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In a secret health and safety report, the chief nuclear inspector admits Britain's watchdog force is short of experienced staff The scale of safety problems inside Britain's nuclear power stations has been revealed for the first time in a secret report obtained by the Observer that shows more than 1,750 leaks, breakdowns or other "events" over the past seven years. The damning document, written by the government's chief nuclear inspector, Mike Weightman, and released under the Freedom of Information Act, raises serious questions about the dangers of expanding the industry with a new generation of atomic plants. And it came as the managers of the UK's biggest plant, Sellafield, admitted they had finally halted a radioactive leak many believe has been going on for 50 years. The report discloses that between 2001-08 there were 1,767 safety incidents across Britain's nuclear plants. About half were subsequently judged by inspectors as serious enough "to have had the potential to challenge a nuclear safety system". They were "across all areas of existing nuclear plant", including Sellafield in Cumbria and Aldermaston and Burghfield in Berkshire, says Weightman, chief inspector of the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII).

Nuclear Regulatory Commission officials in King of Prussia, Pa., have selected Heather Jones as the new resident inspector at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon, Vt. She joins NRC Acting Senior Resident Inspector Dave Spindler at the plant, which is operated by Entergy Nuclear Operations, Inc. Jones joined the agency's Region I office in 2005 after earning a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the University of Arizona and a master's degree in chemical engineering from the University of Pittsburgh. She is a graduate of the NRC's Nuclear Safety Professional Development Program, a two-year training program that provides specialized training in nuclear safety and a broad perspective of NRC regulatory activities. Jones also completed a rigorous NRC inspector qualification program. Most recently, she was assigned as a reactor inspector in the Region I Division of Reactor Safety, performing engineering inspections.

State inspectors were concerned that an early report last year on a corroded steel radiation barrier at the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in Lacey "withheld important and significant information from the public," according to a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission e-mail. Advertisement The e-mail said that state inspectors cited standing water in an area that was supposed to be dry and that there was no proof that the barrier was not rusting. State inspectors also expressed concern about the time it would take to issue a public inspection report, which was in effect a "gag order" on them, according to the Nov. 18 e-mail from John Richmond, an NRC inspector. The final report was issued Jan. 21. Opponents of the nuclear plant say the e-mail shows ongoing problems that are being hidden from the public.

"David Kay, former UN chief inspector of the International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA), contrasts expectations with results on Iraq and Iran. As sanctions on Iran rise, so does Iranian rhetoric. Sanctions aim to force Iran to submit to inspections. However, Mr. Kay finds inspection largely ineffective. Inspection cannot prevent a country from developing nuclear weapons, especially if the country is big, determined, and capable, like Iran. Inspectors would need access to all resources with which Iran could develop nuclear weapons and delivery methods. Iran would have to fully declare its nuclear components, uranium enrichment, plutonium activities, and missile testing, production, and deployment. Iran does not cooperate, it obstructs."

The NRC has initiated a Special Inspection at the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in response to a shutdown of the reactor early on July 12. The inspection got under way today at the plant, which is located in Lacey Township (Ocean County), N.J., and operated by Exelon. Among other things, the team of four NRC inspectors will be tasked with reviewing whether any equipment issues, design deficiencies, communication challenges and/or operator performance issues complicated the event. The Special Inspection will expand on reviews conducted by the NRC Resident Inspectors assigned to Oyster Creek immediately after the shutdown. Assisting the team on a part-time basis will be the NRC's Senior Resident Inspector at the plant. "While the plant was safely removed from service during the event, several equipment issues arose during the shutdown that we believe bear closer examination," NRC Region I Administrator Samuel J. Collins said. "Through this Special Inspection we intend to gain a better understanding of these issues, including the actions taken by plant operators in response."

Dealing with the problems of old age lies at the heart of the nuclear industry's challenge to convince the public of its safety: leaky power plants, crumbling waste stores nearing the end of their lives and overworked inspectors who do not have the time to assess properly the next generation of power stations. Even with billions of pounds a year being poured into clean-up operations, it is a toxic legacy going back to the cold war that continually threatens to undermine the facelift given by the new private sector companies. The companies, mainly from France and Germany, have joined the government to try to convince the public it is time for a nuclear renaissance, on both energy security and climate change grounds. In recent days the industry watchdog, the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII), has admitted that the possibility of a serious accident at Britain's biggest nuclear complex, Sellafield in Cumbria, is still "far too high", while questioning the safety designs of new reactors being submitted for approval. The private sector managers who took over at Sellafield less than a year ago have been told in a letter that they should reduce the risks at the radioactive storage pond dubbed "Dirty 30" and elsewhere as soon as possible.

