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Duke Energy Corp. has signed a contract with the U.S. Department of Energy for the disposal of used nuclear fuel generated at its proposed Lee Nuclear Station. The plant, planned near Gaffney, S.C., is slated to begin operating in 2016. Under the agreement, the department will dispose of all the spent fuel from the site. In exchange, Charlotte-based Duke (NYSE:DUK) will pay the agency a $1 per megawatt-hour fee for electricity generated and sold from the plant.

To reverse the current outdated policy, we need to set up four regional used-fuel storage facilities to act as transfer stations. These would provide geographic equity and allow relocation of the backlog of used fuel to locations where it can be stored safely, securely, and efficiently for up to 90 years before reprocessing or permanent disposal. This can be done with existing revenue and provides the time to implement the second part of the plan: developing and demonstrating an acceptable approach for permanent geologic disposal.

Nuclear energy is increasingly being called upon as a clean and renewable alternative to fossil fuels. As the threat of global warming becomes clearer, nuclear energy is lauded as a carbon-free, clean energy solution. This is an absolute myth. When looking at the entire fuel cycle, one quickly realizes the mining, milling, processing and transportation of uranium fuel for reactors are extremely energy intensive and will emit tons of global-warming pollution.

It's being described as a major step forward in the safe storage of the Humboldt Bay Power Plant's spent nuclear fuel as the federal government wrestles with where to store the nation's growing stockpile of radioactive stuff for the long-term. The Pacific Gas and Electric Co. announced Friday that the first of five massive containers of nuclear rods has been secured in the underground storage facility the power company began building at its King Salmon site in April.

Bulgaria has sent its remaining highly enriched uranium to Russia for safeguarding from terrorist or other potential misuse. Nearly 14 pounds of the spent fuel were received Thursday at a Russian nuclear facility, the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration announced. A first shipment of 37.3 pounds of fresh uranium fuel was sent to Russia in December 2003.

A federal court awarded Progress Energy $82.8 million to cover the company's costs related to storing spent nuclear fuel at its plants in the Carolinas. The Raleigh company, along with other utilities, sued the Department of Energy to cover its costs after the government failed to open a repository for used nuclear fuel by 1998, as required by law.

BRATTLEBORO - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is telling the owners of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant that they can't dip into the fund set aside for dismantling the reactor to pay for storage of highly radioactive spent fuel. "Decommissioning, as defined in (NRC rules), means to remove a facility safely from service and reduce residual radioactivity to a level that permits release of the property for either unrestricted or restricted use and termination of the license," according to an e-mail from the NRC. "It does not include spent fuel management costs."

WASHINGTON -- State legislators are adding their voices to those who have grown impatient at slow progress in establishing nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain. The National Conference of State Legislatures is expected today to recommend the government identify one or two sites where used nuclear fuel can be stored temporarily until the proposed repository 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas is built and until fuel recycling can be made available.

The government affairs arm of the nuclear industry today called for President Barack Obama to convene a blue ribbon nuclear waste commission, a move that could be a first step toward forming alternatives to burying radioactive power plant fuel at Yucca Mountain. With the future uncertain for the Nevada project, the Nuclear Energy Institute is endorsing a fresh look at nuclear fuel management, an NEI official told an audience of state utility regulators. Under the proposal, the Department of Energy would be allowed to continue pursuing a license to build the Yucca repository while the study was being conducted over a 12- to 24-month period.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd said it would spin off its nuclear fuel business on April 1 to form an integrated fuel design, production and service company together with France's Areva ) and two other Mitsubishi group companies. Mitsubishi Heavy announced details of the move in December but it did not set a date.

The environmental watchdog group, Greenpeace is calling for a halt to plans to ship a load of nuclear fuel through the Pacific. Around two tonnes of reprocessed waste is about to leave France for Japan - the largest such shipment ever. The shipment contains a nuclear fuel known as MOX - a mixture of Plutonium and Uranium. The French nuclear group Areva has confirmed it will be shipping the Plutonium, but will only say possibly through the Pacific.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission wants more details on how waste generated by the Energy Department's mixed oxide fuel facility will be managed. Until more information can be gathered and evaluated, a hearing to discuss environmental groups' concerns over the waste stream will be postponed -- possibly until 2010 or later, according to a letter dated Monday from commission staff to the Atomic Safety & Licensing Board. The $4.86 billion MOX plant under construction at Savannah River Site will dispose of plutonium from dismantled warheads by blending it with other materials to make fuel for commercial nuclear reactors. Because commercial power plants would use the fuels, the MOX plant will require an NRC license.

