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Repairing a cracked containment wall will force Progress Energy to keep the Crystal River nuclear plant offline longer than anticipated. Progress Energy shut down the plant on Sept. 26 for a major maintenance project that was expected to last only into December. But on Friday the utility told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that it now plans a major repair: removing and replacing part of the containment wall, which has developed a gap below the surface. "It is clear that the repairs will require us to extend our outage," Progress Energy spokeswoman Jessica Lambert said.

Repairing a cracked containment wall will force Progress Energy to keep the Crystal River nuclear plant offline longer than anticipated. Progress Energy shut down the plant on Sept. 26 for a major maintenance project that was expected to last only into December. But on Friday the utility told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that it now plans a major repair: removing and replacing part of the containment wall, which has developed a gap below the surface. "It is clear that the repairs will require us to extend our outage," Progress Energy spokeswoman Jessica Lambert said.

"Repairs to a cracked reactor building containment wall could keep the Crystal River nuclear plant off line until midyear, Progress Energy says. The company powered down the nuclear plant in September for a major maintenance project that was expected to be finished by late December. But shortly after the job began, workers discovered that part of the containment wall had separated into two layers. The plant has remained off line since then while the company investigates its cause and comes up with a repair plan."

The federal government says it has serious questions about ongoing repair costs at the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor in Sydney. Design flaws in the $400 million reactor have seen it shut down for a total of 11 months since it began operations at the end of 2006. The cost of repairs and loss productions is expected to run into millions.

Atomstroyexport, a Russian nuclear power construction company, said on Tuesday it had completed repairs on the concrete and steel shell encasing the Chernobyl reactor one month ahead of schedule. "Despite the difficult conditions of radioactivity, the work was carried out to a high standard, with a high level of safety for personnel," Atomstroyexport said in a statement. The work involved repairs of an area around 420 square meters over the central part of the reactor's protective shelter.

The Vermont Yankee Oversight Panel's (VYOP) report was 50 pages long, which makes it difficult to summarize in an opinion piece limited to 600 words, but as the VYOP's first chairman, I believe it is important for all Vermonters to understand the panel's assessment of Yankee's reliability. Our report was a consensus report created by four individuals with many years of broad nuclear power experience. The rumor around the state, that the VYOP gave Entergy's Vermont Yankee Nuclear Plant a clean bill of health, is simply not true. With significant reservations, we concluded that Entergy's Vermont Yankee nuclear plant might operate "reliably" for 20 more years if Entergy made all the required repairs and updates, but thus far there is no methodology in place to assure Vermonters that those costly repairs are made. The VYOP uncovered serious and systemwide problems. We concluded that VY has both mechanical and cultural problems that Entergy must address before any license extension to 2032. Entergy's deferred maintenance of VY's mechanical components is troubling and expensive to fix. The VYOP uncovered more than $100 million in deferred maintenance on components that must be replaced to assure VY reliability beyond 2012. VY's condenser is a good example of failing components. Nationally, most nuclear plants replace their condensers between 20 and 30 years of operation. VY's condenser has been operating for 37 years and Entergy has known the condenser had issues prior to its purchase of VY in 2002, yet chose to delay the repairs until at least 2014. The VYOP also found that VY's design could not be licensed today because it does not meet today's modern NRC design criteria.

Progress Energy continues to investigate what caused a 2-inch wide and at least 30-foot-long crack in the containment wall of its Crystal River Nuclear Power Plant. It expects to have answers within the next few weeks. Once the cause is determined, the utility will decide how it will repair the containment wall, said Jessica Lambert, Progress Energy spokeswoman. The containment facility ensures that radiation doesn't escape in the event of a radioactive leak or accident within the reactor. Also unknown is how much it will cost to repair the crack, which is about 9 inches deep inside the 42-inch-thick wall.

Progress Energy continues to investigate what caused a 2-inch wide and at least 30-foot-long crack in the containment wall of its Crystal River Nuclear Power Plant. It expects to have answers within the next few weeks. Once the cause is determined, the utility will decide how it will repair the containment wall, said Jessica Lambert, Progress Energy spokeswoman. The containment facility ensures that radiation doesn't escape in the event of a radioactive leak or accident within the reactor. Also unknown is how much it will cost to repair the crack, which is about 9 inches deep inside the 42-inch-thick wall.

NUCLEAR power group British Energy yesterday admitted that the cost of repairs at two of its reactors had spiralled beyond initial £50 million estimates. Delays and complications at the Hartlepool and Heysham 1 plants will be "significantly higher", the company conceded.

