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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas) -- The ageing Wylfa nuclear power plant in Wales has moved closer to being decommissioned following consent from the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate. The agency's permission is the first of two needed for the Wylfa plant to finally start decommissioning work. For details, view the entire article by subscribing to Industrial Info's Premium Industry News at http://www.industrialinfo.co.uk/showNews.jsp?newsitemID=145612, or browse other breaking industrial news stories at www.industrialinfo.co.uk. Join Industrial Info Resources at POWER-Gen-Europe May 26-28, 2009 in Cologne, Germany and get a hands-on demonstration of our industrial market databases!

The government has released a list of 11 sites in England and Wales where new nuclear power stations could be built. The locations were nominated by companies interested in building the stations, and the government has given its initial approval to the sites. Nine of the locations have previously had nuclear reactors, and the other two are close to Sellafield in Cumbria. A month-long public consultation period now commences. The government wants the first reactors operational by 2018.

Sixteen years after it stopped producing electricity, Dr Phil Sprague, site director at Trawsfynydd in Snowdonia, explains why the process of decommissioning a nuclear power station is so lengthy.

"Dr. Helen Caldicott, co-founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, will speak at St. Michael's College at 6 p.m. March 29 on the medical hazards of the nuclear age. The 71-year-old activist, pediatrician, author and grandmother of seven spoke via telephone from Spain a few days ago, where she had traveled to lecture at an international conference. Caldicott grew up in Australia and spends her free time there in a house in a small fishing village on the coast of New South Wales. She enjoys cooking and puttering in her garden, where kangaroos and exotic birds add to the beauty. She lectures and travels widely, and among her other projects is establishing a new nonprofit that will use social media to spread the anti-nuke message. Here's an account of her conversation with Free Press reporter Molly Walsh."

"The Government's £73bn nuclear decommissioning programme is to be accelerated with a radical repackaging of its private sector contracts. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) had planned up to five nuclear plant clean-up contracts, which would be let sequentially and take about two years each to select a preferred bidder. This has now been cut by two, with the later three projects combined into a single £13bn-plus outsourcing contract. The large value of this contract will also ensure greater private sector interest. Originally, the clean-up of its Magnox reactors, relics from the 1960s, were to be split into north and south site contracts. The south included Sizewell A, Suffolk, and Hinkley Point A, Somerset, while the north had Wylfa in Anglesey, North Wales, and Chapelcross, south-west Scotland. "

Green Audit's founders were Chris Busby Patrick Adams and Molly Scott Cato. Patrick Adams left the operation in 1995 to become a farmer in Devon. Chris has a first-class Honours degree in Chemistry from London University and a PhD in chemical physics from the University of Kent. He is Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk and a member of the UK Department of Health Committee Examining Radiation Risk for Internal Emitters (CERRIE) (www.cerrie.org). He also sits on the UK Ministry of Defence Depleted Uranium Oversight Board (www.duob.org) and in National Speaker on Science and Technology for the Green Party of England and Wales. Chris is a fellow of the University of Liverpool in the Faculty of Medicine. He is also scientific advisor of the Low level Radiation Campaign (www.llrc.org) which he helped to set up in 1995.

TWENTY two years on from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, MEP Jill Evans says the anniversary serves as a timely reminder of why nuclear power must be phased out. Ms Evans visited the site of the nuclear power plant two years ago with a group of MEPs and met local people whose lives were shattered by the disaster as well as people who are now working to secure the site.

Nearly 370 farms in Britain are still restricted in the way they use land and rear sheep because of radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear power station accident 23 years ago, the government has admitted. Environmentalists have seized on the figures as proof of the enormous dangers posed by nuclear power as the UK moves towards building a new generation of plants around the country. Dawn Primarolo, minister for health, revealed 369 farms and 190,000 sheep were affected, but pointed out this was a tiny number compared with the immediate impact of radioactive fallout from Ukraine.

RADIOACTIVE waste from a new generation of nuclear power stations will have to be stored above ground for 100 years, the Government has been told. The claim comes as the possibility of a nuclear power station being built to replace the existing one at Wylfa on Anglesey continues to grow. Hugh Richards, of the Welsh Anti Nuclear Alliance (Wana), told officials at the Department for Environment and Climate Change: "Both the promoters of new reactors and the Government have largely ignored the implications of those reactors discharging high burn-up spent fuel. New-build spent fuel, already acknowledged as twice as hot and twice as radioactive as legacy-spent fuel, will have to cool down for 100 years on each site before it can go for deep underground disposal.

"About 30 campaigners have held a protest over plans to build a new nuclear power plant on Anglesey. It follows the announcement on Tuesday by the Horizon Nuclear Power company that it wants to see a new station on the island by 2020. It would replace the current nuclear reactors at Wylfa which are due to halt electricity generation in December. But the protesters, gathered at Menai Bridge, dispute claims over the economic benefits and the safety. Horizon Nuclear Power has said it will apply for planning consent in 2012 to build a reactor on the island to produce up to 3,300Mw of electricity. "