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"Major Japanese commercial banks are in final talks to set a 400 billion yen syndicated credit line possibly in August for Tohoku Electric Power Co., which has had difficulties raising funds through debt issues amid the Fukushima nuclear crisis, sources close to the matter said Friday. The government-controlled Development Bank of Japan is also considering a low-interest crisis response loan worth some 150 billion yen to the utility serving northeastern Japan, which was devastated by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, they said. The major commercial banks and the DBJ will thus provide a total of 550 billion yen to Tohoku Electric, following some 2 trillion yen in loans they extended by April to Tokyo Electric Power Co. plagued with the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant crisis set off by the quake-tsunami disaster."

"Active faults under Tohoku Electric Power Co.'s Higashidori nuclear power complex in Aomori Prefecture are grounds for a reassessment of the seismic safety of the plant, according to a recent study. The new report released Monday by researchers including Mitsuhisa Watanabe, professor at Toyo University, may affect a decision whether to restart the plant's reactor, which is currently shut down, as well as the earthquake-proof safety screening for other nuclear plants. However, Tohoku Electric, which runs the single-reactor plant, and Tokyo Electric Power Co., which is building a new reactor in the same Higashidori complex, said the faults were shaped by the swelling of water-bearing strata and deny there are active faults that cause earthquakes under the plant site."

"The Disposal subcommittee was established to address the question: "How can the U.S. go about establishing one or more disposal sites for high level nuclear wastes in a manner that is technically, politically and socially acceptable?" The membership on the subcommittees overlap to ensure the subcommittees do not operate in isolation from one another. Each subcommittee will also address a series of questions related to governance and institutional arrangements. Disposal Subcommittee Members Chuck Hagel - Co-Chairman Jonathan Lash - Co-Chairman Lee Hamilton - Ex Officio Brent Scowcroft - Ex Officio Mark Ayers "

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) gives notice as required by 42 CFR 83.12(e) of a decision to evaluate a petition to designate a class of employees at the Mallinckrodt Chemical Co., Destrehan Street Plant in St. Louis, Missouri, to be included in the Special Exposure Cohort under the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act of 2000. The initial proposed definition for the class being evaluated, subject to revision as warranted by the evaluation, is as follows: Facility: Mallinckrodt Chemical Co., Destrehan Street Plant. Location: St. Louis, Missouri. Job Titles and/or Job Duties: All employees who worked with uranium. Period of Employment: January 1, 1958 to December 31, 1958.

The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by Hanford's contractors in the massive downwinders' lawsuit - raising hopes for a legal settlement for up to 2,000 radiation-exposed people after 18 years of court battles and millions of dollars in litigation costs. The high court's one-line denial of the contractors' appeal was announced today. The contractors, including E.I. Du Pont De Nemours & Co., General Electric Co. and UNC Nuclear Industries Inc., filed their appeal in August, asking the court to review two recent 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rulings that sided largely with the downwinders.

Nuclear power will play a key role in helping the United States meet its growing energy needs, the chief executive of Birmingham-based Southern Nuclear Co. said Wednesday. In a Harbert Center luncheon speech to the Rotary Club of Birmingham, Jim Miller shared details of the two additional nuclear reactors that parent company Southern Co. of Atlanta seeks to build at its Vogtle power plant in Georgia.

Participating in nuclear power hearing can be a 'learn-as-you-go' process Joseph Wojcicki concedes his last name can twist tongues. "It's Voo-tess-kee," the West Columbia man says with a thick Polish accent. "But you can call me 'Joe the Intervenor.'" A retired Midlands Tech math teacher, Wojcicki took part as a citizen intervenor in the Public Service Commission's almost three-week-long hearing on SCE&G's $9.8 billion plan to add two reactor units to the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station at Jenkinsville. Intervenors, 12/22/08 Intervenors Pamela Greenlaw, bottom left, Meira Warshauer, center, and Joseph Wojcicki, right, listen to attorney Bob Guild, standing left, as he enters an objection to secret building cost amounts during the hearing before the commission. The intervenors sit at the table with lawyers for other groups challenging the nuclear plan. They represent the consumer. - Tim Dominick/tdominick@thestate. /The State Intervenors, 12/22/08 Lay-people known as "intervenors" question witnesses at the Public Service Commission hearing on SCE&G's plan to build two reactors at its plant in Jenkinsville. - Tim Dominick/tdominick@thestate. /The State Intervenors, 12/22/08 About a half-dozen lay-people known as "intervenors" are questioning witnesses at the Public Service Commission hearing on SCE&G's plan to build two reactors at its plant in Jenkinsville. - Tim Dominick/tdominick@thestate. /The State Intervenors, 12/22/08 Intervenors Pamela Greenlaw, bottom left, Meira Warshauer, center, and Joseph Wojcicki, right, listen to attorney Bob Guild, standing left, as he enters an objection to secret building cost amounts during the hearing before the commission. - Tim Dominick/tdominick@thestate. /The State Intervenors, 12/22/08 Intervenor Joseph Wojcicki looks through documents during the hearing before the commission. - Tim Dominick/tdominick@thestate. /The State Intervenors, 12/22/08 Citizen intervenor Meira Warshauer, left, asks a que

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. says the presence of the fault was discovered using new computer programming that maps epicenters Pacific Gas & Electric Co. officials announced today that they have discovered a new earthquake fault offshore of Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. The presence of the fault was discovered using new computer programming that allows geologists to better map the epicenters of the many small magnitude earthquakes in the area, said Lloyd Cluff, head of PG&E's earthquake risk management program, in a summary sent to the California Energy Commission earlier this week.

Georgia regulators will begin hearings November 3 on whether to allow construction of two Westinghouse AP1000s at the Vogtle nuclear power plant site. Under state law, new power generation cannot be added in Georgia without a certificate of public convenience and necessity issued by the PSC. The Georgia Public Service Commission is expected to vote on the proposal March 17. Georgia Power is the majority owner of the two existing Vogtle reactors, which are operated by Southern Nuclear Operating Co. Both companies are subsidiaries of Southern Co. The PSC will hold a public hearing November 3 on the additional units. Testimony, including from Georgia Power -- which would also be majority owner of the new units, if built -- will continue November 5-7. Hearings and testimony from staff and intervenors will be held from January 12?16 and rebuttal testimony will be received from Georgia Power February 9?13. Southern Nuclear filed an application with NRC in March for a combined construction permit-operating license for the new units.

The government's Atomic Energy Commission began looking into how the country's nuclear energy research should proceed in August because of a recent change in the circumstances surrounding nuclear energy. For about 20 years, the nuclear energy industry experienced continuous misfortune and opposition. However, its fortunes began to change in 2001, when the U.S. government started building more nuclear power plants. More recently, in Japan, former Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said nuclear energy was an energy source for a low carbon society.

Electricite de France SA, Europe's biggest power producer, said it offered to acquire Constellation Energy Group Inc. with KKR & Co. and TPG Capital LP for $6.2 billion, 32 percent more than Warren Buffett agreed to pay. The agreement announced Sept. 18 for Buffett's MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co. to buy Baltimore-based Constellation for $4.7 billion, or $26.50 a share, isn't adequate, Paris-based EDF said today in a public filing. Constellation Chief Executive Officer Mayo Shattuck said the Buffett deal was ``superior'' to any alternative available after the largest U.S. power marketer plunged 58 percent in the preceding three days.

Westinghouse Electric Co. and its Chinese client broke ground today on the first of four nuclear power plants the company will build in the energy-hungry nation. Monroeville-based Westinghouse announced that, along with engineering partner The Shaw Group, of Louisiana, and the Shandong Nuclear Power Co., it began excavation one month earlier than planned at the plant site in Haiyang, Shandong province in northeastern China.