"A cracked containment lid at a nuclear power plant in Ohio needs replacing, and a new one will be installed in 2011, plant officials say. FirstEnergy Corp. has purchased a replacement lid for the Davis-Besse reactor near Toledo, Ohio, The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported Monday. The plant has been closed since Feb. 28 for work to repair cracks in its lid. Such cracks can allow radioactive coolant into the facilities containment building, the newspaper said."

"A radioactive form of hydrogen called tritium was found leaking out of a storage tank this week at the Exelon Nuclear generating station south of Marseilles, plant officials said Thursday in a press release. "We have identified the source of the tritium leak and are taking actions to make repairs," said La Salle Site Vice President Dave Wozniak. "This finding has no impact on public health or safety." Workers performing regular monitoring discovered tritiated water near the base of a tank. Exelon notified state and federal regulatory agencies. On Wednesday workers sampled water at the base of a tank that stores water from the plant and found tritium. The plant is transferring water from the tank to temporary containers. Workers will inspect the empty tank and make necessary repairs, Exelon said. There is no indication that tritiated water has left the station property, Exelon said."

Tokyo Electric Power Co. will seek a ban on the operation of its quake-damaged nuclear plant lifted, paving the way for a test run when it completes repairs of one of the reactors next month. "We will ask the local fire department to check our facility," President Masataka Shimizu told reporters today. Tepco will fix a turbine in early February, the final repair on the No. 7 reactor at its Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear plant, he said. Six other reactors are still being worked on. The Kashiwazaki Fire Department imposed the ban after a magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck the plant on July 16, 2007, causing a fire and radiation leaks. Shimizu said he doesn't know when he can resume output at Kashiwazaki Kariwa, the world's biggest nuclear plant.

A New Jersey nuclear plant has reduced its operating power by about 50 percent while workers repair an underground pipe that's been leaking. Advertisement David Benson, a plant spokesman, says the leak was detected Monday inside Oyster Creek's turbine building. Workers excavated soil immediately outside the building, and samples showed elevated levels of tritium - a weak radioisotope found naturally and produced in somewhat higher concentrations in commercial reactors. Officials say the leak at the Lacey Township plant does not pose a threat to employee or public safety. The excavation is near the area where two other small leaks were found in April and repaired. Oyster Creek opened in December 1969 and produces about 9 percent of New Jersey's electricity.

"According to a study by the International Panel on Fissile Materials, fast breeder reactors may not the answer to the problem of long term storage for nuclear waste. The IPFM report concludes that the problems with fast breeder reactors make it hard to dispute that such reactors are expensive to build, complex to operate, susceptible to prolonged shutdown as a result of even minor malfunctions and difficult and time-consuming to repair. Plagued by high costs, often multi-year downtime for repairs (including a 15-year reactor restart delay in Japan), multiple safety problems (among them often catastrophic sodium fires triggered simply by contact with oxygen) and unresolved proliferation risks, fast breeder reactors already have been the focus of more than $50 billion in development spending, including more than $10 billion each by the U.S., Japan and Russia."

"Equipment failure in the steam generating system prompted over the weekend an emergency shutdown and unplanned repairs on Reactor 1 of Volgodonsk (Rostov) Nuclear Power Plant in southern Russia. This was a second incident at the plant in just one fortnight: The reactor was already taken down once due to an operational failure on December 26, 2009. Andrei Ozharovsky, 14/01-2010 - Translated by Maria Kaminskaya "At 09:20 AM on January 10th, 2010, Reactor Unit 1 of the Volgodonsk [Nuclear Power Plant] was shut down for ongoing maintenance. The preliminary cause has been determined as leakiness in the piping of the steam generator. The repairs are estimated to take four days," said an official statement by Concern Rosenergoatom, the operator company that runs Russia's ten nuclear power plants. The statement has been posted in Russian on the company's site."

"Until FirstEnergy Corp. implements measures to ensure Davis-Besse nuclear plant's reactor does not violate federal health and safety regulations, the Oak Harbor nuclear plant should not be allowed to restart, the Union of Concerned Scientists said. The science group Monday asked the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to keep Davis-Besse idle until it solves problems with leaking cracks in its reactor. Federal regulations require reactors be shut down immediately whenever such leakage occurs, it noted. FirstEnergy does not yet have a time line for when Davis-Besse - which was idled Feb. 28 for normal refueling and maintenance - is expected to be repaired and restarted, spokesman Todd Schneider said. Several of Davis-Besse's 69 control-rod drive mechanism nozzles were found to be cracked or otherwise damaged, and some had leaked. A repair plan is to be submitted to the NRC."

"Premier Shawn Graham says the federal government appears to be softening its stance toward the repair delays and cost overruns at the Point Lepreau nuclear power plant. Graham was in Ottawa on Tuesday to meet with Prime Minister Stephen Harper and federal ministers. At the top of the premier's agenda was the Point Lepreau plant, which is being refurbished by federal Crown corporation Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. AECL originally promised to complete the refurbishment last fall. But in September, it announced the repairs would cost $1.4 billion, much more than initially expected, and won't be finished until roughly February 2011."

Seven German nuclear plants have failed to generate any electricity this month due to technical breakdowns. They have about half the production capacity of Germany's 17 nuclear reactors, but Germany did not suffer any power shortages. The plants have between them a 9,000 megawatt (MW) capacity, but Germany generates more electricity than it consumes, and has been exporting some of the surplus to France, which is heavily dependent on nuclear power. Early this month, three plants shut down automatically due to failures in their transformers. The other four have been out of service for months, and are undergoing expensive repairs. The breakdowns come at a time when the planned phasing out of nuclear power is under attack. In 2002, the coalition government of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Greens decided that all nuclear reactors would be phased out by 2021. At the same time, the government launched a massive investment programme in renewable energy, making Germany the leading country in Europe in use of the sun and wind as energy sources. According to official figures, Germany generates 15 percent of the electricity it consumes from renewable sources. A law passed in 2008 sets a target of generating at least 30 percent of electricity through renewables by 2020. Additionally, on Jul. 13, a group of large German companies announced a joint investment of 400 billion euros (560 billion dollars) in setting up solar thermal plants in the Sahara, to generate at least 15 percent of all electricity needed in Europe by the year 2020. But Chancellor Angela Merkel announced Jul. 1 that she would reverse the phasing out of nuclear power if her Christian Democratic Party wins the general election in September, and can form a coalition with the right-wing Liberal Democratic Party. Merkel presently rules in coalition with the SPD. "Nuclear power remains an indispensable component of the German energy mix," Merkel told the annual meeting of Atomforum, a group represe

Seven German nuclear plants have failed to generate any electricity this month due to technical breakdowns. They have about half the production capacity of Germany's 17 nuclear reactors, but Germany did not suffer any power shortages. The plants have between them a 9,000 megawatt (MW) capacity, but Germany generates more electricity than it consumes, and has been exporting some of the surplus to France, which is heavily dependent on nuclear power. Early this month, three plants shut down automatically due to failures in their transformers. The other four have been out of service for months, and are undergoing expensive repairs. The breakdowns come at a time when the planned phasing out of nuclear power is under attack. In 2002, the coalition government of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Greens decided that all nuclear reactors would be phased out by 2021. At the same time, the government launched a massive investment programme in renewable energy, making Germany the leading country in Europe in use of the sun and wind as energy sources. According to official figures, Germany generates 15 percent of the electricity it consumes from renewable sources. A law passed in 2008 sets a target of generating at least 30 percent of electricity through renewables by 2020. Additionally, on Jul. 13, a group of large German companies announced a joint investment of 400 billion euros (560 billion dollars) in setting up solar thermal plants in the Sahara, to generate at least 15 percent of all electricity needed in Europe by the year 2020. But Chancellor Angela Merkel announced Jul. 1 that she would reverse the phasing out of nuclear power if her Christian Democratic Party wins the general election in September, and can form a coalition with the right-wing Liberal Democratic Party. Merkel presently rules in coalition with the SPD. "Nuclear power remains an indispensable component of the German energy mix," Merkel told the annual meeting of Atomforum, a group represe

FirstEnergy Corp. faces disciplinary action because its Davis-Besse operators "failed to recognize the hazard to the station's operations" caused by a June 25 explosion inside the electrical transmission switchyard, according to a letter the Nuclear Regulatory Commission sent to the utility. The NRC's letter, dated Monday, said operators should have immediately recognized the explosion met federal emergency action level conditions for declaring an alert. The agency said it will allow FirstEnergy to explain in greater detail what happened before deciding whether to proceed with enforcement. The explosion occurred as repairs were being made to electrical equipment. There were no injuries or radiation releases and the nuclear reactor never stopped operating.

FirstEnergy Corp. faces disciplinary action because its Davis-Besse operators "failed to recognize the hazard to the station's operations" caused by a June 25 explosion inside the electrical transmission switchyard, according to a letter the Nuclear Regulatory Commission sent to the utility. The NRC's letter, dated Monday, said operators should have immediately recognized the explosion met federal emergency action level conditions for declaring an alert. The agency said it will allow FirstEnergy to explain in greater detail what happened before deciding whether to proceed with enforcement. The explosion occurred as repairs were being made to electrical equipment. There were no injuries or radiation releases and the nuclear reactor never stopped operating.

The Zvezdochka shipyard in northern Russia said on Friday that a recent minor radioactive leak at its storage facility posed no threat to people or environment. According to a Zvezdochka statement, the "radiation incident" took place on Thursday when about two cubic meters liquid radioactive waste leaked through a seam in a pipe connecting a storage tank and a waste treatment facility. "The pipe itself is located in a leak-proof tunnel and the waste did not spill outside," the statement said, adding that the tunnel has been drained of the waste in two hours following the leak. "The radiation levels around the tunnel are normal. The causes of the leak are being investigated," the shipyard said. Severodvinsk-based Zvezdochka is Russia's biggest shipyard for repairing and dismantling nuclear-powered submarines. It has the capacity to scrap up to four nuclear submarines per year.

The Zvezdochka shipyard in northern Russia said on Friday that a recent minor radioactive leak at its storage facility posed no threat to people or environment. According to a Zvezdochka statement, the "radiation incident" took place on Thursday when about two cubic meters liquid radioactive waste leaked through a seam in a pipe connecting a storage tank and a waste treatment facility. "The pipe itself is located in a leak-proof tunnel and the waste did not spill outside," the statement said, adding that the tunnel has been drained of the waste in two hours following the leak. "The radiation levels around the tunnel are normal. The causes of the leak are being investigated," the shipyard said. Severodvinsk-based Zvezdochka is Russia's biggest shipyard for repairing and dismantling nuclear-powered submarines. It has the capacity to scrap up to four nuclear submarines per year.

Lawmakers and state utility regulators are asking tough questions about a plan to spin off Vermont Yankee into a new company. They want to know if the new corporation is taking on too much debt. And they're asking whether the company will have enough money to make major repairs and dismantle the nuclear plant after it's shut down. VPR's John Dillon reports: (Dillon) First the background: Entergy, the Louisiana company that owns Vermont Yankee, wants to create a new company that would own the reactor in Vernon and five other nuclear plants. This new spin-off corporation is called Enexus. And it would control the part of Entergy's nuclear fleet that sells power to the wholesale market.

Lawmakers and state utility regulators are asking tough questions about a plan to spin off Vermont Yankee into a new company. They want to know if the new corporation is taking on too much debt. And they're asking whether the company will have enough money to make major repairs and dismantle the nuclear plant after it's shut down. VPR's John Dillon reports: (Dillon) First the background: Entergy, the Louisiana company that owns Vermont Yankee, wants to create a new company that would own the reactor in Vernon and five other nuclear plants. This new spin-off corporation is called Enexus. And it would control the part of Entergy's nuclear fleet that sells power to the wholesale market.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is eying Braidwood Gen-erating Station in the wake of a valve failure last summer in Unit 2. The June 24 failure involves a valve located outside the containment area. It controls the sump pump that drains water from the reactor, should it be necessary. The valve in question, and others on the two units, are located on the nuclear side of the station. NRC spokesman Viktoria Mitlyng said today the valve has since been repaired, and there is no longer any kind of safety concern to the station and the public. The NRC is now looking at what happened in the incident and why. "At what kind of weaknesses in the station's programs would have caused such a situation," she said. The NRC's report was issued Nov. 30, and received at Braidwood Station on Wednesday of this week, spokesman Neal Miller said today.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is eying Braidwood Gen-erating Station in the wake of a valve failure last summer in Unit 2. The June 24 failure involves a valve located outside the containment area. It controls the sump pump that drains water from the reactor, should it be necessary. The valve in question, and others on the two units, are located on the nuclear side of the station. NRC spokesman Viktoria Mitlyng said today the valve has since been repaired, and there is no longer any kind of safety concern to the station and the public. The NRC is now looking at what happened in the incident and why. "At what kind of weaknesses in the station's programs would have caused such a situation," she said. The NRC's report was issued Nov. 30, and received at Braidwood Station on Wednesday of this week, spokesman Neal Miller said today.