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"You can take the girl out of Suffolk but you can't take Suffolk out of the girl. Stories inspired by her home county have been floating around former Look East broadcaster Boni Sones's head for years. Now she's sharing them. She spoke to Steven Russell BONI Sones was eight when the bulldozers and cranes came. They changed forever the face of the coast and heathland where she played, scraping away more than 200 acres of scrub and grass to build a nuclear power station. Not that it put paid to youthful pursuits, for the construction site became an unofficial adventure zone for children from the tiny fishing hamlet of Sizewell and the scattered houses around. "As kids, we used to break into the site by burrowing under the fence and climbing the crane and so on. It was just an extension of our playground," she confesses of the early 1960s. Not surprisingly, the magnox reactors had a major impact on the lives of the communities in and around Leiston. "The power station definitely gave a sense of menace," says Boni. "If you think, as eight-year-olds, we were having to practise emergency evacuation procedures . . . It went from being an idyllic childhood to something that had menace in it. I used to think 'Where would we be safe, then, if it blew up?'""

"- 10 regions had appealed for say on location of plants - Ruling gives central govt final say on siting Italy's top court on Wednesday rejected an appeal by 10 Italian regions to have a say on the location of any nuclear power plants built, judicial sources said. The ruling by the constitutional court, which had been championed by companies hoping to build the plants and opposed by environmental groups, effectively means the central government will have the final say on the site of the plants. Italy is the only Group of Eight industrialised nation without nuclear power, but the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi aims to relaunch it and have a quarter of all power in the country generated by nuclear plants in the future. Nuclear power was discontinued in Italy nearly 25 years ago after a referendum. Enel (ENEI.MI) and France's EDF (EDF.PA) would like to start building four nuclear power stations in Italy in 2013. Public opinion in Italy has been generally hostile to nuclear energy and local authorities had demanded a say in their approval."

"European experts and a representative of the U.N. nuclear watchdog attended an Arab conference on nuclear power, which ended Friday in Tunis. Yury Sokolov, deputy director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told delegates to the First Arab Conference on the Prospects of Nuclear Power for Electricity Generation and Seawater Desalination his agency believes international cooperation is important to nuclear development, AllAfrica.com reported. He also spoke of the need for transparency. The conference began Wednesday. On the final day a number of resolutions were adopted on the need for training and cooperation among Arab countries, KUNA, the Kuwaiti national news agency, reported."

President, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research Before the Indian Parliament votes on limiting the liability of nuclear operators due to accidents, it should carefully consider the much higher limits that the United States has set for itself about $11 billion per incident industry maximum (under the Price-Anderson Act). The liability of the operator of the plant would be just Rs. 500 crores, about $110 million, which is just one percent of the U.S. limit, and about $450 million per accident. The proposed law allows an adjustment of this upwards or downwards to a possible lower limit of just Rs. 300 crores, or about $65 million. But more than that, Parliament should consider that the actual damages could be far greater than the U.S. liability limit. A 1997 study by the U.S. governments own Brookhaven National Laboratory, on Long Island, New York, found that the severe spent fuel pool accidents could result in damages from somewhat under $1 billion of up to $566 billion, depending on a how full and hot the pool is at the time of the accident and the intensity of the postulated fire. The high-end figure would amount to over $700 billion in 2009 dollars. Vast amounts of land --- up to about 7,000 square kilometers in the worst case would have to be condemned. Large numbers of people would have to be evacuated. Further, the maximum estimated monetary damages do not take into account some critical elements. For instance, the Brookhaven amount does not include excess cancer deaths, estimated to range from 1,500 to more than 100,000. Worst case nuclear reactor accident cancers and condemned area were estimated to be generally comparable to the upper end of the spent fuel accident estimates.

"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. "

"Yesterday we brought you more of the continuing and farcical story of the state of the art European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) being built by AREVA at Olkiluoto in Finland. The many, many diverse delays incompetence in the project have led to it being (at the time of writing) four years behind schedule and 2.3 billion euros over-budget. It's not just in Finland, however, where the reactor that was supposed to relaunch the nuclear 'renaissance' is struggling. In the UK, where the EPR - along with the Westinghouse AP1000 - is being evaluated for possible construction there, the government's Health and Safety Executive has said its design assessment process will miss its June 2011 deadline. More information is required from the reactor vendors in a number of areas: fault studies, fuel design and electrical systems for AP1000; and mechanical engineering, environment and fuel design for the EPR. For both reactors the HSE wants more information on structural integrity as well as higher active waste and used fuel management."

