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The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has authorized the reinstatement of the construction permits for Tennessee Valley Authority's (TVA's) unfinished Unit 1 and 2 reactors at the Bellefonte site near Scottsboro, Ala. In 2006, having decided not to complete construction of the reactors, TVA requested that NRC withdraw the construction permits for the two Bellefonte units. However, in August 2008 TVA, citing changing power-generating economics, stated that completing the Bellefonte reactors may now be viable and requested that the NRC reinstate the permits. If the Bellefonte construction permits had remained in place, they would not have expired until 2011 and 2014, respectively. TVA also requested that the permits be reinstated with the reactors classified in the "deferred" status - a category indicating a plant's structures, equipment and records have been well maintained in a mothballed condition. The Commission denied that portion of the request. "The Commission Policy Statement on Deferred Plants is clear and demanding with respect to the condition of the facilities and the quality of plant records. The Bellefonte reactors simply do not meet that threshold right now," said NRC Chairman Dale Klein.

The operating rate of Japan's nuclear power plants stood at 58 percent in 2008, and will likely sink to the lowest level in 29 years on a fiscal-year basis, a government survey has shown. Provisional estimates in the survey by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry put the operating rate of 55 commercial nuclear power plants in Japan at 58 percent in 2008. The level is the lowest since the 57.4 percent recorded in 2003, when periodic inspections were held earlier due to false inspection reports. On a fiscal-year basis, the figure for fiscal 2008 is expected to come near the lowest level of 54.6 percent recorded in fiscal 1979.

Remember the one about the thousands of missing tritium based Exit signs? A number of institutions with licenses to hold nuclear material reported to the Energy Department in 2004 that the amount of material they held was less than agency records indicated. But rather than investigating the discrepancies, Energy officials wrote off significant quantities of nuclear material from the department's inventory records. That's just one of the findings of a report released on Monday by Energy Department Inspector General Gregory Friedman that concluded "the department cannot properly account for and effectively manage its nuclear materials maintained by domestic licensees and may be unable to detect lost or stolen material."

After 10 years of sifting through thousands of pages of classified records and overcoming secrecy obstacles at the nuclear weapons lab, independent investigators have provided the first rough estimates of radioactive and toxic releases from Los Alamos National Laboratory dating back to its earliest operations and the potential health impact of the nation's first atomic bomb blast on ranchers and other nearby residents in New Mexico. Investigators for the Los Alamos Historical Document Retrieval and Assessment (LAHDRA) project released a draft final report in late June that-while far from definitive in its conclusions-said there was persuasive evidence from spotty, decades-old emissions monitoring data that radioactive releases during Los Alamos' early years were so significant that they could dwarf the cumulative releases from all of the Energy Department's other early nuclear weapons production sites. In particular, the researchers said that although the lab did not monitor emissions from many of its earliest plutonium processing facilities, fragmentary records-especially "industrial hygiene," or worker safety, reports from 1955 and 1956-suggest plutonium releases in the late 1940s and early 1950s were much higher than has been acknowledged by the government to date.

Critics round on ministry's 'scandalous' safety record after admission to nine nuclear submarine leaks in past 12 years Radioactive waste has leaked from Britain's nuclear submarines nine times in the past 12 years, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has admitted. Two of the leaks - including one at Devonport near Plymouth two months ago - had not been revealed until today. Confirmation of the leaks raises new questions about the MoD's safety record, which has been coming under increasing scrutiny since HMS Vanguard, a British submarine armed with Trident nuclear missiles, collided with a nuclear-armed French submarine, Le Triomphant, under the Atlantic in February.

On April 26, 1986, Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station reactor number 4 exploded at 1:24 a.m. "Tons of radioactive dust was" unleashed "into the air…transported by winds, [and] it contaminated both hemispheres of our planet, settling wherever it rained. The emissions of radioactivity lasted [short-term] for 10 days."(1) On 29 April, "fatal levels of radioactivity were recorded…in Poland, Austria, Romania, Finland, and Sweden."(2) The day after (30 April), it hit Switzerland and Italy. By 2 May, it reached France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Great Britain, and Greece. The next day, Israel, Kuwait, and Turkey were contaminated. Then, over the next few days, "radioactive substances" were recorded in Japan (3 May), China (4 May), India (5 May), and the US and Canada (6 May). The radioactive spew from this explosion was "200 times greater than the atomic bomb at Hiroshima."(3) Not one person was safe from this catastrophic nuclear explosion; and "65-million people were contaminated...more than 400,000 people were forced to evacuate the area [around Chernobyl], losing their homes, possessions and jobs, as well as their economic, social, and family ties."(4) The long-term and hidden costs of radioactive contamination have never been adequately reported by mainstream news. According to the authors (including the distinguished Dr. Rosalie Bertell) of a new book, "Chernobyl: The Hidden Legacy" "[i]t will take millennia to recover…[before an area] as large as Italy, will return to normal radioactive levels in about 100,000 years time."(5)