Standing on the end of Bailey Point, looking out on a cold, blue inlet of the Atlantic, you'd never know a nuclear power plant once stood here. The massive concrete containment dome, the spent fuel storage pool, and the six-story-high turbine hall were all torn down earlier this decade, leaving a rain-soaked meadow of grass. The engineers and technicians who tended the 900-megawatt reactor packed up and left town a decade ago, when the Maine Yankee Atomic Power Station stopped producing power. All that's left is radioactive waste: the remains of the plant's reactor vessel lining and the 1,435 spent fuel assemblies that passed through it over a quarter century of operations.

(Host) State regulators may levy fines against Vermont Yankee for its failure to monitor radiation that comes from its high-level nuclear waste. The company was required to report the temperature and radiation from storage containers that hold spent nuclear fuel. State officials say they're concerned about the apparent violation. VPR's John Dillon reports: (Dillon) The monitoring was required as part of a state license that allows Yankee to store spent fuel in five steel and concrete casks near the reactor. It was supposed to begin last year, but Yankee spokesman Larry Smith said the company didn't discover until late June that it had never established the monitoring protocol. (Smith) "And it's an oversight by us. We did not catch that until an engineer who was assigned to the dry fuel storage project was going through a checklist."

A recent letter advocated more nuclear power plants. There are too many problems with this technology. First, companies will not build nuclear power plants without the protection of the Price-Anderson Act which provides taxpayer compensation in case of an accident since no company in the world will insure them. Price-Anderson, however, only provides $500 million when the latest government report, states that depending on the severity of the accident, damages could run in the billions. Second, after 50 years of operation there is still the waste problem. Energy Secretary Steven Chu appeared before the House lawmakers on June 3 and declared the planned Yucca Mountain repository "dead." More than $9 billion have been invested developing this waste dump, which caused one lawmaker to say: "We got a mighty expensive dinosaur sitting there." This waste, which is lethal for thousands of years, now stays on site in fuel pools and dry casts for future generations to worry about. Minimum morality would demand that we, at least, stop producing it. Estimates as to the cost of this "eventual cleanup" are incalculable. Still the proponents declare nuclear as cheap energy. Third, uranium, like oil, is a finite fuel. Reprocessing, the separation of plutonium which can then again be used as fuel, was discontinued by the United States nearly three decades ago on nonproliferation grounds. Fourth, since 2005, cost estimates for building a new nuclear reactor have more then tripled. Nuclear energy, once declared to be "too cheap to meter," is now too expensive to pursue. Frieda Berryhill, Wilmington

The Environmental Protection Agency plans to re-evaluate the rocket fuel chemical perchlorate, once made near Lake Mead, because of its potential health impacts on infants and children. Under the Bush administration, the EPA made a preliminary decision not to regulate perchlorate in drinking water. In the 1990s scientists discovered perchlorate from two chemical plants in Henderson in Las Vegas Wash and Lake Mead waters. Lake Mead supplies 90 percent of Las Vegas Valley's drinking water.

The Environmental Protection Agency plans to re-evaluate the rocket fuel chemical perchlorate, once made near Lake Mead, because of its potential health impacts on infants and children. Under the Bush administration, the EPA made a preliminary decision not to regulate perchlorate in drinking water. In the 1990s scientists discovered perchlorate from two chemical plants in Henderson in Las Vegas Wash and Lake Mead waters. Lake Mead supplies 90 percent of Las Vegas Valley's drinking water.

