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he BNP has said it is considering "legal avenues" after its leader was refused permission to visit the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant. Nick Griffin had wanted a fact-finding tour of the site, which is in his North West European Parliament constituency. But Sellafield Limited, the facility's operator, said it was concerned about security and possible demonstrations.

he BNP has said it is considering "legal avenues" after its leader was refused permission to visit the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant. Nick Griffin had wanted a fact-finding tour of the site, which is in his North West European Parliament constituency. But Sellafield Limited, the facility's operator, said it was concerned about security and possible demonstrations.

he BNP has said it is considering "legal avenues" after its leader was refused permission to visit the Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant. Nick Griffin had wanted a fact-finding tour of the site, which is in his North West European Parliament constituency. But Sellafield Limited, the facility's operator, said it was concerned about security and possible demonstrations.

A nuclear waste reprocessing facility proposed for Grundy County will be among the options discussed at a Dec. 4 public hearing on the environmental impact of nuclear waste disposal. The facility proposed at General Electric's Morris Operation, a storage site for more than 700 metric tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste, drew regional opposition during earlier hearings. The reprocessing technology GE wants to use at the site would burn off its most radioactive components and use them to generate electricity in a specialized reactor.

URGENT ACTION ALERT! Condemned by health and environmental groups across the country, GNEP means foreign nuclear waste imported and "reprocessed" in the USA. This is a national issue! We need a big national outcry!!! Washington, Oregon, Idaho, New Mexico, Ohio, Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, South Carolina, and all our sister states! Cold War nuclear sites are thirty years behind on clean-up! NO foreign waste! Global Nuclear Energy Partnership In the dying throes of the Bush administration, one last environmental disaster is being foisted on the public. With GNEP, the Pacific Northwest, Hanford Nuclear Reservation and Idaho Falls, the Southwest and sites in the Eastern USA could all get a lot more nuclear waste (both from within and outside the country) and dirty nuclear waste 'reprocessing' plants, "recycling" reactors, and "advanced fuel cycle research facilities"-all verbal green-washings of very dirty processes. The Department of Energy (DOE) is holding public hearings on GNEP in November through early December, 2008, final hearing on December 9 in Washington DC in a rush to push this awful idea in under the wire. Thursday, November 20, 7:00 p.m. Hilton Garden Inn 700 Lindsay Boulevard Idaho Falls, IDAHO 83402 Tuesday, November 18, 7:00 p.m. Best Western Hood River Inn - Gorge Room 1108 East Marina Way Hood River, OREGON 97031 Monday, November 17, 7:00 p.m. Red Lion Hotel 2525 North 20th Avenue Pasco, WASHINGTON 99301 Monday, November 17, 7:00 p.m. Lea County Event Center 5101 North Lovington-Hobbs Hwy Hobbs, NEW MEXICO 88240 Tuesday, November 18, 9:00 a.m. Pecos River Village Conference Center Carousel House 711 Muscatel Avenue Carlsbad, NEW MEXICO 88220 Tuesday, November 18, 7:00 p.m. Eastern New Mexico University-Roswell Occupational Technology Center Seminar Room 124 20 West Mathis Roswell, NEW MEXICO 88130 Thursday, November 20, 7:00 p.m. Hilltop House Best Western 400 Trinity Drive (at Central) Los Alamos, NEW MEXICO 87544 Mon

Hundreds of German students protest the dumping of reprocessed nuclear waste at a storage center in the town of Gorleben. Germany annually sends the spent fuel of its nuclear power plants to France and Britain for reprocessing and later the waste is returned to Germany for dumping at nuclear storage centers. A train carrying the toxic remains was to leave France on Friday, and arrive at a storage facility in the town of Gorleben on Monday. The Friday protest took place in the nearby town of Luechow.

The trial operation of a spent nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in the village of Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, is unlikely to be completed in November as scheduled due to a glitch, Isami Kojima, president of Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd., said Friday. The anticipated delay this time is because the plant operator must file an additional report with the government on a test it restarted in October to produce vitrified waste by mixing high-level radioactive liquid waste with glass raw materials in a melting furnace.

Doug Turner argues that politicians opposing a nuclear waste repository inside Yucca Mountain contribute to our nation's energy woes. Advocating increased use of nuclear power, Turner references the French, who are heavy producers of electricity generated by nuclear power plants. He claims their nuclear power is cheap, profitable and environmentally sound. The French pave their highways with material in which they mix radioactive wastes, spreading the hazard across the land. They store radioactive waste in facilities along miles of coastline. Radioactivity leaks into the ocean. Reprocessing creates more waste than there was before the material was reprocessed. But discarding weapons-grade plutonium and uranium would be economically irresponsible.

