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Radioactive sludge heads for landfill sites in US

Thanks to James McGinnis reporting for the Bucks County Courier Times and found on the Phillyburbs web pages for the following.  Federal and state regulators have agreed to let Waste Management accept low-activity radioactive waste (which originated at the Limerick Nuclear Power Plant, Pennsylvania) at its landfills in Tullytown and Falls.

The landfill operator said it would transport 750 tons of sludge laced with radioactive Cesium-137 and Cobalt-60 in special “super sack, polyethylene bags.” That's enough to fill about 55 transport trucks.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission senior health physicist Betsy Ulrich said the “extremely small quantities” of radiation in the sludge pose an “extremely small risk” to the public. “It is highly unlikely that this would affect anyone.”

Environmental groups were nonetheless disturbed by the plan to import the radioactive materials to a municipal landfill along the Delaware River. “Agreeing to store nuclear waste is a slippery slope,” said James Browning, state director of the Public Intoerest Research Group.

Here’s a cautionary tale about the importance of looking what you’re doing (especially when working with uranium) from South Carolina brought to you by Andrew Shain writing for The State web pages. Westinghouse’s nuclear fuel plant in Columbia could face nearly U$100,000 in fines from federal regulators because a worker accidentally threw away vials of low-grade uranium.

Plant workers discovered in February that 16 sample vials containing a total of 4½ ounces of uranium hexafluoride were missing. The vials with the gel-like material are shipped inside cushioned, six-gallon steel containers. Lab technicians then remove the vials from the canisters to test the uranium.

An employee threw away the canisters, believing they were empty, said Jackie McCoy, spokeswoman for the plant, which annually produces enough nuclear fuel to provide 10% of the USA’s electricity.

Company officials using radiation detectors searched the plant, a scrap metal recycling facility, a metal shredding facility in Spartanburg and a landfill in Elgin. The federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission also searched, but nothing was found.

Chris Haslam, writing for The Times online web pages this week, brings us a cautionary tale should you be considering a holiday by the sea in Scotland. A beach contaminated by nuclear waste is a “radioactive minefield” that should be closed immediately, say worried locals.

Sandside beach, an attractive bay two miles west of the decommissioned fast-breeder reactor at Dounreay, is a popular stopping off site for tourists on the Highland coastal route – but campaigners say that thousands of tiny but potentially lethal radioactive fuel particles have contaminated the sand.

The Dounreay Particles Advisory Group (DPAG) has estimated that 5,000 particles have been accidentally discharged from the reactor’s crumbling storage shafts, with many being washed ashore at Sandside and the popular surf spots at Dunnet Bay and Murkle, east of Thurso.

The UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) says that just 27 particles were found on Sandside beach in 2007, eight of which were large enough to pose a significant health risk. The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) is required to scan the beach for particles every month and say the risk is minimal.

With thanks to Rory Sweeney, reporting for North Eastern Pennsylvania’s Times Leader web pages for this information. The only facility available for disposing certain levels of radioactive waste in Barnwell, South Carolina, closed its doors to Pennsylvania and 36 other states on July 1, meaning  waste producers will have to hold onto their waste until a new site is found.

Currently there are three disposal facilities in America for low-level radioactive waste, but one site is open only to a coalition of 11 western states. A second in Utah accepts only the lowest level of waste. The third (Barnwell) accepted the other two levels of low-level waste, but now does so only from the states in its coalition – Connecticut, New Jersey and South Carolina.

That leaves the 36 states with no place to send their B- and C-level wastes, which include medical wastes, certain material from nuclear reactors, both research and commercial, and some sensing equipment that includes radioactive components.

Thinking of buying property in Australia? Well, best read this report from the pages of The Age news site, then. New South Wales Health has been accused of failing to effectively clean up at least four Sydney properties at the site of a former uranium smelter that operated from 1908-1915. Some years after it closed the land was acquired by the state health department and subdivided.

NSW Health still owns the now vacant lots at numbers 7 and 9 Nelson Parade in Hunters Hill, but neither it nor the DECC could tell a recent inquiry where contaminated materials from the sites were sent after being removed in 1987.

"The records talk about it being removed and placed elsewhere but we don't know precisely where it went to," DECC regulation director Craig Lamberton said. When challenged about the disposal of the waste, he said: "Well, it was (more than) 17 years ago."

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This emotive story comes courtesy of Ginger Richardson, reporting for The Arizona Republic and found on the azcentral web pages. The U.S. government will spend tens of millions of dollars to assess and clean up uranium contamination across the vast Navajo Reservation, but the effort is unlikely to erase decades of frustration over what has been characterized as a slow and sporadic federal response.

The exploration scarred the three-state Navajo Reservation's landscape and resulted in what tribal officials call a public-health tragedy on the reservation. The premature deaths of Navajo miners, cancer clusters and passed-on genetic defects are all thought to be the result of prolonged uranium exposure.

Today, the Navajos say the new federal response effort, which includes testing of water sources and the review of hundreds of homes and buildings for radioactive materials, is a "good step forward." But they also have grave concerns about the proposal, which is short on specifics in several key areas.

"It's a significant step, but there's still a long road ahead of us," said Steve Etsitty, executive director of the Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency.

Here’s a tale of military incompetence, brought to you by Demetri Sevastopulo, reporting for the FT’s web pages.

The US military cannot locate hundreds of sensitive nuclear missile components, according to government officials familiar with a Pentagon report on nuclear safeguards. One official said the number of missing components was more than 1,000.

Robert Gates, US defence secretary, recently fired both the chief of staff and secretary after an investigation blamed the Air Force for the inadvertent shipment of nuclear missile nose cones to Taiwan. Mr Gates added that the Pentagon was evaluating the results of an inventory of all nuclear-related materials that had been conducted to re-establish "positive control" of such components.