There's still nowhere to put that toxic waste Nuclear electricity is affordable and emission free People opposed to nuclear energy applications point to the high initial price tag of enormous nuclear generating facilities that can … read more provide enough reliable electricity for several million people; they often overlook the resulting low cost per unit of power when spread over that large market. There are 104 nuclear plants operating in the US today. Many of us who are old enough to remember the controversies surrounding their construction can remember how many times we were told that nuclear power plants are frighteningly expensive and that they always cost more than predicted. We even remember that electrical power prices often increased immediately after the plants went into operation due to the effect of adding those big, expensive plants into the utility rate base. What many people who consider "news" media to be their only information sources rarely understand, however, is that the 104 plants currently operating provide the US with 20% of its electric power at an average production cost of about 1.8 cents per kilowatt hour. They also do not understand that after a few decades of operation and revenue production, the initial mortgages on those plants are largely paid off. The best information of all, which is not really "news" and does not get regularly published on the front page, is that the plants still have at least 20 years of life remaining during which they can produce emission free, low cost power. The companies that own the plants and their stock holders understand the economics pretty well; that is why 18 applications for 25 new plants have been turned into the Nuclear Regulatory Commission already with more in the pipeline. All of the used fuel - what some people call waste - is being carefully stored in a tiny corner of the existing sites, just waiting to be recycled into new fuel. It still contains 95% of its initial potential energy, but

There's still nowhere to put that toxic waste Nuclear electricity is affordable and emission free People opposed to nuclear energy applications point to the high initial price tag of enormous nuclear generating facilities that can … read more provide enough reliable electricity for several million people; they often overlook the resulting low cost per unit of power when spread over that large market. There are 104 nuclear plants operating in the US today. Many of us who are old enough to remember the controversies surrounding their construction can remember how many times we were told that nuclear power plants are frighteningly expensive and that they always cost more than predicted. We even remember that electrical power prices often increased immediately after the plants went into operation due to the effect of adding those big, expensive plants into the utility rate base. What many people who consider "news" media to be their only information sources rarely understand, however, is that the 104 plants currently operating provide the US with 20% of its electric power at an average production cost of about 1.8 cents per kilowatt hour. They also do not understand that after a few decades of operation and revenue production, the initial mortgages on those plants are largely paid off. The best information of all, which is not really "news" and does not get regularly published on the front page, is that the plants still have at least 20 years of life remaining during which they can produce emission free, low cost power. The companies that own the plants and their stock holders understand the economics pretty well; that is why 18 applications for 25 new plants have been turned into the Nuclear Regulatory Commission already with more in the pipeline. All of the used fuel - what some people call waste - is being carefully stored in a tiny corner of the existing sites, just waiting to be recycled into new fuel. It still contains 95% of its initial potential energy, but

Berlin- A damaged fuel rod sought since last week has been located inside one of Germany's 12 nuclear power stations, regulators said Wednesday. The jinxed plant at Kruemmel near Hamburg was shut down for two years by a transformer fire. It was crippled again July 4 by a short circuit and was then reported to have a problem in one or more of its 80,000 fuel rods. Engineers took the lid off the reactor to find the damaged uranium rod. The problems at Kruemmel have led to calls to retire the station and re-ignited debate in Germany about nuclear power as an election approaches. Anti-nuclear activists are also highlighting mismanagement of nuclear waste dumps in old salt mines. Wolfram Koenig, president of the Federal Radiation Safety Agency (BfS), said radioactive contaminated fluid had been found to have seeped to the bottom of one such dump, the Asse mine.

The U.S. Department of Energy today released a fiscal year 2010 budget request that increases funding for developing next-generation nuclear power plants and used nuclear fuel recycling, but does little to support construction of reactors that are expected to be built over the next two decades, according to The Nuclear Energy Institute. The FY10 budget proposal -- the first released by the Obama Administration -- also cuts funding for DOE's used nuclear fuel management program to $196.8 million, only $98.4 million of it from the federal Nuclear Waste Fund. The fund, established in 1983 to finance the federal government's program to manage used nuclear fuel, is paid for by users of nuclear-generated electricity through a monthly surcharge on their electric bills. The $196.8 million request is only one-fifth of the interest that accrues annually on the $22 billion fund. The Nuclear Power 2010 program -- a cost-shared, industry-government partnership designed to reduce the technical and regulatory uncertainties associated with construction of advanced nuclear power plant designs -- would receive only $20 million in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. The program receives $177 million in the current year, a sum matched by industry. The industry intends to invest $121 million in the program in FY10 and had expected DOE to match that commitment, which would complete the program.

As the White House and U.S. Congress create a new national strategy for managing used nuclear fuel, GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) is encouraging lawmakers to support the research and development necessary for recycling nuclear fuel, according to a June 18 press release. Lisa Price, a GEH senior vice president, briefed lawmakers at a House Science & Technology Committee meeting on the company's proposed Advanced Recycling Center (ARC).