base - October 23, 2007 Michael Evans, Defence Editor Royal Navy nuclear-powered submarines have been involved in more than 200 radiological incidents at a single base in the past five years, according to a report released under the Freedom of Information Act. In one case, experts at the Devonport naval base who were supposed to be monitoring nuclear reactor operations aboard HMS Tireless, a submarine with a history of technical faults, were found to be in the wrong vessel. The Royal Navy said that since 2002 the majority of the incidents recorded at Devonport, the Navy’s only nuclear submarine refitting base, involved “either nil radiological or the very lowest radiological consequences”. However, details released to the Western Morning News revealed a catalogue of potential safety scares. The report showed that between 2002 and 2006 there were 189 recorded incidents, including 12 in the first two months of this year. The three most-serious incidents last year merited a safety-scare rating of Class 3, under a sliding scale system ranging from Class 1, the most severe, to Class 5. © Copyright 2007 Times Newspapers Ltd. ***************************************************************** 44 Gallup Independent: A job she loved, a life of suffering; Grants woman?s love of mining outweighed by health impact October 20-21, 2007: A heavy equipment operator wears only a ball-cap and a safety vest as protective equipment on Wednesday while moving dirt around at the Rio Algom mine north of Milan, NM. Signs attached to the fence surrounding the area state that the area is a radiation materials site. [Photo by Jeff Jones/Independent] Second in a series of personal accounts of Post-71 miners. By Kathy Helms Diné Bureau Helen Savedra shared her experiences of working for a uranium mining company in the late 1970s. [Photo by Jeff Jones/Independent] A Sign attached to the fence surrounding the Rio Algom mine north of Milan, NM., state that the area is a radioactive materials site. [Photo by Jeff Jones/Independent] GRANTS ? Helen Gurule Savedra has spent most of her life in the dark. Now she?s legally blind. Still, if her health was good, she would go back to working in the uranium mines because she loved her job and the pay was good. Savedra, 52, of Grants worked for Kerr-McGee Section 30 at Ambrosia Lake from 1974 until she was laid off in 1985. She doesn?t know whether her blindness is attributable to working in the mine, but it did come along years before she was diagnosed with diabetes ? a common complaint among uranium workers. ?I was in the dark all day. I used to work five days a week. We?d shower and go home and it was already dark. One day, I was helping my grandpa put a fence up and I passed out because I couldn?t handle the daylight. I was used to just being underground all day, so it was hard for me to see daylight, even on the weekends.? Savedra, a former barrel racer, married at 15, had her first son at 17, and went to work for Kerr-McGee at 18 after leaving an abusive marriage. ?He beat me so bad that one day I just got up and left and came back to Grants. My son was 2 weeks old,? she said. ?I started working at Pizza Hut and then my aunt talked me into working at the mines. ?They gave you a probation period to see how long you were going to last. They put you in what they call the ?piss ditch.? They used to give you a shovel and you had to clean all the dirt from the ditches so the water would flow. There was a lot of contamination there that we weren?t aware of. All I had was gloves and my hands. We wore a helmet and safety glasses.? Savedra worked in the ditch for about six months before receiving on-the-job training. ?I learned how to do everything. I learned how to take supplies down from the cage, I learned how to use the belts, I learned how to run a motor.? She worked as a utility miner, learning to drill and blast. ?I used to run the slusher,? she said. ?The last six years I had my own working place. I was a miner. Then I worked two years after that to help clean up.? Savedra was petite, young and attractive, with long hair she had to pin up under her hat to keep it from getting caught in the machinery. She became a target for sexual harassment. ?Working with all these men, they thought, you know, I?m a lady, I?m there to ? in other words, excuse my language, no disrespect ? they treated these women like whores, like they had no business underground. ?A couple of times when I was going down in the cage, this guy patted me on the back in the wrong place. I turned around and I got my wrench ? we used to carry our own equipment ? and boom! I hit him on the mouth. I thought I was going to get fired.? But her supervisor stuck up for her. ?He said, ?You know what? She?s here to work and to make a living just like you are. If you?re not going to respect her, you?re going to get your teeth knocked out again.? So after awhile, after the guys got to know me, it was like, ?Don?t touch her because she?ll punch you.? ?To this day, I see them in town and they respect me. They learned to respect me. I?m not saying there weren?t women that didn?t like to play around ? there was. But I was one that didn?t like it. I was there to make a living,? Savedra said. For years, she ran the slusher machine. ?It?s a big old bucket that you put in the open stope spring and pull out the muck. Every day we used to drill and blast and then we?d have to get in there and, you know, you?d sniff all this smoke from the blasting. ?The motor man would come underneath you, because you were up top. He?d put a light on to let you know that he was down there. You?d have to slush that thing as fast as you could because the motor man was getting paid by pulling the muck, so they had to be fast. This was 1,700 feet underground,? she said. A lot of times, the miner would be working above and she would be in the lower level doing the slushing. ?Sometimes the grill would get plugged up and you?d have to blast. You?d have to call the miner to tell him that you had to blast because your chute was plugged up. Once you blasted, the muck would come down and you?d slush it out.? They didn?t have any safety equipment, not even a mask, she said. ?The vent bag that they had down there for air, half the time it would be torn. It wouldn?t be in our working place so we could breathe better. We were breathing the bad air.? As a miner, she and her helper, who now ran the slusher as she had once done, worked alone. ?That machine was heavy for me,? she said. She used to prop it a certain way to make it comfortable for her to drill. ?Then I?d set it up for blasting. The only time we were able to blast was at noontime when everybody was at lunch.? Everyone