This incident has raised concerns about US nuclear safeguards as Washington presses other countries to bolster counter-proliferation measures.

Thanks to World Nuclear News for this one. Swiss energy company Atel has submitted an application for framework approval of a new nuclear power plant to Switzerland’s Federal Office of Energy.

The Niederamt plant would be built alongside the Gösgen nuclear power plant, in which Atel owns a 40% stake, but would be independent of the existing plant. No reactor design is specified in the application, other than a "third generation light water reactor" that would use a virtually vapour-free "hybrid" cooling tower.

 Kernkraftwerk Niederamt AG (KKN), a 100% Atel-owned subsidiary, has been set up with responsibility for planning, building and operating the new and for obtaining the necessary approvals. Atel says it is looking for partners in the project and is currently talking to "various interested parties," including the operators of Switzerland's nuclear power plants. KKN envisages that the new plant could start up in 2021-2023.

Images: Swiss info / Nagra.ch

Our thanks to Glenn Gilbert, reporting for the Oakland Press. It has taken $4-per-gallon gasoline to get to this point, but the issue appears headed for some serious debate.

Mike Rogers, a Brighton Republican whose district includes much of northern Oakland County, California, aims to have 30 new nuclear plants online as part of his energy independence plan for the United States to attain energy independence by July 4, 2015. He says that will save 150,000 barrels of oil per day.

The climate-change movement is helping to fuel what amounts to a renaissance for nuclear power. Fossil fuels such as coal are considered harmful to the environment.

A spokesman was quoted as saying that nuclear power "is a great carbon footprint solution. Nuclear is a really good fit with the environmental climate."

This environmental story comes via Jeremy Loome, reporting for the Edmonton Sun. Albertans could face a significantly higher risk of radioactive exposure due to storage transportation, say opponents of a proposal to build a nuclear power station in Canada.

Canada is still 20 to 30 years away from completing a national storage facility which (according to the Nuclear Waste Management Organization) would see spent fuel rods from across the country being shipped to one central underground storage location.

According to environmental activists, a study out of the University of Calgary shows there is nowhere geologically appropriate at the proposed location that would suit an underground, temporary, on-site storage chamber.

With the Peace Country facility expected to take 12-15 years to be approved - if at all - that would mean transporting it to a storage facility elsewhere in the province. The risk from transportation will increase, says environmentalist and municipal councillor Trudy Keillor, when the federal facility is built some 15 years later. "Any time you're putting a lot more of this material on the roads, you are increasing the risk of public exposure," she said.

Seeing as there has been quite a few stories about submarines doing the rounds lately, here’s a very interesting story for you and one that made us think ‘Hello….’ thanks to Lewis Smith writing for the Times On-Line pages. Bob Ballard, the man who located the wreck of the Titanic in 1985, has revealed that the discovery was a cover story to camouflage the real (top secret) mission of inspecting the wrecks of two Cold War nuclear submarines – the USS Thresher and USS Scorpion. “We handed the data to the experts. They never told us what they concluded – our job was to collect the data. I can only talk about it now because it has been declassified.”

Both of the United States Navy vessels sank during the 1960s, killing more than 200 men and giving rise to fears that at least one of them, Scorpion, had been sunk by the USSR.

He was told that the military were not willing to spend a fortune on locating the Titanic, but they did want to know what had happened to their submarines. The military were anxious to know how the nuclear reactors had been affected by being submerged for so long.

Here’s something from deep in the heart of Texas, courtesy of Enrique Rangel writing for the Lubbock Online web pages.  Starting next year, residents of Andrews County and south-eastern New Mexico will live with nuclear waste buried in their large but sparsely populated area.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality agreed to let Dallas-based Waste Control Specialists dispose of radioactive waste in a dumping site 3.5 miles from the Texas-New Mexico border and 30 miles from the town of Andrews, the county seat.

"We're very pleased. We're very excited," Rod Baltzer, president of Waste Control Specialists told reporters after the commission voted 2-1 to authorise his company to dispose of the nuclear waste.

Andrews Mayor Bob Zap said after the hearing that he and other residents in the community of 9,652 were supportive of the company.

"Our town, from the very beginning, looked at this and asked questions. ... We studied it. We worked closely with them. "We're really supportive of everything that's being done and supportive of the way WCS has handled it and will continue to handle it. We don't have any questions or doubts."

This typical American non-story comes to you thanks to Garry Lenton, reporting for the Patriot News web pages. A breakdown in security procedures at Three Mile Island last summer was of moderate to serious significance, federal regulators concluded. Public safety was not jeopardized by the incident, which was first reported to the agency by plant operator AmerGen Energy.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission will increase inspections at the plant for at least a year to ensure that corrections have been made, said Neil Sheehan, agency spokesman.  Beyond that, the NRC is saying little about the incident, except that it did not involve inattentive or sleeping security officers. Now, where have we heard that before I wonder?

This environmental tale is brought to you thanks to Susan Smallheer reporting for the Rutland Herald news pages.  The recent spate of advertisements promoting the electric power generated at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant as "clean and green" doesn't tell the true story, said two Native Americans whose lands are severely affected by the nuclear power industry.

Lorraine Rekmans, of the Northern Ojibwa people from Elliot Lake, Ontario, and Ian Zabarte, from Mercury, Nev., secretary of state of the Western Shoshone National Council, spoke in Brattleboro  recently,  their last stop in a weeklong visit to Vermont.

Rekmans' home, which is located on the north shore of Lake Huron, was devastated by the pollution from 11 different uranium mines, which she said had turned 10 lakes in the area into radioactive waste sites. For every pound of uranium, she said, there is a ton of mine waste, and the waste was dumped into lakes.

"People who get their power from nuclear plants should know that uranium doesn't just fall out of the sky," she said.  Much of the Western Shoshone's tribal lands are now operated as the Nevada test site.

Looking for a bit of land to develop?  Bob Downing, reporting for the Ohio.com web pages, may have the answer.

A cleaned-up Ohio toxic waste dump is seeking a new owner: The Industrial Excess Landfill, a Superfund site that has been in the headlines for three decades, will soon be for sale under proposed consent decrees in U.S. District Court in Youngstown.

Negotiating terms of the sale will be up to potential buyers and Industrial Excess Landfill Inc., the Akron-based company that owns the 30-acre site.

But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has imposed restrictions on what can be done with the land: No houses, apartments, excavating or wells for drinking water. Potential buyers, Lake Township, are proposing to use the site as either green space, or a nature preserve. 

With grateful thanks to those nice people at Reuters for the following.  Entergy Corp's 1,266-megawatt Grand Gulf nuclear power station in Mississippi returned to full power yesterday (Thursday) after having reduced the unit to 48% on Wednesday.  Power was lost after a raccoon crawled into one of the switchgears at the plant!  Only in America, people…

The Grand Gulf station, which entered service in 1985, is located in Port Gibson in Claiborne County, about 130 miles north of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

On a more serious note: In February 2007, Entergy filed with the NRC through NuStart Energy Development LLC for permission to build one of General Electric Hitachi's 1,550 MW Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactors (ESBWR) at Grand Gulf. The company however has not yet decided whether it will build the new reactor.

With thanks to John Murawski, writing for The Charlotte Observer’s web pages for this one.

Nuclear opponents are trying to force Duke Energy of Charlotte to disclose the projected cost of a proposed nuclear plant in Cherokee County, S.C., that would serve the Carolinas. The groups have asked officials in both states to require that Duke disclose the estimate. Regulators for both South and North Carolina are expected to rule on the request soon – although by the time you read this, they may have done so already.

Duke Energy will have to reveal the project cost when it seeks a permit in South Carolina, but such a disclosure may be a year away. Nuclear opponents say the public shouldn't have to wait that long for vital information about such an important decision.

Cost estimates are available to state regulators, public officials and lawyers who sign confidentiality agreements. North Carolina's Public Staff agrees with Duke that the cost estimate qualifies as a trade secret under N.C. law.

Thanks goes to Owen McAteer, writing in the Northern Echo. The North East could become a major force in the nuclear power industry, the way it was for coal, the former head of British Nuclear Group believes. Lawrie Haynes put the case in favour of nuclear power at a debate in Yarm, near Stockton, organised by the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE).

He said it was "inevitable" that nuclear power would become a major source of the UK's energy and that the North East could become a key hub.

In January, British Energy, owners of Hartlepool power station, revealed plans to build a replacement reactor that would safeguard 700 jobs. The announcement followed the Government's support for a new generation of nuclear power plants. Mr Haynes later said: "Nuclear power could provide us with the opportunity to develop a nuclear supply industry that could position an area as a keen contributor to the world market. I think there is a real opportunity for the North-East to step in and fill that vacuum."

Gwen DuBois, writing for the Baltimore Sun’s web pages, brings us this environmental story from Maryland.

With the recent settlement between the state of Maryland and Constellation Energy Group, the power company is once again championing Calvert Cliffs as the site of a new nuclear power plant. This is not a cause for celebration.

On July 13, Constellation submitted the first new application to build a nuclear power plant in the U.S. since Three Mile Island. But the company threatened to go elsewhere if Maryland lawmakers re-established state regulatory control on new power plants.

Fear of a growing energy shortage is leading to calls for more nuclear power plants. With wind power already more economical than nuclear power, and solar power soon to be, one critic predicts nuclear power plants will be economically obsolete before they are built.

The following comes under the ‘We don’t want to worry you, but…’ category found thanks to the Whitehaven news web pages, courtesy of Alan Irving.

Milk on a local farm in the Sellafield area has been contaminated by higher levels of radioactivity which has entered the food chain. Abnormal concentrations of iodine-129 have been detected and sampling is taking place at other farms in the area to see if there are any traces of the same contamination.

The Environment Agency has given an assurance that there has been no health risk from the radioactive iodine but how the increased amounts have got into the milk is still a mystery. Iodine 129 is said to be present already in local milk but in very low concentrations, sometimes undetectable. The higher levels have since gone down on the farm concerned.

The contamination was picked up by Sellafield’s own monitoring team, which routinely samples milk around local farms.

This was filed by Danielle MacMurchy for the Tracey Press web site. The public was invited to speak out for or against a new nuclear weapons complex proposed by the National Nuclear Security Administration at a public hearing held in California yesterday (Tuesday.)

During the first informal hour, people had a chance to check out booths set up by the U.S. Department of Energy and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and hear the opposing perspective from Tri-Valley C.A.R.E.s, an anti-nuclear Lab watchdog. Afterward, each person who signed was allowed to speak for less than five minutes during the public comment portion.

Ted Wykadocument manager for the nuclear weapons complex’s environmental impact statement,  was due to give a half-hour presentation on the administration’s plans to modernize the nuclear weapons complex.  Lauren Martinez, spokeswoman for NASA’s Livermore site office, added: “This is important for the public to know how we want to achieve a smaller, safer, more secure and less expensive nuclear weapons complex.”

With thanks to Keith Johnson writing for the Wall Street Journal. “I think nuclear power has a great future, and we should look at it again:” so said California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger when closing The Wall Street Journal’s “ECO:nomics” recent conference. While he understands some people might still be afraid of the nuclear option, most Three Mile Island analogies are “environmentalist scare tactics. The technology has advanced so much,” he said.

That was the message from the nuclear industry at the same conference, grappling with a question beguiling policy makers—and plenty of Environmental Capital readers: If coal is out of the question, and renewables are too small, how will America get its power if it keeps ignoring the nuclear elephant?

“The U.S. is far behind the rest of the world,” said Tom Christopher, a top executive at France’s Areva, which builds nuclear reactors. He chalks that up to bad nuclear economics a generation ago, a dwindling of home-grown tech, and a “dysfunctional licensing process” in the U.S.

Here’s something that probably passed you by, courtesy of the Associated Press and Colorado’s Summit Daily web pages.

Jean Hediger can stand at the edge of her organic wheat farm in Nunn, Colorado and look west to the Rockies, east toward this speck-in-the-road town and straight ahead into what she sees as her worst nightmare.

A Canadian company’s plans to establish a uranium mine just across the two-lane county road from Hediger’s farm has triggered a bitter tug-of-war with residents of this fast-growing region about 70 miles north of Denver who fear the risk of contaminated water and other health problems.

“How do you farm organically next to a uranium mine?” Hediger asks. “It’s pretty darned scary, isn’t it?”

Powertech Uranium Corp. Chief Executive Officer Richard Clement insists the firm’s closed-system mining process, in which a solution of oxygen and sodium bicarbonate is injected to recover the uranium, is safe. “There’s a lot of misinformation out there about nuclear, about uranium, about radiation, about the effects of mining,” he said.

Russia has indicated that it will bid in a tender to build a nuclear power station in Armenia to replace an ageing Chernobyl-style plant that has provoked safety concerns, according to a recent Reuters report.

Armenia, which imports most of its energy, has said it will close down its Soviet-built Metzamor nuclear reactor only when it can add new generating capacity. The government said last year it would hold a tender to build a new 1,000 megawatt reactor at the site near Yerevan, which could be ready by 2016.

"The Armenian government will hold a tender for a new atomic station," Sergei Kiriyenko, the general director of Russia's Rosatom state nuclear holding company, said on a visit to Yerevan. "We will take part and we have good chances of winning."

Here is an almost non-story from the pages of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, filed by Gabriel Margasak. The St. Lucie nuclear power plant on Hutchinson Island, Florida, declared the lowest-level type of unusual event emergency recently after a hydrogen gas leak. No one was hurt and there were no radiation leaks or danger to the public, officials said.

The following was found thanks to AFP & Yahoo.  French nuclear giant Areva, oil company Total and utility group Suez have reached agreement on plans to build two next generation nuclear power plants in Abu Dhabi.  The two plants would be based on the third-generation system developed by Areva, the world's largest nuclear power group.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy went on a three-nation tour of Gulf Arab states, having offered to share France's expertise in civilian nuclear technology with the Islamic world.

France and the United Arab Emirates are to sign a framework accord for cooperation in developing civilian nuclear energy, a source close to talks between the two governments said earlier.

Amid concerns over Iran's nuclear ambitions, the six Arab monarchies of the Gulf decided to develop a joint nuclear technology programme for peaceful uses.

The following item comes to light, thanks to the ’30 year rule’ regarding the UK Government’s wheeling and dealing in the past and, of course, Iran’s Press TV web pages.  The 1977 British government records show London was secretly negotiating with Tehran to build 20 nuclear reactors for the Shah of Iran.

Following talks with the head of Iran's atomic energy program at the time, senior UK civil servants predicted Tehran would obtain the technology to build nuclear weapons - from Britain - by the end of the 20th century. In a note to Prime Minister James Callaghan, Britain's energy secretary Tony Benn said Iran would invest millions of pounds in pressurized water reactor technology in return for Britain's agreement to supply the reactors.
 
The project was postponed when the Shah fled Iran in 1979.

Russia is looking for cooperation with Uruguay in the field of nuclear energy, Sergei Koshkin (the Russian ambassador to the Latin American state) said recently. 'Our countries could maintain cooperation in the sphere of nuclear energy although Uruguay's legislation bans the use of nuclear energy.'

The diplomat said Uruguayan officials had also shown interest in a floating nuclear power plant. As we mentioned last year, Russia is currently building the world’s first floating nuclear power plant which should be ready to roll in 2011.

Koshkin said Uruguay's legislation would not have to be amended as Russian specialists could tow a plant to its coast and build a power line so that Uruguay could buy electricity. Russia could also undertake to provide maintenance of the plant and its subsequent disposal, he added

Due to a projected lack of balance between supply and demand in energy production in 2008, Turkey is planning to open its first nuclear power plant by 2012 in Sinop province of the Black Sea region and two more by 2020. In conjunction with this Russia has expressed interest in purchasing the waste to be produced by the nuclear plants, rendering the waste problem a moot point for Turkey.

The Turkish Atomic Energy Agency (TAEK) has presented a report on nuclear power plants which includes appropriate locations for constructing nuclear plants in Turkey. The years-long search has shown that the Sinop Inceburun Peninsula is a prime spot, far from the seismic belt and devoid of the problem of cooling water. The peninsula is located outside of settled areas, and the Black Sea would provide the necessary cooling, the report suggests.

Global giants of the nuclear sector, such as Westinghouse and Mitsubishi, began keeping their eye on Turkey following the government's announcement that it would launch bids for nuclear power plants in 2008

With thanks to Tristan J Schweiger, writing for the APP web pages. A total of 5,304 fish were killed as a result of the unplanned shutdown of the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in Lacey, New Jersey, a company official confirmed recently.

Operators manually shut down Oyster Creek's reactor after one of the three pumps that feed water into the reactor tripped, according to a report on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Web site.

A final root cause will likely take several weeks to determine.  Elaine Makatura, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Environmental Protection, said the determination of whether to impose any fines on the operator would be made after the cause of the incident is known.

The Bush administration has asked Congress for permission to expand the nuclear facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, as the planned facility would not be able to store all the spent waste safely.  If this was not approved the Energy Department would probably ask Congress’s permission next year for a second site to be built at Yucca. 

Nevadans and environmental groups believe that Yucca would not be able to store waste there safely for 1,000 years.

This little gem was found on the web pages of the International Herald Tribune. President Bush has approved "a significant reduction" in the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, cutting it to less than one-quarter its size at the end of the Cold War, the White House said recently. At the same time, the Energy Department announced plans to consolidate the nuclear weapons complex that maintains warheads and dismantle those no longer needed. 

White House press secretary Dana Perino said: ‘We are reducing our nuclear weapons stockpile to the lowest level consistent with America's national security and our commitments to friends and allies. A credible deterrent remains an essential part of U.S. national security, and nuclear forces remain key to meeting emerging security challenges.’

For you number - crunchers out there: there are believed to be nearly 6,000 warheads that either are deployed or in reserve and, under terms of a 2002 arms control treaty with Russia, the U.S. is committed to reducing the number of deployed warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200 by 2012. Well, no worries there, t

The following nugget is the kind of thing that makes my job worthwhile, thanks to the First Coast News web site: White  Plains,  N.Y.  A federal inspector found an armed guard asleep at a gate inside the Indian Point nuclear power plants but officials said there was no security breach.

The inspector spent two minutes trying to rouse the unnamed guard before he "stood up and opened his eyes," said Neil Sheehan, spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The five-year veteran was alone on the second of three security rings around the two plants in Buchanan, about 35 miles north of New York City, but all other security measures at the gate remained operational.  Tapes showed there was no breach but Sheehan later said “that doesn’t make it any less serious..”

Found on the Tennessean web pages: An American company that disposes of radioactive nuclear waste by burying it wants to ship 20,000 tons of the material from overseas through ports in Charleston and New Orleans. Energy Solutions Inc. wants to ship about 200,000 cubic feet of waste into the United States, process it in Tennessee before burying it at a site in Clive, Utah, where the company is based.

A spokesperson for Energy Solutions said that it is a leader in the safe handling and disposal of radioactive solutions.

However, there is a stumbling block to overcome: Byron Miller, spokesman for the State Ports Authority said: ‘We don’t handle any radioactive materials.

Found recently on the pages of The Charlotte Observer:  Two cars on a train carrying spent radioactive nuclear fuel jumped the tracks at the Shearon Harris nuclear plant about 25 miles southwest of Raleigh, North Carolina, Progress Energy said recently.

No one was injured in the accident, and the waste -- transported in 75-ton reinforced concrete casks -- was undamaged. Human error has been cited as the cause of the accident; a spokesman for the nuclear plant said: "It was a miscommunication about whether or not the preparations on the actual track had been made in order to move the train."

In case you were wondering, the train remained upright as it was only travelling at around 4 mph

This tale comes with thanks to Matthew Santoni writing for the Examiner web pages: Federal investigators plan more inspections at Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania, because of continuing concerns emerging from an investigation into guards caught sleeping on the job (what is it with US security guards?  This is the second story we’ve run on this subject this year).

Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspectors will visit the nuclear power plant over the coming year to ensure that operator Exelon Nuclear has taken adequate steps to deal with the sleeping guards and the supervisors who never reported them.

One guard at the plant secretly videotaped others sleeping on the job last summer after his complaints to supervisors went unheeded, then released the tapes to a New York TV station.

Officials recently scrutinised the handling of a radiation scare at Bahrain International Airport, which put three men in hospital, according to a recent report in the Gulf Daily News. Three Nepalese porters were transferring radioactive material from one Gulf Air flight to another when it was thought one of the containers had leaked.

They were taken to Salmaniya Medical Complex (via a Bahrain Airport Services vehicle!) and were isolated until tests showed them free from any radioactive contamination. Authorities said later that wetness on one of the containers of radioactive medical waste turned out to be harmless condensation and that taking the men to hospital was just a precaution.

Interior Ministry officials said they had not been informed about the incident by airport authorities and that the first they heard of it was from the SMC Accident and Emergency Department doctors

This little gem may have passed you by, so here’s a report filed by Richard Owen on the Times online web pages. Anti-Mafia police in Italy are investigating eight former directors of the country’s energy agency for alleged illegal trafficking in nuclear waste and “clandestine production of plutonium”.

Francesco Basentini, head of anti-Mafia police at Potenza, in southern Italy, said that the former managers in the National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and the Environment were accused of connivance with the Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian Mafia, and the ’Ndrangheta, the Calabrian Mafia. The accusation came after a 12-year inquiry into Mafia involvement in nuclear waste disposal.

Found on the Sydney Morning Herald website: Northern Australia would be at risk of nuclear fallout if Indonesia's proposed nuclear power station suffered a major failure, environmentalists said.

The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) said a university study 13 years ago - when Indonesia last raised the prospect of a nuclear power station - found the north of Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland "would be at substantial risk of receiving radioactive fallout" in the event of a major reactor failure.

Indonesia's government is expected to make a final decision soon on whether it will pursue nuclear energy, as it grapples with surging energy needs and is looking at building up to 4 power plants on Central Java’s Muria Peninsular.

Electricite de France (EdF), the world's biggest nuclear power generator has joined with Toyota, the world's biggest car company, to advance plug-in hybrid vehicle technology.

EdF will run a fleet of four Toyota Prius hybrid cars  which have been adapted to draw electric power from mains supply. The public road trial, which will involve the every-day driving of EdF staff, will begin this autumn in France and could be expanded to other European countries in future.

Experience gained from the project should help the pair develop Toyota's existing prototype technology to expand the use of electricity in transportation.

