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France has indicated its willingness to consider taking back uranium for reprocessing if India is not in a position to reprocess the entire amount. "India has a reprocessing facility which will be put under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. So for us the best is that the fuel is reprocessed here. (But) India does not have enough capabilities. We will consider the option of taking the fuel back to France for reprocessing," the French Ambassador to India, Mr Jerome Bonnafont, said on Friday. He was speaking at a luncheon meeting organised by the PHD Chambers of Commerce and Industry here. This comes in the wake of the recent signing of an agreement between India and France which is to see Areva deliver 300 tonnes of uranium to India. "This contract is to be implemented in the next few weeks and months. There is nothing holding back implementation of the contract. It is simply that you need to gather the uranium, package it, organise the transport and (get through the) legal methods involved," Mr Bonnafont said.

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry and Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd. will work together on improving a furnace for disposing of radioactive waste at the spent nuclear Fuel reprocessing plant in Aomori Prefecture, ministry sources said. The development cost is expected to exceed ¥14 billion, of which the government will provide about ¥7 billion, they said. The project will aim for completion in the 2013 fiscal year. The decision was made because the melting furnace at the plant in Rokkasho has had technical problems, causing the plant to extend its trial period to August.

The second construction in the plutonium disposition complex at SRS broke ground Friday and was proclaimed "the cornerstone ... of a new nuclear age." Project workers and dignitaries spoke before the first shovels of dirt were turned over on the $345 million facility. Ken Chacey, director of site engineering and construction management for the National Nuclear Security Administration, said the event was "a huge event for America" as a move toward energy independence. The Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MOX) will turn weapons-grade plutonium into Fuel assemblies in use in commercial nuclear reactors. The new facility is the Waste Solidification Building (WSB), which will process low-level and transuranic liquid waste streams from MOX and pit disassembly operations.

U.S. Department of Energy Seeks Public Comment on National Transportation Plan for the Proposed Repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada Washington, D.C. -- The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM) is seeking public comment on a National Transportation Plan (Plan) that outlines DOE's current strategy and planning for developing and implementing a system to ship spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and high-level radioactive waste (HLW) safely and securely from where the material is generated or stored to the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

Cameco Corp., the world's largest uranium producer, is suspending uranium-processing temporarily at a plant in Canada because of a dispute over supplies of hydrofluoric acid used in the production of nuclear fuel. Output of uranium hexafluoride at its Port Hope, Ontario, plant will be halted until the second half of next year because of "unreliable and expensive deliveries" of hydrofluoric acid, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan-based Cameco said today in a statement. The acid is used in uranium oxide's conversion into uranium hexafluoride, or UF6, a critical step in the fuel-making process.

The US Supreme Court took its turn Tuesday in wrestling with the complexities of an eight-year-old case in which uranium supply company USEC and the US government argued that US antidumping duties should apply to low-enriched uranium exported to the US by French enricher Eurodif, a subsidiary of Areva. The critical issue in the case is whether uranium enrichment should be considered a good or a service. Under the antidumping law, goods are subject to the import duties but services are not. Part of the case's complexity comes from the unusual features of the nuclear fuel market. In most utility purchases of enriched uranium, the utility pays separately for the natural-uranium "feed" and the work by the enricher to raise the enrichment level of uranium-235 to the levels needed to fuel a nuclear power plant.

Some of the highly radioactive vitrified nuclear waste being churned out by the fuel reprocessing plant in the village of Rokkasho, Aomori Prefecture, has been found to contain unexpected highly soluble chemical compounds that are escaping the vitrification process as liquids, Japan Nuclear fuel Ltd. said Thursday.

Duke Energy doesn't plan to use nuclear reactor fuel made from converted weapons-grade plutonium at its Oconee reactors, a spokeswoman has told The Greenville News. But Duke, the only American utility to use the mixed-oxide, or MOX, fuel in its reactors, does plan to use MOX in two of its other nuclear plants once the MOX factory at the Savannah River Site near Aiken begins production, said Rita Sipe, a Duke spokeswoman.

Workers have removed spent nuclear fuel rods from Indian Point 1 and expect to drain 500,000 gallons of radioactive water from the dead reactor's storage pool by the end of the year. The move should end strontium 90 contamination at the plant, company and regulatory officials say. Advertisement "We've said from the beginning that an essential part of the strategy for reducing additional contamination was removing the fuel and draining the pool," said Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "It's believed to be the primary source of strontium contamination at the site."

