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A small Idaho company that wants to build a nuclear power plant has delayed the date when it expects to apply for a federal operating license to 2011, a year behind a previous estimate. Alternate Energy Holdings Inc. chief executive officer Don Gillispie told the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission he now expects to apply for a combined license for the Elmore County plant in the fourth quarter of 2011, the Times-News reported. Gillispie also told the federal commission he plans to seek licenses for two other plants: one in Payette County in the second quarter of 2011 and one for a site near Pueblo, Colo., in the second quarter of 2012.

A small Idaho company that wants to build a nuclear power plant has delayed the date when it expects to apply for a federal operating license to 2011, a year behind a previous estimate. Alternate Energy Holdings Inc. chief executive officer Don Gillispie told the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission he now expects to apply for a combined license for the Elmore County plant in the fourth quarter of 2011, the Times-News reported. Gillispie also told the federal commission he plans to seek licenses for two other plants: one in Payette County in the second quarter of 2011 and one for a site near Pueblo, Colo., in the second quarter of 2012.

Chronology of events surrounding crippled Fukushima nuclear plant A school building, which was submerged as a result of a tsunami on March 11, stands in an area of Yamamoto, Miyagi Prefecture. (Mainichi) TOKYO (Kyodo) -- The following is a chronology of events regarding the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station in Fukushima Prefecture, triggered by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that struck northeastern and eastern Japan. March 11 -- Magnitude 9.0 earthquake forces power plant's Nos. 1-3 reactors to suspend operations automatically (Nos. 4-6 reactors were shut down, undergoing regular checks). Prime Minister Kan declares nuclear emergency, directing local residents in 3-kilometer radius of plant to evacuate. March 12 -- Kan inspects stricken plant. Radioactive steam is vented from No. 1 reactor's containment vessel. Hydrogen explosion rips No. 1 reactor building. Government expands evacuation zone to 20 km radius of plant. March 14 -- Hydrogen explosion rocks No. 3 reactor building. No. 2 reactor's fuel rods are exposed as water recedes inside reactor vessel. March 15 -- Kan scolds Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) officials at company head office. Explosion is heard near suppression chamber of No. 2 reactor's containment vessel. Explosion is also heard at No. 4 reactor. Government directs residents in 20-30-km ring of plant to stay indoors. A tsunami crests the embankment of the Heikawa River in Miyako, Iwate Prefecture, before sweeping into the city on March 11. (Mainichi) March 16 -- Damage is feared to have been done to No. 3 reactor's containment vessel, forcing workers to retreat. March 17 -- Ground Self-Defense Force helicopters drop water on No. 3 reactor building. Fire engines spray water from ground. March 18 -- Nuclear safety agency gives crisis involving Nos. 1-3 reactors preliminary value of Level 5 on nuclear accident scale of 7. March 19 -- Tokyo firefighters spray water at No. 3 reactor. Government announces detecti

"The latest progress report from UK nuclear safety regulators has made the best-case completion of the Generic Design Assessment process seem unlikely. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) said detailed examination of the Areva EPR and Westinghouse AP1000 was well underway and making reasonable progress with a rapidly increasing workrate. However, it is facing a deadline of June 2011 when it is meant to issue the most meaningful design acceptance certificates that it can for the reactors. While most plant systems and features have posed no substantial problem, there remain some that could potentially have to be dealt with under separate processes which extend the overall GDA effort beyond June 2011. As well as acceptance certificates, the HSE said it is planning to publish "a suite of progress reports" in June 2011 "together with the requesting parties' resolution plans for any outstanding issues relating to GDA." "

"Cracks in support for $36 billion in new US Department of Energy loan guarantee authority for nuclear projects appeared on Thursday, after a House of Representatives appropriations subcommittee postponed a meeting scheduled to discuss a draft 2011 appropriations bill because the bill did not contain provisions for that authority. The Obama administration requested the additional authority in its 2011 budget, and that request has the support of most members of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, an aide to Representative Chet Edwards said Friday. The Texas Democrat is the vice chairman of the subcommittee. "To eliminate or dramatically cut the President's $36 billion request for nuclear loans in fiscal year 2011 would be devastating for the jobs and economic growth our country desperately needs," Edwards said in a statement. "I believe a clear majority of House members favor the expansion of nuclear power in America, and I will do everything I can to work in partnership with business and labor, which are united in support of this effort," he added. "