Up to 10,000 tons of depleted uranium hexafluoride are expected to travel through St. Petersburg in the next six months, according to the local branch of the international environmental pressure group Bellona. The next cargo is expected to arrive in town in early October. Arriving by sea, the radioactive material will then be sent by rail to the town of Novouralsk in Siberia for reprocessing and storage. Most of the cargo arrives in Russia from the Netherlands and Germany but Russia has signed contracts with India, Pakistan and China - states that are rapidly bolstering their nuclear programs - and looks set to receive even more spent nuclear fuel and uranium hexafluoride for reprocessing.

Assurances on disposition of spent nuclear fuel could be more important than guarantees of fresh fuel in convincing new nuclear countries to rely on international supply arrangements rather than pursuing their own uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing programs, according to a study released Tuesday by the US and Russian national science academies. For several years, there have discussions about establishing an international system so that countries starting or considering nuclear programs do not also embark on enrichment and reprocessing programs, since this could give countries the capability to produce material -- high-enriched uranium and plutonium, respectively -- that can be used in nuclear weapons.

Professor Emeritus John C. Ringle ("U.S. would benefit from nuclear power, "Opinion, Aug. 21) asserts, "France, Great Britain, Japan and Russia derive great benefit from reprocessing, " and concludes, "We [The US] should be doing the same." Advertisement I write from London, England. I cannot speak for France, Japan or Russia, but can enlighten your readers that the chemical separation of plutonium from uranium and fission products in irradiated nuclear fuel through the process called nuclear reprocessing has not proved a great benefit to Britain. It has resulted in significant radiological pollution of the Irish Sea, angering our neighbors, Ireland, for several decades, as well as Nordic neighbors, Norway, concerned over radiological pollution of their pristine fishing waters.

Answering some of the most commonly asked questions about nuclear power plants. To read part I of Peak oil and nuclear energy, click here. What are we going to do with all of the spent fuel? Let's start with the saddest observation of all. There is no need to have this problem. France, which produces 79% of its electricity with nuclear plants, does not. France, and almost everyone else, reprocesses their fuel. We do not because Jimmy Carter (a nuclear engineer, for Lord's sake) decided in 1977 that it was too "dangerous" because of the fear of nuclear proliferation (which has continued nonetheless). Reagan reversed Carter in 1981 but reprocessing has never been initiated. Nonsense. Read this to learn the reality of proliferation.

Government plans to send the highly-radioactive spent fuel rods stored at the Koeberg nuclear power station overseas for reprocessing, Parliament's minerals and energy portfolio committee heard on Wednesday. This was a short-term solution to disposing of it, in terms of policy approved by Cabinet "but not announced yet", minerals and energy department nuclear safety director Schalk de Waal told MPs.

June 23 (Bloomberg) -- British Prime Minister Gordon Brown will meet with his Japanese counterpart Yasuo Fukuda next month to discuss a nuclear-fuel reprocessing contract, worth about 1 billion pounds ($1.98 billion) a year, the Telegraph reported.

If leading US energy experts have their way, the US will be storing tens of thousands of tonnes of nuclear waste above ground for decades to come. But are dry casks, originally intended as a short-term fix for nuclear waste, a safe bet? Researchers from MIT and Harvard University fielded questions from US Senator Tom Carper yesterday in Cambridge, Massachusetts on what the US should do with its nuclear waste now that plans for Yucca Mountain, a national underground repository, have been put on hold by the Obama administration. Surprisingly, the assembled scientists unanimously told Carper not to worry, saying existing aboveground storage would be perfectly save for another 60 to 70 years. Instead, they pressed the senator to spend time and money developing better waste reprocessing technology, rather than rush to develop the same reprocessing technology now used by Japan and other countries.

Sellafield's Thorp reprocessing plant is to shut down while a probe into an evaporator is carried out. Site bosses said the move is not linked to a rumour sweeping west Cumbria last week that the troubled site would be closed because of the failure of another, older evaporator. Thorp's 1,500 workers were told last Thursday that evaporator B had been fixed, normal operations would resume and the threat of closure had been lifted. However, it emerged this morning that Thorp will be shut down, for a routine inspection of evaporator C.

