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A North Carolina environmental group is seeking a public hearing with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to oppose the reinstatement of a construction permit for Bellefonte Nuclear Plant's Units 1 and 2. "This is an unprecedented action by the commission," said Louis Zeller, director of the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League. Issuing permits to a utility that had abandoned the project in 2006 and had not been inspecting or maintaining the plant over a three-year period violates the National Environmental Policy Act, he said Thursday. Zeller said the Tennessee Valley Authority should be made to start over "from square one," as if it's a new construction project, in applying for a permit to finish the two units. Efforts to reach the commission for comment were unsuccessful.

The House Natural Resources and Energy Committee approved a bill Friday forcing the owner of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant to put more money toward its decommissioning. The 8-2 committee vote Friday came after weeks of testimony about Vermont Yankee's decommissioning fund, which has dropped by nearly $100 million in the last 16 months as the financial markets collapsed. The decommissioning bill - which was opposed this week by Entergy Nuclear Vermont, the state's top two utilities and the Public Service Department - is expected to appear on the House floor for a vote late next week.

"Former and current nuclear weapons workers at Los Alamos National Laboratory have been dealt a setback in their attempts to collect on a 10-year-old promise to compensate them for illnesses and deaths related to their exposure to radiation and other hazardous materials. In a report to the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health recommends against easing a radiation-dose determination process for potentially thousands of workers. The agency's report said it is not necessary to grant what is called "special cohort status" to workers who were employed in certain parts of the plant between Jan. 1, 1976, and December 2005 and may have developed certain forms of cancers, making it more difficult for workers to prove they are entitled to benefits.

An anti-nuclear group has warned west Cumbrians: "Be afraid, very afraid" after bosses at the Drigg waste dump admitted they don't know what's buried there. Management at the Low Level Waste Repository (LLWR), near Sellafield, have placed newspaper adverts appealing for ex-employees who worked at the site in 1960s, 70s and 80s to come forward. The aim is to build up a picture of what was stored there and how it was buried. Drigg bosses say the vast majority of material is accounted for.

Congressman Eliot Engel urged the head of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to deny Indian Point's application for relicensing, saying the reactors at the Buchanan plant continue to have too many serious issues to ignore. Engel met with Dale Klein, commissioner of the NRC, in his Washington office telling him, "Indian Point would never be built today at its present location because of its proximity to the millions of people in the New York metropolitan area. It is degrading the Hudson River by using its water, some two billion gallons daily, to cool the plant, and by the radioactive leakages that may have already reached the river." Engel also told Klein the site is "a very tempting target for terrorist" and there are "too many other serious issues about the dangers of Indian Point's nuclear reactors to ignore."

Body-snatching, poisoning and infanticide, the nuclear industry does it all. Even if the mantra - "Nuclear is Carbon Free" were true - flying pigs are still flying pigs, not angels. If nuclear power led to freedom from oil then why is France's per capita consumption of oil higher than in non-nuclear Italy, nuclear phase-out Germany or the rest of the EU? Even if nuclear was everything the Government and industry claimed regarding CO2 - that would not justify new build.

ANTI-NUCLEAR campaigners protested outside Carlisle Cathedral at the pro-nuclear stance of the new bishop. The Right Reverend James Newcome succeeds Graham Dow as Bishop of Carlisle in October. He recently endorsed the nuclear industry, telling journalists: "We regard Sellafield as one of the most important institutions in the diocese. "It employs a significant number of people.

Southern Nuclear has secured a necessary federal permit to allow it to build two new nuclear reactors at Georgia Power's Plant Vogtle facility in Waynesboro, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Wednesday. The permit, called an early-site permit, means federal regulators have reviewed safety and environmental issues related to building two additional reactors at the site. It also lets Georgia Power do some preliminary construction work. The permit is good for 20 years.

PROPOSALS to put low-level radioactive waste in ordinary landfill sites are being resisted by Cumbria County Council. At present all low-level waste goes to a repository at Drigg in west Cumbria. But the Environment Agency is considering applications to allow very-low-level waste from Sellafield to be buried at Lillyhall and Keekle Head. Meanwhile, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority is consulting on a national strategy that could see such waste sent to landfill sites almost anywhere.

FIFTEEN fires or coolant leaks have been reported in Cumbrian nuclear installations - accounting for almost 10 per cent of the total across the country, according to the government. Information released by the Department for Energy and Climate Change shows there have been 81 coolant leaks and 80 fires recorded at UK nuclear installations since 2001 - with almost one in ten in Cumbria. Four fires are listed for Barrow, including two from earlier this year when there was a fire on the submarine Ambush during welding/grinding operations and another on the bridge fin of Astute.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Office of New Reactors has issued an Early Site Permit (ESP) and Limited Work Authorization (LWA) to Southern Nuclear Operating Company for the Vogtle ESP site near Augusta, Ga. The ESP, valid for up to 20 years, is the fourth such permit the NRC has approved. Successful completion of the ESP process resolves many site-related safety and environmental issues, and determines the site is suitable for possible future construction and operation of a nuclear power plant. The LWA allows a narrow set of construction activities at the site. Southern Nuclear filed its ESP application Aug. 15, 2006, and filed its LWA request on Aug. 16, 2007, seeking permission for construction activities limited to placement of engineered backfill, retaining walls, lean concrete, mudmats, and a waterproof membrane.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has issued an early site permit for two new nuclear reactors to be built in Georgia. The permit means the NRC has determined that the site is suitable for construction and operation of the reactors at Plant Vogtle near Waynesboro. A limited work authorization will allow workers to begin preliminary preparations at the site.