EnergySolutions, Inc. (NYSE: ES) announced today that $22.9 million of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding has been allocated to the Moab UMTRA project. The total amount of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding for the Moab project is $108 million. The funding is being used to accelerate removal of uranium mill tailings away from the banks of the Colorado River. Thus far 160 jobs have been created this year as a result of Recovery Act funding. "We are thrilled that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has allocated sufficient funding to the Moab project to accelerate the cleanup of the site. This is great news for the community and for all who use the Colorado River and Lake Powell," said Steve Creamer, CEO and Chairman of EnergySolutions. The Recovery Act funding is being used to excavate, transport and dispose of additional mill tailings from the Moab site to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission-approved disposal cell at Crescent Junction. This additional work began in June and will continue through September 2011. Additionally, this additional funding supports increasing the size of the disposal cell as well as crushing, transporting, and placing final rock cover on the disposal cell. This portion of the work began in August and continues through September 2011. Sixteen million tons of uranium mill tailings will eventually be relocated 30 miles north of Moab to a location designated by the DOE.

EnergySolutions, Inc. (NYSE: ES) announced today that $22.9 million of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding has been allocated to the Moab UMTRA project. The total amount of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding for the Moab project is $108 million. The funding is being used to accelerate removal of uranium mill tailings away from the banks of the Colorado River. Thus far 160 jobs have been created this year as a result of Recovery Act funding. "We are thrilled that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has allocated sufficient funding to the Moab project to accelerate the cleanup of the site. This is great news for the community and for all who use the Colorado River and Lake Powell," said Steve Creamer, CEO and Chairman of EnergySolutions. The Recovery Act funding is being used to excavate, transport and dispose of additional mill tailings from the Moab site to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission-approved disposal cell at Crescent Junction. This additional work began in June and will continue through September 2011. Additionally, this additional funding supports increasing the size of the disposal cell as well as crushing, transporting, and placing final rock cover on the disposal cell. This portion of the work began in August and continues through September 2011. Sixteen million tons of uranium mill tailings will eventually be relocated 30 miles north of Moab to a location designated by the DOE.

" Cumulative radiation outside the 20-kilometer radius of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in the past three months has reached as high as 82 millisieverts, more than four times the yardstick of 20 millisieverts a year, a science ministry estimate showed Tuesday. The highest level was detected in a part of Namie, Fukushima Prefecture, around 22 kilometers northwest of the nuclear plant crippled since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, according to the data compiled by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. Namie is among the designated evacuation areas lying outside of the no-entry zone where radiation levels are feared to exceed the annual limit of 20 millisieverts. Of 160 monitoring sites in the designated areas outside the no-entry zone, 23 registered radiation levels exceeding 20 millisieverts over the three-month period, the ministry said. A man is scanned for levels of radiation in Koriyama, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, Sunday, March 13, 2011. (AP Photo/Mark Baker) A man is scanned for levels of radiation in Koriyama, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, Sunday, March 13, 2011. (AP Photo/Mark Baker) Outside the areas subject to evacuation, an area in the city of Minamisoma had an estimated cumulative radiation level of 20.4 millisieverts a year since the start of the crisis. (Mainichi Japan) June 22, 2011"

"The fiscal 2011 budget for the Hanford nuclear reservation would increase at least $22 million from the current year's budget to about $2.1 billion under the Obama administration's proposal released Monday. That money would be in addition to $1.96 billion in federal economic stimulus money being spent on Hanford cleanup from spring 2009 through fiscal 2011. In early budget talks, the administration had considered cutting the budget for environmental cleanup of nuclear weapons sites such as Hanford by 20 percent, or about $1 billion, nationwide. But the Washington congressional delegation stepped up to get funding restored in the proposed budget, with Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., personally visiting the White House to discuss her concerns, said Gary Petersen, vice president of Hanford programs at the Tri-City Development Council."

" Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology admitted that they have made a "mistake" on the report about fall out in Fukushima. The data is about the amount of fallout and the rain, from 6/6/2011 ~ 8/4/2011. Having said that it was a simple error, it turned out that it was 10 times more than originally reported. For example… 6/11 Cs-134 6.6 MBq/km2 → 160 MBq/km2 Cs-137 8.0 MBq/km2 → 200 MBq/km2 7/19 Cs-134 31 MBq/km2 → 590 MBq/km2 Cs-137 39 MBq/km2 → 750 MBq/km2"

"The Obama administration is planning to cut the U.S. nuclear arsenal by as much as 40 percent by 2021, but also wants to spend nearly $175 billion over the next 20 years to build new facilities and maintain and modify thousands of weapons, according to two sections of an administration plan made public today by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). The proposal, the "FY 2011 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan," which is part of the Department of Energy's proposed fiscal year 2011 budget, was drafted by DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and presented to members of Congress in May. "

The company submitted a proposal Wednesday to the Florida Public Service Commission to increase base power rates by $1 billion in 2010 and $1.25 billion in 2011. Florida Power & Light proposes increasing electric rates by at least $1 billion a year starting next year. The company submitted a proposal Wednesday to the Florida Public Service Commission to increase base power rates by $1 billion in 2010 and $1.25 billion in 2011. FPL, the state's largest utility with 4.5 million customers, said the increase would allow it to earn a "fair" profit, while making its infrastructure stronger, more efficient and less likely to emit greenhouse-gas emissions.