had a tag. If their tag didn?t show up at lunch break, ?they would have to go looking for you,? she said. ?They couldn?t blast. They had to make sure everybody was in the lunchroom.? ?When you were working underground it was dark, so you?d carry your light. If your light went out, you?d better stay there and have somebody come and pick you up because it was so dark you wouldn?t be able to find your way around.? Savedra said she wasn?t afraid of being in the dark. ?I was real brave. You know what? I?d go back today if I could, but my health is really bad.? About 14 to 15 years ago she was diagnosed with diabetes. ?I got amputated already for my leg, my toes. And then I went to the doctor ? I was having problems with my lungs ? and they told me that I already had the radon spots on my lungs.? That was about five years ago. ?Pretty soon I guess they?re going to put me on the breathing machine because I have a hard time breathing. Now I have a caretaker that comes and helps me and drives me around because I?m legally blind also.? In addition, she has begun to experience kidney problems. ?Just the other day I went to the doctor and he told me I was dropping protein ? not bad enough to where I could go to dialysis, but they put me on all kinds of medication. ?I never got anything from Kerr-McGee, no compensation, no nothing. They told me when I was working at Kerr-McGee that I was going to be sterile from all the radiation. Well, I have a son that is 14, he was born in ?93. He has a mental disorder problem and I wonder if that was coming from radiation.? There is no family history of mental disorders, she said. Her son is in a residential treatment center in Las Cruces where he is being tested to see whether the disorder might be related to her years in the mine. ?There are other people who have had kids that have a disorder problem,? she said. Their parents also worked in the mines and mills. ?We had to shower every day before we went home. We had our own trailer, the women. It was mandatory that we showered before we left. But we took our clothes home and washed them with our family?s clothes. We didn?t know that it was bad. We were contaminating our family and we weren?t even aware of it. ?I think if they reopen the mines, they?re just opening up the poisons. They need to be aware of what?s going to happen later down the line,? she said. ?When I was working for Kerr-McGee, I saw this ?Keep Out? sign and I saw this ladder going up. I heard a bunch of men talking and I heard the slusher going. I thought, ?Why are there people up there if the Keep Out sign is there?? I was curious and I climbed up. I found nothing but trash. There was nobody up there. ?I swear to God, to this day, I can still hear those voices. People say it was from when people died there. It might have been the spirits,? she said. ?But you know what, if I had my health, I would go back because I really loved my job. The money was good. When I was mining, I was on contract. You had to move fast ? that?s where the money was. My checks were about $1,800 a month. It was something I had to do because I felt like, in my heart, I had a son to raise. ?Is it worth it? Look at my health.? October 20-21 2007 All contents property of the Gallup Independent. Please send the Gallup Independent feedback on this website and the Send questions or comments to gallpind@cia-g.com ***************************************************************** 45 [NYTr] Iran Accuses US of Hindering IAEA Operations Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 16:31:44 -0500 (CDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Prensa Latina, Havana http://www.plenglish.com Iran Accuses US of Hindering IAEA Operations Tehran, Oct 22 (Prensa Latina) Iran charged on Sunday that US President George W. Bush's warmongering statements are aimed at clouding the constructive atmosphere of cooperation between Tehran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Seyyed Mohammad Ali Hoseini told national and foreign reporters that Washington's stance poses a threat to world peace and security. A few days ago, Hoseini pointed out that the US president's statements show the hegemonic policy and desire to stand out by neoconservative elements in the White House. He underlined that such a stance fosters international insecurity and warmongering policies. That belligerent rhetoric is aimed at hiding many domestic problems being faced by the incumbent US administration and evading responsibility. It would be better if US leaders betted on the world's willingness to keep peace and security, and abstained from unilateralism in the international arena, respecting the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the states. Bush warned that World War III would break out if the Islamic Republic continues to develop its nuclear program with peaceful ends. Commenting a high-ranking US military officer's statement that the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are not reasons to prevent an attack on Iran, Hoseini noted that it is part of Washington's psychological warfare and an effort to improve the morale of US troops. ef jg jcd PL-11 * ================================================================= 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 ================================================================= ***************************************************************** 46 [NYTr] Iran's chief nuclear negotiator quits Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 16:29:41 -0500 (CDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit Channel 4 News - Snowmail (UK) - Oct 20, 2007 http://www.channel4.com Iran's chief nuclear negotiator quits ===================================== Ali Larijani has resigned as Iran's chief nuclear negotiator. Your instant reaction is probably a yawning "so what?". But Larijani is important. He's the man who was probably more able than anyone in Iran to deliver an accommodation with the West over the nuclear issue and Iraq. He was urbane, intelligent and far from fundamentalist - you may remember him as the person who sorted out the release of the British sailors captured in the waterway between Iraq and Iran. Die hard Channel 4 News viewers will remember his live appearances on the programme complete with simultaneous translation. More importantly he was a man the West could deal with - much more so than his boss, the president. So it is a big loss, and one that could make the road to conflict in the region a little swifter. Tonight we will have something of an inside track on what happened between Larijani and President Ahmedinejad to bring events to this point. more on the story: Channel 4 News - Oct 