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A security incident has occurred at a French nuclear site already under scrutiny because of a series of safety scares over the summer, France's ASN nuclear safety authority said on Monday. ASN said two fuel units became snagged in a reactor at Tricastin in southern France on Monday morning when site workers were attempting to remove them during maintenance work.

When SCE&G filed an application in May to raise its rates by 37 percent, buried in the application was a petition to begin clearing a site for two new reactors at the utility's V.C. Summer Nuclear Station in Fairfield County. While the power company posted a notice that it would accept public comments on the petition, SCE&G did not plan a hearing to discuss its plans, according to Tom Clements, regional coordinator of nuclear issues for Friends of the Earth. "They had requested in the petition that the decision be made by the [S.C.] Public Service Commission without any form of hearing," Clements says.

South Carolina Electric and Gas Company as Itself and Acting as Agent for the South Carolina Public Service Company (Also Referred to as Santee Cooper) Acceptance for Docketing of an Application for Combined License for Virgil C. Summer Nuclear Station Units 2 and 3

It's late summer in Washington at the tail end of a lame duck presidency. And that means one thing for Beltway insiders: open season for lobbying. The nuclear energy industry is one group in a good position to take advantage of the changing of the guard. And one of its biggest guns--former New Jersey Gov. and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman--is drumming up publicity for what might be a nuclear renaissance in the U.S. within the next few years.

The latest safety lapse occurred at a nuclear plant run by an arm of Areva, the group in line to take over Sellafield The French state energy giants bidding to take control of Britain's nuclear industry are facing concern over their safety record in France after the fourth radioactive incident of the summer. The latest safety lapse occurred at a nuclear waste plant run by a subsidiary of Areva, the group which is leading a consortium in line to take over management of Sellafield in the UK.

Last summer, the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Legacy Management issued a report that determined an increase in uranium mining in the region would have "no significant environmental impact." The report allowed the DOE to bring back a program that initially fueled atomic weapons but would now go toward powering hair dryers and electric cars.

In August 1975, somebody scored a sweet deal. That summer, a transport company paid $2 a barrel to dump 2,353 drums into a Ephrata landfill. There were no records of what was in the barrels, which since then have rotted and leaked toxic chemicals into an underlying aquifer, according to this story by Michelle McNiel in the Wenatchee World .

Lawmakers: Loux rift won't end opposition WASHINGTON -- No matter what happens with the embattled director of Nevada's Nuclear Projects Agency, the state will not give up the fight against Yucca Mountain, Nevada's senators vowed Thursday. Sens. Harry Reid and John Ensign insisted the Energy Department's plans for a nuclear waste repository are still more dead than alive, even as the department made progress this summer moving it toward construction.

Twenty-five years ago this summer, prospects for a nuclear-powered Northwest imploded. In what was then the nation's largest municipal bond default, the Washington Public Power Supply System told creditors it could not make payment on a $2.25 billion debt it incurred to build two large nuclear plants. Today, as we contemplate regional energy options, the Supply System's abandoned projects still cast a shadow.

This is NRC's official timeline chart for reactor licensing by design: AP1000 (Bellafonte, Lee Summer, Harris, Vogtle, Levy Cnty, Turkey Pt) ESBWR (N Anna, Grand Gulf, River Bend, Victoria Cnty, Fermi) EPR(Calvert Cliffs, Callaway, Amarillo Power, Bruneau, Nine Mile Pt) ABWR (South Texas) USAPWR (Commanche Peak)

The state's health agency will be testing water from wells near three nuclear reactor sites around South Carolina. The Department of Health and Environmental Control says its staffers will visit residents Thursday and take samples from wells near Duke Energy Inc.'s nuclear power plants in York and Oconee counties and near the V.C. Summer plant in Fairfield County, which is co-owned by South Carolina Electric and Gas and state-owned utility Santee Cooper.

The Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant is operating at half its power level while it investigates a leak in one of the plant's cooling towers. The cooling towers were the source of a problem last summer when one of them degraded so badly that it collapsed.

Problems with broken wooden timbers continue to plague Vermont Yankee's cooling towers, as Entergy Nuclear was forced Friday to cut power production in half. According to a preliminary report from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, engineers found timber support problems first in the east cooling tower and then in the west tower, including the same cell that was rebuilt last summer after it collapsed.

CH2M Hill Hanford Group will spend $30,800 to resolve a new fine issued by the Environmental Protection Agency against the Department of Energy and its contractor for delays in notification of a radioactive tank waste spill last summer. EPA announced the fine Monday, just four days after DOE fined CH2M Hill $302,500 for nuclear safety violations related to the spill. Including a settlement of an earlier fine imposed by the state of Washington and pay withheld by DOE, the spill has cost CH2M Hill almost $1.2 million.

South Carolina's two largest utilities said Tuesday they have agreed to pay nearly $10 billion through 2019 to add two nuclear reactors in Fairfield County - only the second time power companies have made a financial commitment to build a nuclear plant in 30 years. Columbia-based South Carolina Electric & Gas and state-owned Santee Cooper signed a contract with Westinghouse Electric Co. and The Shaw Group to design and build two reactors at the V.C. Summer Nuclear Station in Jenkinsville, about 25 miles northwest of Columbia.

BRATTLEBORO - Entergy Nuclear can resume discharging heated water into the Connecticut River this summer, according to a decision by Environmental Court Judge Merideth Wright released Friday. However, Wright imposed conditions on the discharge and didn't grant the nuclear company its full request. She said Entergy couldn't discharge the 105-degree water until July, and ordered that the company install temperature sensors at the Vernon hydroelectric dam, which is downstream from the Vernon reactor.

WASHINGTON -- As head of analysis for all U.S. spy agencies, Thomas Fingar was making final edits last summer on a long-awaited intelligence report on Iran. The draft concluded that Tehran was still pursuing a nuclear bomb, a finding that echoed previous assessments and would have bolstered Bush administration hawks. Then, just weeks before the report was to be delivered to the White House, new intelligence surfaced indicating that Tehran's nuclear weapons work had stopped.

The nuclear plant at Three Mile Island will get closer scrutiny from federal regulators for the next 12 months, following a lapse in security procedures that occurred last summer. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission concluded that the security issue was of moderate to serious significance. The problem was discovered and reported by AmerGen Energy, the operator of the plant,

During the summer of 1991, the United States military had collected artillery, tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, conventional and unconventional munitions, trucks, etc. at Camp Doha in Kuwait. As result of carelessness this weapons depot caught fire with consequent catastrophic explosion resulting in death, injury, illness and extensive environmental contamination from depleted uranium and conventional explosives. Recently the emirate of Kuwait required the United States Department of Defense to remove the contamination.

Richard Miller, a longtime union policy analyst, arrived in a formal Capitol Hill conference room in the summer of 2000 eager to share his ideas. He had worked for years trying to help sick nuclear weapons workers. Now that the Clinton administration had dramatically reversed the federal government's decades-old policy of fighting workers' claims of job-related illness, it was time to iron out the details of a remedy for past harm.