TOKYO, June 14 (Reuters) - Nuclear power facilities run by Tohoku Electric Power Co (9506.T: Quote, Profile, Research) and Tokyo Electric Power Co (9501.T: Quote, Profile, Research) located in northern Japan were operating normally after a powerful earthquake on Saturday, company officials said.

Monday night Stewart Brand spoke at UC Berkeley on "Rethinking Green." He went through the requisite slides on climate, population and energy - but with a few twists. He was involved in the Pentagon-sponsored Abrupt Climate Change report in 2003, "we're still learning about how weird it can get and how fast it can get weird," he said as he showed a global minefield of positive feedback loops that could rapidly increase CO2 in the atmosphere. "At what point will the pH of the oceans become too acidic for the phytoplankton to continue sequestering CO2? When will the methane gigaburp out of the permafrost? When will the rainforests wilt and stop storing carbon? We have no idea!" Brand asserts that each one of these events will come as a nasty surprise and will push the urgency around climate response to a new level, forcing us to reconsider technologies that we may not currently favor, such as nuclear power and geo-engineering.

Dominion Resources Inc (D.N) expects to decide in the fall whether to continue working with General Electric Co/Hitachi Ltd on a proposed nuclear plant in Virginia, a spokesman said. Dominion opened a competitive process this month to broaden its discussions with potential nuclear vendors, spokesman Richard Zuercher said on Monday. The move to look at competing engineering and construction partners came after Dominion disclosed in January that it was unable to reach agreement with General Electric Co (GE.N)/Hitachi Ltd (6501.T) on terms to build the company's advanced nuclear design, the 1,550 MW Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor.

Body-snatching, poisoning and infanticide, the nuclear industry does it all. Even if the mantra - "Nuclear is Carbon Free" were true - flying pigs are still flying pigs, not angels. If nuclear power led to freedom from oil then why is France's per capita consumption of oil higher than in non-nuclear Italy, nuclear phase-out Germany or the rest of the EU? Even if nuclear was everything the Government and industry claimed regarding CO2 - that would not justify new build.

Japan Atomic Power Co. will continue operating Japan's oldest commercial-basis light-water reactor in Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, through 2016, scrapping its initial plan to suspend its operation next year, its chief said Thursday. Hiroshi Morimoto, president of Japan Atomic Power, conveyed the decision in a meeting with Fukui prefectural officials. Japan Atomic Power had intended to cease operating the boiling-water No. 1 reactor in 2010 to coincide with planned start of operations of two new reactors - No. 3 and No. 4 reactors - at the Tsuruga nuclear plant.

Japan's power industry utilities' association said on Friday it has delayed a target of having 16-18 nuclear reactors using mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel by five years to March 2016, denting the resource-poor nation's goal of a "closed" nuclear fuel cycle. Japan is aiming to move towards a closed cycle where it recycles its own spent fuel and then burns recovered uranium and plutonium as MOX fuel. The Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan, made up of 10 utilities, said it would do its best to achieve the target by the year starting in April 2015, when a nuclear reprocessing plant in northern Japan is scheduled to start operations. MOX plutonium-uranium enriched fuel is controversial because critics fear it could be used to build nuclear weapons. Currently, no commercial reactors in Japan use the fuel, but Chubu Electric Power Co (9502.T), Shikoku Electric Power Co (9507.T) and Kyushu Electric Power (9508.T) last month imported MOX fuel from France. (Reporting by Osamu Tsukimori; Editing by Hugh Lawson)

Chugoku Electric Power Co. showed reporters Tuesday the reactor pressure vessel that will contain the nuclear fuel for a power plant in Matsue, Shimane Prefecture. News photo Heavy lifting: A pressure vessel that will contain the nuclear fuel for a power plant in Matsue, Shimane Prefecture, is removed from a plant in Kure, Hiroshima Prefecture, on Tuesday. KYODO PHOTO The 21-meter-high, 910-ton device was taken from its plant in Kure, Hiroshima Prefecture, and put on a cargo ship as reporters and photographers watched. The pressure vessel will be transported 480 km to the nuclear plant in Shimane, which is scheduled to be activated in December 2011.