20, 2007 http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/politics/international_politics/irans+chief+nuclear+negotiator+quits/941647 Iran's chief nuclear negotiator quits By Channel 4 News Ali Larijani, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator and the country's main contact with the west, has resigned after months of tension over Tehran's plans to build a nuclear reactor. The UN has imposed sanctions on Iran because of fears that it is intent on developing nuclear weapons. Channel 4 News has been told that Mr Larijani's resignation followed a disagreement with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over a possible compromise recommended by Russia. Ali Larijani has been key to the west's attempts to negotiate with Iran and many will see his departure as a worrying sign. The Iranian government cited personal reasons for his leaving and insisted it had nothing to do with differences of opinion. But Channel 4 News has learned the resignation came about as a result of President Putin's meeting with Iran's President Ahmadinejad this week. Sources close to Mr Larijani have said he thought a compromise on Iran's nuclear future suggested by the Russians was worth pursuing. He abruptly resigned after President Ahmadinejad denied any such proposals had been made. * ================================================================= 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 ================================================================= ***************************************************************** 47 [NYTr] Iran's new hardline nuclear envoy causes jitters in West Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 20:09:53 -0500 (CDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit [The Brit press is certainly making a big deal out of Larijani's resignation, although it appears that he is still involved in negoitiations, and Iran has repeatedly said this does not signal any change in its nuclear policy. See the earlier stories here: Iran's chief nuclear negotiator quits http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20071022/070517.html He may have resigned, but Iranian Negotiator Apparently Still on the Job http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20071022/070529.html See ALSO: Iran Accuses US of Hindering IAEA Operations http://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20071022/070528.html The Independent - Oct 22, 2007 http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article3084298.ece Iran's new hardline nuclear envoy causes jitters in West By Anne Penketh, Diplomatic Editor The shock resignation of Iran's chief nuclear negotiator has cast a shadow of uncertainty over the country's future co-operation with UN inspectors, heightening the risk of US military strikes. Iran sought to reassure the West yesterday that Tehran's policy over negotiations with Western powers attempting to curb its nuclear programme would not change after the replacement of Ali Larijani with a reputedly hardline deputy foreign minister, Saeed Jalili. Mr Jalili is more closely associated with the radical Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than Mr Larijani, who had been a rival of Mr Ahmadinejad in the last presidential elections. Iran's nuclear policy is, however, decided by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to whom Mr Jalili will report in future. In a further sign that Tehran wanted to reassure the West, negotiations between the European security chief, Javier Solana, and Mr Larijani are to be held as expected in Rome tomorrow. Mr Larijani will be accompanied to the talks by his successor. The Europeans are offering a package of economic and technological incentives if Iran agrees to suspend its uranium enrichment programme which has fuelled concern around the world about Iran's intentions because the process can eventually lead to production of a bomb. But Iran has steadfastly refused to bow to UN demands to halt enrichment. President Ahmadinejad said in August that the nuclear dossier is now "closed" and talk of US military strikes was "propaganda". Mr Jalili's links to the president, known for his fiery brand of rhetoric, could signal that Iran does not fear challenging the US, at a time when President Bush is saying a nuclear Iran would trigger "World War Three". The timing of Mr Larijani's departure comes at a critical stage in an agreed "work plan" between the UN nuclear agency and Iran, which is engaged in a race against the clock to avert the threat of additional UN sanctions before the end of the year. The Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who feels directly threatened by the Iranian nuclear programme, is touring European capitals to press for strengthened UN sanctions. Iran has promised to clear up outstanding questions regarding its past nuclear activities within weeks in an attempt to prove to the International Atomic Energy Agency that its nuclear programme is purely peaceful. The UN Security Council will wait until next month, when the IAEA chief, Mohamed ElBaradei is to report back on progress before considering further sanctions. "Either they co-operate, or they don't. That's what we're going to judge," said a Vienna-based diplomat, who described the departure of the pragmatic Mr Larijani as "unfortunate". David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, is to discuss the impact of the replacement of Mr Larijani, and the "next steps" on Iran with the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Washington today, according to a Foreign Office spokesman. The US continues to stress a diplomatic solution is Washington's preferred route to resolve the standoff with Iran over the country's right to enrich uranium but is refusing to rule out the military option. The hawkish US Vice-President, Dick Cheney said yesterday that Iran was a "growing obstacle to peace in the Middle East" and warned of consequences if Iran did not halt its sensitive nuclear activities. Mr Jalili has served since 2005 as deputy foreign minister and was responsible for Europe and America. * ================================================================= 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 ================================================================= ***************************************************************** 48 [NYTr] It's the USA's Nuke Arsenal That Worries the World: Iran's UN Amb. Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2007 16:36:49 -0500 (CDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit IRNA - Oct 18, 2007 http://www2.irna.ir/en/news/view/line-20/0710182245011828.htm Iran's Ambassador to UN says US nuclear arsenal worries world United Nations, New York, Oct 18, IRNA Iran's Permanent Representative to UN Mohammad Khazaie said here Wednesday Iran, the only victim of chemical weapons in contemporary era is highly motivated for efforts aimed at a world without WMD, adding, thousands of nuclear warheads at US arsenal worry world nations. Khazaie made the comment at a meeting of the UN General Assembly's 1st Committee, allocated to surveying disarmament and international security. The IRI Ambassador expounded on Iran's basic policies in that respect, Iran's stands regarding usage of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, and the assault of Saddam's armed forces against Iran and brutal vast usage of chemical weapons during the eight years of imposed war. Khazaie added, "Nearly two decades after the end of the Iraqi imposed war, still thousands of Iranians are suffering from the effects of the chemical weapons, whose raw materials were provided by some permanent members of the UN Security Council." Referring to the existence of thousands of chemical weapons at the arsenal of the US Army, he said, "Today, the world is worried about those fatal weapons more than ever." The Iranian envoy pointed out the contradictions in declared US policies regarding global disarmament, while Washington simultaneously threatens other nations of atomic bombardments. He added, "Although the United States claims to be the standard bearer of the international campaign against weapons of mass destruction (WMD), Washington takes full advantage of the stockpiled nukes at its arsenals as an effective tool at the service of materializing its security and foreign policy objectives. Khazaie said, "The United States is today threatening the non-nuclear countries that are members of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of US nuclear attacks. Iran's Ambassador at UN also denounced the revived US missile shield defense, which he said is the reminder of the Cold War era, questioned Washington's intentions in bringing up the issue again, adding, "By allocating fifty billion dollars to that suspicious project, the US is after establishment of absolute security for itself." He said, "Yet, such a project has long term negative aftermaths for entire world nations, and materializing such an objective is basically impossible in our closely inter-related world today." Elsewhere in his address, Khazaie criticized the Zionist regime's persistent refusal from signing the nuclear NPT, while pursuing its military nuclear programs secretly, arguing, "Israel is the only obstacle in the way of declaring the Middle East a nuclear weapons free zone." He added, "The international community, and particularly the regional countries, must act unanimously to counter the threat posed by he nuclear weapons of that expansionist, usurper regime." Khazaie in his address also referred to the work plan agreed upon by Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) aimed at solving the entire remaining ambiguities, calling the initiative a long stride taken by Iran, that has led to creation of a positive atmosphere for returning Iran's nuclear dossier to the agency." Iran's permanent representative at UN reiterated, "The IAEA's technical framework and holding negotiations are the only appropriate ways for solving Iran's nuclear problems appropriately." He emphasized, "The Iranian nation and Government are resolutely determined to materialize their absolute right to take advantage of nuclear technology for peaceful purposes." Khazaie further stressed, "We are also determined to conquer the peaks of nuclear sciences, while Iran respects its entire international commitments, including those stated in the NPT, and asking for nothing beyond his rights." * ================================================================= 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 ================================================================= ***************************************************************** 49 BBC NEWS: No breakthrough in nuclear talks Last Updated: Monday, 22 October 2007, 16:57 GMT 17:57 UK There have been isolated protests against the nuclear deal Talks between India's Congress-led ruling coalition and communist allies over a nuclear deal with the US have ended with no indication of progress. There are growing signs that the government may shelve the deal. The two sides will resume talks on 16 November. The communists say the deal would give the US too much influence over India's foreign policy. The deal would give India access to civilian nuclear technology and fuel even though it has not signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. US companies are hoping the deal would pave the way for lucrative contracts in India. We would like to know what the stand of the government is [on the nuclear deal] R Raja, Communist Party of India The administration of US President George W Bush is keen for the deal to be completed before next year's presidential elections. Monday's talks were held in a "constructive and cordial atmosphere", Foreign Minster Pranab Mukherjee told reporters. Prime Minister Singh told Mr Bush recently that he was having difficulty implementing the deal. It was the first clear sign India could abandon it. The communists were expected to ask the government during Monday's talks to confirm that the deal had been shelved. "They are changing their position every day. We would like to know what the stand of the government is," D Raja of the Communist Party of India told Reuters news agency. 'Meaningful consensus' After many weeks during which the Indian government insisted it would press ahead with the deal, Mr Singh's conversation with Mr Bush last week pointed to the government backtracking in the face of opposition. But on Thursday Mr Singh told reporters on the sidelines of an official trip to Africa that attempts were being made to evolve a "meaningful consensus" on the issue. The prime minister called Mr Bush last week and told him that "certain difficulties have arisen with respect to the operationalisation of the India-US civil nuclear co-operation agreement". He said the nuclear agreement was "an honourable deal that is good for India and good for the world". He said, however, that if the deal did not come through, he would be disappointed - but he could live with it. The landmark deal has also been criticised by many outside India. Under the agreement, India is allowed to reprocess spent nuclear fuel - something that is seen as a major concession and opposed by some members of the US Congress. * BBC Copyright Notice ***************************************************************** 50 The Herald: Bombing Iran Features: LETTERS Web Issue 2972 October 23 2007 Tony Blair's ignorance of history and failure to learn from his own mistakes in Iraq make him unsuitable to be EU President (Blair touted as front-runner, The Herald, October 20). He claimed in a recent speech in New York that it was wrong to think our governments had "provoked" Islamic terrorists. He said their "grievances" were false. Despite Blair's denials, tens of thousands of civilians have been killed by British and US forces in Afghanistan and Iraq and revenge for these deaths is a major source of recruits for terrorist groups. Nato airstrikes this year have killed more Afghan civilians than the Taliban. Iraq Body Count reported that 600 of the 800 Iraqis killed in the November 2004 assault on Fallujah were civilians, 300 of them women and children. Condoleezza Rice wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine in 2000 that rogue states such as Iran would be deterred, by US nuclear arsenals, from using WMDs if they developed them. So bombing Iran would be pointless and increase support for nationalists and religious fundamentalists. It would also be nothing to do with democracy and everything to do with controlling Iran's oil - just like the 1953 coup backed by the CIA and MI6 which overthrew the elected government of Mohammed Mossadeq for attempting to nationalise Anglo-Iranian Oil (now BP) in Iran. Does Mr Blair know who Mossadeq was? Duncan McFarlane, Beanshields, Braidwood, Carluke. © All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without Copyright © 2007 Newsquest (Herald & Times) Limited. All Rights Reserved ***************************************************************** 51 Seattle Times: A nuclear reactor's next life: Tourist destination? Monday, October 22, 2007 - Page updated at 01:04 AM By Stuart Eskenazi Seattle Times staff reporter MIKE SIEGEL / THE SEATTLE TIMES Some Tri-Cities residents want the Hanford nuclear reservation's B Reactor — the world's first nuclear reactor — to be preserved as a museum. MIKE SIEGEL / THE SEATTLE TIMES Debbie Poteet, a radiation-control technician, explains how the uranium tubes were ejected at the rear of the B Reactor. This area is not part of a public tour. AP Plutonium produced by the B Reactor was used in the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945. AP From 1944 to 1951, large amounts of radioactive Iodine 131 went up reactor smokestacks and scattered, according to government estimates. JOSEF SCAYLEA / THE SEATTLE TIMES Long gloves and a glass hood protect a plutonium handler at Hanford. B Reactor historyDecember 1942: President Roosevelt approves Manhattan Project. January 1943: Hanford selected as the third top-secret location for Manhattan Project. October 1943: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers breaks ground to build B Reactor. September 1944: First plutonium produced at B Reactor. July 1945: B Reactor plutonium used in first nuclear test explosion at Alamogordo, N.M. August 1945: B Reactor plutonium used in bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan. February 1968: Atomic Energy Commission shuts down B Reactor permanently. 1992: B Reactor placed on the National Register of Historic Places. 2001: Escorted public tours of B Reactor begin on a limited basis. Source: U.S. Department of Energy, Richland Operations Office RICHLAND — Stuck in time and place, B Reactor at the Hanford nuclear reservation is a monument of world history few get to tour. Built in secrecy during World War II but dormant since 1968, B Reactor ushered in the atomic age as the world's first nuclear reactor, producing the plutonium for the first full-scale nuclear test explosion in New Mexico and the bomb the U.S. dropped on Nagasaki. For generations, Hanford has been the bread of life for the Tri-Cities, from when nine reactors produced plutonium to now, when billions of dollars are paying for the world's largest environmental cleanup. Proud of their nuclear heritage, Tri-Citians want the U.S. Department of Energy to give new life to B Reactor by turning it into a museum. If that happens, several thousand more visitors a year will be able to stand face to face with the reactor core — and confront the issues of the soul that color the atomic age. "Even if you disagree with the principle of this, even if you believe this reactor never should have been built, you have to admire the complexity of what they built here — the genius of it," Hanford historian Michele Gerber said while leading a tour of B Reactor. Without question, the reactor is a marvel of science, engineering and craft. B Reactor was constructed in a mere 11 months, a millionfold scale-up of an experimental reactor built on a Chicago sports court. But the reactor's place in the sociopolitical history of the U.S. and the world is more volatile and open to debate. Dr. David Hall, of Seattle, a past national president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, said the story told at a B Reactor museum must include a fair accounting of the human and financial costs of developing nuclear capabilities. He isn't sure that side of the story would get a full airing at a museum on the Hanford site. "It depends on who's writing the history," Hall said. "I want to honor the good intent and patriotism of the people who worked at B Reactor. On the other hand, science needs to be honest about its consequences and understand the Pandora's box that was opened." Did the bomb on Nagasaki save tens of thousands of U.S. lives by forcing Japan's surrender? Or did it needlessly sacrifice tens of thousands of civilian Japanese lives? Are advances in nuclear energy and medicine outweighed by the environmental contamination from nuclear wastes? "Those debates ought to start in this room," Gerber said, while standing in front of the reactor core. "The mission of Hanford is never complete until the waste is managed and properly disposed of — and that requires the same amount of innovation that went into building this reactor." Origins in secret mission Lacking in aesthetic, B Reactor rises 120 feet from the Southeast Washington desert about a quarter-mile from the Columbia River, sharing the landscape with the sagebrush that grows on the 586-square-mile Hanford nuclear reservation. In early 1943, more than 1,500 residents of two desert towns — Hanford and White Bluffs — were ordered to immediately vacate with no explanation. Native Americans who knew the land for generations no longer had access to it. At the peak of construction, more than 50,000 workers converged upon Hanford to dutifully carry out their war effort. Told little about their mission, they completed a highly classified project under