Dealing with the problems of old age lies at the heart of the nuclear industry's challenge to convince the public of its safety: leaky power plants, crumbling waste stores nearing the end of their lives and overworked inspectors who do not have the time to assess properly the next generation of power stations. Even with billions of pounds a year being poured into clean-up operations, it is a toxic legacy going back to the cold war that continually threatens to undermine the facelift given by the new private sector companies. The companies, mainly from France and Germany, have joined the government to try to convince the public it is time for a nuclear renaissance, on both energy security and climate change grounds. In recent days the industry watchdog, the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII), has admitted that the possibility of a serious accident at Britain's biggest nuclear complex, Sellafield in Cumbria, is still "far too high", while questioning the safety designs of new reactors being submitted for approval. The private sector managers who took over at Sellafield less than a year ago have been told in a letter that they should reduce the risks at the radioactive storage pond dubbed "Dirty 30" and elsewhere as soon as possible.

UN nuclear inspectors left North Korea Thursday after the hardline communist state ordered them out and announced plans to restart production of weapons-grade plutonium. The inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) arrived in Beijing but declined to comment to reporters. A separate four-member US team which had been monitoring the North's disablement of its Yongbyon nuclear complex was also preparing to leave after being ordered out, the State Department said.

Federal inspectors begin assessing how power plant dealt with the problem Waterford - A special team of federal inspectors arrived Monday at Millstone Power Station to verify how the owner is addressing a recent situation in which gas was trapped in piping for a reactor safety system. The trapped gas was discovered when the Unit 3 reactor owned by Dominion was shut down for refueling in October, and was corrected by inserting a valve in the pipe, according to Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for Region 1 of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The most senior figure in nuclear safety has defended the regulation of an atomic power station barely 50 miles from the centre of London that leaked radioactive material for 14 years. Mike Weightman, chief inspector at the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, said it was not possible to "inspect or check every feature of a complex plant". But as soon as the leak in the sump of one of the Magnox reactors at Bradwell-on-Sea was discovered the safety body did all it could to ensure that the cause of the problem was identified and dealt with, he added. The leak became public when a little-publicised case started by the Environment Agency against the then owners of the plant, Magnox Electric Ltd, for 11 breaches of safety regulations came to court last month.

Neither the former workers at a nuclear weapons plant in Largo nor Sen. Bill Nelson are buying into a recently released Inspector General report. The report by the Inspector General for the federal Labor Department says claims for benefits under a program for sick plant workers are being processed according to law. Congress passed a program in 2000 to compensate sick workers at the General Electric plant and pay their medical bills.

Military whistle-blowers might want to save their breath. The Pentagon inspector general, the internal watchdog for the Defense Department, hardly ever sides with service members who complain that they were punished for reporting wrongdoing, according to a review of cases by The Associated Press. The inspector general's office rejected claims of retaliation and stood by the military in more than 90 percent of nearly 3,000 cases during the past six years. More than 73 percent were closed after only a preliminary review that relied on available documents and sources - often from the military itself - to determine whether a full inquiry was warranted.

60 gallons a minute pouring from pipes The Vermont Department of Public Service is asking the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to send inspectors to examine the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon to see if it is safe. The call comes in the wake of the discovery of more problems with the plant's cooling towers. The state wants inspectors to "consider whether any of the newly discovered cooling tower problems could affect the safety or seismic cooling tower cells," said the letter by Public Service Commissioner David O'Brien's letter, dated Friday, to NRC regional administrator Samuel Collins.

We have long argued that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's approval process for nuclear power plant license extensions is a charade. The agency's inspector general continues to provide support for that thesis. Six months ago, an audit of the license renewal process by the inspector general found that information provided in some NRC safety evaluation reports was identical, or nearly identical, to the corresponding applications, casting doubt on whether the NRC independently reviewed the applications.