"The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has completed a draft environmental statement recommending commission approval of a license for the Global Laser Enrichment facility proposed for the GE complex in Castle Hayne. The approval was reported in a notice published in Friday's Federal Register, which stated: "The NRC staff preliminarily recommends that, unless safety issues mandate otherwise … the NRC should issue a license" to Global Laser Enrichment to operate a laser-base uranium enrichment facility. The notice went on to say the "NRC staff in the Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, Division of Fuel Cycle Safety and Safeguards is currently completing the safety review of (GE Hitachi's) license application. The safety review is currently scheduled for completion in December 2010.""

"* Egypt wants to build four nuclear plants by 2025 * Cairo backed 2012 conference on WMD-free Middle East The U.N. nuclear watchdog is ready to cooperate with plans to build nuclear power plants in Egypt, which is now working on locations for construction, the head of the U.N. body said on Tuesday. Egypt said in March it planned to build four plants by 2025 and inaugurate the first in 2019 in an effort to reduce the most populous Arab country's reliance on oil and gas. Officials hope the programme would add capacity of up to 4,000 megawatts."

"Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit said Tuesday his country will not stop its calls on Israel to join the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and submit its facilities to international observation. Following a meeting here with Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Yukiya Amano, Abul Gheit said his country will press ahead with its calls for submitting all Israeli nuclear facilities to international observation, state- run MENA news agency reported. "I can not imagine any one in Egypt would say that we stop calls for submitting Israeli facilities to the observation of international society represented in the IAEA," he said. Meanwhile, Abul Gheit said his meeting with Amano also touched upon ways the international watchdog could help Egypt to carry out its peaceful nuclear program."

"Bruce Power has added 40 long-term employees to a growing list of workers being tested for exposure to alpha radiation, company spokesman John Peevers said Monday. "This is just another step based on what we learned from the restart project," Peevers said. "We put a number of measures in place to protect employees, to better monitor alpha, and now we're looking back historically to see if any of our long-term employees in operations have had any exposure to alpha over their career." The company unexpectedly discovered alpha radiation when workers were doing Jprep work -- cutting and grinding down tubes that had carried coolant as part of the Bruce A Unit 1 restart project. Similar work on Unit 2 had been done without incident. The first hint of airborne alpha radiation in the Unit 1 nuclear vault came during a routine air sample test on Nov. 26, 2009. Two days later, a similar radiation spike was found but the company didn't find out it was alpha radiation until Dec. 21. "We have always been looking for alpha but we were using . . . industry standard assumptions" based on ratios of beta-gamma radiation which are quite common in nuclear plants, Peevers said. The company now knows "that the ratios weren't as accurate as we wanted." "

"Two of the world's leading nuclear states - the United States and China - are set to clash at a closed-door meeting in Christchurch this week. About 200 technical and diplomatic officials from 46 nations that make up the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) are at the Convention Centre for a week-long meeting, which started yesterday. China is expected to be questioned about controversial plans to export two nuclear power-generating reactors to Pakistan. If a row develops, Beijing may claim Washington has double standards because the United States sold nuclear technology to non-member India in 2008 after pushing through an exemption with the help of other major powers. Asked yesterday about a possible deal between China and Pakistan, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade spokesman said it was premature to comment. "

"A FRESH trawl of waters off Dounreay will get under way next month to recover more rogue radioactive fragments. A robot mounted on a bespoke subsea assembly is being mobilised to detect and then retrieve some of the hottest of the reactor fuel particles. The operation is part of Dounreay Site Restoration Ltd's attempt to tackle the legacy of radioactive pollution caused by sloppy historic waste practices at the site. A major part of its strategy is to target the seabed near the site's original sea effluent plant. This area - the size of 10 football pitches - is thought to contain the 1500 to 2000 particles deemed to pose a significant health hazard. Last year, a robot recovered 64 particles, including 13 in the significant category."