"Uranium transfers canceled for 2011, continue for 2010 * Department doesn't want too much uranium in the market * Uranium transfers help pay cleanup of enrichment plant (Adds uranium transfers continuing for 2010) WASHINGTON, Feb 4 (Reuters) - The U.S. Energy Department has canceled plans to put into the market during 2011 extra government-owned surplus uranium supplies, Energy Secretary Steven Chu told Congress on Thursday, but the uranium transfers will continue for this year. The department had planned to transfer next year up to 1,125 tonnes, or about 2.48 million lbs, of its surplus uranium a year to raise money to pay for the cleanup of the Portsmouth uranium enrichment plant in Ohio."

Department of Energy Manager Gerald Boyd said it's "sort of doubtful" that Bechtel Jacobs Co., DOE's cleanup manager in Oak Ridge, will complete the demolition of K-25 by the end 2011 - when the company's contract is due to expire - and federal officials are starting to make other plans. Last year, DOE extended and modified the BJC contract, valued at $1.48 billion, to allow the contractor to finish work on the mile-long and massively contaminated building that once processed uranium for the nation's Cold War arsenal of nuclear weapons.

Department of Energy Manager Gerald Boyd said it's "sort of doubtful" that Bechtel Jacobs Co., DOE's cleanup manager in Oak Ridge, will complete the demolition of K-25 by the end 2011 - when the company's contract is due to expire - and federal officials are starting to make other plans. Last year, DOE extended and modified the BJC contract, valued at $1.48 billion, to allow the contractor to finish work on the mile-long and massively contaminated building that once processed uranium for the nation's Cold War arsenal of nuclear weapons.

-U.S.-Japanese joint venture GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy expects to resubmit its nuclear reactor design into the U.K. regulatory process in 2011, after it completes the process in the U.S., the company's senior vice president told Dow Jones Newswires on Thursday. Once the reactor design clears the U.K. regulatory process, the company expects to be able to have its first nuclear reactor in operation by 2020, Danny Roderick said. "We believe we could have it licensed in the U.K. before 2014,"

-U.S.-Japanese joint venture GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy expects to resubmit its nuclear reactor design into the U.K. regulatory process in 2011, after it completes the process in the U.S., the company's senior vice president told Dow Jones Newswires on Thursday. Once the reactor design clears the U.K. regulatory process, the company expects to be able to have its first nuclear reactor in operation by 2020, Danny Roderick said. "We believe we could have it licensed in the U.K. before 2014,"

"The Energy Department will reduce the size of former nuclear waste sites needing environmental cleanup by 40 percent by the end of 2011, fueled largely by Recovery Act funding, a top official said. The footprint of Cold War-era sites to be cleaned up will be reduced from 900 square miles to 540 square miles during fiscal 2011, said Ines Triay, assistant Energy secretary of environmental management. The department's goal is to clean up 90 percent of contaminated areas by 2015. Energy received $6 billion in Recovery Act funds to accelerate cleanup efforts. To date, $5.6 billion in stimulus funds has been obligated and $1.7 billion has been spent, Triay told the Senate Armed Services subcommittee on strategic forces at an April 21 hearing. Stimulus funds will be used for many projects: Accelerate by seven years the removal of radioactive waste at 11 sites; remove 2 million tons of waste material from the uranium mill in Moab, Utah; and build the infrastructure required to support high-level waste processing operations. In addition, Recovery Act funds will be used to speed up completion of cleanup activities at three small sites: Brookhaven National Laboratory and Separations Process Research Unit in New York, and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in California."

"The Radiation Graphs are made from data from monitoring posts setup by the Prefectural Offices, TEPCO and NISA. I am focusing on these as they are only in Japanese and provide a different view on the MEXT Radiation Data that everyone else is graphing. Please note that the graphs do have different scales depending on the data. All Radiation readings are converted to μSv/h for consistency. Thanks & Notice Thank you to all the people on Twitter who have also been providing valuable and accurate information about the events since the Earthquake, Friday 11th March 2011. To everyone who is following the Earthquake, Radiation and Water Graphs, please note that I will usually no longer updating these files after 2011.04.09 00:00 JST. I want to thank everyone for the support and to the people who have viewed the graph page in the past 4 weeks more than 100,000+ times. I hope this has helped everyone to make sense of all the numbers floating around easier to understand. It's now up to the Government / Prefectural Offices to make these graphs to help people understand more clearly."

"The Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration would receive a 13 percent increase to $11.2 billion in 2011 to support the Obama administration's efforts to manage the nation's stockpile of nuclear weapons and achieve the president's goal of securing all vulnerable nuclear material in the world within four years. Overall, the department's discretionary budget would increase more than 7 percent to $28.4 billion. Energy programs outside of NNSA would increase less than 3 percent overall. The budget proposes $300 million for the new Advanced Projects Research Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), which would bankroll cutting-edge advanced energy technologies that will reduce the country's dependence on foreign energy imports and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. ARPA-E, which was modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, was created in 2007 but only recently funded with an initial $400 million from the Recovery Act. Energy's budget proposes $5.1 billion for science research, an additional $217 million; $108 million above the $371 million approved this year to advance research into wind, solar and geothermal energy sources; and $500 million in credit subsidies that would support between $3 billion and $5 billion in energy-efficiency and renewable-energy projects."

"The Obama administration plans to ask Congress to increase spending on the U.S. nuclear arsenal by more than $5 billion over the next five years as part of its strategy to halt the spread of nuclear weapons and eventually rid the world of them. The administration argues that the boost is needed to ensure that U.S. warheads remain secure and work as designed as the arsenal shrinks and ages nearly 18 years into a moratorium on underground testing and more than two decades after large-scale warhead production ended. The increase is also required to modernize facilities - some dating to World War II - that support the U.S. stockpile and to retain experts who "will help meet the president's goal of securing vulnerable nuclear materials worldwide ... and enable us to track and thwart nuclear trafficking (and) verify weapons reductions," Vice President Joe Biden wrote in a Friday Wall Street Journal opinion piece. The administration will seek an initial $600-million increase for nuclear weapons programs in the proposed 2011 budget it submits to Congress on Monday. That would increase annual spending on those programs by about 10 percent, to almost $7 billion."

Russia has reneged on an agreement to deliver a total of 10 kilograms of plutonium-238 to the United States in 2010 and 2011 and is insisting on a new deal for the costly material vital to NASA's deep space exploration plans. The move follows the U.S. Congress' denial of President Barack Obama's request for $30 million in 2010 to permit the Department of Energy to begin the painstaking process of restarting domestic production of plutonium-238. Bringing U.S. nuclear laboratories back on line to produce the isotope is expected to cost at least $150 million and take six years to seven years from the time funding is approved.

Russia has reneged on an agreement to deliver a total of 10 kilograms of plutonium-238 to the United States in 2010 and 2011 and is insisting on a new deal for the costly material vital to NASA's deep space exploration plans. The move follows the U.S. Congress' denial of President Barack Obama's request for $30 million in 2010 to permit the Department of Energy to begin the painstaking process of restarting domestic production of plutonium-238. Bringing U.S. nuclear laboratories back on line to produce the isotope is expected to cost at least $150 million and take six years to seven years from the time funding is approved.

"The FY 2011 budget request will be released on Monday, February 1, 2010. The Obama administration has laid out an aggressive nonproliferation agenda that includes deep reductions in nuclear stockpiles, ratification of a nuclear test ban, and decreased prominence for nuclear weapons in US defense policy. Despite this agenda, the Department of Energy's (DOE) budget request will ask Congress to significantly increase nuclear weapons activities, including funding for construction of new facilities that will expand U.S. warhead production capacity. The DOE request will not reflect recent independent scientific conclusions that existing nuclear weapons can be reliably maintained for decades under current, well-established programs. The Alliance for Nuclear Accountability (ANA), a national network representing communities downwind and downstream from U.S. nuclear weapons facilities, is concerned that increased funding for nuclear energy and weapons research and production will rob precious resources for needed environmental cleanup and clean, sustainable energy solutions. Items of interest:"

"Switzerland latest country to shelve nuclear plant plans - but many states still lack an alternative low-carbon energy supply guardian.co.uk, Sunday 29 May 2011 22.00 Moves to cut carbon emissions in line with international targets have come under renewed strain since the nuclear crisis in Japan led some countries to shelve plans to use the technology. Switzerland became the latest country to decide to phase out nuclear power last week, citing concerns over the accident at the Fukushima plant that was left stricken by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami in March. The Swiss deci"