I am a former U.N. weapons inspector. I started my work with the United Nations in September 1991, and between that date and my resignation in August 1998, I participated in over 30 inspections, 14 as chief inspector. The United Nations Special Commission, or UNSCOM, was the organization mandated by the Security Council with the implementation of its resolutions requiring Iraq to be disarmed of its weapons-of-mass-destruction capabilities.

A scrap metal company had to call in government officials after it discovered that some of its scrap metal was contaminated with uranium. KMR Stainless discovered the scrap was radioactive after it had been shipped from Saint Petersburg to Dordrecht, in the Netherlands at the end of 2008. The firm called in inspectors from the Dutch Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment (VROM) after the discovery. Inspectors have now confirmed the scrap had been contaminated with low-grade enriched uranium and officials had informed the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The Department of Energy needs to improve oversight after a contractor at Hanford was allowed to approve federal funding on behalf of DOE for its own contract, according to an audit by the Department of Energy Office of Inspector General. The audit also said that in some cases the contractor was allowed to prepare statements of work, which established DOE's requirement for work to be performed under its contract. The DOE Hanford Office of River Protection, or ORP, already has made some changes after recognizing that oversight of Project Assistance Corp. was weak before the Office of Inspector General began its investigation. DOE issued a blanket purchase agreement to Project Assistance Corp. in 2003 for project management, risk assessment, program assessment, quality assurance, safety, cost and schedule estimating, budgeting and finance, and engineering. Annual costs of the contract have increased from $4.7 million in 2005 to $9.2 million in 2008.

Contractors at one of the nation's major nuclear weapons complexes repeatedly used substandard construction materials and components that could've caused a major radioactive spill, a recently completed internal government probe has found. One of the materials used at the Savannah River Site on the South Carolina-Georgia border failed to meet federal safety standards and "could have resulted in a spill of up to 15,000 gallons of high-level radioactive waste," the Energy Department's inspector general found. The inspector general's five-month investigation also found that contractors bought 9,500 tons of substandard steel reinforcing bars for the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C. The faulty steel was discovered after a piece of it broke during the construction of a facility to convert spent nuclear weapons-grade plutonium and uranium into mixed-oxide, or MOX, fuel for civilian reactors. Replacing 14 tons of substandard rebar -- the steel bars commonly used to reinforce concrete -- that already had been installed cost $680,000 and delayed the completion of the $4.8 billion MOX facility, the investigation found.

"An internal memo from Southern California Edison, leaked to a San Clemente activist group, indicates that fear of retaliation still exists at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, despite repeated public statements calling for openness by top plant leadership. The memo, released by the environmental group San Clemente Green, is dated Feb. 2 and appears to have been written by an Edison employee in advance of a meeting between Southern California Edison executives and Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspectors who conducted an inspection at San Onofre in November. Though the NRC eventually releases the results of its inspections, it has not yet done so for the one that occurred in November 2009. The memo states that inspectors, meeting in focus groups with plant employees, found that 25 percent of those surveyed said they fear retaliation from plant management for raising safety concerns to federal regulators. The memo also indicates that, in 2008, reports from San Onofre employees to the NRC were six times higher than the industry median."

"The new senior resident inspector from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission worked for Entergy Nuclear, the owner of Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor, until 2006, before he left to become a federal inspector. But a spokesman for the NRC said David Spindler stopped working for Entergy Nuclear in 2006, well beyond the two-year hiatus federal regulations call for. Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the NRC, said there are federal regulations dealing with employees who may face "an appearance of loss of impartiality in the performance of his official duties." He said federal regulations call for a two-year "period of disqualification" from working in matters in which a former employer is involved."

"Next week, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will meet in New York with diplomats from more than 180 countries at the eighth review conference of the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (pdf), the Cold War pact that determines who can have nuclear weapons and who can't. The nuclear accord obliges the five original nuclear powers to disarm while exacting a pledge from other countries not to pursue nuclear weapons. In exchange, those that foreswore atomic weapons were assured the right to develop nuclear energy programs, under the monitoring of U.N. inspectors. The Obama administration will seek to use the nearly month-long conference to plug gaps in a landmark agreement that has significantly limited the spread of nuclear weapons but enabled a small number of nuclear proliferators, including Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il, to develop clandestine atomic weapons programs under the nose of U.N. weapons inspectors. The nuclear conference has gained increased urgency as concerns about global warming have fueled renewed interest in nuclear power, and the prospects of lucrative international trade in nuclear fuel."