An Exelon Nuclear monitor located about a mile away from Three Mile Island in Dauphin County picked up trace amounts of radiation during the same week workers were exposed to contamination at the plant. Between Nov. 18 and Nov. 24, one of TMI's seven remote monitors detected an increase of 0.02 millirems, said Beth Archer, an Exelon spokeswoman. A millirem is a measure of radiation exposure. A second monitor recorded a statistically insignificant change in its reading, she said. A typical person receives about 360 millirems of radiation annually from natural sources, such as soil and rocks, cosmic rays, food and consumer products.

An Exelon Nuclear monitor located about a mile away from Three Mile Island in Dauphin County picked up trace amounts of radiation during the same week workers were exposed to contamination at the plant. Between Nov. 18 and Nov. 24, one of TMI's seven remote monitors detected an increase of 0.02 millirems, said Beth Archer, an Exelon spokeswoman. A millirem is a measure of radiation exposure. A second monitor recorded a statistically insignificant change in its reading, she said. A typical person receives about 360 millirems of radiation annually from natural sources, such as soil and rocks, cosmic rays, food and consumer products.

Because New York State is a leader in monitoring radiotherapy and collecting data about errors, The Times decided to examine patterns of accidents there and spent months obtaining and analyzing records. Even though many accident details are confidential under state law, the records described 621 mistakes from 2001 to 2008. While most were minor, causing no immediate injury, they nonetheless illuminate underlying problems. Following are 18 accidents representing a variety of medical mistakes."

"On March 31, retired Sgt. Hermogenes Marrero was told during a visit to the Veterans Affairs (VA) outpatient clinic in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, that he didn't have cancer - or at least, his official VA computer file no longer showed any record of cancer. But Marrero was not relieved. He had been diagnosed twice before with colon cancer and suffers today from a dozen other illnesses, including Lou Gehrig's disease, failing vision, a lung condition that keeps him on oxygen around the clock, not to mention tumors throughout his body. The terminally ill and wheelchair-bound, 57-year-old veteran immediately suspected that the U.S. government had manipulated his medical record."

Read the release that details how TMI will operate for an additional 20 years * Record Tracker blog: More on TMI's renewal, including links to documents. * York Town Square blog: Three Mile Island emergency indelibly written into memories. Thirty years after Three Mile Island Unit 2 suffered a partial meltdown, a federal agency has approved its sister reactor to operate for an additional 20 years. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission renewed the operating license Thursday for TMI Unit 1 in Dauphin County. The new license will expire April 19, 2034. The reactor's original 40-year license was Read TMI's response to landing license renewal. set to run out April 19, 2014.

Read the release that details how TMI will operate for an additional 20 years * Record Tracker blog: More on TMI's renewal, including links to documents. * York Town Square blog: Three Mile Island emergency indelibly written into memories. Thirty years after Three Mile Island Unit 2 suffered a partial meltdown, a federal agency has approved its sister reactor to operate for an additional 20 years. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission renewed the operating license Thursday for TMI Unit 1 in Dauphin County. The new license will expire April 19, 2034. The reactor's original 40-year license was Read TMI's response to landing license renewal. set to run out April 19, 2014.

It is great to read that several environmental groups are getting on board with the idea that more nuclear power construction has to be part of the mix if the nation is going to meet future energy needs while lowering greenhouse gas emissions. This newspaper is on record as supporting a revival of nuclear power, noting there is room for more reactors at Millstone Power Station in Waterford. An Environmental Protection Agency analysis of the Waxman-Markey energy bill passed in the House shows nuclear energy generation more than doubling by 2050, if it becomes law. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is reviewing 22 nuclear-plant applications.