an extremely tight deadline. Rumors spread as to what was being manufactured at Hanford. As legend has it, a child was sure he figured it out — toilet paper! His father, who worked at the site, came home every night with a couple or three rolls, the boy unaware his dad was pilfering to provide his family more than its wartime ration. Tri-Citians tell that tale and want to be the ones to tell B Reactor's story for the museum, figuring who better than those who lived it. "What happened at B Reactor is roughly equivalent to the discovery of fire and putting a man on the moon," said Wally Greager, 80, who worked five decades at B Reactor and other Hanford facilities. He is among a group of Hanford retirees who 17 years ago launched an effort to preserve B Reactor. They see the museum as a tool to promote the nuclear industry. "People need to recognize what they get out of it," Greager said. "If you're not afraid of it, good can come from it." U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings, the Republican who represents the Tri-Cities, said B Reactor ought to be viewed in the context of when it was built — as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project to build the first nuclear bomb. "We were in an all-out struggle at the time and thought Nazi Germany had the technology to build an atomic bomb," he said. "From a historic standpoint, we won the war in a large part because of efforts at Hanford." Reactor tours popular The Reactor is always accessible to bats, spiders and rats, and — three times a year — it's open to people. Tours are advertised on a Hanford Web site about a month ahead of time, with the 300 or so available spots filling up in minutes during the online sign-up. "Very many people are turned away," Gerber said. "One guy compared getting a ticket to winning a lottery." Visitors arrive by bus, but if B Reactor becomes a museum, tourists also could arrive by boat as part of a dinner tour or buy a package tour combining B Reactor with visits to area wineries. At the reactor, visitors can gaze up at the 46-foot-high front face of the core and the 2,004 nozzles protruding from it — access points for loading solid uranium fuel slugs that entered the graphite-block middle that caused the complex nuclear chain reaction that produced the plutonium. They also can see the office where Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, the mind behind the first controlled nuclear chain reaction, sat for three days with his slide rule, trying to figure out why the reactor kept automatically shutting itself down after its initial startups. Tourists are barred from contaminated areas, but the mint-green interior walls of the reactor still have the original evacuation alarm and evacuation-route signs. Operated without computers, the control room features a wall of gauges where workers constantly monitored water temperature and pressure in each of the 2,004 fuel process tubes to avoid meltdown. Below a metal grate is a pit where giant intake pipes supplied 30,000 gallons of Columbia River water per minute to cool the reactor core. Congress will have a say If B Reactor is not saved, the government will demolish most of the building, wrapping the highly radioactive core with steel and concrete, buying 75 years for scientists to figure out how to dismantle and dispose of it safely. Five of Hanford's nine production reactors already have been "cocooned" this way, with three more scheduled over the next few years. B Reactor's fate rests with Congress, which awaits a study on whether to preserve Manhattan Project sites. The National Park Service report is due next fall. Park Service authorities say operating B Reactor as a museum would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, compared with an estimated $12 million to cocoon it. The local goal is to increase the number of annual bus tours to B Reactor from 18 to 125 and run them out of the Hanford Reach Interpretive Center, which is set to open in 2010 on the banks of the Columbia near Richland. A basic tour would cost $20. Kimberly Camp, center executive director, said B Reactor exhibits should make no value judgments but that history must be viewed through history's eyes. "Too often, we like to look at history through contemporary eyes because it allows us to change the script," she said. "Exhibits should pose the evidence, ask the questions and inspire people to have the discussion." Stuart Eskenazi: 206-464-2293 or Copyright © 2007 The Seattle Times Company ***************************************************************** 52 DOE: DOE Recognizes Six Leading Organizations for Helping the U.S. ‘Go Green’ October 22, 2007 2007 National Green Power Supplier Award Winners WASHINGTON, DC – The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) will recognize six leading organizations at the Seventh Annual Green Power Leadership Awards tonight in Philadelphia for advancing the development and use of “green power”. These organizations are furthering the Bush Administration’s efforts to reduce our Nation’s dependence on foreign oil by increasing the use of clean, renewable energy. The DOE Green Power Supplier Awards are competitive, and recognize exceptional achievements in supporting increased market deployment of renewable energy technologies through green power programs. DOE’s 2007 Green Power Supplier Award winners are: Constellation NewEnergy (Baltimore, MD); 3Degrees (San Francisco, CA); Sterling Planet (Norcross, GA); SunEdison (Beltsville, MD); Pacific Power and Rocky Mountain Power (Portland, OR) and; Silicon Valley Power (Santa Clara, CA). DOE co-sponsors the Green Power Leadership Awards with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Center for Resource Solutions. Each organization recognized has helped advance the development of the Nation’s “green power markets” through the creation of successful green power programs. The goal of green power programs is to provide market-based choices for electricity consumers to purchase power from environmentally preferred sources. The combined green power supplied by these organizations amounts to over five billion kilowatt-hours of green power annually, equivalent to the amount of electricity needed to power nearly 465,000 American households annually. “The Department of Energy applauds these organizations for taking a leading role in providing consumers with cost-effective options for ‘going green,’” DOE Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Alexander Karsner said. “Green power marketing has enormous potential to expand domestic markets for clean, abundant and affordable renewable energy technologies by fostering greater availability throughout the country. The leaders in the voluntary green power markets are a critical part of the President’s strategy to build, generate and promote renewable energy capacity that will have a sizeable impact in the marketplace and increase our Nation’s energy security.” The following organizations have been selected for the 2007 Green Power Supplier Awards to recognize their work in three sub-categories: New Green Power Program or Product (Constellation NewEnergy – Baltimore, MD) This award recognizes green power programs or products judged as “most successful” in the marketplace based on both quantitative criteria, such as customer participation and green power sales, and qualitative criteria, such as overall value provided to customers. For the purposes of this award, a “new” program or product is defined as being first offered in 2004 or thereafter. Renewable Energy Marketer (3Degrees – San Francisco, CA; Sterling Planet – Norcross, GA; and SunEdison – Beltsville, MD) This award recognizes renewable energy project developers or technology vendors who play a prominent role in supplying renewable energy or a renewable energy technology used in green power markets. Green Power Program of the Year (Pacific Power and Rocky Mountain Power – Portland, OR; and Silicon Valley Power – Santa Clara, CA) This award recognizes exemplary green power programs judged on a combination of quantitative and qualitative criteria. Quantitative considerations emphasize program growth through continued effort and persistence. Quantitative criteria include number of customers participating, customer participation rate (where applicable), and green power sales. Qualitative criteria include the type of renewable resources offered and the overall value provided to customers, including but not limited to product pricing and fuel-price stability benefits. Separate awards will be considered for “small” and “large” programs. Today, more than half of all U.S. electricity customers have an option to purchase some type of green power product from a retail electricity provider. Currently, more than 750 utilities - or about 25% of utilities nationally - offer green power programs to customers. Overall, retail sales of renewable energy to consumers making voluntary purchases totaled about 12 billion kilowatt-hours in 2006, representing a 40% increase over last year’s sales data. The 2007 Green Power Supplier Awards will be presented this evening at the Seventh Annual Green Power Leadership Awards, which is being held in conjunction with the Twelfth National Renewable Energy Marketing Conference in Philadelphia. The Green Power Leadership Awards recognize outstanding commitments and achievements in the green power marketplace in the following three categories: Purchasers; Suppliers and; Market Development. DOE, EPA, and the Center for Resource Solutions each recognize winners in the Green Power Supplier, Purchaser, and Market Development categories, respectively. Learn more about “green power” and DOE’s 2007 Green Power Leadership Awards. Media contact(s): Megan Barnett, (202) 586-4940 U.S. Department of Energy | 1000 Independence Ave., SW | Washington, DC 20585 1-800-dial-DOE | f/202-586-4403 ***************************************************************** 53 Tri-City Herald: Bulk vitrification tests show some progress Published Monday, October 22nd, 2007 By Annette Cary, Herald staff writer The final full-scale test has been completed on bulk vitrification technology proposed to treat Hanford radioactive waste before a decision is made on construction of a pilot plant. "The results look good" as far as performance of the equipment planned for the pilot plant, said Ben Harp, Department of Energy project director. However, tests must be completed on the quality of the glass blocks that incorporate the radioactive waste. Those results are not expected until December. If DOE decides to go forward with a pilot plant, purchasing of materials and construction could start in fiscal year 2009. The pilot plant could begin operating in fiscal year 2011 and test runs could be completed in fiscal year 2012. Then a decision would be made on construction of a production bulk vit treatment system. DOE is considering using bulk vitrification to supplement the $12.2 billion vitrification plant being built at Hanford to treat radioactive waste now in underground tanks beginning in 2019. The main plant was not designed to treat all of Hanford's 53 million gallons of radioactive waste left from the past production of plutonium for the nation's nuclear weapons program. DOE must either expand the main vitrification plant or use a supplemental treatment technology, such as bulk vitrification, for some of the low-activity radioactive tank waste to complete treatment in a time frame that Hanford regulators will approve. The main vitrification plant will turn all the high-level waste and some of the low-activity waste into sturdy glass logs for permanent disposal. Bulk vitrification would turn the rest of the low-activity waste into glass blocks the size of land-sea shipping containers for permanent disposal. DOE began pouring concrete pads for a pilot plant to test the technology at full scale using radioactive waste in 2005. But the construction was halted by the end of that year, as DOE decided not to build the pilot plant with an unfinished design. Questions also were raised about the cost of the project. Since then, work has proceeded on the pilot plant design and on cost and schedule estimates. Testing also has continued. But without a pilot plant on the nuclear reservation, full-scale tests only could be done using mock waste that's not radioactive at a site north of Richland near the nuclear reservation. The full-scale tests done off-site this summer appear to show that a waste migration problem has been solved. Each steel box used to melt the waste with glass-forming materials is lined with sand and a refractory. Molten ionic salts that could carry radioactive waste had been migrating through the refractory into the sand. Adding cellulose to the mixture appears to bind up the salts, although more analysis of test results is being done. The test also showed that the proposed pilot plant systems could successfully operate together at full scale, according to DOE. However, some design modifications still may be needed for better operations. When final results are available on the quality of glass and the waste migration issue in December, DOE could approve the design for the pilot plant and its cost and schedule. The pilot plant project is expected to cost about $230 million, with about $100 million of that already spent in testing the technology and concept. Once a design is approved, a decision to build the pilot plant still would be needed later in 2008. If the pilot plant is approved, it would produce up to 50 test boxes of glassified waste by the end of fiscal year 2012. No money for bulk vitrification was included in DOE's budget request to Congress for fiscal year 2008, which began this month. To continue work to prepare for a possible start of construction on the pilot plant in fiscal year 2009, such as design modifications and testing of glass quality, DOE Hanford officials need $1.5 million to $5.4 million. Discussions are under way with DOE officials in Washington, D.C., to find the money. The Washington State Department of Ecology, which regulates treatment of Hanford tank waste, supports moving forward with more testing of bulk vitrification. "We're still at the point we think there's a viable option here," said Suzanne Dahl, of the Department of Ecology. "We're very interested in seeing if it proves itself out." But if bulk vitrification cannot be shown in pilot plant tests to produce glass that's as protective of the environment as glass produced at the main vitrification plant, the state will push for an expansion of the main vitrification plant. * Annette Cary: 582-1533; acary@tricityherald.com © 2007 Tri-City Herald, Associated Press & Other Wire Services ***************************************************************** 54 DOE: Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board, Idaho National Laboratory FR Doc E7-20689 [Federal Register: October 22, 2007 (Volume 72, Number 203)] [Notices] [Page 59520] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr22oc07-40] 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), Idaho National Laboratory. 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, 8 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Opportunities for public participation will be held from 1 to 1:15 p.m. and 4 to 4:15 p.m. These times are subject to change; please contact the Federal Coordinator (below) for confirmation of times prior to the meeting. ADDRESSES: AmeriTel Inn, 645 Lindsey Boulevard, Idaho Falls, Idaho 83401. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Robert L. Pence, Federal Coordinator, Department of Energy, Idaho Operations Office, 1955 Fremont Avenue, MS- 1203, Idaho Falls, ID 83415. Phone (208) 526-6518; Fax (208) 526-8789 or e-mail: pencerl@id.doe.gov or visit the Board's Internet home page at: http://www.inlemcab.org. 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 Topics (agenda topics may change up to the day of the meeting; please contact Robert L. Pence for the most current agenda): Progress to Cleanup Waste Area Group 7 Proposed Plan Chemical Processing Plant (CPP)-601 Status Special Nuclear Material Engineering Test Reactor After Action Briefing 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 Robert L. Pence at the address or 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 or calling Robert L. Pence, Federal Coordinator, at the address and phone number listed above. Minutes will also be available at the following Web site http://www.inlemcab.org/meetings.html . Issued at Washington, DC on October 17, 2007. Rachel Samuel, Deputy Advisory Committee Management Officer. [FR Doc. E7-20689 Filed 10-19-07; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 6450-01-P ***************************************************************** 55 OregonLive.com: First U.S. nuke plant at Hanford might become museum. But who writes the history? - Posted by mrollins October 22, 2007 06:58AM Categories: Eastern Washington, Puget Sound B reactor is a marvel of American engineering chutzpah -- created in secret during World War II in just under a year, based on a mockup built on a Chicago basketball court. It's plutonium fueled the country's first atomic bomb detonated in New Mexico. Now some Tri-Cities residents want to give their region an economic boost by turning the reactor into a tourist destination. Will a delegation from Nagasaki be invited to a grand opening? Will the local high school still insist on calling itself the the "Bombers" with a mushroom cloud logo as a mascot? The Seattle Times explores the social implications. "Even if you disagree with the principle of this, even if you believe this reactor never should have been built, you have to admire the complexity of what they built here -- the genius of it," Hanford historian Michele Gerber said while leading a tour of B Reactor. Without question, the reactor is a marvel of science, engineering and craft. B Reactor was constructed in a mere 11 months, a millionfold scale-up of an experimental reactor built on a Chicago sports court. But the reactor's place in the sociopolitical history of the U.S. and the world is more volatile and open to debate. Dr. David Hall, of Seattle, a past national president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, said the story told at a B Reactor museum must include a fair accounting of the human and financial costs of developing nuclear capabilities. He isn't sure that side of the story would get a full airing at a museum on the Hanford site. "It depends on who's writing the history," Hall said. "I want to honor the good intent and patriotism of the people who worked at B Reactor. On the other hand, science needs to be honest about its consequences and understand the Pandora's box that was opened." The Oregonian - The Oregonian Business Center | Hillsboro Argus © 2007 Oregon Live LLC. All Rights Reserved. Use of this site ***************************************************************** 56 El Paso/Las Cruces News: Vault at Los Alamos lab to help reduce security risks Associated Press - October 21, 2007 2:45 PM ET LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) - Los Alamos National Laboratory is hoping to reduce the risk of a security lapse with a $1.6 million super vault. The Super Vault Type Room that opened last month came partially in response to an incident last year in which a 22-year-old contract worker took secret data home from the lab. In years past, the lab has stored electronic classified media in a couple of hundred vaults and vault-like rooms spread throughout the 40 square-mile site. The lab is planning to consolidate those facilities into just a handful of vaults and three Super Vault Type Rooms. Los Alamos' super vault is the first at a National Nuclear Security Administration facility. All content © Copyright 2000 - 2007 WorldNow and KDBC. All Rights Reserved. ***************************************************************** NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: *****************************************************************