John McCain has called for building 45 new nuclear power plants by 2030 and 100 eventually. Barack Obama's Web site says, "It is unlikely that we can meet our aggressive climate goals if we eliminate nuclear power from the table." But to what extent can nuclear power really help achieve energy independence? There's a problem about nuclear energy that gets little attention. At present, fossil fuels provide 87 percent of the world's total energy while nuclear power plants provide just 4.8 percent. (All nuclear power plants currently generate electricity, accounting for about 15 percent of world electricity generation, while fossil fuels produce almost 67 percent of the electricity.) The best estimates put the amount of uranium that can be mined economically (what geologists call the reserves) at about 5.5 million metric tons, and according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, today's nuclear power plants use 70,000 metric tons a year of uranium. At this rate of use, the uranium that could be mined economically would last about 80 years.

Officials at the Indian Point nuclear power plant in Buchanan can cross a big chore off their to-do list. A leaking waste-containment pool, containing 500,000 gallons of radioactive water and spent fuel rods, has been drained and cleaned. The bulk of the work was completed at the end of October, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The last step is for work crews to coat the pool and do some other maintenance-related work, thus solving a problem that surfaced several years ago. In August 2005, a dangerous dose of strontium-90, a carcinogenic isotope, was detected in storm drains and groundwater around the riverside power plant. The contamination was eventually traced back to a leaking spent fuel pool for reactor Unit 1, which was shut down in the 1970s.

Waste clean up at the former site of a nuclear fuel processing plant in Hematite could begin as early as 2009. The 228-acre site was closed by owner Westinghouse in 2002, after producing nuclear fuel rods for more than four decades.

Up to 150 tons of water could splash out from the pool for spent fuel at the Monju fast breeder nuclear reactor in Tsuruga, Fukui Prefecture, if a magnitude 7-level earthquake struck the area, a study has shown. During the Chuetsu offshore earthquake that hit Niigata Prefecture in July last year, 8.5 tons overflowed from the fuel pools of the No. 1 to No. 7 reactors at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Power Plant in Niigata Prefecture. The latest study shows that the amount that would overflow at the Monju reactor would be 18 times larger.

Recent allegations that a dash for wind would cause a big increase in fuel poverty crumble when you do the numbers, says Oliver Tickell. Nuclear is the real worry "Wind power could put another half million people into fuel poverty" - shock, horror! That was how BBC Radio 4 promoted last week's The Investigation into the future of wind power in the UK.

The Babcock & Wilcox Company (B&W), a subsidiary of McDermott International, Inc. (NYSE: MDR), announced today that an affiliate of B&W has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Nuclear Fuel Services, Inc. (NFS) of Erwin, Tenn., a provider of specialty nuclear Fuels and related services. The acquisition supports B&W's strategic goal of being a leading provider of nuclear manufacturing and service businesses for government and commercial markets.

Two more workers have been exposed to a small amount of radiation after an accident at a nuclear fuel processing plant here, bringing the number of victims to four, the plant operator said Saturday. None of them suffered any illness as a result, and the radiation did not contaminate the environment around the facility in Yokosuka owned by Global Nuclear fuel-Japan Co., according to the company.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: On November 17, 2005, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC or the Commission) issued NRC Materials License No. SNM-2514 to the Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) for the Humboldt Bay Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation (ISFSI), located in Humboldt County, California. The license authorizes PG&E to receive, possess, store, and transfer spent nuclear Fuel and associated radioactive materials resulting from the operation of the Humboldt Bay Power Plant in an ISFSI at the power plant site for a term of 20 years. The NRC staff also issued an Environmental Assessment and Finding of No Significant Impact related to the issuance of the initial ISFSI license on November 16, 2005, in accordance with the National Environmental Policy Act, and in conformance with the applicable requirements of 10 CFR part 51.

Canadians have until Dec. 15 to make suggestions on the design of the process to select a storage facility site for high-level nuclear waste. The Nuclear Waste Management Organization is responsible for the long-term management of Canada's used nuclear fuel. It was established in 2002 by Ontario Power Generation Inc., Hydro- Québec and New Brunswick Power Corporation, under the Nuclear fuel Waste Act. People can make a submission, participate in an online discussion or complete a survey on the NWMO website, a news release from the organization says.

Recent allegations that a dash for wind would cause a big increase in fuel poverty crumble when you do the numbers, says Oliver Tickell. Nuclear is the real worry "Wind power could put another half million people into fuel poverty" - shock, horror! That was how BBC Radio 4 promoted last week's The Investigation into the future of wind power in the UK. Who can blame them? It got me listening. But do their figures stack up? And what exactly was Sir David King, former government chief scientific advisor, up to when he uttered his dire warning? In case you missed it, here's that warning in full:

In the Matter of: Carolina Power and Light Company, Brunswick Steam Electric Plant; Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation Order Modifying License (Effective Immediately) AGENCY: U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. ACTION: Issuance of Order for Implementation of Additional Security Measures and Fingerprinting for Unescorted Access to Brunswick Steam Electric Plant Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation.