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The contractor who ran the Savannah River Site for almost two decades and is a big part of the company which was just awarded a new $3.3 billion deal to run the liquid waste operation is under federal investigation for irregular accounting practices. Washington Savannah River Company altered findings in a 2007 financial audit to justify expenses to the government, federal investigators said in a report made public Wednesday. The Energy Department's Inspector General said, as a result, it cannot verify more than $1 billion in expenses submitted by WSRC that year.

TVA contractor Stone & Webster Construction Inc. has paid $6.2 million to the federal government to settle a contract fraud complaint, U.S. Attorney James Dedrick said Thursday. The settlement follows the TVA Office of Inspector General's investigation of alleged false claims involving Stone & Webster's billion-dollar plus contract to service TVA nuclear plants in East Tennessee and Alabama, according to a press release.

According to an Inspector General report released today, DOE sites have 2,635 unneeded weapons. The surplus was created by changing security requirements for the plants' protective forces in the years that followed 9/11, the report said. The IG audit said that DOE and NNSA are not always properly managing the inventories of surplus weapons and that the weapons -- valued at more than $2.8 million -- could be used by other agencies or law enforcement.

Yesterday, POGO sent a letter to the Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Health, Safety, and Security (HSS) urging it to provide oversight and enforcement of Oak Ridge National Laboratory's (ORNL) beryllium exposure prevention policies. These policies were designed to prevent Lab workers' exposure to beryllium, which can lead to the development of the incurable and potentially fatal lung disease, chronic beryllium disease. Recently, POGO received a tip that ORNL is not in compliance with its beryllium prevention plan. ORNL's plan was born out of Beryllium Controls at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (IG-737), a damning 2006 DOE Inspector General (IG) report which found that ORNL "did not properly manage activities relating to beryllium contamination." In our letter, we expressed concern that HSS did not follow up on these issues when they were previously brought to the office's attention.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission plans a public meeting on Jan. 21 to review backup power problems at the Salem 1 nuclear plant in New Jersey along the Delaware River in 2005 and 2007. Under NRC rules, the agency briefly gave plant owner PSEG Nuclear it's second-worst "yellow" performance rating for reliability and availability of emergency power, a classification that was returned to normal status during the first quarter of 2008. Inspectors designated a portion of Salem's multi-part rating as "degraded" after diesel generators failed to start during three times during testing over 12 consecutive quarters.

The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station will receive additional oversight from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission as a result of a "white" inspection finding related to problems with an emergency battery used for supplying power to plant safety systems. The plant, operated by Southern California Edison Co., is located near San Clemente, Ca. NRC inspectors found that the battery used to supply power to plant safety systems under some accident conditions, was inoperable between 2004 and 2008 because of loose electrical connections caused by inadequate maintenance instructions. The problem was discovered on March 25 during testing, prompting the NRC to conduct a special inspection. "The problem stemmed from inadequate maintenance procedures," said Region IV Administrator Elmo E. Collins. "The problem was promptly corrected, but is troubling because the condition persisted for so long."

A new audit of the sick nuclear workers compensation program found that the U.S. Department of Labor was following the rules, but the report said the federal agency could do more to help the claimants and accelerate the process. "Based on our review, we found that the claims decisions issued by DOL were based on evidence supplied by or obtained on behalf of claimants and complied with applicable laws and regulations," the report by the Labor Department's Office of Inspector General said.

A Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspector said Tuesday that slack engineering by Entergy Nuclear workers was to blame for two recent cooling tower leaks at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant in Vernon. "Entergy's design change process requires providing adequate engineering drawings and instructions ... and also requires engineers to resolve technical issues identified during implementation," NRC's George Malone said. "Entergy did not do that."

Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspectors are determining why a shipment of lead shielding from Pilgrim nuclear station in Plymouth, Mass., to Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon exceeded radiation levels established by the federal Department of Transportation. The lead shielding is used to protect workers during refueling outages. "It's not uncommon for plants to share equipment during refueling outages," said Neil Sheehan, spokesman for the NRC. Both Pilgrim and Yankee are owned by Entergy.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has rejected calls by environmental groups to overhaul its review process before processing applications for license extensions by reactors in Vermont, Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey. Nine environmental groups seized on a report from the federal agency's inspector general -- a report sharply critical of the agency staff's review of license renewal applications -- to call on the commission to put on hold 20-year license extensions being sought by four nuclear plants: Vermont Yankee in Vernon, the Pilgrim plant Plymouth, Mass., the Indian Point plant in New York's Hudson Valley and the Oyster Creek plant in New Jersey.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission violated its own rules when it asked the owner of the Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station to investigate a 2007 complaint that security guards were sleeping on the job. That was the conclusion in a report by the NRC's internal Office of Inspector General, which reviewed the agency's handling of security officer Kerry Beal's allegation that members of his security team routinely slept on the job. Among the findings in the report, companies that operate the plants should not be asked to investigate themselves when the allegations concern management.

The NRC Office of Inspector General said in a report Tuesday that its Region I staff could have done a better job in responding to allegations that security officers were napping on duty at Exelon's Generation 1,119-MW Peach Bottom station near Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Separately, Exelon Generation has now completed all of its commitments related to addressing this "inattentiveness" by security officers, the NRC said Thursday in closing an October 2007 confirmatory action letter.

When a whistle-blower told the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2007 that guards at the Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station were sleeping on the job, the agency told the plant's owner to investigate even though the accusation involved company managers. Having the plant's owner, Exelon, and its security provider, Wackenhut Corp., investigate themselves was a mistake, according to a report by the NRC's Office of Inspector General. By asking the companies to handle it themselves, the agency's Region 1 office in King of Prussia violated its own rules, the report states.

Entergy Nuclear officials said Thursday inspectors have found additional "degraded" support beams in Vermont Yankee's east cooling tower. Robert Williams, spokesman for Entergy Nuclear, said a total of five cracked or broken columns have been discovered since the tower was pulled offline Tuesday night, when three leaks were found in a pipe carrying water from the Connecticut River. Williams said repairs were under way, and two of the five beams had already been replaced. "The tower work is nearing completion," he said.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff is revising its schedule for the issuance of two reports that are central to the agency's review of the license renewal application for the Indian Point nuclear power plant. The documents are the draft Safety Evaluation Report (SER) and the draft Environmental Impact Statement for the application. Release of the draft SER will be extended by approximately four months for several reasons. They include additional time required to review supplemental information provided by the plant's owner, Entergy; time devoted by the license renewal review staff to responding to an unusually large number of contentions filed by those seeking a hearing on the application; and the staff's efforts to address, in reviews currently under way, issues raised by the agency's Office of Inspector General in a report on the NRC's license renewal program. As a result of the schedule change, the NRC now expects to issue the draft SER in early January.

Inspectors have found more problems with Vermont Yankee's cooling towers while investigating water leaks of more than 60 gallons a minute discovered earlier in the week. Officials said Thursday that additional degraded support beams were discovered in the nuclear plant's east cooling tower. A total of five cracked or broken columns have been found since leaks were discovered Tuesday night, said Rob Williams, a spokesman for Vermont Yankee owner Entergy Nuclear.

The wreck of the Russian cruiser Murmansk was pronounced safe and free from radioactivity by government inspectors. However, equipment from the ship caused alarm when it triggered Geiger counters.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is conducting a special inspection at the San Onofre nuclear plant in response to problems discovered with several electrical connections affecting plant safety systems. The plant, located near San Clemente, Ca., is operated by Southern California Edison Co. Following an incident in which maintenance personnel discovered a loose electrical connection on an emergency battery that rendered it inoperable, NRC inspectors identified similar problems that had occurred since 2005. These problems with electrical connections had affected the operability of an emergency diesel generator and batteries that are used to supply power during some accident conditions.

The Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) has given formal consent for a three-and-a-half year programme to remove all fuel from the Scottish plant to commence. Chapelcross ceased generation in 2004 and preparations for de-fuelling the reactors including design, manufacturing, installation and the commissioning of a £30m upgrade to the de-fuelling route have now been completed.

Jurors on Tuesday convicted a former nuclear plant engineer of hiding information from government regulators about the worst corrosion ever found at a U.S. reactor. Prosecutors said Andrew Siemaszko and two other workers lied in 2001 so the Davis-Besse plant along Lake Erie could delay a shutdown for a safety inspection. Months later, inspectors found an acid leak that nearly ate through the reactor's 6-inch-thick steel cap.