How much did you say that scanner cost?

Robert O’Harrow Jr, reporting for the Washington Post, crunches some numbers for us.

The Department of Homeland Security office responsible for protecting the nation from nuclear and radiological terrorism is largely scrapping plans for new high-tech detectors for screening vehicles and cargo, saying they cost too much and do not work as effectively as security officials once maintained.

In a Feb. 24 letter to Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the acting chief of the Domestic Nuclear Detection Office said officials will possibly use the machines only for secondary screening, at no more than about a third of the cost originally planned.

The development virtually ensures the collapse of one of the most prominent national security initiatives in the Bush administration, which aggressively touted the machines as a high-tech front-line defense against the importation of nuclear materials.

Bush administration officials in 2006 committed to spending at least $1.2 billion on the development and deployment of Advanced Spectroscopic Portal machines, saying they would dramatically improve screening of vehicles and cargo containers over existing equipment. They estimated that each machine would cost about $377,000.

But officials from the Government Accountability Office, Congress's investigative agency, turned up evidence that the machines did not work as well as billed. They later discovered that the machines cost far more than DNDO officials had told Congress - as much as $822,000 each. (5/3/10)

Workers fear reprisals for speaking out at San Onofre

Yet another tale they didn’t really want you to know, this time courtesy of The Santa Maria Times and The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Workers at the San Onofre nuclear power plant fear retaliation if they report a safety concern, according to a leaked internal company memo.

The plant, in northwest San Diego County, has been under increased scrutiny by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for safety problems. Over the last two years, the plant operated by Southern California Edison has increased training, changed top managers and replaced a contractor.

A survey of workers conducted by a commission inspector shows workers fear for their jobs if they report safety issues. The findings were included in a Feb. 3 company memo leaked this week to the environmental group San Clemente Green. According to the memo, the commission received 63 allegations of safety concerns at the plant between 2008 and 2009, and 25 of the people making the allegations feared retaliation. San Onofre workers report safety violations 10 times more often than the industry average, the memo states.

Ross Ridenoure, chief nuclear officer, said the plant is working on improving the safety culture, and company surveys show progress. "We have zero tolerance for any type of retaliation," he said.

Similar allegations have previously been leveled at plant officials. In November, two plant workers filed federal whistle-blower complaints against the plant, saying managers retaliated against them after they disciplined an employee who violated regulations while welding a nuclear waste canister. Ridenoure would not comment on pending litigation.

Gary Headrick, a founder of San Clemente Green, said a plant manager leaked the memo. Headrick said it was important to shed light on the issue because the plant is scheduled to restart a reactor that he believes may have been rushed back into service.(26/2/10)

US students may have been exposed to radiation on campus

Found on a blog spot called Driven News, this is written by NY Scribe.

Students, faculty and administrators at New York University, Stanford, Columbia, MIT, SUNY at Stony Brook and over a dozen universities in the United States may have been exposed to cancer causing radiation, beryllium, plutonium, silica and other highly toxic substances while attending school or working at universities holding contracts with the Department of Energy from 1941 through the present. 

The universities on a list from Department of Energy (DOE), Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act  (EEOICPA) website provided by the Office of Health, Safety and Security were listed as “Atomic Weapons Employers”, “Beryllium Vendors” and  “Weapons Research and Development Facilities” doing work such as  “nuclear research involving plutonium and uranium” at the universities’ laboratories.   

Over 400 contaminated DOE sites, or their contractors and subcontractors, are listed by the EEOICPA. Persons at listed DOE sites may be compensated for their exposure to toxic and radioactive substances in the course of their work and research but if the exposed person is already deceased, surviving relatives could be entitled to monetary compensation

Any person who worked or studied at the university sites listed, during the specified time periods, are entitled to a free medical screening, medical benefits and lump sum payments from $150,000 to $400,000 dollars if they have cancers or other illnesses presumed to be caused by their exposure to carcinogenic and radioactive substances when the DOE was working on early nuclear weapons creation and testing at many American colleges; including several in the New York area.(24/2/10)

Progress Energy's extra payment demand is 'unconstitutional'

Ivan Penn and the pages of the St Petersburg Times bring us news on Progress Energy.

A group protesting charges by Progress Energy for its planned nuclear plant in Levy County has filed suit against the utility, claiming the advance fees for the plant are unconstitutional.

The five plaintiffs who are part of the Citizens for Ratepayers Rights Inc. state that Progress Energy has been allowed to collect money from customers without providing any benefits or services and to enrich itself even if the plant is never built.

As part of the complaint, the plaintiffs are seeking class-action status for their claim, filed in the Circuit Court for Sumter County. "We truly believe this is unconstitutional," said Suzan Franks, one of the plaintiffs and president of the Citizens for Ratepayers Rights. "We really have tried every avenue possible to get them to understand. This was the only way we could do it."

Progress Energy plans to build a $17 billion nuclear plant on a 5,000-acre site 4 miles north of the nearest town, Inglis. The utility had planned to start producing power in 2016 but announced a 20-month delay in its plans to at least March 2018. As part of Progress Energy's effort to recoup cost of construction of the facility, customers pay $5.86 a month per 1,000 kilowatt hours toward up-front costs. (19/2/10)

Test delays worry remaining 176 workers at Bruce Power (don't worry, we're processing 2 a day!)

Paul Jankowski, writing for the Owen Sound Sun Times, brings us up to date with the events at Bruce Power.

The 195 workers at Bruce Power who are being tested for exposure to alpha radiation are understandably concerned and frustrated with the slow pace of the process, a company spokesman said last week.

"We've had 19 people go through testing (so far). It's urine sampling. It's a slow process and that's the frustrating thing for our workers and for us," John Peevers said. He went on to say that there is only one place accredited by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission to do the tests, an Atomic Energy of Canada lab at Chalk River, and it can only process two samples a day.

The discovery of alpha radiation came as a surprise during work on refurbishing Bruce A Unit 1, which the company hopes to return to power generation in 2011. The first hint came during a routine air sample test on Nov. 26, while crews were working on feeder tubes inside the Bruce A Unit 1 nuclear vault. Two days later a similar radiation spike was found. "We initially thought it was cobalt," Peevers said. But the samples were sent out for testing and in December, we find out that it's alpha (radiation), which we weren't expecting.”

Nuclear power plant operators tend only focus on beta and gamma radiation: Alpha is different as it's a larger particle so it's not as penetrating. If it's inhaled or ingested that's the potential hazard.(15/2/10)

450kg of uranium ore found in Brasil rainforest

We found this little gem on the pages of RIA Novosti - Police in the north Brazilian state of Amapa have unearthed a cache with 450 kg of enriched uranium ore, a dangerous mineral used for nuclear arms production.

The operation to seize radioactive material was a result of four-month work by investigators, who found a bag of pitchblende on Friday in a remote area of tropical rainforest.

Pitchblende, or uraninite, is an extremely radioactive mineral used as a major component for the production of fuel for nuclear power plants and nuclear arms. An investigation is underway.

Brazil's nuclear capabilities are considered the most advanced in Latin America. The country runs its sole nuclear power plant, Angra, with two reactors, and a third is under construction.(25/1/10)

Standing down at Erwin

Bill Jones, writing for the Greenville Sun in Tennessee, starts off the New Year with this.

After a fire in November, Nuclear Fuel Services, Inc., announced that it is "standing down" some operations at its Erwin plant while "implementing organizational, facility, and management changes that will enhance existing stringent safety controls and processes."

NFS spokesman Lauri Turpin said "all areas of the plant are currently idle." She noted that NFS normally suspends operations for one week during the Christmas-New Year's holiday period.

Turpin said this year the normal shutdown took place the week of Christmas, but NFS officials chose to continue that shutdown while beginning implementation of new safety measures.

She continued that NFS officials are "not ready to commit" to a specific date for restarting full operations and that some areas of the plant will remain operational, but declined to specify which areas.

A press release issued by NFS said the company "developed these changes following consultation with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Both NFS and the NRC are committed to ensuring that the highest level of safety commitment, culture and compliance are in place for licensed operational processes." (4/1/10)

Change of heart in Denmark over nuclear power

Thanks to the pages of CPH Post for this. A new study on Danish attitudes towards nuclear power counterclaims one published two weeks ago, which demonstrated a majority support the use of the energy source, reports trade publication Ingeniřren.

Two weeks ago, a Gallup/Berlingske Tidende newspaper poll claimed a majority of people supported the use of nuclear power. The new A&B Analyse poll, conducted for political news website Altinget.dk, shows there is considerable resistance to atomic energy.

The discrepancy in the two polls can be explained by the questions asked. The latest one asks respondents if they are in favour of, or against, the construction of nuclear power plants in Denmark, to which 60 percent said no and 25 percent answered yes.

In the Gallup poll, however, people were asked whether atomic power could be ‘an important part of the solution to the climate problem’. It therefore did not ask respondents about the actual placement of nuclear power plants in Denmark nor whether it was their preferred source of energy.

According to Altinget.dk, there is still broad agreement across political parties not to introduce nuclear power in Denmark. The website indicated that only the tiny Liberal Alliance party is in favour of the move.

Is this what you want to see in the New Forest? Thought not..

We found this report by Peter Law writing for the Southern Daily Echo and bring it to you in its entirety. Radioactive waste from the controversial Sellafield nuclear plant is set to be disposed of in Hampshire, the Southern Daily Echo can reveal.

Under a proposal out to consultation last week, ten trucks a year would make the 350- mile journey from Cumbria to an incinerator in Fawley, on the edge of the New Forest.

Each truck would carry about 40 barrels of low-level radioactive waste oil to the Spanish-owned facility. Up to 100 cubic metres of radioactive waste would be sent to Hampshire each year, a spokesman for Sellafield said.

Java going nuclear? Good question..

Today we travel to Indonesia, thanks to Tom Allard and the Sydney Morning Herald. Indonesia could formally embrace nuclear power as early as next year as senior Government members push to revive a proposal to build up to four reactors just 30 kilometres from a volcano in Central Java.

The country is beset by regular blackouts that are crimping industrial production and deterring investors, and nuclear energy is being resurrected as a means to meet the country's growing electricity needs while also capping carbon emissions.

But serious concerns remain about the viability of the plan, not least because Java is one of the most densely populated areas in the world and is prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that could cause catastrophic radioactive leaks.

''There are pros and cons on the nuclear power issue but if you ask my personal opinion, of course I want to use it,'' Agusman Effendi, a member of the council, said. ''The building should begin in 2010 because our fossil fuel resources are decreasing from time to time.''

Mr Effendi suggested it could take 10 years to build the reactor.

Uranium prices are falling - time to start shopping!!

Stuck for a present idea for that hard-to-buy-for person? Well, Pratima Desai, reporting for Reuters, has a gift idea for you.

A supply glut could see uranium prices tumble over coming months, but that will be a buying opportunity as demand from nuclear reactors over coming years is expected to surge.

Governments around the world are sizing up nuclear energy as an alternative to expensive fossil fuels such as crude oil and coal, which pollute the atmosphere when burned.

Uranium on the stock market could fall to $35 a lb over the next quarter, to its lowest since late 2005 from around $45 a lb currently and $136 a lb in June 2007. Over the next year it is likely to be capped at $55 a lb, but beyond 2011 some analysts expect it to rebound to $80 a lb.

"Uranium will be oversupplied in the short term, utilities have more than they need for this year," said John Wong, portfolio manager at New City Investment Managers. "Next year the uranium market (estimated at about 180 million lbs) will be oversupplied by about 10 million lbs."

Pickering gets wash and brush-up to extend working life

Tyler Hamilton, writing for The Star’s web pages, brings us this from Canada.

The Pickering nuclear station, near Toronto, Canada (minus 1 degree C at the moment!) is under the microscope. Its four Pickering B reactors, built in the mid-1980s, will within a few years come to the end of their safe operating lives. Ontario Power Generation is expected to decide before year's end whether it makes sense to mothball the Candu reactors or spend billions of dollars extending their life beyond 2050. One stop-gap being considered is a quick tune-up and short life extension.

The clock is ticking. Pickering B's reactors contribute more than 2,000 megawatts to the province's power mix, enough electricity over a year to supply 1.6 million homes. If they are to be shut down as early as 2012, then Ontario must make sure it has another source of power to take their place. Those who argue against refurbishment cite the high cost of operating the Pickering station and the poor performance of two Pickering A reactors that were renewed between 2003 and 2005.

But risks related to safety are what most concern the former head of Canada's nuclear safety regulator. Linda Keen, president of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission between 2001 and 2007, told the Star during an exclusive series of interviews that the rate of population growth around Pickering isn't being taken seriously enough. "Population growth means the risk has increased," Keen said. "To be honest, I don't know how you'd vacate the Pickering area alone in the event of an emergency."

Need a quick clean-up? Just send it all to Oak Ridge!

Frank Munger dons his marigolds and mop and heads to Oak Ridge for a massive clean-up job. The U.S. Department of Energy's Savannah River nuclear facility in South Carolina is using a wealth of Recovery Act funding to accelerate cleanup activities and reduce its Cold War stockpile of radioactive waste.

Some of that waste, containing radioactive tritium and other contaminants, is coming to Oak Ridge for treatment and packaging before being shipped west to Nevada or Utah for disposal. Two local facilities owned by Perma-Fix Environmental Services Inc have been hired to treat the so-called mixed waste, which contains both radioactive elements and hazardous chemicals.

"Not only is it radioactive for its tritium content, it is hazardous for mercury, which can make treatment of this waste challenging," Jacob Nims, project engineer with the government's contractor, Savannah River Nuclear Solutions, said in a statement released to the news media.

DOE's original plan was to let the legacy waste remain in South Carolina and allow the radioactive tritium to decay before shipping the waste off-site for disposal. The decay process, however, would have taken another 10 to 50 years, and the actual cleanup project wasn't scheduled to start until 2053. Now, with money from the Recovery Act, Savannah River has put the waste disposal on a "fast track," the agency said.

Sizewell wants dry storage tank for spent waste: but not until 2015

Thanks to the Lowestoft Journal for this. Highly radioactive spent fuel from the Sizewell B nuclear power station could be housed in containers in a massive new building on the site under plans outlined by British Energy.

The company is consulting on proposals to build a new dry storage building to manage the power station's spent fuel from 2015 ahead of submitting a final planning application to the Department of Energy and Climate Change in January next year.

Under the current arrangements spent fuel from the reactor is stored in a fuel storage pond, which is expected to provide capacity until around 2015. In the longer term it is expected that there will be a national underground repository to house high level waste but this is not expected to be ready for many years. British Energy says it has reviewed the options for the interim management of spent fuel after 2015 and dry storage was chosen as the most suitable option.

British Energy is holding a public exhibition to present its proposals for the new facility at the United Church Hall, High Street, Leiston, on Tuesday, November 24, between 1pm and 7.30pm, and Saturday, November 28, between 9.30am and 2pm.

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Walmart tritium exit sign disposal scandal

Our grateful thanks to the pages of the NRC’s web site for the following report.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has cited Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., with four violations concerning improper disposal and transfer of tritium exit signs at its stores throughout the United States and Puerto Rico. The violations, issued Oct. 28, concerned the improper transfer or disposal of 2,462 signs from Wal-Mart stores in states under NRC jurisdiction between 2000 and 2008, and the improper transfer of an additional 517 signs between various Wal-Mart facilities.

Exit signs containing tritium pose little threat to public health and safety and do not constitute a security risk. However, the NRC requires proper record keeping and disposal of the signs because a damaged or broken sign could cause minor radioactive contamination of the immediate vicinity, requiring environmental clean up.

The improper transfer or disposal of the 2,979 signs and failure to appoint a responsible official were determined to be a Severity Level III problem under NRC’s enforcement policy, and the failure to report damaged signs is a Severity Level IV violation, the lowest on the NRC’s enforcement scale.

The Severity Level III problem could have incurred a civil penalty of $369,300. However, the NRC decided to exercise enforcement discretion and waive a civil penalty based on Wal-Mart’s prompt, comprehensive, and extraordinary corrective and preventive actions.

Not so much a one-eyed yellow idol - more a small nuke plant in Nepal - maybe...

This comes form the English pages of China View. The International Atomic Energy (IAEA), the world's centre of cooperation in the nuclear field, has urged the Nepali government to enact nuclear law and establish an atomic energy commission as soon as possible to deal with nuclear issues in Nepal.

The IAEA's call to Nepal for membership came at the end of a fact-finding mission, which visited Nepal on Oct. 19-23. The mission's visit followed the first-ever visit of IAEA Director General Dr Mohamed Elbaradei to Nepal in September, said Science Secretary Ram Hari Aryal.

There is no legislation and regulation to oversee nuclear activities, including licensing and inspecting. The IAEA can help Nepal in many areas of development like health, agriculture and energy if it enacts nuclear law. Besides, IAEA will not be authorized to provide Nepal with radioactive sources for medical and other purposes till it enforces nuclear laws.

Nepal currently lacks mechanism to notify any nuclear accident to IAEA though it is required to have such mechanism as a member state. Nepal became IAEA member in August, 2008.

Potential 'criticality' at Oak Ridge - time to knock it down, we think

Frank Munger (Hi, Frank) dons hard hat and goggles for a report on the state of the K-25 plant out at Oak Ridge on behalf of Knox News.

The government contractor in charge of the massive K-25 demolition project at Oak Ridge has acknowledged there is potential for a nuclear criticality in parts of the old building bearing deposits of enriched uranium, but said it is highly unlikely.

"There is a potential for criticality on the north and east sides, but the probability of such an event happening is very low," said Dennis Hill, a spokesman for Bechtel Jacobs. Hill was responding to questions about the deteriorated condition of the 65-year-old facility and whether a collapsed structure could trigger a criticality event, involving an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction and release of radiation.

Before demolition began, the processing equipment in the west wing was injected with foam to stabilize old systems and keep the residual deposits of uranium in place. According to Jack Howard, DOE's former project manager at K-25, the roof leaks like a sieve, the upper floors are too fragile to walk on, and the overall deterioration has accelerated since 2004.

$1.8m for tank cleaning/hose removal? That's cheap...

Hello again to our old friend Annette Cary, reporting for the Tri-City Herald. Today, she  gets the shovels out.  Hanford workers have finished removing 11 obsolete transfer lines contaminated with high-level radioactive waste in the Hanford tank farms.

The flexible lines were used to transfer waste from leak-prone single-shell tanks into sturdier double-shell tanks, but the lines were past their design life. Some were buried in shallow trenches and others were above ground and covered with shielding to protect workers from radiation.

"Removal of these lines allows workers to focus on retrieving the sludge-like waste remaining in the single-shell tanks without these obstacles and interferences," Stacy Charboneau, DOE assistant manager for the tank farms, said in a statement. It also reduces risk to workers and the environment.

Washington River Protection Solutions committed to the Department of Energy and the Washington State Department of Ecology, a Hanford regulator, to remove the six lines in the U Tank Farm when the new tank farm contractor began work a year ago.

Because the work was done for less money than budgeted and some additional money was appropriated by Congress, five more lines in the C Tank farms also were removed. The total cost was $1.8 million.

Officials take to the skies to search for radioactive waste

Annette Cary and the Tri-City Herald take to the air for this one.  A helicopter was scheduled to fly low over the centre of Hanford last week looking for hot spots where animals have spread radioactive contamination in hundreds of places among the sagebrush.

CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. will be conducting an aerial radiological survey of the "BC controlled area," 13.7 square miles that have had little human intrusion.

But it is just south of the BC cribs and trenches that 50 million gallons of liquid waste contaminated with radioactive salts were discharged during the Cold War. Animals attracted to the salts spread the waste across miles of the Hanford desert.

During the 10 days that a specially equipped helicopter for aerial radiological surveys will be at Hanford, it also will survey one of Hanford's other unusual contaminated areas - a vernal lake that was at Hanford long before the U.S. government started making plutonium for its nuclear weapons programme. Although no radiological work was done at West Lake near Gable Mountain, contaminated ground water rose to fill the lake during the Cold War and left behind slightly radioactive salts.

The helicopter, which has pods of equipment mounted on each side, will do work in a few days that would take crews walking the rugged shrub steppe land with hand instruments six to eight months.

IAEA concerned about Cobalt-60 smuggling rise

The security of nuclear and other radioactive materials and the detection of nuclear and radiological smuggling activities is improving but there are issues with the transportation, storage and disposal of radioactive sources, experts from the IAEA reported yesterday.

Speaking at a press briefing on the latest statistics from the IAEA´s Illicit Trafficking Database (ITDB), Nuclear Security Officer Viacheslav Turkin (pictured) said that the numbers, although still at a high level, point to improvements in nuclear security.

"Some States show a considerable decrease in the number of reported cases, and this can be an indication of improved security arrangements in those countries," he said. "Certainly, we have seen success in the efforts to locate and secure orphaned radioactive sources, as the deployment of detection and monitoring equipment has increased detection at borders and within States."

However, Mr. Turkin also said that in the past three years, more cases involving metal products contaminated with Cobalt-60 have been reported. "This is a disturbing development," he commented.

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Possible delays in Olkiluoto reactor construction

Ed Crooks, writing for The Financial Times takes us north to Finland for this. Construction work at the new Olkiluoto reactor in Finland, being built by Areva of France, continues apace; anyone hoping that the reactor will be such a huge commercial disaster that it will deter all other investment in nuclear power is likely to be disappointed.

The Olkiluoto OL3 project has been dogged by problems, most recently the dispute between Areva and TVO, the Finnish electricity company that will own and run the reactor.

As Areva put it in its results statement at the end of last month: ‘Areva has sent the client documents detailing the methods of execution for the final phases of the project that are in accordance with standard industry practices for the construction of turnkey power plants. Areva will only commence the final phases of the construction when TVO has agreed upon the proposals that have been made.’

That did not mean that work was coming to a halt immediately, but it faced the prospect of an indefinite delay. For now, though, important progress is still being made, with the fitting of the vast dome on top of the reactor hall.

Indian Point goes 'White' after yet another shutdown

This may have passed you by so thanks to A James reporting on the pages of the Record Online. Another unplanned shutdown at the Indian Point nuclear plant is drawing increased attention from federal officials.

Reactor Unit 3 automatically shut down after a turbine tripped. Plant officials said the root of the problem was an oil leak in a safety system.

”It's not oil used for lubrication,” said plant spokesman Jerry Nappi. The oil is part of a pressurized system designed to detect problems within the turbine. The leak caused the system to lose pressure and trigger an emergency response. “All equipment responding to the shutdown performed as designed. There were no safety threats or release of radioactivity.”

This malfunction is the fourth since May, which concerned officials with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the industry's federal oversight body. More than three unplanned shutdowns during a 7,000-hour operating span will change a nuclear reactors' Performance Indicator status. Indian Point's Unit 3 was operating under a “green” status, or the highest level. Thursday's problem will likely downgrade the reactor to a “white” status. (There are two stages below that: yellow and red.)

Whatever you do, DO NOT drop that sub!

The following article seems to be doing the rounds at the moment – it comes from the Sunday Herald via the pages of Rob Edwards.

A huge and virtually unknown crane poses the biggest risk of a nuclear disaster at the Faslane naval base on the Clyde, according to newly released safety assessments by the Ministry of Defence.

Plutonium from up to 48 nuclear warheads could escape and cause widespread contamination and cancers if there was an accident while a Trident submarine was in the shiplift, the reports say. But the MoD has been accused by experts and anti-nuclear campaigners of playing down the real dangers. The amounts and risks of the radioactivity that could be released have been underestimated, they say.

The biggest risk is 'societal contamintation' according to a report written in 2000 by expert scientists at Aldermaston in Berkshire. But the numbers indicating how far the contamination would spread, how many cancers it might cause and how probable it might be have all been blacked out.

Australia's opposition party calls for nuclear 're-think'

Pia Akerman and Matthew Franklin, reporting for The Australian report on a debate that’s rumbling down under.

Serious splits have emerged within the Coalition on nuclear power, with outspoken Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce yesterday calling for a referendum on the issue, while Liberal senate leader Nick Minchin declared any discussion "utterly futile".

Senator Joyce demanded Australia abandon its Cold War mindset and end its ban on nuclear power, telling the Nationals federal council meeting it made no sense to continue to take the "peculiar" position of selling uranium overseas, while pretending domestic nuclear energy generation was immoral.

"We either say it's immoral and we won't use it at all or, quite obviously, we should be trying to use it ourselves," Senator Joyce told the meeting in Canberra. "Do we live in 1954? We are stuck back in the Cold War while the rest of the world runs ahead of us."

His comments follow similar recent calls for a rethink on Kevin Rudd's ban on nuclear power from mining giant Rio Tinto and Australian Workers Union national secretary Paul Howes.

But Senator Minchin (who voted at the South Australian Liberal annual general meeting this weekend against a resolution calling for debate on the use of nuclear power to reduce carbon emissions) said nuclear power was raised at the last federal election with obvious results. "Clearly, there was no appetite in the community whatsoever for the consideration of nuclear power," he said. "We've had that debate and let's move on."

Yucca closure could mean the start of NIMBY recycling issues for US

Geof Koss, writing for Water World’s web pages brings us up to date with events at Yucca Mountain. The decision by President Obama to shelve the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, has revived a vexing, decades-old question: what to do with tens of thousands of tons of radioactive nuclear waste. Obama 's fiscal 2010 budget request, sent to Congress in May, eliminates virtually all funding for the controversial project.  But the decision also leaves the U.S. without a disposal strategy more than 25 years after President Ronald Reagan signed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, in which the government agreed to dispose of spent nuclear fuel. In return, nuclear plants agreed to pay for the project through ratepayer fees.

The rapid demise of Yucca comes as interest in greenhouse-gas-free nuclear plants is surging amid global warming concerns. The move is sparking debate over what to do with the huge quantities of waste that were destined for Nevada but instead are piling up at nuclear plants nationwide.

There is revived interest in efforts to recycle nuclear waste, which would require building reprocessing plants around the country. Such plants similarly could be a boon for local economies, but this move will ultimately raise security and environmental concerns.

USAF launches new Global Strike Command - result of 2 previous "major mis-haps"

The following comes courtesy of AFP and Google News. The US Air Force has launched a new Global Strike Command responsible for nuclear forces after two major mishaps raised doubts about the supervision of the country's atomic weapons. (You may remember that we wrote about this some time ago).

The opening of the command marks a shake-up that followed the botched handling of nuclear weapons and the subsequent sacking of the air force's top civilian and military leaders last year. The command, located at Barksdale Air Force base in the southern state of Louisiana, will combine nuclear-capable B-52 and B-2 bombers as well as the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) force - which had previously been under the Air Force Space Command in Colorado.

"We needed to refocus on the nuclear mission and not lose sight of that," Secretary of the Air Force Michael Donley told reporters ahead of last Friday's ceremony. He said there had been some "painful lessons" but the new command would "reinvigorate our nuclear enterprise."

An outside panel headed by former defence secretary James Schlesinger concluded that the US Air Force had for years given the nuclear forces a lower priority and failed to manage the mission with rigor. The panel found "an unambiguous, dramatic and unacceptable decline in the air force's commitment to perform the nuclear mission and, until very recently, little has been done to reverse it."

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Don't press the button, Bill!

Joseph Berger, reporting for The New York Times web site takes a trip to Sandy Hook, New Jersey.

One of those infamous buttons of the Cold War  - the switch that could fire a nuclear missile at a Soviet bomber and possibly lead to an apocalypse - can be found in a rust-eaten trailer in the scrub pine and oak on a sandbar a long swim from Staten Island.

Bill Jackson was a sergeant in his early 20s when he led one of the crews responsible for the 24 nuclear-armed Nike Hercules missiles then housed here. Mr. Jackson and others can remember that atomic missiles were stationed not just in desolate landscapes out West, but also in the midst of New York’s crowded suburbs and resorts. There were 21 such sites guarding New York City, and relics from that era (like Mr. Jackson’s rusty trailer) still linger in places like Livingston, N.J., and Westhampton, on Long Island.

Decades ago, residents near these military outposts were often aware that there were missiles behind the fences, but relatively few knew that they were armed with nuclear warheads, experts say. Even today, some suburbanites find it haunting to learn that they lived so near.

New reactors planned for Georgia, due to start 2011 - maybe..

Those nice people at World Nuclear News take us to Georgia, USA, for this one.

Southern Nuclear has given notice to its main contractors to proceed towards two new reactors at Vogtle, Georgia. Permissions already in place allow some construction work to begin. The reactors in question are two Westinghouse AP1000 units which Southern's subsidiary Georgia Power contracted Westinghouse and Shaw to build in April exactly one year ago.

Southern's application to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission reached a certain point in February at which limited construction work would be permitted at the site when the NRC released the final safety evaluation related to Southern's application for an Early Site Permit. The full result of the ESP application should be known by the end of this year. Full construction, however, can only start once a combined construction and operating license is issued for the project, expected in mid-2011.

It's all stop at Bruce Power - thanks to the recession

This snippet may have passed you by, so thanks to the pages of the London Free Press in Canada for this.

The Bruce Power nuclear generating station has shut down one of its reactors. The problem isn't mechanical - it's because there isn't enough demand for the electricity generated by the station.

Spokesperson Steve Cannon says the manufacturing slowdown caused by the recession and a cooler summer have left Bruce Power with a surplus.

Cannon says a 795-megawatt reactor will be offline for at least a few more days and follows a brief shutdown in June for similar reasons. He says it's not something they like to do because nuclear plants are designed to run 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Cannon says the shutdown doesn't affect any jobs and that all other units at Bruce Power remain online and available for service.

Whadya mean, we're on a list? What list?

Karen Dillon, reporting for The Kansas City Star, reports on a list no one wants to be on. Kansas City is on the short list to become the Yucca Mountain for mercury.

A new law requires that all of the nation’s waste mercury - now estimated at about 10,000 tons - must be stored in one facility, or at most, just a few facilities by 2013. So the Department of Energy has selected seven potential sites to be the national facility for mercury just as Nevada’s Yucca Mountain was once designated to become the storage location for radioactive waste.

The Energy Department has pinpointed the Kansas City Plant, formerly AlliedSignal, on Bannister Road. The massive plant, with its thick concrete walls and floors and 500-year flood protections, has manufactured non-nuclear components for nuclear weapons for half a century.

“To even propose that it could be used for the storage of toxic metals is mind-boggling,” said Kansas City Councilman John Sharp. “It would certainly cause irreparable harm or kill our economic development efforts for that area.”

Local, state and federal officials did not know Kansas City was on the list until contacted by a reporter.

Level 2 alert at Dungeness - only 2? - that's not much to worry about, now, is it?

Those nice people at Reuters bring us another of those ‘non-event’ tales we all know and love: this time, though, it’s from right here in the UK.  An incident in late June at the Dungeness B power station has been provisionally rated at level two on the seven-tier International Nuclear Event Scale (INES), the EDF-owned operating company said on Tuesday.

While connecting new fuel to a fuel plug unit on June 29, a piece of rubber was found to have become trapped, threatening the integrity of the connection.

"The coupling did not fail, there was no plant damage, no staff were injured and there was no release of radioactivity," plant operator British Energy said in a statement. "There was no impact on the safety of our workforce or the public at large and there was no damage to the plant. Both units continue to operate as normal."

Operations in the fuel building at the power station in southeast England ceased immediately and foam was injected under the fuel assembly as a precaution. A subsequent review confirmed that the foam used was not permitted under the rules.

The load has since been secured by fitting clamps and plant engineers are working on a plan to return the fuel handling equipment to full service safely. British Energy is investigating the cause of the event with UK nuclear safety authorities.

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New York, New York, so good they zapped it twice!

Our thanks to Christine Kearney and Reuters for this piece.

Thousands of additional law enforcement officers within 50 miles of New York City will have access to radiation detectors for dirty bombs and nuclear devices, New York police said recently.

The detectors, including cell phone-sized devices that officers wear on their belts, could help uncover a dirty bomb that might be assembled outside New York and smuggled in, police said at a security conference. New York Police Department officers have used such devices for several years.

Police spokesman Paul Browne said thousands of law enforcement officers would be using the devices in areas surrounding New York City, including state police and sheriff's departments in New Jersey and Connecticut.

New York remains the top target for terrorist groups planning attacks on the United States, police and lawmakers said, and the possibility of a radiological attack on a public transport system remained high. "We know that terrorists come here and we know that they are surveying here," said Captain Michael Riggio of the NYPD counter-terrorism division. The belt devices, which buzz when they detect radiation, are the "first line of defence" against a possible dirty bomb or a small-scale nuclear device.

IMalaysia should 'look seriously' at tapping into nuclear energy

 According to a news report we found tucked away on the pages of the New Straits Times online pages, Malaysia has the expertise to build its own nuclear power plant and earlier than scheduled.

Atomic Energy Licensing Board chairman, Prof Datuk Dr Noramly Muslim, said the country had around 80 PhD holders with expertise in nuclear engineering technology. "Some of these people who are nuclear trained are now chief executive officers in banks and big companies. "This is because we have put our (nuclear) programme on the back burner."

Noramly said only about 10 to 15 per cent of this expertise was required to operate a nuclear plant.

Prof Jong Hyun Kim, of the Nuclear and Quantum Engineering Department at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, said while it took his country some 20 years to build a nuclear power plant, Malaysia would need only half of that time.

According to Jong, Korea had only three nuclear scientists with PhDs when it embarked on building its first nuclear power plant but Malaysia today has so much more expertise and better technology and newer processes.

Jong said Malaysia should seriously look into tapping nuclear energy as a source of electricity in the long run. Tenaga Nasional Berhad had announced earlier in the week that it would start its nuclear power plant by 2025, once it got the green light from the government.

Energy Fuels want to change the rules at Pinion Ridge mill

Found recently on the pages of The Examiner, this report is by Ben Williams. Energy Fuels is trying to alter its special use permit application for their proposed uranium mill at Pinon Ridge, Colorado.  They want to open up the restriction, imposed by the Montrose Planning Commission, that states, “only raw uranium ore processed on-site may be stored in the tailings cells.”

The Montrose Daily Press reports that Energy Fuels CEO, George Glasier, brought up the proposed change for discussion late at the June 10 meeting. In testimony at the May 19 meeting in Nucla, before a large crowd in the high school gymnasium, Energy Fuels had publicly stated they had “no plans to process any material other than uranium ore.”

It now appears that Energy Fuels, facing an unstable uranium market, is scrabbling to increase profits by processing waste materials from other sites. The ability to accept, and dispose of, ‘source material’ would increase radioactive dumping at the proposed site, Energy Minerals Law Center attorney Travis Stills believes. “I think that we are looking at a special use permit for a mill that cannot make a decent profit on uranium ore and instead wants to get permitted as an industrial uranium-hazardous materials recycler.”

This “false recycling”, as it is known, uses waste streams from other contaminated sites to increase output of yellowcake at the mill, thus sparing producers expensive containment fees.  Meanwhile, tailings at the mill fill up faster.  The mill is paid to convert this waste, while avoiding fees from accepting product from mines and sites they do not own. 

Spanish watchdog gives Garona go-ahead for next 10 years

Martin Roberts, writing for Reuters, brings us this from Madrid. Spain's nuclear watchdog has made a non-binding recommendation that the ageing Garona power is safe enough to stay open for another 10 years. The government - which has pledged to phase out nuclear power - has the final say in deciding whether to renew an operating permit for the 500-megawatt plant in northern Spain, which expires on July 5.

The Nuclear Safety Council is not due to make public its recommendations until Monday, but it has handed them to the government and several newspapers reported them on their web sites. "The Council has unanimously concluded that it (the plant) complies with the minimum safety standards needed to extend its years of service by another decade," El Mundo reported without citing sources.

Garona is first of seven nuclear plants whose permits are up for renewal in the next two years, or well within the mandate of the Socialist government, which has pledged to gradually replace them with sources of renewable energy.

Prime Minister Jose Rodriguez Zapatero's government has not, however, ruled out extending the working lives of Spain's nuclear plants, which generate about 20 percent of electricity consumed in the country.

You couldn't make it up - confidential documents go public

This has been doing the rounds on various sites and so we had a look for you. Thanks to The New York Times.

The US federal government mistakenly made public a 266-page report, its pages marked “highly confidential,” that gives detailed information about hundreds of the nation’s civilian nuclear sites and programs, including maps showing the precise locations of stockpiles of fuel for nuclear weapons.

The publication of the document was revealed Monday in an online newsletter devoted to issues of federal secrecy. That set off a debate among nuclear experts about what dangers, if any, the disclosures posed. It also prompted a flurry of investigations in Washington into why the document had been made public. On Tuesday evening, after inquiries from The New York Times, the document was withdrawn from a Government Printing Office Web site.

Several nuclear experts argued that any dangers from the disclosure were minimal, given that the general outlines of the most sensitive information were already known publicly. “These screw-ups happen,” said John M. Deutch, a former director of central intelligence and deputy secretary of defence who is now a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It’s going further than I would have gone but doesn’t look like a serious breach.”

But David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington that tracks nuclear proliferation, said information that shows where nuclear fuels are stored “can provide thieves or terrorists inside information that can help them seize the material, which is why that kind of data is not given out.”

The information, considered confidential but not classified, was assembled for transmission later this year to the International Atomic Energy Agency as part of a process by which the United States is opening itself up to stricter inspections in hopes that foreign countries, especially Iran and others believed to be clandestinely developing nuclear arms, will do likewise.

As of Tuesday evening, the reasons for that action remained a mystery. On its cover, the document referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs and ordered to be printed. But Lynne Weil, the committee spokeswoman, said the committee had “neither published it nor had control over its publication.”

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Slovakia plans new reactor build with a little help from their friends

Susan Houlton brings us this from Deutsche World web site.

When Slovakia joined the European Union five years ago, one of the terms of accession was that it shut down a Soviet-era nuclear plant by 2008.

But recent spats between gas supplier Russia and transit country Ukraine have left some European countries in the cold. Some nations, including Slovakia and its neighbour the Czech Republic, now think nuclear power may free them from their dependence on Russian natural gas.

State-run companies from the Czech Republic and Slovakia announced plans last week to build a new nuclear reactor in Jaslovske Bohunice on the site of the old Soviet power generator that was shut down last December.

The deal that was signed between Czech energy company CEZ AS and Slovak state energy firm JAVYS AS will set up a joint-stock company to construct a new U$5.2 billion reactor. JAVYS AS will have a 51 percent stake while CEZ will control 49 percent.

No further details were provided, but a feasibility study, due to be completed by 2010, will provide a timetable for the project.

New reactor test due at Volgodonsk in two weeks

Hydro testing of the new reactor at Russia's Volgodonsk nuclear power plant is to start in the next two weeks. The unit is set to start up in October according to a report carried by World Nuclear News.

The reactor is a V-320 type VVER pressurized water reactor which will produce 1000 MWe. Its construction had been stalled for some time but was kick-started again in 2007 as part of a major Russian initiative to maximise domestic nuclear power production in order to maximise the value of gas reserves.

Current activities include preparation for the washing-out of the water coolant lines as well as hydrostatic testing to confirm their integrity. The Volgodonsk plant is sometimes known as Rostov after its region. Four 1000 MWe VVER pressurized water reactors were planned there in the early 1980s and some construction took place before work was stopped.

Valery Limarenko of main contractor Nizhniy Novgorod Atomenergo  said, "We are entering the final straight... The second unit of Rostov is the starting point of the large scale construction of new nuclear reactors in our country. "

Test veterans get their own stretch of US Highway 400

Beccy Tanner, reporting for The Wichita Eagle, brings us this well-deserved report.

More than 50 atomic veterans were expected to attend a dedication for the Atomic Veterans Memorial Highway recently in Leon, Kansas. The 18 ˝-mile stretch of U.S. 400 west of Leon is the first in the nation to earn the designation in tribute to U.S. military veterans exposed to radiation during atomic weapons testing from 1945 to 1963.

Gary Thornton of Leon and his friend Lawrence Halloran of Mulvane began a grassroots effort to gain national recognition for atomic test veterans in 2004. Thornton was exposed to alpha, beta and gamma radiation during four atomic tests in 1962, when he was a 19-year-old sailor on a minesweeper stationed 500 yards off Johnson Island, a nuclear test site.

The majority of veterans attending the ceremony were from Kansas, which has about 130 aging atomic veterans. Thornton and Halloran started a petition and wrote letters to politicians seeking additional benefits to help atomic veterans deal with illness caused by radiation.

The stretch of U.S. 400 -- from U.S. 77 in Augusta east to the Butler County line -- received the designation in a bill introduced by Reps. Ed Trimmer of Winfield and Dave Crum of Augusta. It became law last year.

The ceremony comes one day after U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., and Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Goddard, introduced companion legislation called the Atomic Veterans Service Medal Act. The bill would authorize a Department of Defence Service Medal to recognize members of the military who were exposed to radiation as a result of atomic weapons tests or patrolling ground zero at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Kirksanton nuke plans stall over prison evac plans

We found this interesting tale on the archive pages of the North West Evening Mail and thought you’d like to read this.

The proposal by RWE npower to construct a plant at Layriggs Farm in Kirksanton hangs in the balance unless Haverigg prison bosses agree to cooperate with the evacuation plan. Nuclear development manager for the project, Stuart Dagnall, revealed an emergency evacuation procedure must be agreed between the prison and nuclear bosses before any plans can be set in stone.

The prison, which stands less than a kilometre from the proposed 180-acre site, houses a population of 622 inmates and more than 300 staff – and all would have to be safely evacuated. A similar plan would be drawn up for any occupied building within a kilometre radius of the plant.

Mr Dagnall released the information while under fire from outraged Kirksanton residents at a heated public meeting. He said: “We are not saying there is going to be any problems but if we couldn’t provide one, we wouldn’t be able to build. An emergency plan would involve how we can affect an evacuation during an emergency. How readily can they be evacuated?”

The prison already has a fire evacuation procedure in place but new prison governor Martin Farquhar has admitted a full scale evacuation would be a difficult feat to achieve. “If they said we have to do it in an hour it is unlikely. For any evacuation plan we would need to meet initially with the relevant people. Nobody has been in touch with us at this time but if at some stage someone does approach us I will be happy to talk to them about it.”

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Jamaica: it would take 15 years to establish nuclear reactor on island

Daraine Luton, reporting for the pages of the Jamaica Gleaner brings us this report. Portia Simpson Miller's suggestion that Government consider nuclear energy as a source to support the national grid has been rejected by the Jamaican Government. Prime Minister Bruce Golding told Parliament on Tuesday that the proposal has been ruled out for a number of reasons.

"... Environmental concerns, extremely high capital costs, long lead time and the challenges involved in operations, maintenance, waste disposal and decommissioning," Golding said as he listed negatives.

The prime minister was making his contribution to the Budget Debate. According to Golding, for countries that do not already have nuclear facilities, it would take 15 years to establish a nuclear power reactor. "The siting of such plant would also be hazardous in a country of Jamaica's size and population density ... where would you put it?" the prime minister asked.

Both the Opposition and the Government have said that the development of the Jamaican economy will depend on the country's ability to source cheaper energy.

Russia's first floating power station nears completion - revisited

We noticed this in Sunday’s Observer – reported by John Vidal - but for those of you who have actually kept up with all our various ‘Nuggets’, you will remember that we have featured this tale once or twice in the last three years. So, whilst this is not exactly new news, here is an update.

A prototype floating nuclear power station (possibly the Lomonosov, but don’t quote me) being constructed at the SevMash shipyard in Severodvinsk is due to be completed next year. Agreement to build a further four was reached between the Russian state nuclear corporation, Rosatom, and the northern Siberian republic of Yakutiya in February.

The 70-megawatt plants, each of which would consist of two reactors on board giant steel platforms, would provide power to Gazprom, and would allow them to power drills needed to exploit some of the remotest oil and gas fields in the world in the Barents and Kara seas. The self-propelled vessels would store their own waste and fuel and would need to be serviced only once every 12 to 14 years.

Bellona, a leading Scandinavian environmental watchdog group, yesterday condemned the idea of using nuclear power to open the Arctic to oil, gas and mineral production. "It is highly risky. The risk of a nuclear accident on a floating power plant is increased. The plants' potential impact on the fragile Arctic environment through emissions of radioactivity and heat remains a major concern. If there is an accident, it would be impossible to handle," said Igor Kudrik, a spokesman.

There's a hole in my containment building, dear Liza, dear Liza..

It’s been a busy time for the NRC lately. Bill Vidonic, writing for Times Online, fills us in.

The recent discovery of a small hole in the steel lining of the reactor containment building of Beaver Valley Nuclear Power Station’s Unit 1 in Pennsylvania, wasn’t the first time a breach has been found there, a Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman said Saturday.

Before Thursday’s discovery, no radiation was released from the building, and there was “no impact to the public health or safety of any employees,” FirstEnergy spokesman Todd Schneider said.

The Unit 1 reactor has been shut down since Monday for scheduled refuelling and maintenance. As part of that routine work, the containment building around the reactor was inspected. The containment building has concrete walls that are 4 feet thick and there’s a 3/8-inch-thick steel lining on top of that concrete in the building’s interior. The lining is a vapour barrier and would only be used to contain gases and radiation if there’s a serious problem with the nuclear reactor.

An inspection showed a blister in some of that coating: once the coating was cleaned workers found that the steel underneath had corroded through to the concrete wall. The affected area of the steel is a rectangle,  just under the size of a standard paper clip.

Hanford gets a case of bats in the belfry - I mean, water tank!

Annette Cary, writing for the Tri-City Herald web pages goes a bit, well, batty with this tale. The largest known colony of bats in Eastern Washington will keep its underground home at Hanford, the Department of Energy has determined.

A colony of about 2,000 Yuma myotis bats roosts from mid-March to mid-October in an underground concrete structure once used in north Hanford to hold water from the Columbia River before it was used at F Reactor.

The clearwell was scheduled to be demolished by the end of September as part of cleanup and restoration of the Hanford nuclear reservation. But that was before DOE contractor Washington Closure Hanford discovered the colony of bats using the clearwell in 2006.

As Washington Closure launched a study to find out more about the bats, DOE began to receive letters from other public agencies and wildlife groups urging it to find a way to let the bats remain. The Environmental Protection Agency, the regulator on the project, also agreed that the structure should be saved as a home for the bats.

"We didn't want to disturb such great bat habitat," said Craig Cameron, an EPA scientist. EPA concluded the structure had no chemical or radioactive contamination that would require it to be cleaned up, and DOE agreed the clearwell remained structurally sound.

Meacher blasts Sellafield Mox Plant as waste of money

Jon Swaine, reporting for The Daily Telegraph, brings us this sorry tale.

The mixed-oxide (Mox) plant at Sellafield, which was approved by the Government despite concerns over its cost, was supposed to produce 120 tons of fuel a year and return a profit of Ł200 million in its lifetime.

However, figures released to Parliament by the Government show that it has produced just 6.3 tons of fuel in seven years and racked up Ł626 million of operating costs. It also cost Ł637 million in construction and commission costs. The disclosure comes as a blow to the Government's plan to increase the use of nuclear technology in order to meet its target of reducing carbon emissions by 80 per cent of its 1990 level by 2050.

Michael Meacher, the Labour MP who attempted to block approval for the plant as Environment Secretary, said: "This waste of taxpayers' money is unforgivable. The construction of the plant was resisted for years, but was overridden by Tony Blair on the basis of assurances from the nuclear industry that the Mox plant would be cost-effective and a market for its fuel would develop. These claims have proved illusory.”

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Saskatchewan "should include nuclear in future energy mix"

A long-awaited report on uranium development in Saskatchewan includes 20 recommendations, including the construction of a new nuclear reactor.

The report (released by the government-appointed Uranium Development Partnership) says the recommendations could increase the province’s gross domestic product by an estimated $50-billion and create 6,500 construction jobs and 5,500 long-term jobs.

Saskatchewan is currently the largest uranium producing region in the world and accounts for about 30% of annual world uranium production, according to a provincial government website.

There has long been debate over how the province could further benefit from the resource. "Saskatchewan should include nuclear in its long-range energy mix," said Dr Richard Florizone, a nuclear physicist, who’s also vice-president of finance at the University of Saskatchewan. "The province will require at least 1,000 megawatts of new generation in the next 15 to 20 years.”

Russia upgrades nuclear fleet - possibly..

RIA Novosti brings us this which we can only put under the ‘We don’t want to worry you, but we’re gonna..’ banner. Russia may prioritise the development of nuclear-powered attack submarines armed with nuclear-capable cruise missiles in the future, while maintaining its fleet of strategic subs, a senior Navy official said.

The Russian Navy maintains a fleet of about 60 submarines, including 10 nuclear powered strategic submarines, over 30 nuclear-powered attack submarines, diesel-electric submarines and special-purpose subs.

"Probably, tactical nuclear weapons (on submarines) will play a key role in the future," Vice Admiral Oleg Burtsev, deputy head of the Navy General Staff, told RIA Novosti. "There is no longer any need to equip missiles with powerful nuclear warheads. We can install low-yield warheads on existing cruise missiles," he said.

The admiral mentioned Russia's new Severodvinsk nuclear-powered attack submarine, which will be commissioned with the Navy in 2010-2011, as an example. The fourth-generation Graney class submarine combines the ability to launch a variety of long-range cruise missiles (up to 3,100 miles) with nuclear warheads, and effectively engage hostile submarines and surface warships.

Toledo's two nuke plants still don't get public's vote: just don't mention Fermi 3!

Tom Henry, reporting for the pages of the Toledo Blade brings us this. Although Davis-Besse and Fermi 2 fared well in their 2008 performance reviews issued earlier this month, both Toledo-area nuclear plants continue to have a hard time winning over critics.

Davis-Besse's tarnished legacy continues to be an anecdote for the nation's top nuclear regulators, seven years after FirstEnergy Corp. nearly let its reactor head burst, causing a breach that would have allowed radioactive steam to form in the containment building that protects the nuclear reactor. The last such accident occurred in 1979 with the partial meltdown at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island. Two Nuclear Regulatory Commission board members last week used Davis-Besse to illustrate the need for more safety while demanding greater accountability from nuclear industry officials.

Five anti-nuclear groups, unimpressed by Fermi 2's solid performance last year, followed through with their request for an intervention hearing aimed at blocking plans DTE Energy might have of building Fermi 3. Meanwhile, the NRC is reviewing DTE's application for what would be a U$10 billion plant, although the utility has not committed itself to building it.

Water water everywhere, but not a drop to drink around Oak Ridge

This comes from our friend, Frank Munger (hi, Frank!) reporting for the Knoxnews web pages. Resident Bailey Johnson (pictured) has always savoured the sweet taste of well water, shunning whenever possible the chemically treated city stuff. Now Johnson and his family members drink bottled water. It's delivered free of charge - courtesy of the U.S. Department of Energy - to their farm on the Clinch River.

The sudden change is because of concern that hazardous waste from DOE's Oak Ridge property on the other side of the Clinch could be moving in their direction, perhaps using cracks or fissures in underground rock formations to travel beneath the waterway.

That's mostly conjecture or theory at this point. However, there's enough circumstantial evidence, including radioactive contaminants found in "sentry" monitoring wells on the DOE side of the river and some anomalies in residential well-water samples on the other side, to get the attention of environmental regulators. It's prompted the DOE to not only provide bottled water to residents in the short term but to pay for commercial water lines to be extended to about a dozen other residences in the Jones Road area.

John Owsley, the state official responsible for overseeing DOE's environmental activities in Oak Ridge, said nothing found to date indicates there's an immediate health threat for local residents, but he said the issue is top priority for his office.

Used waste builds up, thanks to Obama's fund cut for Yucca (Part 2...)

Tom Meersman, writing for the Minneapolis Star Tribune web pages recently, brings us an update on Yucca Mountain.

Highly radioactive wastewill likely accumulate in Minnesota for decades longer than expected because of a new energy policy taking shape in Washington.

President Obama is closing the door on Yucca Mountain, a remote site in Nevada that for more than 20 years has been the nation's only candidate for permanent burial of nuclear waste. That leaves the waste containers collecting at nuclear plants near Monticello and in Red Wing, with nowhere to go.

"President Obama has been emphatic that storage at Yucca Mountain is not an option, period," said Stephanie Mueller, spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Energy.

Nuclear utilities including Xcel Energy hoped to ship wastes to Nevada beginning around 2020, but they have seen the opening date postponed many times. The project has encountered high costs, environmental concerns and steadfast opposition from Nevadans.

More delays in turning (on) Japanese - style

Eisuke Sasaki and Hidenori Tsuboya bring us a report from Japan’s Asahi news pages. A clogged nozzle, a few dislodged bricks and a bent furnace-churning stick might appear minor concerns for a plant being put through its final commissioning test in Japan.

These technical failures, responsible for yet another delay in two- decade-old efforts to launch the plant, are far from last-minute crinkles. Not only have they proved frustratingly difficult to iron out, the problems at the Rokkasho Reprocessing Plant, conceived as a major link in Japan's nuclear fuel recycling program, could shake the program to its foundations.

Plant operator Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd. announced in January it would postpone the end of testing from February to August (the 16th time it has delayed completion of the plant) which was originally due to go into full operation in 1997.

When in operation, the Rokkasho plant will reprocess spent fuel from nuclear power stations in Japan to extract plutonium, which will be burned again to generate electricity. But the latest delay could jeopardize the nation's nuclear fuel recycling policy.

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Bulgaria plans to expand plant at Kozloduy by 2030

Our thanks to Nick Iliev, reporting for the Sofia Echo website for this. Bulgaria’s Economy and Energy Minister Petar Dimitrov has said that there is a private interest for a substantial investment for the construction of units 7 and 8 at their sole nuclear power plant at Kozloduy on the Danube River.

"The Bulgarian government will not allocate any new funds for the creation of new reactors at Kozloduy. If this happens at all, it will happen exclusively with private investment. I will not disclose any specific names for the moment, but one of the world's biggest nuclear energy companies has shown interest in Kozloduy nuclear power plant," Dimitrov said.

However, the estimated power grid infrastructure operational in 2030 is calculated to facilitate no more than 15 million MWh, so the entire grid infrastructure has to be redesigned and expanded.

Although that would be an expensive undertaking, Dimitrov said that power shortages in Turkey, Croatia and Macedonia made the investment worthwhile.

Okay, Geiger, where did you stash that mercury?

Dean Kirby writing for the Manchester Evening News brings us this little gem.

A Manchester University laboratory at the centre of a radiation scare has been closed. Four workers have been moved out of two rooms in the Rutherford Building after tests revealed the `likely presence' of mercury under floorboards.

In September the university launched an investigation into claims contamination from lab experiments by Ernest Rutherford a century ago had caused the death of two lecturers.

Concerns have been raised since then that four other people have contracted cancer after working in the building where Rutherford (seen pictured here with Hans Geiger) the Nobel Prize-winning chemist and pioneering nuclear physicist, carried out experiments using radioactive materials, such as radon and polonium, in 1908.

A spokesman said: "Measurements in one of the rooms have indicated the likely presence of mercury under the floor, but it is important to stress that these levels were well below the legal workplace exposure limits."

Corruption fears in the Philippines due to plant re-commissioning plan

We are off to the Philippines today, courtesy of Floro Taguinod, reporting for the GMA News web pages.

Members of the Network Opposed to BNPP Revival fear that the planned re-commissioning of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant will spur corruption anew within the country’s corridors of power.

A recent report disclosed that while the technical concerns on the plant's site and plant safety have not yet been directly addressed by the proponents, it is not the end or be-all of talks considering BNPP's revival.

Recent moves to re-open the mothballed nuclear plant have also spurred debates among members of the scientific community. Touching both nuclear energy in general and the BNPP in particular, questions of safety, impacts on the environment, and efficiency have been raised.

According to Dr. Giovanni Tapang, chairperson of Samahan ng Nagtataguyod ng Agham at Teknolohiya para sa Sambayanan (Agham), BNPP has become a monument of corruption.

“Given its history of overpricing and $80 million in kickbacks for Marcos and his cronies, the idea of reviving the plant to become another source of corruption is not far-fetched. Looking at the proponents involved having that crony lineage makes one shake his head in exasperation,” Tapang said.

About turn in Alberta - perhaps a nuke plant wouldn't be so bad..

Hanneke Brooymans, reporting for the Edmonton Journal (and found on the Canada . com website) brings us this ‘about turn’ tale from deepest Canada.

When plans surfaced to build a nuclear power plant in Alberta, opposition groups were quick to gather their forces. But now, two years later, some momentum seems to be gaining on the other side of the debate.

Alfred Johnson says he has no problem with the nuclear power plant that could be built just five kilometres north of his land in the Peace River area of north - western Alberta by Bruce Energy. In fact, he's helping organize a new pro-nuclear power group. Johnson and Ed Pimm said their fledgling group is called the Committee for Sustainable Regional Socio-Economic Development.

They think the power plant could provide lots of high-paying, steady jobs, as well as plentiful economic spinoff opportunities. This is something their community needs badly, they said. The group is particularly in favour of the first of two proposed sites, near Lac Cardinal, because they say it is more centrally located to the many communities in the area and that could mean a more even spread of the benefits.

A nuclear lighthouse? Nah...pull the other one!

Found on the pages of English/Russia. During Russia’s Soviet Era, it was decided to build a chain of lighthouses to guide ships finding their way in the dark polar night across uninhabited shores of the Soviet Russian Empire. They had to be fully autonomous, because they were situated hundreds of miles away from any populated areas.

After reviewing different ideas on how to make them work for a years without service and any external power supply, Soviet engineers decided to implement atomic energy to power up those structures. So, special lightweight small atomic reactors were produced in limited series to be delivered to the Polar Circle lands and to be installed on the lighthouses. Those small reactors could work in the independent mode for years and didn’t require any human interference.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the hunt for the metals like copper attracted the looters  (who didn’t care or maybe even didn’t know the meaning of the “Radioactive Danger” sign) who broke in and destroyed the equipment. They also broke into the reactors, causing all the structures to become radioactively polluted.

U$7.65bn nuke power stations on cards for Florida

Ann Belser, reporting recently for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette brings us this.

Progress Energy in Florida is planning to retire two of its old coal-fired power plants and replace them with nuclear power units from Westinghouse Electric Co. The two units, which will cost the energy company about U$7.65 billion, are expected to be online in about eight years.

Progress Energy, based in St. Petersburg, Fla., made the announcement in conjunction with Westinghouse on Monday. The energy company also will be working with The Shaw Group Inc.'s Power Group of Baton Rouge.

According to Progress Energy, the two new nuclear power units will provide 3,000 jobs at the peak of construction and 800 full-time jobs when the units are operational. The contract with Westinghouse is for engineering, procurement and construction. Each of the power units will provide 1,150 megawatts of electricity.

In addition to the U$7.65 billion for the two power generation units, the company said the total cost of the project would include another U$6.4 billion for the 5,100 acre site, financing costs, plant components, construction, labor, regulatory fees and reactor fuel.

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Uranium storage plant is ready - sorry, but you can't use it until 2010

Our grateful thanks to Frank Munger for this report from the KnoxNews web pages. Construction of the US  government's new storehouse at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, for bomb-grade uranium is complete, but no uranium will be loaded into the fortress-like facility for more than a year.

A lot of testing and training will take place in the months ahead at the U$549m plant and that will be followed by a series of readiness reviews to actually certify the high-security nuclear facility for use. "We expect to receive authorization to begin loading the facility about March 2010," Steven Wyatt, a federal spokesman at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant, said in an e-mail response to questions.

Some of the security features, such as the massive vault doors, are multiple and redundant to prevent unwanted access to the inner sanctum - where the nearly pure stocks of U-235 will be stored. The only entry to the facility comes from the east side, where hydraulically operated loading docks are located.

Okay - whose job was it to change the batteries...?

Christopher Goffard, writing for the LA Times brings us this worrying tale.

Federal inspectors said that they will ratchet up scrutiny of the San Onofre nuclear power plant after discovering that a battery meant to power safety systems had been inoperative for four years. Plant personnel discovered in March that bolts connecting an emergency battery to a circuit breaker were loose, a problem the Nuclear Regulatory Commission attributed to poor maintenance.

The commission said that the twin-reactor plant near San Clemente, run by Rosemead-based Southern California Edison, remains safe, and that other backup batteries are functioning. But the commission expressed concern that the battery problem had gone unnoticed from 2004 to 2008.

Apart from the battery, the commission discovered seven additional safety flaws that it described as minor in themselves -- including poor documentation and inconsistent follow-up on potential problems -- but that taken together formed a troubling picture.

As a result, the commission issued a "white finding," characterized as a low- to moderate-level safety concern, and said it will step up inspections at San Onofre until it sees improvements.

No more protests at Aldermaston, people: it's American now

The government has sold its final stake in the country's nuclear weapons plant, prompting criticism from MPs who said it throws the independence of the British nuclear deterrent into question. State-owned British Nuclear Fuels Limited (BNFL) sold its one-third stake of the Aldermaston Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) at Aldermaston, Berkshire, to Jacobs Engineering Group of the United States.

The remaining two-thirds are already owned by US defence giant Lockheed Martin and Serco of Britain. The move was announced in a brief statement on the BNFL website which said: "BNFL is delighted to confirm that it has today agreed the sale of its one third shareholding in AWE Management Limited to the Jacobs Engineering Group."

Aldermaston is where the Trident nuclear warhead is designed and manufactured. It has been the focus of anti-nuclear protests for decades. The Conservatives called for a government explanation, saying the AWE was "critical" to Britain's nuclear deterrent capability.

The Liberal Democrat's defence spokesman Nick Harvey said: "The whole argument used for Britain having a separate weapons establishment is that this is required by the non-proliferation treaty.”

Obama's Yucca opposition causes nuke storage problems

Chuck Crumbo reporting for the web pages of The State newspaper brings us this storage problem from South Carolina.

South Carolina Electric & Gas would have to store radioactive waste produced by new reactors at its Jenkinsville nuclear plant until the federal government finds a place to bury it, a utility executive said. Steve Byrne, vice president of nuclear operations, said the plans for two new reactors the utility wants to build call for waste such as spent fuel rods to be stored above ground in concrete-enclosed casks. An application has been submitted by South Carolina Electric & Gas and its partner, state-operated Santee Cooper, to build two 1,117-megawatt reactor units, costing $9.8 billion, at the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station.

Where to store high-level radioactive waste has long been a national issue: plans to use Yucca Mountain seem to have been thwarted as President-elect Barack Obama has repeatedly said he opposes using the Nevada site.

New feature in a Roller – a nuclear glovebox: workers exposed at Raynesway plant

This little gem was found on the pages of Istock Analyst and came from Birmingham’s Sunday Mercury. Thanks go to Ben Goldby for this. Workers at a Midland nuclear plant were exposed to radiation twice in the space of just ten months.

One employee received medical care in June after coming into contact with a radioactive glovebox at Rolls-Royce's controversial Raynesway facility in Derby which produces parts and fuel for Trident submarines. Two other workers were exposed to an "internal dose" of radioactive material in September last year, triggering an investigation by the Health and Safety Executive's Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII).

Part of the resulting safety report said: "One matter of particular note considered during the current period was a radiological incident that occurred on June 15 in which a number of employees were potentially exposed to a release of radioactive material from a glovebox. Early indications are that only one employee has received a radiation dose; however, this is within the legal limits for a radiation worker."

Oh, Canada - new nuke plant on way?

Tyler Hamilton, energy reporter for The Star, takes us to Canada for this report. Nuclear power-plant operator Bruce Power will signal to Queen's Park and the federal regulator that it intends to build a new nuclear plant in the small community of Nanticoke, next to the massive coal-fired generating station that's slated for shutdown in 2014.

Duncan Hawthorne, president and chief executive officer of Bruce Power, is expected to announce at an event near Nanticoke, Ontario, along the north shore of Lake Erie, that his company is seeking a site preparation licence from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.

The application would start an approvals process likely to take five years before construction can begin, but there's no guarantee such a plant will get built. The Ministry of Energy recently selected Darlington as the site of the province's newest nuclear plant in 20 years, to be operated by Ontario Power Generation.

Industry experts say Nanticoke is considered an ideal site for a nuclear plant because of its location, lakeside access and ample access to high-voltage transmission lines.

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George Bush finds new job after leaving White House

Christopher Carey, reporting for The Capital/Hometown Annapolis web pages brings us this. Sparked by interest in a proposed third reactor, the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant in Maryland opened its doors recently for the first public tour of the facility since 9/11.

Residents living within a five-mile radius of the plant were invited to get an inside look at their nuclear neighbour, with a particular emphasis on safety. Since the 2001 airline hijackings, the plant has been closed to the general public and security around the facility has been greatly increased.

James Spina, vice president of the Calvert Cliffs plant, said that the idea to open the plant for tours came after public meetings for the proposed third reactor. "We felt that it was appropriate to allow some fashion of general access."

Most noticeable during the tour was the security, which included armed guards, surveillance cameras and several screening checkpoints. Visitors were also assured the reactors would be able to withstand being struck by a commercial airliner. In addition to the security, the highlights of the tour included a control room simulator and a close, outdoors look at the reactors.

Fallout denied in Oz nuclear issues row

The following tale comes from the pages of The Australian’s web site. West Australian Nationals leader Brendon Grylls recently denied that there is any fallout from nuclear issues in the state's Liberal-Nationals power sharing agreement.

Mr Grylls said the partnership between the Liberal government and the Nationals, who hold the balance of power in the new parliament, was working well despite reports of a clash over his views on nuclear waste.

Perth newspaper The Sunday Times reported that the Nationals were on a collision course with the Barnett government because of Mr Grylls' stance that WA should accept nuclear waste from around the world. Premier Colin Barnett, while declaring his readiness to open up the state to uranium mining, has ruled out any plan for a nuclear waste repository in WA.

Mr Grylls said the issue was "not on the radar. Three years ago I made the comment that if you support reducing world carbon emissions then nuclear power is a way of doing that.”

"If there's going to be nuclear power there'll be spent fuel rods. If there's going to be spent fuel rods and you're concerned about their safe storage you might want to think about storing them where we have got control rather than where we haven't got control.”

India looks to Sweden for nuke energy disposal tips

Sujata Dutta Sachdeva, reporting for the Times of India’s web pages, brings us the following environmental tale.

India is planning to increase nuclear power generation at least 15-fold by 2030 and now may be time to work out how it will handle the radioactive waste generated by the new reactors

At present, India has nine operational nuclear reactors and at least eight more are being developed by the public sector. Private companies want a piece of the action too. Clearly, nuclear waste disposal is likely to be of critical importance to India this century.

The Swedish example may offer lessons for India. For three decades, Sweden has safely used nuclear power to meet 30% of its energy needs.  Claes Thegerstorm, president of Svensk Karnbranslehantering AB (SKB), a Swedish nuclear fuel and waste management company, says, "We have 10 nuclear reactors and almost an accident-free history of handling them."

SKB has been involved with the disposal of radioactive waste since 1977. Its ship, MS Sigyn, is designed to transport spent fuel from nuclear facilities, hospitals and industry to the waste disposal centres at Forsmark and Oskarshamn.

IItalian waste due for Oak Ridge disposal delayed by red tape

We’ve not heard from our friend Frank Munger lately (Hi, Frank!) so here’s a report he filed recently with the Knoxnews web pages. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has postponed a decision on EnergySolutions' request to import up to 20,000 tons of Italian nuclear waste. The low-level radioactive waste would be processed at the company's Oak Ridge plant, and the remnants would be sent to Utah for disposal at the company's nuclear landfill.

NRC spokesman David McIntyre said the commission approved an order "holding in abeyance" the import license application until some related court proceedings are resolved.

The Northwest Interstate Compact passed a resolution earlier this year saying any disposal of foreign waste in Utah would require its approval: EnergySolutions subsequently filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the regional waste compact's authority: that issue is still pending.

If approved, the company plans to bring the waste to Oak Ridge for processing at its plant on Bear Creek Road. After incineration, compaction and other treatments, the waste residues would be transported to the company's landfill at Clive, Utah, for disposal.

Venezuela 's nuke plans get helping hand fom Russia

Our thanks to Christopher Toothaker  and the Associated Press for the following. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said recently that Russia will help Venezuela develop nuclear energy — a move likely to raise U.S. concerns over the increasingly close cooperation between Caracas and Moscow.

Chavez said he accepted an offer from Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin for assistance in building a nuclear reactor. "Russia is ready to support Venezuela in the development of nuclear energy with peaceful purposes and we already have a commission working on it," Chavez said. "We are interested in developing nuclear energy."

Putin offered Chavez assistance in developing nuclear energy during a meeting in the Russian city of Novo-Ogaryovo.  The prime minister did not specify what kind of cooperation he could offer Venezuela, but Russia is aggressively promoting itself as a builder of nuclear power plants in developing nations.

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Hutton takes on new job at British Energy?

Our thanks to Paul Dobson for this article found on Bloomberg’s web pages.

U.K. Business Secretary John Hutton told a recent industry meeting that building new reactors was indispensable for keeping the nations’ lights on, as the country's biggest nuclear power producer, British Energy Group Plc, continued takeover talks.

According to a news release from London's Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform, Hutton said: ‘We are determined to get new nuclear up and running as soon as possible.’ A program of building new stations may also create as many as 100,000 jobs.

British Energy, which is 36 percent state-owned, is in takeover talks with Paris-based Electricite de France SA, which has plans for at least four new U.K. reactors from 2017. Prime Minister Gordon Brown supports the expansion of nuclear power to replace older plants.

Didn't you know? Plutonium site is now a historic landmark

With thanks to William Yardley, reporting for the New York Times. During WWII, Richland, Washington had been a company town where the 50,000 employees didn’t know what they were manufacturing. “The war effort” had been the only explanation for the sudden rush of work out on a remote curve of the Columbia River.

Now, 63 years later, the place and its purpose have been publicly affirmed. Last month, B Reactor, the world’s first major nuclear reactor and the source of plutonium for the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki, was designated a national historic landmark.

Although the federal government no longer produces plutonium here at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, it expects to spend the foreseeable future cleaning up after it.

I’m going to retire out there,” said Clayton Howell, 41, a local carpenter: “This is the best job I’ve ever had. They don’t rush you. They’ve got people watching the people who are watching the people watch the people.”

Dib Dib Dib - let's get that badge! US Scouts can aim for Atomic Badge

You can tell it’s poor pickings this week on the web, regarding interesting/silly nuclear tales unless, of course, you are interested in what’s going on in India at the moment (see Monday’s Nugget).  So with nothing better to do on a wet Sunday afternoon, yours truly was having a look around for you and came across the pages of the US Scouting Organisation and the badges they can aim for.  And, would you believe it? They can actually aim for an Atomic Energy Badge!  Is this peculiar only to America, or does any other country have this?

Anyway, here is an extract from someone’s blog page that I thought you might like: ‘You might work hands-on with radioactive materials while working on this merit badge. It is essential that you take safety precautions before, during, and after working with any radioactive substance. Accidentally swallowing, breathing in, or coming in direct skin contact with ANY amount of radioactive material could cause severe long term health problems.

Be sure to discuss your plans for working with radioactive materials with your counselor or the laboratory manager where you obtain your samples.’

India on course for nuclear technology?

We’re still concentrating on the East;  this time India, courtesy of the BBC’s web pages.

The group of nations that regulate the global nuclear trade is meeting in Vienna to consider lifting restrictions on selling nuclear technology to India.

It is part of a controversial Indian-US deal that needs the approval of the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) before the US Congress can ratify it.

The group did not endorse the plan in a meeting last month, forcing the US to come back with a revised proposal. India's government says the deal is vital to meet its civil energy demands.

Critics say it creates a dangerous precedent - effectively allowing India to expand its nuclear power industry without requiring it to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as other nations must. They say the deal would undermine the arguments for isolating Iran over its nuclear programme and be a disaster for international non-proliferation efforts.

UK's NDA gets 'MOXy'

Our thanks goes to Angela Jameson, writing for The Times online this week, for this interesting report that makes us think: ‘Hello….’

According to scientists, Britain has a stockpile of plutonium and uranium that, if converted to fuel, could be worth nearly Ł160 billion and power three nuclear reactors for 60 years. Its future still has to be decided.

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), which takes responsibility for the stockpile on behalf of the State, has begun to consult the nuclear industry on what to do with the 100 tonnes of plutonium, stored at Sellafield.

By recycling plutonium and uranium into so-called mixed oxide fuel (MOX), they can be re-used in nuclear reactors of the sort used in France, Germany, Japan and Belgium. The three reactor designs being considered for Britain by the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate could burn MOX fuel alongside uranium. Once turned into ceramic-encased MOX pellets, plutonium can be used in a nuclear reactor.

Oak Ridge Lab evacuation due to 'operational emergency' (the lowest level rating)

The following comes courtesy of John Huotari, reporting for the Oakridger web pages in Tennessee. 

More trouble for the folks at Oak Ridge: following on from the dropped nuclear warheads incident back in April, four of six people have been "cleared" in a medical evaluation after an Oak Ridge National Laboratory building was evacuated on Monday morning. A subsequent operational emergency that had been declared was later terminated.

Monday's emergency at the Holifield Radioactive Ion Beam Facility was due to elevated readings on radiological detection equipment during routine checks; an operational emergency is the lowest level of emergency, and does not involve a significant release of hazardous materials.

About 30 people were evacuated: six employees, including the four that have been cleared, were being evaluated to check for radiological contamination associated with accelerator (pictured) operations inside the Holifield facility.

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Illinois has new nuke task force

Found in the Lake County News-Sun: State Senator Michael Bond recently announced the adoption of a resolution to create a new task force on nuclear power issues in Illinois.

Senate Joint Resolution 101 creates the Nuclear Power Issues Task Force to study key concerns related to nuclear power use in Illinois, including the state's ban on the construction of new nuclear reactors.

The task force will focus on the following issues related to nuclear power use in Illinois: The decommissioning of existing and retired nuclear plants, waste storage and disposal issues (including any economic potential) and the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel.

"With the very real threat of global climate change, and existing issues with air quality and public health, we must act now to develop alternative sources of energy that are safe, clean and economically viable," Bond said. "The expansion of the nuclear power industry holds tremendous benefits, but first we need to resolve safety and security issues."

Final clearup in Baghdad

Thanks goes to Alissa Rubin and Campbell Robertson, reporting for the New York Times for this.

American and Iraqi officials have completed nearly the last chapter in dismantling Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program with the removal of hundreds of tons of natural uranium from the country’s main nuclear site.

American military personnel helped move about 600 tons of uranium in the form called yellowcake. It had been stored at Tuwaitha, an installation 12 miles south of Baghdad. It apparently arrived in Canada over the weekend.

Although the material cannot be used in its current form for a nuclear weapon or even a so-called dirty bomb, officials decided that in Iraq’s unstable environment, it was important to make sure it did not fall into the wrong hands.

There are also health dangers associated with concentrated forms of natural uranium and, since little is secure in Iraq, officials wanted to remove it.

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Okay - who dropped the warheads?

Our thanks a second time around to Frank Munger and the Knoxnews web pages for yet another little gem featuring the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. In separate incidents barely a week apart in April, nuclear warhead parts were dropped at the complex, but a plant spokesman said there was no threat of a nuclear explosion.

“There was no danger to the public,” Bill Wilburn said. “There was never any danger of explosion. There was nothing associated with this work that could cause an explosion.”

Both of the drops occurred at Y-12’s Assembly/Disassembly Building, where workers build and dismantle warhead components containing enriched uranium.

According to a report: “The part fell approximately seven inches onto an inspection stand causing minor damage to the part,” “Neither the visible nor audible loss-of-vacuum alarms activated during this event.” In other words, there were no criticality concerns…

Lax security at NATO bases

Here’s a rather scary tale for a Monday morning, thanks to Agence France-Presse (AFP). Most European air force bases that house US nuclear bombs are failing to meet security requirements to protect the weapons, according to an internal US Air Force investigation.

The air bases, including those in Belgium, Germany, Holland and Italy, often fall short of US Defence Department (DOD) standards, with fencing, lighting and buildings in need of repair and security guards lacking sufficient training and experience. At some bases, military conscripts with less than a year of active duty experience were assigned the task of guarding the weapons against theft.

As a result of the security concerns, the United States may decide to consolidate the nuclear weapons at fewer bases in Europe. Consolidating the storage of the weapons would "minimize variances and reduce vulnerabilities at overseas locations."

Several hundred thermonuclear bombs, about 200 to 350 B-61 bombs according to unofficial estimates, are kept at air bases in six NATO countries.

Transuranic waste drum put in waste

The following comes from Kyle Marksteiner, reporting for the Current-Argus web pages recently.  A transuranic waste drum with prohibited levels of liquid has been removed from the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant 27 miles east of Carlsbad, New Mexico, and returned to Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The drum, packaged with other drums in a standard waste box, was shipped to Carlsbad in May and was nine rows back at the underground repository when the mistake was discovered. The drum had been tagged as not conforming to the standards required for shipment to WIPP, but it was mistakenly placed in the waste box and shipped anyway.

An official letter contained the following conclusion: “Even though the drum was identified to have a prohibited amount of liquid, this condition was indirectly and subsequently remediated when it was overpacked with three other drums for container integrity issues," and noting that the total amount of liquid in the container was less than 1% which made it compliant with WIPP's permits.

Waste to be kept at Pilgrim site

Robert Knox, writing for the Boston web pages brings us the following. Next month's closing of a nuclear waste storage facility in South Carolina means the Pilgrim nuclear power station will be forced to store low-level waste for what federal regulators call an ‘extended interim period.’

Although the waste - including resin and filters from cleaning the water used by the reactor - is far less radioactive than the used nuclear fuel already stored inside nuclear power plants, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued a renewed warning to power plants on storing it safely.

The closing of the low-level storage facility in Barnwell, S.C., where reactors have sent waste for decades, comes as the Bush administration announced its determination to pursue a remote Nevada site as the ultimate repository for nuclear waste (Yep, Yucca - again)

David Tarantino, a Pilgrim spokesman, said that Pilgrim is prepared to store the low-level waste in strong concrete containers for at least 10 years, and that the arrangement poses no threat to public safety.

Bomb blueprints go walkabout

We’ve recently had a ‘we don’t want to worry you’ story – now we have a definite ‘head for the bunkers, people’ report, thanks to Ian Traynor’s recent report on the Hindu.com’s web site. Nuclear bomb blueprints and manuals on how to manufacture weapons-grade uranium for warheads are feared to be circulating on the international black market, according to investigators tracking the world’s most infamous nuclear smuggling racket (You didn't think we'd put real blueprints on this page, did you?)

Alarm about the sale of nuclear know-how follows the disclosure that the Swiss government, allegedly acting under U.S. pressure, secretly destroyed documents from a massive nuclear smuggling investigation. The information was seized from the home and computers of Urs Tinner, a 43-year-old Swiss engineer who has been in custody for almost four years as a key suspect in the nuclear smuggling ring run by Abdul Qadeer Khan.

“We know that copies were made,” said Mark Fitzpatrick, an expert on the illicit networks at the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS). “Both U.S. intelligence and the IAEA have been pursuing this with great urgency and diligence. It is worrisome that there are other plans floating around somewhere out there,” he said.

Slovenia mis-calls incident

Slovenia apologised yesterday (Thursday) to its European neighbours after wrongly informing them that an incident at a nuclear power plant was an exercise, according Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Slovenian Environment Minister Janez Podobnik told other EU environment ministers he was sorry for the mistaken alert, triggered after a leak in a primary cooling system at the country's only nuclear reactor.

Speaking as he arrived for a meeting, which he chaired, Podobnik said Slovenia's nuclear agency had "used the wrong form. It used a form that had 'exercise' on it. It was a mistake that was a genuine human error."

He said the error following the coolant leak on Wednesday at the Krsko nuclear plant, which has been shut down, was spotted "in a few minutes" and corrected.

Neighbouring Austria’s Environment Minister Josef Proell, whose country is deeply opposed to nuclear power, was furious about the mix-up. "It's not okay to set off an alarm in Europe and inform Austria, Italy and Hungary that it's only an exercise," he said.

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ND 5th Bomb Wing fails safety tests

The following definitely comes under the ‘We don’t want to worry you, but we’re going to’ banner and  is, frankly, quite worrying (but not surprising given the number of similar stories out there). It comes with grateful thanks to Michael Hoffman reporting for the Air Force News web pages. The 5th Bomb Wing at Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, failed its much-anticipated defence nuclear surety inspection recently, according to a Defence Threat Reduction Agency report.

Inspectors gave the wing an “unsatisfactory” grade after uncovering many crucial mistakes during the weeklong inspection. Security broke down on multiple levels during simulated attacks across the base: at one point, inspectors observed a forces’ security guard playing games on his mobile phone, whilst supposedly on duty at a restricted area perimeter.

The lapses are baffling, given the high-level focus on Minot since last August, when 5th Bomb Wing airmen mistakenly loaded six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles onto a B-52 Stratofortress and flew them to Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, where the plane sat on the flight line, unattended, for hours. That incident not only embarrassed the Air Force, but also raised concerns worldwide about the deterioration in U.S. nuclear safety standards.

Kentucky to lift state ban?

Our thanks to Steve Blankinship, writing for Kentucky’s Red Orbit news pages for this one.

Kentucky legislators are considering lifting a state ban on nuclear plants imposed more than 20 years ago. The move would clear the way to potentially diversify the state's power generation mix. Sponsors of a state senate bill to lift the ban cited improved ability to safely store nuclear waste on- site at nuclear plants.

Kentucky's current stance, say backers of the proposed repeal measure, is keeping the state from competing for nuclear power projects. Under the state's moratorium, no nuclear power plant can be built until a long-term federal disposal site has become operational.

The state is also a domestic source of uranium in addition to coal. Rob Ervin of the United Steel Workers, which has hundreds of members working in the uranium enrichment field near Paducah, said the safety of nuclear power has come a long way. "Exploring our options and giving us a chance to capitalize on the rebirth of an industry is what this bill is all about."

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Radioactive pollution at all-time high in Scotland

Once again, here at anythingradioactive, we prove that we are on the ball when it comes to bringing you up-to-date news reports and items on all things nuclear.

Here is a classic case in point with the following found on the pages of Scotland’s Sunday Herald web pages, written by Rob Edwards. Radioactive pollution of a Scottish military firing range by depleted uranium (DU) has risen to the highest level for more than 10 years, according to a survey for the Ministry of Defence.

Soil on parts of the Kirkcudbright Training Area on the Solway coast is so contaminated that it breaches agreed safety limits, more so as the contamination is spreading, due to the corrosion of fragments from shells misfired in the past.

Scottish Environment Minister, Michael Russell said: "The Scottish government was not adequately consulted on the test firing of DU shells at Kirkcudbright," he said. "I have stated in the past that I am strongly opposed to the testing of such weapons on Scottish soil and this remains the case."

More than 6000 DU shells were fired at the range near Dundrennan in Dumfries and Galloway between 1982 and 2004. Controversy flared again last month when the MoD test-fired another 20 DU rounds over two days.

China & Pakistan in nuke cooperation

This ‘we don’t want to worry you, but..’ story comes from the Financial Express web pages: China and Pakistan plan to set up a corporation to build nuclear and coal-based power plants in Pakistan, and Beijing has agreed to expedite the delivery of six atomic power plants of 300 MW each.

The decision to form the China-Pakistan Power Plant Corporation was made during President Pervez Musharraf's visit to China in April. China has also promised to help Pakistan achieve its target of generating 8,800 MW of nuclear power by 2030 by speeding up the delivery of the six nuclear plants.

Pakistan is also building a US $1.2 billion facility to develop the capability to manufacture full-cycle nuclear fuel and power plants, as well as setting up the Pakistan Nuclear Power Fuel Complex to manufacture pressurised water reactors and nuclear power plants.

Oldbury to be site of Ł2.8bn reactor?

Here’s a bit of UK news that may have passed you by, thanks to Alex Ross, writing for the Gazette Series web pages. The town of Oldbury, in the West Midlands, could be the site for a new Ł2.8billion nuclear reactor.

America-based Energy Solutions has teamed up with Japanese company Toshiba-Westinghouse to table a bid to construct and operate the power station.

It comes after the government announced its support for the nuclear option to meet Britain's future power needs and is said to be welcoming bids from private energy companies.

The choice to build a new power station at Oldbury, however, has come as a surprise after it was ranked 11th in a list of 14 preferred sites: independent consultants felt that the local communities had become accustomed to having a nuclear site as a neighbour. Well, that’s okay then!

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Hill Base waste sent off-site for burning

Thanks goes to the Desert News web pages for this gem. Hill Air Force Base in northern Utah recently reported it had learned that materials it sent to the burn plant in Layton contained small amounts of depleted uranium. Hill sent what it called "classified components" to the Wasatch Integrated Waste Management District as part of its process of demilitarising materials, or rendering them unusable for military purposes.

The quantity of the radioactive material is described as "less than the amount found in one household smoke detector," according to Col. Linda Medler, 75th Air Base Wing commander, but the Utah Department of Environmental Quality has asked the Air Force to come up with a worst-case scenario on possible adverse health effects.

DEQ officials said the Air Force had made local notifications about the depleted-uranium-containing material, but that the state has not yet heard from the base about the maximum possible dosage of radioactive materials that could have been released when the military items were burned.

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Duck & Cover at Susquehanna

Here’s yet another ‘Duck & Cover’ story thanks to Rory Sweeney writing for the Times Leader web pages in Pennsylvania.  I know, I know, but I like these kinds of stories!  Residents of the 27 municipalities surrounding the Susquehanna nuclear plant in Salem Township will have to endure more rounds of siren testing now that a new system is replacing a faulty one, plant owner PPL Corp. announced recently.

A system of 76 sirens in the 10-mile-radius emergency planning zone around the plant was installed in 2006 replacing a 112-siren system built with the plant a quarter-century ago.

That system, however, failed to meet reliability requirements, and PPL sued the responsible companies, seeking in excess of $75,000. That case is still being litigated, according to plant spokesman Joe Scopelliti.

Each siren will be tested when installed, and the entire system will receive a three-minute test after installation is completed, which is expected sometime during the summer. He also added that the public would be notified before the full test – glad to hear it, Joe!!

Turkey Point II - more power plants needed

Florida regulators have approved Florida Power & Light Co.’s petition to build two new nuclear plants at its Turkey Point facility, according to a recent report found on South Florida’s Business Journal web pages.

The state Public Service Commission determined that there is a need for the additional power. Turkey Point, located south of Miami, currently has nuclear units, two gas and oil units, and one natural gas unit. The two new nuclear units (which are still awaiting federal approval) would come online in 2018 and 2020, and contribute between 2,200 megawatts and 3,000 megawatts of new generation.

"Trends indicate there will be a substantial need for more power in FP&L's service territory, and these new nuclear units can help meet that need," PSC Chairman Matthew M. Carter II said in a news release. "The nuclear units will provide a clean, non-carbon-emitting source of base-load power to meet Florida's growing energy needs."

'Fogbank' at Oak Ridge

Here’s something that may have passed you by, brought to you courtesy of Frank Munger writing for the Knoxnews web pages. Oak Ridge, Tennessee: New Scientist magazine is reporting that problems with a super-secret material manufactured at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant are holding up efforts to refurbish W76 warheads, which are deployed on Trident missiles.

According to the magazine's report by Rob Edwards, the material is code-named "Fogbank" and is extremely hazardous. It is reportedly produced at Y-12's new Purification Facility, a $50 million facility that was completed in mid-2005. Oak Ridge officials have repeatedly refused to discuss details of the "technical issues" holding up the program to extend the life of the W76 warheads and, at one point, denied that it was a materials problem.

The W76 is considered a critically important part of the nuclear arsenal, not only in the United States but in the United Kingdom as well – bet you didn’t know that…

Britain starts waste consultation

Grateful thanks go to Pete Harrison for filing this report with Reuters.

Britain has started consulting on the best way for nuclear operators to handle costs from disposing of radioactive waste from a new generation of reactors.

The government gave the go-ahead to a new generation of nuclear power stations last month, setting no limits on nuclear expansion and adding momentum to atomic energy's worldwide renaissance.

According to Business Secretary John Hutton: "Funds will be sufficient, secure and independent; it will be a criminal offence not to comply with the approved arrangements, and we are taking powers to guard against unforeseen shortfalls.”

The ruling Labour government says it will help Britain meet its climate change goals and avoid over - dependence on imported energy amid dwindling North Sea supplies.

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Transmission towers knocked down in tornados

With thanks to Platts' web pages for this one. The recent series of severe storms and tornados that ripped through Arkansas, Tennessee and Kentucky this week knocked down four structures carrying a 500-kV transmission line from the Entergy Arkansas' Arkansas-1 nuclear power plant, the utility's parent company said Wednesday. Three other transmission towers sustained significant damage, the utility added.

In a notice on Entergy's transmission web site, the company said that while it has inspected the damage from the air, it has been unable to get crew on the ground because of difficult terrain. The loss of the line forced the nuclear plants to cut its output to 37% of normal capacity. Entergy expects it will take about two weeks to restore the damage.

Who forgot to sound sirens at Brown's Ferry?

A while ago we featured a story about a new siren system put into effect at Brown’s Ferry nuclear power plant, alerting residents of any impending disasters and being tested on a regular basis.  Well, it seems that a similar plan for a new system to be put in place at the Indian Point plant in New York state has failed to materialise!

According to Newsday’s web pages, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issued a notice of violation and proposed a $650,000 fine over Entergy's failure to implement the new siren system.

"The NRC will consider additional enforcement in the future if Entergy does not resolve the issues and make their new emergency notification system operable in a timely manner," said NRC Executive Director for Operations Luis Reyes.

Robyn Bentley, a spokeswoman for Entergy, which operates the plant in Westchester County, said the company will respond to the NRC's order within the mandated 30 days. She added that public health and safety are not in jeopardy.

Veterans want compensation

With thanks to Martin Croucher, writing for the Epoch Times for this one.

Families of British veterans used as human guinea pigs in 1950s nuclear experiments in the Pacific are likely to suffer genetic defects for generations to come. The results of a parliamentary inquiry come as 700 surviving veterans are preparing to take the Ministry of Defence to court for compensation.

Between 1952 and 1967, more than 22,000 servicemen from Britain, Australia and New Zealand witnessed hundreds of nuclear explosions in the Pacific and Indian oceans – most were contaminated to some degree or another by radiation.

The inquiry acknowledged that the veterans' health problems had been caused by the nuclear tests and recommended an interim compensation pay out. The government, however, has denied that there is a link between the veterans’ health problems, while the MOD claims that there was no exposure – and even if there was, it wasn’t the cause of the injuries and diseases the veterans suffered…

Australia won't sell uranium to India

With thanks to the Associated Press for this one.  Foreign Minister Stephen Smith of Australia's new Labour government has told Indian envoy Shyam Saran that it will not sell uranium to his country while it is not a member of the global non-proliferation treaty.

The comments uphold a policy that would scuttle the previous government's plans to start negotiating a uranium trade with India to fuel the country's skyrocketing demand for electricity. Smith later told reporters: "We went into the election with a strong policy commitment (that) we would not export uranium to nation-states who are not members of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty."

A former member of India's National Security Council later said:  "Australia has one of the largest reserves of uranium but there are other nations which also have it."

Yucca Mountain closed-off

This report was filed by Lisa  Mascaro, writing for the Las Vegas Sun. The beleaguered Yucca Mountain  - yes, again - nuclear waste dump project now has a chain-link fence blocking the entrance to the tunnel that leads inside.

The US Energy Department’s contractor says daily operations at the nation’s planned nuclear waste repository are being put “on standby” in the face of massive budget cuts and all on-site jobs, save for a few sentries’, are being eliminated and more layoffs are on the way.

As Nevadans constantly seek signs that Yucca Mountain is really dead, is a 6-foot barrier blocking entry to the tunnel significant? Spokesman Jon Summers said: "It’s clear the dump is dying. This is one of the most significant moves we’ve seen to signal the end of the dump. They closed the tunnel ... "

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Senator assured of Pakistan's nuke safety

This report comes with thanks to UPI’s web pages: U.S. Senator, Joseph Lieberman, on a recent visit to Islamabad, said he had been assured by Pakistani officials that the country's nuclear weapons were safe from falling into extremists' hands. Lieberman went on to say that he was told sufficient safeguards had been put in place to protect the weapons.

Lieberman also met Pakistan's army chief and Lt. Gen. Khalid Kidwai, chairman of the Strategic Planning Division and said that his meeting with Kidwai was very successful and was encouraged to learn that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons were in safe hands.

He went on to say that "There is a multi-layer security about Pakistan's nuclear arsenals and I will take a good message about it for the U.S. Senate."

Vietnamese workers 'too confident''

Twenty-eight Vietnamese labourers who worked in an area close to where radioactive material went missing at a Vung Tau construction site last week, tested negative for radioactive contamination.

Director of Radiation Safety Centre under the Da Lat Nuclear Research Institute, Hoang Van Nguyen, said the workers’ blood samples were now being tested further using more advanced equipment.

The results, which would tell whether the missing material caused chromosome abnormalities in the individuals, would be announced in 14 days, he said, adding that the company had yet to determine how the material had gone missing from the test equipment.

He said that workers, however, may have been “too confident” in handling the equipment.

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Front line officers get radiation detection lessons

Front Line Officers from Ghana, Nigeria and Sudan operating in the Customs, Immigration and Security Agencies are being trained to use radiation detection equipment to identify nuclear and other radioactive materials.  The training programme is being organised by the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission in collaboration with the IAEA.

The Minister for National Security pledged his Ministry’s commitment to assist the Atomic Energy Commission in particular and the global community in general in fighting nuclear terrorism. 

The Director General of Ghana Atomic Energy, Professor Edward Akaho gave the assurance that the country’s nuclear facility meets international safety regulation standards.

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Belaruss needs to build power station

Still in Eastern Europe, this article was found on the BBC’s world web pages.  Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko said recently that his country needs to build a nuclear power station and that the creation of a domestic nuclear energy source was essential to guarantee national security.

Belarus relies heavily on Russian gas for its energy, and rows over payments have prompted threats of supply cuts.

Work on the reactor would start in 2008 and it is expected to be ready in four to eight years.

Woman accused of smuggling in South Africa

A woman appeared in Cape Town Magistrate's Court on November 8th on charges of helping to smuggle parts used in manufacturing nuclear weapons from the United States to South Africa. Marisa Sketo, 46, allegedly also helped to export the nuclear weapon parts illegally from South Africa to Pakistan. She is facing charges under the Weapons of Mass Destruction Act. The trial has been rescheduled for January 23, according to a court official.

An unnamed US source reportedly said that the parts she allegedly helped to smuggle to Pakistan were "rapid high-voltage electric switches". A nuclear weapons expert, who did not want to be named, said these switches "were used in nuclear weapons." These could be Krytron detonation switches, but this has not yet been confirmed (you know the old adage: Nothing is confirmed until officially denied!)

Nuclear rows Down Under

Politics today from Down Under, courtesy of ABC Australia's web pages.

Australia’s Opposition environment spokesman Peter Garrett has accused Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull of "running away" from Prime Minister John Howard's support for nuclear power.

Mr Turnbull recently 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.

The country’s Labour Party is opposed to nuclear power in Australia and Mr Garrett is demanding that the Government clarify its stand on nuclear power before the election.

Italy 'reconsidering' nuclear power

On this cold and frosty morning, let’s head South for a bit of warmth with the following article found via World Nuclear News. Italy is beginning to reconsider nuclear power - some 20 years after a referendum banning it.
The move has been prompted by the price of electricity in Italy - it is the highest among industrialised countries (and you thought we had it bad!)

Several members of parliament from different sides of the political spectrum are now speaking in favour of nuclear energy.

Pierferdinando Casini, leader of the Union of the Christian Democrats, has prepared an official parliamentary debate to "follow the way of nuclear energy again" and the Chamber of Deputies will hold a dedicated meeting on the subject.

Egypt to build nuclear power plants

Found on the Sydney Morning Herald news pages recently. The President of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, has announced that the country (which lacks the oil reserves of some of its Middle East neighbours) will build several nuclear power plants to meet rising energy demands.

His statement, made in a nationally televised address, seemed to have twin purposes: to overhaul an energy policy to keep pace with economic growth; and to support his son, Gamal, who has stressed the need for nuclear power and who many analysts regard as a frontrunner to succeed the 79-year-old president.

"We believe that energy security is a major part of building the future of this country and an integral part of Egypt's national security system," Mr Mubarak said. "We have to face the fact that oil and gas are not renewable energy sources.”

Government may scrap nuke pill distribution

Today’s nugget is a follow-on from one we ran recently and comes thanks to USA Today.

The White House may scrap a plan that would give anti-radiation pills to millions of people, five years after Congress ordered that the tablets be made available to anyone living within 20 miles of a nuclear reactor.

The White House is considering whether to invoke a legal loophole allowing the government to scrap the distribution requirement if there is a better way to prevent thyroid cancer.  The US government already provided free pills to the 4.7 million people living within 10 miles of a plant, but Congress ordered wider distribution to cover 21.9 million people in 33 states.

Although the White House at the time called potassium iodide pills crucial to preventing thyroid cancer in cases of radiation exposure, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) argues against wider distribution of the drug. Apparently, this could undermine confidence in U.S. nuclear plants.

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Chile considering nuclear options

Found recently, thanks to Reuters. Chile's President Michelle Bachelet announced recently that her government was still studying its nuclear energy development options, but warned it will be for the next government to make a decision as studies could take up to eight years. "I will do all the work, the next government will have all the studies needed." "The International Atomic Energy Agency told us that it takes sometimes eight years to make a good decision, specifically in a country that has as many earthquakes as Chile."

The next Chilean government is due to take office in 2010, making it impossible for Bachelet to make the final decision of pursuing nuclear energy during her presidency

Record forging aboard nuclear sub

With thanks to CNN for this one: Six Navy personnel on board the nuclear-powered submarine USS Hampton (pictured here) have been punished for forging inspection records for the cooling system of the ship's nuclear reactor, Navy officials said recently.

The misconduct was discovered on September 17 but was made public after completion of an initial investigation. One officer and five enlisted personnel received a "non-judicial punishment" after other Navy personnel discovered their actions.

The crew neither maintained inspection records nor conducted the required inspection of the chemical levels associated with the cooling system

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Romania wants 2nd power plant

We are taking a return trip to Romania today, thanks to Reuters.

Romania plans to build a second nuclear power plant after the completion of two more reactors at its Cernavoda plant on the Danube, Prime Minister Calin Tariceanu said recently at the official opening of the plant’s second reactor. "After we complete units 3 and 4 we must continue to develop the nuclear system in Romania," Tariceanu told reporters.

He added: "We must already start to think about where we will have the next nuclear power plant in Romania” and that the Black Sea state needed to ensure it was not dependent on oil and gas energy resources.

European Union newcomer Romania has set an Oct. 25 deadline to receive binding bids for the licence to build and operate Units 3 and 4 in Cernavoda, an investment estimated at 2.2 billion euros.

Nuke warheads flown over US airspace

Here is a story to make you choke on your cornflakes, thanks to Stephen Foley at the New Zealand Herald.

Nuclear warheads, capable of unleashing the equivalent of 10 Hiroshima bombs, were mistakenly flown across the United States by a bomber crew. The warheads should have been replaced with dummies of the same weight, but personnel failed to notice that six of the 12 were fully operational nuclear warheads, scheduled for burial in Louisiana.

The flight was the first time in 40 years that nuclear bombs have been flown over US territory without specific authorisation from the top level of the Air Force. Critics have argued that safety procedures have been disregarded as funds and expertise are diverted to new wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Air Force spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Edward Thomas, said ‘Clearly this incident was unacceptable on many levels.

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Japan can't say when plant will reopen

At the recent UN nuclear watchdog’s general conference in Vienna, the Japanese nuclear safety body examining the damage at the world's largest nuclear plant – Kashiwazaki-Kariwa - in Japan, hit by a powerful earthquake in July, declined to say when the plant might re-open.

When asked, Akira Fukushima said, "At this moment, we can't say when the reactor could be restarted," Fukusima, a top official at Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) went on to say: "What I can say now is that we have to be careful to do our investigations and our research.”

Apparently, a clearer picture of what happened inside the plant will be available at the end of the year.

Russian nuclear giant reveals building plans

Here’s something that may have passed you by, thanks to those nice people at World Nuclear News.The deputy head of Russia's AtomEnergoProm has outlined the new giant's plans for building and funding new nuclear power plants. Petr Schedrovitsky explained that a Federal Task Program would see funding made available for seventeen 1200 MWe reactors to come on line between 2013 and 2020 at a wide range of sites.

Construction has already started on Novovoronezh Phase-II units 1 and 2. Next would be two units at Leningrad Phase-II units 1 and 2, where site preparation is underway. Following those would come Volgodonsk 3 and 4. New nuclear power plant sites would be started at Tverskaya, 400 km northwest of Moscow; Severskaya near Tomsk; Nizhegorod, 325 km to the east of Moscow; and South Urals.

US orders new nuclear plants

The following comes from NBC/Associated Press. The current turmoil in credit markets is unlikely to derail plans by power companies in the US to begin ordering the first new nuclear plants since cost overruns and public opposition virtually killed the industry three decades ago.

Nearly 30 years after the disastrous partial meltdown at Three Mile Island, Pa., several companies are planning to seek regulatory approval to build new plants, including Entergy Corp., Dominion Resources Inc., Exelon Corp. and the Tennessee Valley Authority. Constellation Energy Group has already filed a partial application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which expects up to seven requests this year and 28 by 2009. The first plants could be online by 2014 or 2015.

Californian Republicans take vote

Hundreds of members of the Californian Republican Party have voted to work towards ending the state's 31-year moratorium on nuclear power plant construction.

The party said that by approving the pro-nuclear resolution, it had effectively put the weight of 5.3 million voters behind an initiative to ballot Californians on the ban.

California State Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, who has long been campaigning against the moratorium, said "I'm delighted with the unanimous support of the California Republican Party in favour of building modern nuclear power plants. The only way we can meet California's ambitious mandate to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 25% in 13 years is if we allow the construction of new nuclear power plants."

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Yucca row rumbles on

The continuing dispute at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain site still rumbles on.  The following report comes thanks to Keith Rogers writing for the Las Vegas Review Journal. 

What began in June as a clear attempt by the state engineer to stop the US Department of Energy from drilling boreholes at the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site now appears as clouded as the muddy water that's in the centre of the dispute.

At the close of business Thursday, DOE's acting director of the Yucca Mountain Site Operations Office sent State Engineer Tracy Taylor an overnight letter declaring that the so-called first phase of drilling that's been under way this year "is not affected by the cease and desist order (and) is anticipated to conclude by the end of September."

That means DOE intends to use an additional 191,000 gallons of Nevada's water, or more than half of an acre-foot, according to the letter from James W. Hollrith, acting director of the Yucca Mountain Site Operations Office.

Nukem awarded South African contract

Found via our friends at World Nuclear News: Nukem Technologies (what a great name!) of Germany has been awarded a fourth contract by South Africa's PBMR Pty related to the construction of a pilot fuel plant for the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) project.

The latest contract is for the supply of professional services for the procurement support and supervision of construction and commissioning of the PBMR Pilot Fuel Plant at Pelindaba, near Pretoria. The plant should be completed in 2010 to qualify the fuel manufacturing process and to deliver the first core load for the demonstration PBMR This will be operated by the Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa.

The PBMR fuel would be moulded graphite fuel spheres containing coated uranium fuel particles, similar in form to those of the German Thorium High-Temperature Reactor (THTR). The plant at  Pelindaba  is designed to initially produce 270,000 of the high temperature fuel elements annually.

Russia starts floating plant build

Russia has begun to build the world’s first floating nuclear power plant despite warnings from environmentalists that it risks creating a disaster.  They fear that these floating plants will be more vulnerable to accidents and terrorist attacks.

The Ł100 million vessel, the Lomonosov (named after the 18th Century chemist, Mikhail Lomonosov – probably!) is the first of seven plants that Moscow says will bring vital energy resources to remote Russian regions as well as potential foreign markets. It will house two 35-megawatt reactors capable of supplying a city of 200,000 people when it starts operations, in three years’ time

German plant fire misses reactor

With thanks to the Khaleej Times web site for this one: Fire broke out at a nuclear power plant, run by Vattenfall, in northern Germany recently but was isolated from the atomic reactor. A police spokesman said it was unclear what had caused the fire but added there was no danger of a radiation leak and that no one was injured.

The blaze began at the Kruemmel power plant in Geesthacht, 20 miles southeast of Hamburg on the Elbe River, when coolant in a large electric power transformation substation ignited. The reactor was subsequently shut down as a ‘precaution.’

The plant provides 30 percent of the electricity supply to the thinly populated northern state of Schleswig-Holstein.

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Babcock & Wilson win Bruce Power contract

Again, found courtesy of World Nuclear News.  Babcock & Wilcox (B&W) has been awarded a contract by Bruce Power for the supply of eight replacement steam generators for unit 3 of the Bruce A nuclear power plant in Ontario, Canada.

The contract is valued at over C$90 million ($85 million). The replacement steam generators - which each weigh more than 100 tonnes and stand some 12 metres high - will be installed in unit 3 as part of the ongoing, C$4.25 billion ($4 billion) Bruce A Restart and Refurbishment project.

Bruce Power and B&W signed a similar contract in 2005 for the supply of 16 replacement steam generators. To date, four of those generators have been installed. B&W supplied the original Bruce A steam generators more than 30 years ago. The company will manufacture the replacement steam generators at its plant in Cambridge, Ontario, using Alloy 800 tubes and employing design enhancements.

Toshiba to sell 10% nuclear shares

With thanks to Reuters - Japan's Toshiba Corp. is in talks to sell 10% of its stake in nuclear power unit Westinghouse to Kazakh state firm Kazatomprom, a Toshiba source said recently.

Kazatomprom could buy the stake for roughly 60 billion yen ($488 million), and Toshiba hopes the deal would also secure a steady supply of uranium from Kazakhstan (home to a fifth of the world’s uranium reserves) as Japan is looking for new sources of uranium. Japan relies heavily on nuclear power for over 25 percent of its electricity, and already imports some 60 percent of its uranium from Australia and Canada.

Toshiba spokesman Keisuke Ohmori said Toshiba and Kazakhstan were negotiating for Kazatomprom to invest in Westinghouse, but declined to comment on the details

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EU Commission to allocate 20m euros to safety measures

The European Commission plans to allocate 20 million euros (over $27 million) for nuclear safety projects in Russia, Rosenergoatom (the country's nuclear power plant operator) said recently.

The company, which runs all 10 Russian nuclear power plants with a total capacity of over 23 gigawatts, pointed out that the funds offered by the European Union's (EU) executive branch were aimed at optimising their preventive maintenance.

The funds will be allocated under the Instrument of Nuclear Safety Cooperation (INSC) programme, are intended for seven years. Rosenergoatom is supposed to prepare the bidding documents by December this year.

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Agreement signed for Chinese reactors

An agreement has been signed which would see the first two of four nuclear power reactors built at Bamaoshan, in the Anhui province of China. The development would be the first inland nuclear power project. Reports from Beijing indicate that a consortium of Anhui Province Energy Group, Guangdong Nuclear, Shanghai Electric Power Company and Shenergy signed an agreement on May 20th.  The first phase of the project is planned for the Bamaoshan site near Wuhu on the Yangtze river which will eventually host four (1000 MWe each) reactors, the first two of these reportedly costing an astounding $5.75 billion!

Bush criticises Putin comments

Found on the International Herald Tribune web pages: The Bush administration criticized comments by Russian President Vladimir Putin that Russia could respond to U.S. plans to build a missile defence system in Europe by retargeting Russian nuclear weapons toward Europe.

Both national security adviser Stephen Hadley and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday that Putin's comments were unhelpful. Hadley, speaking aboard Air Force One en route to Europe with President George W. Bush, said the comments reflected an escalation in rhetoric over the missile defence system. Bush and Putin are expected to discuss the issue face to face this week in Germany during the G-8 summit of industrialized nations. In an interview released Monday, Putin warned that Moscow could take "retaliatory steps" should Washington go forward with the missile defence plan, including possibly aiming nuclear weapons at targets in Europe.

UK has enough chemicals in stock to fuel 3 reactors

Just in case you were wondering: according to a report shown to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, the UK has enough uranium and plutonium in stock to fuel three 1000 MWe reactors for their entire 60-year lives.

The document, entitled Uranium and Plutonium: Macro-economic Study, and prepared by consultants Environmental Resources Management and Integrated Decision Management, totals up the UK stockpiles resulting from nuclear fuel cycle activities before putting forward a range of scenarios for their long-term management.

The NDA has the responsibility of managing the legacy of the UK's historic nuclear program, gaining the best value for the taxpayer. It will use information from the report to discuss the future management of uranium and plutonium with the Government. 

Add 3, take away 2: oh, just pour a ton of water into the core - it'll be okay

Here’s a little gem that may have passed you by, thanks to the OC Register web site: On Dec. 11, operators in the control room of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, CA, were bringing Reactor 3 up to full power after a months-long refuelling outage.

The goal: raising power to 18 percent by adding water to the nuclear core. But rather than doing the precise calculations operators consulted a book, did some rudimentary math and added 500 gallons – twice what was necessary!This incident was among more than a dozen at San Onofre last year considered "more than minor" because it could have led to a significant event, challenged safety systems or affected workers' health. In the end, the incidents had very low safety significance, and no harm was done.

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PPL Corp submits reactor application

PPL Corp has informed the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission that it intends to submit an application for a combined construction and operating licence for a third reactor at its Susquehanna nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania.

The 2005 Energy Policy Act provides incentives for the first six new US reactors, or the first 6000 MW of new generating capacity to be licensed by the NRC. A production tax credit valued at up to $125 million will be available to companies starting construction by January 2014.

PPL said that it has not yet made a decision to construct a new unit. According to a spokesman a decision on construction could take as long as four years. The company estimates that if it proceeds with the licensing phase it would cost about $70 million.

Brown's Ferry re-start soon

Just in case you were wondering, here is a recent update on events at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant mentioned here a while ago, courtesy of the Boston Globe web site: It appears that this plant is looking likely to re-start operations within days, according to reports from regulators and operators. 

If you have been reading this section of our web site you may remember that this site has been mothballed since a fire in 1985 and is due to be reborn as an up to date 1,200 mw atomic generator with the power to light up approximately 650,000 homes in the Tennessee Valley area – apparently! For those of you into statistics, this is the USA’s 104th active commercial reactor and the country’s first ‘new’ generator of the 21st century…

Brazilian government approves new plants construction

The Brazilian government is planning to approve the construction of up to eight new nuclear power plants by 2030. The government is also likely soon to approve the construction of a third reactor at the existing Angra site.Plans for Angra 3 could be approved at a meeting of the National Energy Policy Council in June, and Odair Goncalves, head of the government's nuclear energy commission, is confident that the plant will get the go-ahead despite opposition. Angra 3 was originally planned as a twin unit to Angra 2, which started up in 2000. It’s estimated that the project will cost $3.5 billion to complete.

Hydroelectricity currently accounts for over 80% of Brazilian electricity generation but droughts can cause power shortages. The country is already co-owner, with Paraguay, of the world's largest operating hydroelectric power complex, the 12,600 MW Itaipu Dam on the Paraguayan border.