It is great to read that several environmental groups are getting on board with the idea that more nuclear power construction has to be part of the mix if the nation is going to meet future energy needs while lowering greenhouse gas emissions. This newspaper is on record as supporting a revival of nuclear power, noting there is room for more reactors at Millstone Power Station in Waterford. An Environmental Protection Agency analysis of the Waxman-Markey energy bill passed in the House shows nuclear energy generation more than doubling by 2050, if it becomes law. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is reviewing 22 nuclear-plant applications.

It is great to read that several environmental groups are getting on board with the idea that more nuclear power construction has to be part of the mix if the nation is going to meet future energy needs while lowering greenhouse gas emissions. This newspaper is on record as supporting a revival of nuclear power, noting there is room for more reactors at Millstone Power Station in Waterford. An Environmental Protection Agency analysis of the Waxman-Markey energy bill passed in the House shows nuclear energy generation more than doubling by 2050, if it becomes law. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is reviewing 22 nuclear-plant applications.

"Safely disposing of low-level radioactive waste is serious business and should lead to serious policy discussions. Unfortunately, The Salt Lake Tribune is less interested in getting its facts straight than using its Opinion page to take cheap shots at EnergySolutions. I do appreciate The Tribune 's willingness to let me set the record straight in response to its editorial of June 8. Anyone reading The Tribune editorial could conclude that EnergySolutions and the Department of Energy are in discussions about a DOE takeover of the company's Clive waste disposal site, which is simply not factual or even possible. "

Three Arco sisters are proving you can do anything when you work together. They're taking on the massive job of digitizing every record in INL history. In 2007 Bertha Jones, Lydia Gonzales and Berniece Hansen purchased a machine made by Kirtas technology. It acts like a scanner but much faster. The machine can digitize 2,400 pages every hour.

An inquiry into the removal of body tissue from Sellafield nuclear workers has been hit by concerns about the medical records of dead patients. Michael Redfern QC is heading a public inquiry into why samples were taken between 1962 and 1992 and whether next of kin were informed.

An inquiry into the removal of body tissue from dead Sellafield nuclear workers can examine the patients' medical records, a judge has ruled. Michael Redfern QC is heading a public inquiry into why samples were taken between 1962 and 1992 and whether next of kin were informed.

* Nuclear watchdog group says India may be releasing sensitive know-how to firms WASHINGTON: India's claim that it has a spotless record when it comes to nuclear proliferation has been questioned by a leading nuclear watchdog group. The Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) believes that important questions remain about the adequacy and implementation of India's export control and nuclear classification procedures.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission will hold a public meeting in Lynchburg on July 24 to discuss Areva NP's safety record. The meeting will begin at 10:30 a.m. at Areva's headquarters at 3315 Old Forest Road. According to a letter posted on the commission's Web site, the public meeting will focus on a performance review that occurred at Areva's Mt. Athos Road plant in April.

"We need your help," begins the plaintive ad on the front of the Whitehaven News. Did you work at Sellafield in the 1960s, 1970s or 1980s? Were you by chance in the job of disposing of radioactive material? If so, the owners of Britain's nuclear waste dump would very much like to hear from you: they want you to tell them what you dumped - and where you put it. The reason for the ad is simple: the Cumbrian facility's new operator, LLW Repository Ltd, has discovered that the historic records of disposal supposedly kept by the British state are far from complete.

A contract foreman with Columbia's Westinghouse nuclear fuel plant has been fired and the company cited by federal regulators after inspectors found that the foreman falsified safety records at the Bluff Road facility. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission announced a settlement Friday with Westinghouse in which the company said it will improve oversight of contractors hired to work the plant. It also agreed to an assessment of how well company employees are trained to investigate wrongdoing. Company spokesman Jackie McCoy said the contract foreman had been relieved of his duties, but she declined to name the person. She said the contract foreman oversaw fewer than 10 employees at the plant, near the Congaree River south of Interstate 77. Westinghouse Electric Co.'s 550,000-square-foot plant, one of the few of its kind in the United States, makes fuel rods for nuclear power stations across the country. The Bluff Road factory is one of the Columbia area's largest employers, with more than 1,000 workers.

For Japanese electronics makers, the last fiscal year was one they'd like to forget. Especially Hitachi, which on Tuesday set the wrong kind of record. It posted the biggest ever annual loss by a Japanese manufacturer, and warning of more red ink, said it doesn't expect the global economy to recover until next year at the earliest.