A nuclear power station has been sent a final warning letter after radioactive waste leaked into the sea. Around 2600 litres of low-level waste was discharged from Hunterston B into the Firth of Clyde because of a problem with a valve. The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) said the leak did not cause an environmental issue, but it issued the Ayrshire power station with a final warning letter because procedures were not followed. Extracts from a letter sent by SEPA radioactive substances specialist Keith Hammond to the director of Hunterston B on July 8 emerged in the Sunday Herald. He wrote: ''SEPA is deeply concerned over this matter.

Most nuclear power plants have a nominal design lifetime of up to 40 years but many have been approved to operate for longer. The possibility of component replacement and extending the lifetimes of existing plants are very attractive to utilities, especially given lingering public opposition to constructing new nuclear plants, while some governments see them as a way of limiting carbon emissions and power price rises. But economic, regulatory and political considerations have led to the premature closure of some power reactors. Below are details of those plants that have been granted life extensions in Europe:

Calling it the "beginning of the beginning," Duke Energy chairman, president and CEO James Rogers Thursday officially kicked off the effort to bring 400 to 700 new permanent jobs to Piketon within roughly the next decade. Advertisement The process will be pursued by a newly created partnership whose aim is to construct a new nuclear power facility in Piketon. And while it will take a considerable amount of time to complete, officials are hopeful it will lead the way to new life in a county that is presently facing 15.1 percent unemployment and routinely ranks among the highest jobless rates in the state. "It will, I think, help revitalize the economy of this part of the state," Gov. Ted Strickland said, adding that the project would make Ohio the only state including next-generation nuclear power production in its energy portfolio.

I am writing to you to make you aware of a little-known tragic mistake that was made by the medical community and physicists like myself during the early years of the Cold War that has been playing a major role in the enormous rise of the incidence chronic diseases such as cancer and diabetes, and thus the cost of healthcare in our nation. The mistake was to assume that the radiation exposure to the public due to the small amount of fallout from distant nuclear weapons tests or the operation of nuclear reactors would have no significant adverse effect on human health. This assumption was based on our experience with a half-century of studies that showed no detectable increase in cancer rates for individuals given one or two diagnostic X-rays. What was not understood at the time was that the radioactive elements created in the fission of uranium did not just produce a small increase in the external dose as received from the natural background sources. Instead, the particles and gases produced in the fission process released into the environment would lead to vastly greater radiation damage than from diagnostic X-rays or the gamma rays in background sources because the radioactive fission products and uranium oxides were inhaled and ingested with the milk, the drinking water and the rest of the diet, concentrating in critical organs of the body.

It has been a crisis month for Exelon since federal regulators jumped the gun and relicensed the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station in Lacey until 2029. Failure of a main transformer led to the shutdown of the reactor. That followed the recent discovery of high levels of radioactive tritium contamination at the site. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) staff have tracked the tritium leak to two burst pipes, a concrete vault and a monitoring well. Concentrations of radioactive tritium are 300 times the allowable levels in four test wells at the site. This raises alarm about the plant's aging management program, which was the basis of the relicensing that is supposed to prevent this sort of dangerous mishap. Despite assurances from Oyster Creek spokespeople that tritium has not traveled off company grounds, it has entered the water table. Water flows, and at Oyster Creek it will eventually empty into Barnegat Bay, where the state announced this week a huge reseeding program of the oyster beds.

Nevada is going to be able to press 222 arguments to stop the construction of the high level nuclear dump at Yucca Mountain. "It's a huge victory for Nevada," says Bruce Breslow, director of the state's Office of Nuclear Projects. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, in its 153-page decision, has allowed all but seven of Nevada's contentions to be presented at a hearing. These claims involve mostly safety, the environment and transportation.

Several proposed uranium mining projects in Wyoming and across the West will be delayed due the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's recent decision requiring a more thorough site-specific analysis for each project. The NRC will require a supplemental environmental impact statement for each mining project rather than a more simplified environmental assessment, which the agency had considered. Some officials in the uranium industry claim the NRC overreacted to a groundswell of public concern that they say comes from either ignorance of the in-situ leach mining process or a desire to block uranium mining. Industry officials have also told the Star-Tribune they worry that investors are losing patience. However, those who scrutinize the emerging next generation of uranium mining say both the industry and government regulators have a history that deserves skepticism. Shannon Anderson, community organizer for the Powder River Basin Resource Council, said she has researched dozens upon dozens of spills and excursions documented by the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality. The Star-Tribune has also reviewed DEQ documentation describing dozens of violations related to in-situ recovery of uranium in the state.