"The French nuclear industry is in turmoil as uranium supplies have dried up and the treatment of spent fuel has been blocked amid an increasingly bitter row between the heads of its two main state operators. EDF, the electricity group that runs 58 reactors in France, said that Areva, the nuclear energy group, had stopped uranium deliveries on January 4 and was refusing to take away spent fuel for reprocessing. ''The transport of combustibles isn't working at the moment,'' Anne Lauvergeon, the chairwoman of Areva, said. As a result, used fuel is remaining at EDF sites instead of being reprocessed at La Hague treatment plant in northern France."

"The U.S. is unlikely to allow South Korea to reprocess spent nuclear fuel that is piling up in secure storage facilities until a satisfactory solution to the North Korean nuclear problem is found, a report said this week. The matter is a key issue in negotiations between Seoul and Washington on the revision of the Korea-U.S. Atomic Energy Agreement, which expires in 2014. Fred McGoldrick, a former chief U.S. representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency, published the report on prospects for Seoul-Washington negotiations about nuclear energy at the request of the Center for U.S.-Korea Policy of the Asia Foundation in the U.S. "It is difficult to imagine that the United States would agree to South Korean pyroprocessing until the North Korean nuclear issue reaches a satisfactory resolution," he wrote. "

SELLAFIELD has been hit by another plant failure but there is said to be no impact on site safety or operations. breaking news Evaporator B known as Bravo and which treats highly radioactive liquor has failed for the second time in six months due to coil corrosion. Sellafield's operators stress, however, that as no fuel reprocessing is currently taking place production is not affected and there are no implications for health and safety.

SELLAFIELD has been hit by another plant failure but there is said to be no impact on site safety or operations. breaking news Evaporator B known as Bravo and which treats highly radioactive liquor has failed for the second time in six months due to coil corrosion. Sellafield's operators stress, however, that as no fuel reprocessing is currently taking place production is not affected and there are no implications for health and safety.

Environmentalists from the international pressure group Greenpeace are trumpeting their biggest success in years after German-Dutch company URENCO announced on Monday that it is ending the practice of sending spent nuclear fuel to Russia for reprocessing and storage. Radioactive loads on board foreign ships had been arriving at the port of St. Petersburg every month for a decade to be sent by rail to factories in Siberia and the Urals. Environmentalists feared that transporting such loads through the city presented a major threat to public health and environmental security. In 1999, they failed in their attempts to have the importing of spent nuclear fuel from abroad into Russia banned. In December 2000, the State Duma voted overwhelmingly to adopt the practice of importing irradiated fuel from other countries.

Environmentalists from the international pressure group Greenpeace are trumpeting their biggest success in years after German-Dutch company URENCO announced on Monday that it is ending the practice of sending spent nuclear fuel to Russia for reprocessing and storage. Radioactive loads on board foreign ships had been arriving at the port of St. Petersburg every month for a decade to be sent by rail to factories in Siberia and the Urals. Environmentalists feared that transporting such loads through the city presented a major threat to public health and environmental security. In 1999, they failed in their attempts to have the importing of spent nuclear fuel from abroad into Russia banned. In December 2000, the State Duma voted overwhelmingly to adopt the practice of importing irradiated fuel from other countries.

The Coalition on West Valley Nuclear Wastes has donated 90 cubic feet of primary documents to the Archives and Special Collections at SUNY Fredonia. The materials, pertaining to the West Valley Nuclear Demonstration Project, have been collected and maintained over the last four decades by the Coalition, an activist group of primarily Cattaraugus and Erie County citizens. Currently headed by Judith Einach of Buffalo and Joanne Hameister of East Aurora, the Coalition has documented the activities at the West Valley site since it opened in the early 1960s in the Town of Ashford in Cattaraugus County, roughly about 30 miles south of Buffalo. "This collection is the most complete documented history available anywhere about nuclear reprocessing and storage," said Randy Gadikian, director of library services at SUNY Fredonia. "It documents the successes, failures and risks that are entailed in operating such a project, and for the first time, this information is available for public review."

A Bush administration project aimed at reprocessing nuclear waste in a global sharing arrangement is bringing opposition that's not always from anti-nuclear advocates as public hearings come to Oak Ridge and Paducah next week. Both of those locations are potential receiving sites for what could be domestic and foreign waste. In the case of Oak Ridge, at least part of the highly radioactive materials could travel through Nashville. Advertisement The Tennessee Valley Authority, the nation's largest public power producer, has been working with the U.S. Department of Energy on the feasibility of the long-controversial practice of re-tooling nuclear waste.