"Safety at the Dounreay nuclear plant continues to improve, according to the bosses of the company leading the clean-up of the Caithness complex. In their annual report, the directors of Dounreay Site Restoration Limited (DSRL) said no time was lost through accidents between March 2009-10. They said the low dosages of radiation workers were exposed to also underlined the priority given to safety. Two workers were exposed to radiation last July. "

"Some people in one Labrador community that could benefit from uranium mining are calling on the Inuit Nunatsiavut government of northern Labrador to end its three-year ban on uranium mining now. They say that since the ban was narrowly approved in 2008 the community has gone from boom town to ghost town. At the peak of exploration, the drone of helicopters and float planes continued from dawn to dusk. "All we can hear now is the wind and the songbirds," said Glen Sheppard, a member of the Nunatsiavut Assembly representing Postville. "If it weren't for the number of homes around, you'd think you're at your [summer] cabin." Sheppard said that since the moratorium almost half the town's residents have become unemployed and that 75 per cent of the people in the community want the moratorium lifted early."

"The Hong Kong government is considering a plan that would require Daya Bay Nuclear Power Operations and Management Co. to report minor accidents, Hong Kong's Ming Pao Daily News reported today. Under the proposal, Daya Bay would need to report small accidents such as the leakage on May 23 to shareholder CLP Holdings Ltd., the government's Environmental Protection Department and the Electrical and Mechanical Services Department, the Chinese- language paper said, without saying where it got the information. "

"Abnormally high radiation levels were detected near the border between the two Koreas days after North Korea claimed to have mastered a complex technology key to manufacturing a hydrogen bomb, Seoul said Monday. The Science Ministry said its investigation ruled out a nuclear test by North Korea, but failed to determine the source of the radiation. It said there was no evidence of a strong earthquake, which follows an atomic explosion. On May 12, North Korea claimed its scientists succeeded in creating a nuclear fusion reaction - a technology necessary to manufacture a hydrogen bomb. In its announcement, the North did not say how it would use the technology, only calling it a "breakthrough toward the development of new energy.""

"India and Canada are set to sign a civilian nuclear energy agreement this weekend that will allow the South Asian nation to secure uranium, and nuclear equipment and technology to meet its energy needs. The accord is expected to be initialed during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's stay in Toronto for the G-20 summit from June 26. Negotiations have made "substantial progress" and the agreement is waiting for approval by both sides, Vivek Katju, a secretary at India's foreign ministry, said in New Delhi today. "The agreement will cover the large ambit of peaceful nuclear applications." "

"Radioactive waste buried under the Olympic Park could jeopardise plans to develop the site after the Games, it is claimed. Traces of thorium and radium have been buried in a disposal cell under the site of the main stadium. The Olympic Delivery Authority insists the deposits pose no risk during the Games. But experts say that a reassessment of the site after 2012 may be necessary before any development plans - housing, for instance - are put in place. Independent nuclear analyst John Large said: "There is some doubt about the applicability and validity of the radiological risk analysis undertaken for the future legacy use." The Lower Lea Valley site was industrial land which was used for landfill and where illegal dumping of waste was common in the Fifties and Sixties."

"The United States should consider a criteria-based nuclear deal for Pakistan as part of a comprehensive strategy to secure the key South Asian country's anti-militancy cooperation over the long-term, a new study by American scholars said Monday. In a critical appraisal of Islamabad's fight against terrorist threat since 2001 in the context of US-Pakistan cooperation as well as Pakistani policies, the Rand Corporation study notes the vitality of "politically valuable initiatives" that Washington should take towards ensuring Pakistan's sustained cooperation in the high-stakes struggle. These initiatives should also include a free trade agreement between the two allies, the study entitled "Counterinsurgency in Pakistan" says. The nuclear deal for Pakistan "could be based on an exclusive relationship with the United States, rather than seeking broad accommodation with the Nuclear Supplier's group and other regimes thatlimit the proliferation of nuclear technology and access to materials for nuclear programs, " authors Christine Fair of Georgetown University and Seth Jones of Rand Corporation suggest."