Jacobs Engineering wins decommissioning work

Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. said Tuesday it received a contract to service the Nuclear Decommissioning and Major Projects Department of British Nuclear Group Sellafield Ltd. on major projects at the Sellafield and Capenhurst sites.

Sellafield is Britain's largest nuclear reservation, where spent nuclear fuel is reprocessed and recovered nuclear material is developed into new nuclear fuel and Capenhurst houses the world’s first gaseous diffusion plant decommissioning project. The new contract took effect on May 1st and Jacobs will provide project delivery services to support the clean up and will also promote faster and less expensive cleaning and construction projects at the site.

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Russia's nuke expansion plans take shape

Russia's plans for a huge expansion of nuclear energy have begun to take shape with announcements of plans for new reactors at Novovoronezh and Leningrad II. It is expected that the first construction projects in plans to increase nuclear capacity from the current 21,743 MWe to about 44,000 by 2020 will consist of new AES-2006 model pressurised water reactors at Novovoronezh and Leningrad II. These first units would be built at a cost of about $3.0-3.7 billion per pair.Leningrad II would eventually boast four of the units, while there would be two at Novovoronezh and $95 million in funding is allocated to begin work at Novovoronezh this year

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TXU picks Mitsubishi's water reactor

US energy giant TXU has chosen Mitsubishi Heavy Industries' (MHI's) advanced pressurized water reactor (US-APWR) design for its new build plans. Comanche Peak in Texas (pictured) is a likely site for two new reactor units.  MHI announced that TXU had finally selected the US-APWR and would begin preparation of a combined Construction and Operating Licence for new plants which would be submitted to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission next year. TXU was said to be considering 2000-6000 MWe of new nuclear capacity at up to three sites, but it remains unclear how many US-APWRs the company is really considering.

China & Australia agree on new build in Oz

An agreement has been signed by PepinNini Minerals of Australia and Sinosteel of China for the joint development and operation of the Curnamona Province project in South Australia, which comprises the Crocker Well and Mount Victoria uranium deposits. The agreement, signed in Beijing on 7 February, facilitates an application to the Chinese government for approval of the alliance: it also calls for state-owned Sinosteel to pay a non-refundable A$1 million ($780,000) for an exclusivity period of 60 days to obtain approvals from the Chinese and Australian governments.

Saudi Arabia: no need for nuclear power development

Found in the Florida Sun Sentinel recently: Two years ago, the leaders of Saudi Arabia told international atomic regulators that they could foresee no need for the kingdom to develop nuclear power. Today, however, they are scrambling to hire atomic contractors, buy nuclear hardware and build support for a regional system of reactors.

Around a dozen states in the region have recently turned to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna for help in starting nuclear programs. "The rules have changed," King Abdullah II of Jordan recently told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. "Everybody's going for nuclear programs."

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80% of French energy is nuclear

When much of the world spurned nuclear power, 30 years ago, the French, being French, decided to go their own way and embrace it. Now, nearly 80 % of the country's electricity comes from 58 nuclear power plants. Because nuclear plants emit no greenhouse gases, France has the cleanest air in the industrialized world, and because the price of oil is now around $60 a barrel, it has the lowest electric bills in Europe. In fact, France has so much cheap electricity, it exports it to its European neighbors. French nuclear plants now supply power to parts of Germany, Italy and, in case you didn’t know (okay, you did!) London!

Tokyo Electric delays reactor completion.

Tokyo Electric Power Co., Asia's biggest utility, will delay completion of two nuclear reactors after admitting that an accident was covered up in 1978. Trade Minister Akira demanded the industry come clean, prompting more than 200 cases of concealed incidents. Fukushima Daiichi's seventh and eighth reactors will be finished in October 2013 and 2014, a year later than planned, the utility said. Japan, which buys 89% of its oil from the Middle East, wants new reactors to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and curb reliance on energy imports

Uranium powder produced in Japan

A powder of uranium and plutonium oxides has been produced at Japan's Rokkasho reprocessing plant as part of active tests leading to operation, scheduled for April 2007. Japan Nuclear Fuel Limited (JNFL) reported that from 2 November it had been collecting uranium-plutonium mixed oxide (MOX) and on 16 November that material had been converted into powder, sealed in a canister and sent to a secure storage facility.

New power stations 'necessary' for Switzerland

New nuclear power stations will be necessary to avoid a power shortfall after 2020, the Swiss government has decided.

Presenting the cabinet’s new energy policy, Energy Minister Moritz Leuenberger said the replacement of existing nuclear plants or the building of new ones would be necessary: The policy has been criticised by left-wing political parties and ecological groups but broadly welcomed by right-wing parties and business leaders.

Iran denies installing centrifuges

Iran recently denied reports it had started installing 3,000 centrifuges at its uranium enrichment site at Natanz, the Fars News Agency reported. Ali-Asghar Soltaniyeh, Iran's representative at the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the installation of two cameras at its nuclear facility showed Iran's desire to cooperate with international inspectors, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported. The U.N. Security Council has ordered Iran to stop its enrichment program and implemented sanctions banning the transfer of sensitive materials that could result in nuclear weapons.

Forsmark managers face tough questions

Managers at Forsmark nuclear power plant in Sweden have faced tough questions following the release of an internal document which revealed safety concerns, and the revelation that workers were sent home after failing alcohol and drug tests.

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US Energy Dept proposses complex overhaul

WASHINGTON:The U.S. Energy Department has proposed a nuclear weapons complex overhaul that could cost more than $150 billion over 25 years. The Government Accountability Office warned that given the importance of the nation's nuclear deterrent, the large amount of funding required, and DOE's history of poor project management, it is vital that Congress closely oversee the National Nuclear Security Administration's implementation of its proposal.

Bulgarian plant reports rupture

Bulgaria's Kozloduy nuclear plant recently reported a rupture in a heating device which caused a leak of radioactive solution into a pipeline in its turbine hall. A spokesman said the spill had caused no contamination – well, that’s okay then!

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Poland could sign up to joint programme

Poland's foreign minister has said that the country would soon join, along with Latvia and Estonia, a project to build a new nuclear power plant in Visaginas, Lithuania, which is at the centre of regional electricity projects. Poland strongly signalled its firm intent to join the Ignalina project: "Poland hopes that, in cooperation with the Lithuanian government, this deal will be finalised and signed as soon as possible. We are very interested in this project," said Anna Fotyga, Poland's foreign minister. A deal was due to be signed in December 06.

Jordan wants its own nuke programme

Jordan's King Abdullah II has told an Israeli newspaper that his country wants its own nuclear program. In an interview with the daily Haaretz, King Abdullah said his desert kingdom, which borders Israel and has a peace agreement with it, wanted nuclear power "for peaceful purposes" and was already discussing its plans with western countries.

Westinghouse secures Chinese contract

US-based Westinghouse has secured a key Chinese contract to provide four new reactors and transfer vital technology. Following many months of discussion it was finally announced on 16 December that the China's State Nuclear Power Technology Corporation has selected Westinghouse's AP1000 as the 'technology basis' for four reactors at Sanmen and Yangjiang. The companies running those sites are China National Nuclear Company and China Guangdong Nuclear Power Company, respectively.

First concrete pouring celebrated in China

Officials from the Qinshan Joint Venture, a subsidiary of China National Nuclear Corporation, have celebrated the first pouring of concrete for the fourth reactor of the second phase of development at Qinshan.  Construction has started on two more reactors for Phase 2 that should be completed by 2011 and provide 650 Mwe to eastern China. China’s nuclear expansion could see the country boast 40 Gwe  by 2020.

Russian experts remove uranium from Germany

Russian experts removed a large quantity of highly enriched uranium from a Soviet-era reactor in Germany and flew  it to Russia for processing. Protesters forced a convoy carrying the material to stop briefly despite efforts to keep the route secret and a heavy police presence. Approximately 717 pounds of enriched uranium, enough for several bombs, was heading to a processing centre in Podolsk, Russia

Police seize computer data at trailer park

During a routine call to a trailer park near the Los Alamos National Laboratory police seized computer memory sticks containing more than 400 pages of highly sensitive documents.  A further search revealed another 456 paper pages of restricted data destined for shredding.  No one has been charged or arrested…

17 tons of weapons-grade uranium to be 'down-blended'

Oak Ridge, Tennessee: More than 17 tons of weapons-grade uranium stored at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant will be "down-blended" to make it available for reactor fuel.  According to the U-S Department of Energy, the highly enriched uranium will be converted into about 290 tons of low-enriched uranium with an estimated value of US $750 million. The Y-12 plant is the nation's primary storehouse for weapons-grade uranium.

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First nuclear fuel bundle loaded at Cernadova

The first bundle of nuclear fuel has been loaded into Cernavoda 2. This first stage in active commissioning makes the Romanian unit an official nuclear site and paves the way for commercial operation this September.

The plant's owner, Societatea Nationala Nuclearelectrica, has announced that the process of fuel loading started on 15 February. The manual loading of 4560 fuel bundles, amounting to 100 tonnes of uranium would be take a period of ten days and the reactor's heavy water moderator would then be added to the primary circuit at the end of February, according to Minister of Economy and Trade, Varujan Vosganian.

Duke Power declares "unusual event"

Let’s start 2007 with something that won’t tax your brains this bleary morning: Duke Power Co. declared an "unusual event" at its Oconee, South Carolina, nuclear station back in Oct ’04, because of a decrease in the water level of the plant's spent fuel pool. The incident didn't threaten public safety and no increase in radiation levels was observed.

Nuclear power in vogue

Suddenly, nuclear power is in vogue. At the G-8 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, President Bush and Russian President Putin announced a far-reaching agreement to cooperate in the rapid expansion of nuclear energy worldwide and called on other countries to join them.

Egypt revives civilian power programme

A bit nearer to home, this time - Egypt is to revive the civilian nuclear power programme it froze 20 years ago following the accident at the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine

Australia 'should tackle power shortage''

Australia should tackle a shortage of power and water by embracing nuclear power plants that also desalinate water. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer predicted that one desalination plant powered by nuclear energy could deliver half of South Australia’s water requirements.

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Radioactive material seized - figures doubled in 4 years

Seizures of smuggled radioactive material capable of making a terrorist "dirty bomb" have doubled in the past four years, according to official figures. Smugglers, mostly in Europe, have been caught trying to traffick dangerous radioactive material more than 300 times since 2002.

Wisconsin power plant dismantled

Wisconsin:19 years after a nuclear power plant last produced electricity, workers are preparing for a big job - dismantling the reactor of the plant near this Mississippi River community about 15 miles south of La Crosse at an estimated cost of $79.5m – cheap at half the price!!

Russian company want to float football-sized barge

BEIJING: A Russian energy company has plans to construct a floating nuclear-energy plant on a football-field size barge to deliver electricity to inhabitants of northern territories near the White Sea.  Rosenergoatom said the 200 million U.S. dollar facility is due to be constructed next year

Defense Bill provision could kybosh Yucca Mountain

Here is something that you may have missed found on the Salt Lake Tribune web site: A provision tucked into a defence bill pending in Congress could erode a piece of the state's case against Private Fuel Storage's plan to store nuclear waste in Utah.

Private Fuel Storage, a group of electric utilities that produce nuclear power, received approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to store 44,000 tons of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel on the Skull Valley Goshute reservation, 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.  In order to move the waste to the site, PFS needed the Bureau of Land Management to change its land-use restrictions on the federal land surrounding the reservation so it could build a rail line to the reservation.The local US Air Force base was asked to do a study to see whether this would affect military operations. 

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UK nuclear shipments suffer from poor packing

The packaging for shipments of radioactivity across the UK is so poor that it could breach safety regulations, putting the environment and public health at risk. A nuclear industry safety adviser has revealed that radioactive materials are often transported by hospitals and factories in "second - hand cardboard boxes" and other "very dubious packages".

Trident subs suffer rash of safety incidents

Trident nuclear submarines docked at the Faslane naval base on the Clyde have suffered a rash of safety incidents, according to an internal Ministry of Defence report. Three of the four submarines that carry Britain's nuclear warheads suffered 22 "nuclear safety events" between June 2005 and May 2006, including "berthing in extreme weather conditions"..

UK may sell British Nuclear Group

The government has supposedly performed a U-turn on plans to sell British Nuclear Group, which is in charge of cleaning up the UK's largest nuclear site at Sellafield, and will instead break the business up and sell it off piecemeal.

Canada home to 'many' nuclear facilities

Our first Canadian story: Ontario is home to many nuclear facilities. Among others, there are six nuclear units at Tiverton's Bruce plant, and one decommissioned Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. reactor at Deep River. To meet all the Ontario Power Authority’s recommendations, the Province would need to spend $40 billion dollars over the next 20 years!! (This is actually our 2nd story, if anyone is counting...)

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Yucca saga starts here

Slowly and quietly, a 20-year logjam in the world of nuclear energy is breaking. There have been no announcements, but the signs are clear. The nuclear energy industry is revving up with plans to build the first nuclear power plant in the USA at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, in three decades.

18 incidents of illegal trafficking reported

Found on the International Atomic Energy Agency  web site: During 1993-2004, there were eighteen confirmed incidents involving illegal trafficking in high-enriched uranium (HEU) and plutonium (Pu). Most involved very small quantities. The most recent confirmed HEU case occurred in June 2003. 

2002 AD: 20,190 weapons stockpiled (and then some)

According to the NRDC in 1945 global nuclear weapons stockpiles totalled 6; in 1986 it was 65,056. Most recent figure: 2002 – 20,190..

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Possible attack on Sizewell B could see major evacuation

Found on the BBC web pages recently: A terrorist attack on Sizewell B nuclear power station in Suffolk could see a major evacuation involving 271,500 people, a new study has found.

Nuclear expert John Large, who has just published the figures, believes the nuclear industry has put its "head in the sand" over terrorist concerns and believes people should be given more information about the level of threat. Mr Large, from John Large and Associates who specialise in assessing nuclear, chemical and other hazards, says his new research, which has used the latest US satellite data on the spread of radiation, has looked at what would happen if there was a major terrorist raid on Sizewell or if a plane was flown into it.

Mr Large found that within two hours of a serious nuclear leak places as far away as Norwich may need to be evacuated. British Energy (BE) said Sizewell B has a high level of security and accused Mr Large of "scare mongering".

Bulgarian customs arrest man carrying 7.5lbs of Hafnium

September 2005: Bulgarian customs officials arrested a driver carrying more than 7.5 lbs. of a rare metal (Hafnium) that can be used in nuclear reactors. The extremely pure sample of Hafnium was found on a Bulgarian man trying to cross into Romania.

German police arrest man in Paris carrying 5gr of plutonium

Reported by Reuters: in July 2001 German police arrested a man in Paris for carrying 5 grammes of enriched plutonium.(Less than 27 microgrammes is enough to give you cancer...)

2000 AD: 500 incidents of illegal material transportation in Russia

From the Nuclear Threat Initiative web site - in 2000 there were 500 incidents of illegal transportation of nuclear material across Russian state borders.

Seabird droppings could introduce radioactive isotopes into food chain

Droppings from seabirds could be introducing radioactive isotopes into the food chain. That is the conclusion of researchers who found high levels of radioactivity in droppings and plants on an island close to the Arctic.

50 nuclear bombs lost at sea - probably

With the holiday season upon us bear in mind, when dipping your tootsies in the water that, according to those nice people at goofball, there are at least 50 nuclear bombs that have been lost at sea!

'Cats eyes' could be radioactive

Back in 1998, jewellers were told to look out for gemstones from Asia, following a radiation scare. Hundreds of very rare chrysoberyl gems, commonly known as cat's eyes, were found to be highly radioactive after they were blasted with neutrons to enhance their value.

Sellafield loses 66lbs of plutonium

February 17, 2005: A British nuclear reprocessing plant  (Oh, OK then - Sellafield) couldn't account for nearly 66lbs of plutonium!!  Authorities said it was more likely to be an accounting issue rather than a loss of potential bomb-making material – well, that’s alright then…

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