Current hybrid vehicles are primarily fuelled by traditional petrol or diesel available at filling stations.
However, the ability to plug a parked hybrid vehicle into mains supply for battery charges would mean that most short trips could be undertaken solely on electric power. Furthermore, using grid electricity would mean a car could be partly powered by low-carbon technologies like hydro, nuclear power or wind

This report comes from Kathryn Thier, at The Charlotte Observer, found on the News & Observer website. Plans are under way to distribute pills to 1.4 million people in North and South Carolina to protect them in a nuclear disaster, replacing ones distributed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Officials are urging the public not to throw away their old potassium iodide pills as the Food and Drug Administration has extended their shelf life for two years.

Despite the shelf life extension, Carolinas officials are ordering new doses now. State health officials have said new pills are on order with the federal government to replace the outdated medication for residents living near nuclear reactors: The pills are expected to arrive around October 2008.

Found on the Reuters UK site with thanks to Pete Harrison.  Britain must keep its ageing nuclear power stations running as long as possible if it is to avoid a damaging shortage of power in five to seven years' time, British Energy Chief Executive Bill Coley said recently.

The nuclear power firm is assessing the economics of extending the lives of its Hinkley Point plant in southwest England and Hunterston plant in Scotland, both due to close in 2011.

Mr. Coley told Reuters: "What is critically important for the country is to operate all these units as long as we can.”  "When I take the company view of long-term power prices ... prices would support life extensions."

Britain is close to deciding whether to back a new generation of nuclear plants, which would boost the global industry as it recovers from the 1986 explosion at Chernobyl.

Picked up from the Sky news site: A former nuclear weapons base deep in a Czech forest is at the heart of a new Cold War-style row between Russia and the United States.

Paired with 10 missiles in Poland it will form a 'son of star wars' missile defence shield. The perceived threat is so-called rogue states like Iran or North Korea. The trouble is the Russians see the base, right on their doorstep, as a potential threat to them.

Nuclear expert Joseph Cirincione thinks they have a point. "Putin isn't making it up," he said. "Those radars could also track a Russian missile, and those interceptors could be tipped with nuclear weapons and be used for a pre-emptive attack on Russia."

Here’s something to make you think whilst packing your suitcases for your annual jaunt to foreign climes; a little gem found in yesterday’s Guardian. Apparently, there is a chance that future visitors to the USA and, possibly, Europe may find themselves being scanned for traces of radioactive materials! 

Because there are so many radioactive materials and articles going ‘missing’ every year (as we have mentioned in this section before) officials fear that it would be very easy to get hold of some of it for nefarious uses!! Our friends at the IAEA report that there have been 16 confirmed cases of illegal trafficking of enriched uranium of the past 10 years and also that incidents involving material with the potential to make a dirty bomb run into 100s.

People who have had radioactive iodine treatment (been there, done that!) are advised not to travel too soon after treatment as this, too, can set machines buzzing and bleeping and, in one instance back in 2003, led a bus in a New York tunnel to be stopped by the State Police as a passenger on board had had similar treatment earlier in the day!!

This comes from a report filed recently through Reuters: A recent US Energy Department audit found that some facilities that handle the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile misplaced classified bomb components under their care.

The department's Inspector General also found there was confusion at the facilities over who was responsible for keeping track of weapons parts and recommended changes in how to better safeguard the parts. However, John Broehm, a spokesman for the department's National Nuclear Security Administration that oversees the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal, said his agency disagreed with the recommendations.

He said the parts, which he declined to identify, were later found

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The following comes thanks to Elizabeth Souder’s article on the Dallas Morning News web site: Support for new nuclear power plants deteriorated slightly during the past two years among people living close to existing reactors, according to a recent survey by the Nuclear Energy Institute.

The institute said that 82 % of people living near nuclear power plants favour nuclear energy, and 71 percent are willing to see a new reactor in the neighbourhood.

Since the last survey, taken in 2005, nuclear power companies have announced plans to build nearly 24 more reactors across the U.S. and the government is streamlining the licensing process and offering loan guarantees to kick-start the industry. Of course the ‘X’ factor in all this is whether Americans will protest about having new plants in their back yards…

This little gem is rather old news, but there are things we just can’t pass by without a mention. According to the folks at the National Archive it was revealed back in 2004 that there was once a secret plan to build a nuclear landmine 'run' by live chickens.

Conceived during the Cold War, the seven tonne device was the size of small truck and was designed to be buried (or submerged) by a British Army retreating from Soviet forces.

Scientists working on the project realised that the bomb could fail in winter if vital components become too cold, so they explored ways of keeping the inner workings warm. One proposal put forward consisted of filling the casing of the nuke with live chickens, who would give off sufficient heat, prior to suffocating or starving to death, to keep the delicate explosive mechanism from freezing.

The five established nuclear powers - the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain - possess enough nuclear warheads to obliterate the world many times over.

Yet it is more than 30 years since they signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which includes a commitment to dismantle these weapons.

In the intervening period, the Cold War has ended but new nuclear threats have emerged. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, signed in 1970, is the most widely accepted arms control agreement.  Back in 2000 a total of 187 states had signed up to the agreement, the exceptions at that time being Cuba, Israel, India, and Pakistan.

The treaty obliges the nuclear powers never to transfer their nuclear technology to other countries, and forbids other countries from acquiring nuclear capability.  In turn, the nuclear powers are supposed to work towards the elimination of their stockpiles.

Just in case you weren’t paying attention, here’s a bit of news from the BBC’s web site: Test explosions on giant cooling towers at the Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria have been declared a success.

Controlled blasts on four towers took place recently as a prelude to their demolition later this year. Experts detonated a charge on a small part of each of the 290ft (88m) high towers' shells. The demolition of the towers is part of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority's (NDA) plan to dismantle ageing facilities throughout the UK.

Jack Williamson, the cooling towers project superintendent, said: "The test was a real-time dry run of all the safety, engineering and communications systems that will be used on demolition day. It was an essential and valuable part of our preparatory work and I'm pleased to report that it was a success."

Radioactive waste exported to Peru from Scotland almost 10 years ago has been returned to the Dounreay nuclear plant in Caithness. It was originally exported to Peru to be used for gas mantles, but as Peru has no specialist treatment or disposal facilities, moves began last year to return the material to Scotland.

It has emerged that 2.9 tonnes of thorium nitrate arrived safely at the site after a marathon sea and road trip from South America in an operation thought to cost £1.7m. A 12-strong team from Caithness travelled to Lima to prepare the waste for its month-long return journey.

The waste was originally produced at the Caithness nuclear plant as a by-product of reprocessing.

A man who sent a white powder to a nuclear agency (the NDA) in Whitehaven, Cumbria, sparking a security alert will not face any charges, as police have now decided there was "no criminal intent".

At least 20 firefighters, along with police and two ambulance crews were on standby for more than five hours after mailroom staff alerted them over the package. Cumbria Police suspected the powder was toxic, but laboratory tests proved it was harmless.

The NDA said it was reviewing security procedures as a result of the alert

Never let it be said that we don’t get around! Georgian Border Police reported that it had detected radioactive emissions from scrap metal in a truck on the Georgian-Azerbaijani border on June 15. A Tbilisi-based TV station reported on June 19 that the Georgian Border Police had detected nuclear materials – a mixture of plutonium and beryllium – in a truck coming from Azerbaijan. The truck was sent back to Azerbaijan.

The Border Police, however, stressed in a statement that only very small traces had been detected on the scrap metal during a routine customs check. The truck was carrying different types of scrap metal and there was a trace of radiation found on one of the pipes. Relevant agencies were informed and the decision was made to send the truck and its cargo back to Azerbaijan.

Sweden: Olkiluoto units 1 and 2 will receive new low-pressure steam turbines under a Eur100 million ($135 million) deal signed by owner Teollisuuden Voima Oy (TVO) and Alstom. Unit 1 will also receive a new generator.

TVO said that the work is part of its long-term development plan for the units, which are boiling water reactors built by Sweden's ABB Atom at the end of the 1970s. Originally rated at 690 MWe each, the power plants have undergone several technical improvements over the years to reach outputs of 870 MWe each, and increase their operational periods to 60 years. Between them they provide about 12% of Finland's electricity.

According to a recent report released by the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, radioactive materials are being released from nuclear weapons facilities to regular landfills and could get into commercial recycling streams.

Diane D’Arrigo, NIRS’ Radioactive Waste Project Director, said "People around regular trash landfills will be shocked to learn that radioactive contamination from nuclear weapons production is ending up there, either directly released by DOE or via brokers and processors.  Just as ominous, the DOE allows and encourages sale and donation of some radioactively contaminated materials."

And, just in case you were thinking about moving to Tennessee (well, you might) the report found that the State of Tennessee is a leader in licensing processors that can release radioactive materials for the nuclear waste generators. "Tennessee is serving as a funnel to bring in nuclear weapons and power waste from around the country to disperse into the landfills and recycling without public knowledge," D'Arrigo said

News from Down Under: Nuclear Fuel Australia Ltd will submit a preliminary feasibility study on building a facility to enrich domestically-sourced uranium. An advance briefing has already been submitted to John Howard's government.

The move comes shortly after the Australian Labour Party (ALP) voted to end its restrictive uranium mining policy and allow individual states to decide on new mines. The Uranium Mining, Processing and Nuclear Energy Review commissioned by the government said that nuclear power was prospective for Australia if significant costs were put on carbon emissions.

Future plans envisage a 3 million separative work unit (SWU) per year plant using Urenco 6th-generation centrifuge technology.

Due to the US government’s refusal to reprocess spent uranium, unlike Europe and Japan, there are some worrying results when it comes to storing the uranium rods at various plants throughout the country.  Take for instance a story we found thanks to the Hanford News web site regarding storage at the Columbia Generating Station in the Pacific North-West (pictured).

When it was recently shut down in order to refuel its uranium rods the old ones were encased in special steel cylinders and concrete cases.  These were then ringed with razor wire fences and monitored by security cameras.  Apparently this scenario is common at dozens of other plants in up to 31 states, before they are shipped to Nevada (yep, you guessed it - Yucca)  along with other by-products, such as plutonium, to sit in the hot desert sun whilst they decide what to do with it all. 

Mohammad Alavi, a former nuclear engineer, was accused of taking software back to Iran recently.  He told FBI agents that he left his job at the nation's largest nuclear power plant and moved to Iran to be closer to relatives. He took the software with him so he could show off to his family and friends there.

Alavi, who lived in the U.S. as a naturalized citizen for 30 years and worked at the Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station west of Pheonix, Arizona, for 16 years, is charged with violating a trade embargo with Iran, which carries a maximum penalty of 21 months in prison. Trial is set for July 3. The software he downloaded onto his personal laptop was part of an emergency-training package containing details of the plant's control rooms, reactors and designs. It is not classified, has no links to actual plant workings and can't be used to affect operations.

Found, courtesy of Reuters:  Germany should reconsider a plan to phase out nuclear energy or it will undermine the security of its power supply and make it harder to tackle global warming, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said.

If the plan to phase out atomic power by the early 2020s goes ahead, Germany is likely to be increasingly reliant on Russian natural gas, and burn more fossil fuels. As Chancellor Angela Merkel hosts a summit of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised nations  she will press for more concerted action on combating global warming, although dropping nuclear power would make this much harder. "While the phase-out threatens to result in higher overall emissions of carbon dioxide than today, it will certainly prevent Germany from reaching its full potential over the long term," the IEA said. "We strongly encourage the government to reconsider the decision to phase out nuclear power."

Rosatom (Russia's Federal Atomic Energy Agency) and United Company Rusal, the world's largest aluminium and aluminium oxide producer, made joint statements recently, explaining that they will undertake a feasibility study on an "energy metallurgical company comprising a nuclear power plant and an aluminium plant."

A working group is currently preparing a feasibility report which will specify the parameters of the nuclear power plant and the aluminium plant. Once that report is complete, at the end of the year, Rusal and Rosatom would prepare a schedule for the project which would be financed as a public-private partnership. The new plant is likely to be built in Siberia where Rusal already has other plants in operation including one in Krasnoyarsk

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Two Finnish power companies have launched environmental impact assessment (EIA) processes for the possible future construction of new nuclear power plants at the Loviisa and Olkiluoto sites.

Fortum, owner of the two-unit Loviisa plant, started the EIA process in April 2007, with completion expected in the third quarter of 2008. “With the EIA process, Fortum raises its preparedness to build a new nuclear power unit in Loviisa,” according to the company's senior Vice President Tapio Kuula.

The nuclear nations' operational arsenals contain over 21,000 nuclear weapons and their militaries still retain hundreds of nuclear-armed launchers and nuclear-capable military units. The threat of a serious nuclear weapons accident has not disappeared; this is particularly the case where the arms race remains the most active. At sea where nuclear-armed and nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines still go on regular patrols at levels that have not changed much if at all from the height of the Cold War.  Here are just a couple of examples found by Greenpeace: 6 October 1986: The K-219, a Soviet Yankee class (Project 667A) nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine armed with 16 SS-N-6 missiles (two warheads each) and probably also two nuclear torpedoes, sank 600 miles northeast of Bermuda. It was powered by two nuclear reactors and 34 nuclear warheads were estimated to be on board.

Meanwhile, back on land: 19 September 1980: A fire and explosion in a U.S. Titan II missile silo near Little Rock, Arkansas, blew off the silo door and catapulted the missile's 9 megaton yield warhead into the air. It landed over a 1,000 feet from the silo, but it was only slightly damaged

.With radiating waves, a skull and crossbones and a running person, a new ionising radiation warning symbol is being introduced to supplement the traditional international symbol for radiation, the three cornered trefoil.  The new symbol, launched by the IAEA and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), is intended for IAEA Category 1, 2 and 3 sources defined as dangerous sources capable of death or serious injury, including food irradiators and industrial radiography units. The symbol is to be placed on the device housing the source, as a warning not to dismantle the device or to get any closer. It will not be visible under normal use, only if someone attempts to disassemble the device.

A new UK policy for managing solid low level radioactive waste has been published setting out priorities for managing existing and future wastes from the nuclear energy industry and other sources. In creating a UK-wide strategy for managing low level nuclear industry waste, the government requires a plan for the optimal use of the country's existing LLW repository near Drigg, Cumbria.

The policy, published by the UK Government, follows a public consultation in 2006, and puts proving public safety at the forefront, while setting out a flexible approach to low level waste (LLW) management. The policy's key aim is not to be prescriptive but "to provide a high level framework within which individual LLW management decisions can be taken flexibly to ensure appropriate safe, environmentally-acceptable and cost-effective management solutions."

Roosting bats have caused a four-month delay to the UK's leading clean-up program. A colony of protected Pipistrelle bats has colonized the structure of the former Capenhurst plant, which is currently being demolished by British Nuclear Group (BNG). After hibernating over the winter, the tiny flying mammals are now fully active and there is a possibility they may begin to breed. BNG is hoping to stick to its 2009 completion date and is currently consulting with local conservationists. They are also investing in new roosting boxes to encourage the bats to live elsewhere

Here’s one that may have passed you by, courtesy of those nice people at World Nuclear News: The European Council reached agreement on a plan that requires greenhouse gas emissions to be cut by at least 20% from 1990 levels by 2020.  The role of nuclear energy was one of the main debating points, with most countries supporting the role of nuclear power as a means of moving away from fossil fuels. The official conclusions were that each EU nation should decide whether to use nuclear power as opposed to fossil fuels: although it was noted that a recent European commission report said that nuclear energy could, indeed, contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions!

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The Pacific Heron, Pacific Nuclear Transport Ltd's (PNTL's) newest ship, has been launched at the Tamano shipyard in Japan where it is currently being built by Mitsui Engineering & Shipbuilding.

The launch of the 4500 t ship on 10 May took place in front of a number of senior European and Japanese nuclear industry representatives. The $60 million vessel has now been towed to an outfitting berth where its construction will be completed. The Pacific Heron is expected to be delivered to PNTL in November 2007 and to arrive at its home port of Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, UK, in early 2008.

Just in case you were interested, the Pacific Heron is an INF 3 certified vessel under the INF Code of the International Maritime Organization (IMO). The INF Code regulates shipments by sea of used nuclear fuel, plutonium and high-level radioactive waste. PNTL's ships have cargo compartments protected by a reinforced double hull together with back-up availability of all essential systems to ensure the safety of shipments of radioactive materials.

The exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power station is teeming with life. It may be the most contaminated place on earth, but in fact it is a perfect place for wildlife. As humans were evacuated from the area, animals and birds moved in, including Przewalski’s horses. Existing populations multiplied and species not seen for decades, such as the lynx and eagle owl, began to return.

There have even been tantalising footprints of a bear, an animal that has not trodden this part of the Ukraine for centuries, and birds have been seen nesting in the steel