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ST. PETERSBURG - Fifteen years ago, in March of 1994, a report was published which, in essence, saved the Arctic region from a nuclear catastrophe. The report by the then little-known Bellona Foundation uncovered the secrets that were for decades hidden by Soviet authorities, and later, the Russian military. Bellona, 18/03-2009 - Translated by Charles Digges The subject of the secret was some 150 decommissioned nuclear submarines languishing at dockside at the ports of the Russian Northern Fleet with their spent nuclear fuel still on board. These cast-off submarines were rusting and their terrifying cargo of spent nuclear fuel could well have ended up in the waters of the Barents and White Seas at any moment. The successor of the USSR - the Democratic Russia - had no money to devote to their dismantlement.

Officials at a Rialto-based public water purveyor are accusing San Bernardino County of illegally demolishing and burying a hazardous waste-disposal facility and likely contributing to water contamination flowing through Rialto. Lawyers for the West Valley Water District say state and federal laws were violated when the facility was demolished, and they say the debris spread across a wide area and was buried. The California Department of Toxic Substances Control, or DTSC, is investigating what happened at the Broco Inc. site, named for the hazardous-waste disposal operation located there from the 1960s to the 1980s. The county purchased the property in 1994 to expand the Mid-Valley Sanitary Landfill.

Xcel Energy says a monitoring well at its nuclear power plant in Monticello detected a radioactive element at higher levels than allowed under one of the company's permits. The monitoring well showed levels of tritium, a mildly radioactive type of hydrogen, that were below the Environmental Protection Agency's drinking water standards. But the amount exceeded what is allowed under Xcel's National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit. In reporting the incident to state and federal regulators on Thursday, Xcel said no elevated levels were detected in any other monitoring wells. The company also says there's no indication tritium has been released off the power plant site. Officials are investigating the source of the tritium.

Germany's vaunted salt mine solution for low-level nuclear waste has proven to be full of holes. Rock salt, at least while it's underground, has two main properties: It can be soft and easy to mine, and it can form a watertight seal. This helps explain why the West German government started forklifting thousands of metal drums of "low-to-medium" radioactive waste into an abandoned salt mine called Asse II during the 1960s. Asse II is named after its mountain range in the state of Lower Saxony. The mine plunges deep into the hills near Braunschweig (aka Brunswick), in the center of Germany, and politicians in Bonn regarded it during the Cold War as a test site for storage of nuclear waste. An overhead layer of rock salt would shield the mine from groundwater, and the shifting salt itself, over centuries, would seal up any fractures and finally pack the nuclear waste in a safe geological bed.

A RISE in radioactive discharges into the air is causing another problem at Sellafield, it was confirmed to The Whitehaven News yesterday. Increased levels have come from the Magnox reprocessing plant. For the last five weeks it has had to close to avoid exceeding the discharge limit. The plant has just started up again but Sellafield Ltd has applied to the Environment Agency for a new authorisation to raise the discharge limit.

Levels of tritium six times higher than federal standards were identified at Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station in Delta earlier this week. Exelon Nuclear reported Friday that tritium had been discovered in a localized area on the nuclear plant's property by plant workers performing environmental monitoring. The tritium, which at high levels has been linked to cancer, was identified Wednesday from a sample taken Monday. The highest sample concentration showed tritium levels of approximately 123,000 picocuries per liter of water, a news release from Exelon said. A picocurie is one-trillionth of a curie, a measurement of radioactivity. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's standards allow no more than 20,000 picocuries per liter in the environment. "This is not a public or employee health and safety issue, but we are committed to being open about the status of our plant operations," Peach Bottom site vice president Bill Maguire said in the news release.

Workers found an elevated level of radioactive tritium in water on the site of the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant in Lacey on Wednesday, according to plant officials. Advertisement The tritium level - 102,000 picocuries per liter - is five times higher than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency limit for drinking water. A picocurie is a measure of radioactivity. "There was no discharge . . . or release of tritium on the state's soil or into the waters," said David Benson, an Oyster Creek spokesman. "Our experts . . . are working to determine how that tritium might have entered" a concrete vault at the plant, according to Benson and a plant statement.

According to a plant report, the water level in the reactor vessel fell to 162 inches during the March 28 shutdown but a Fermi spokesman says he doesn't think that 'necessarily indicates that there was any loss of water level at all.' An incident involving a nuclear reactor going into "hot shutdown" at DTE Energy's Fermi II power generation station in Monroe County late last month went largely unnoticed locally and is raising questions about what exactly happened at the plant.

"Trace amounts of cobalt-60 were found in standing water in the advanced off-gas piping tunnel Thursday at Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, said John Dreyfuss, Yankee's director of nuclear safety assurance, during a conference call with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Vermont Department of Health and the Vermont Department of Public Service. But Dreyfuss told the agencies that finding trace amounts of cobalt-60 in such a location is not surprising, just as was finding it in standing water in a pipe trench in the plant's radioactive waste building on Jan. 22. In that instance, cobalt-60, at 13,000 picocuries per liter, and zinc-65, at 2,460, were found, along with tritium, in the pipe trench. Drinking water limits for Cobalt-60 are 100 picocuries. For Zinc-65, the drinking water limit is 300. At the time, tritium levels were at 1.6 million picocuries, with a drinking water limit of 20,000. "

Summary On January 7, the Vermont Department of Health was notified by Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station that samples taken from a ground water monitoring well on site (identified as GZ-3) contained tritium. Tritium is a radioactive form of hydrogen. It is a by-product of the nuclear fission process in a nuclear reactor, and also occurs naturally in the environment in very low concentrations. Most tritium in the environment is in the form of tritiated water, which easily moves about in the atmosphere, bodies of water, soil and rock. The finding of tritium in ground water signals that there has been an unintended underground release of radioactive material, and that other radioisotopes may have contaminated the environment. Vermont Yankee officials are conducting an investigation to identify the source of the tritium, and the magnitude of contamination, with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in an oversight role."

"The zone of groundwater now contaminated at the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant is about the size of a football field. And the state Health Department has increased the testing of private wells in the area around the plant. VPR's John Dillon has more. (Dillon) The Department of Health stepped up its monitoring work in early January after Yankee discovered radioactive tritium in a well about 30 feet from the Connecticut River. The department now says a half-dozen wells are showing tritium. Some have registered high levels - close to what's found in water that's used in the nuclear reactor. The Health Department says that a corridor of contaminated water is flowing from the turbine building toward the Connecticut River. "

Investigation into why Darlington workers were filling wrong tank CLARINGTON -- Workers at the Darlington nuclear station filled the wrong tank with a cocktail of water and a radioactive isotope Monday, spilling more than 200,000 litres into Lake Ontario. Ontario Power Generation is investigating how the accident happened and officials say hourly tests of the lake water show that the level of tritium - the radioactive isotope of hydrogen - poses no harm to nearby residents.

Investigation into why Darlington workers were filling wrong tank CLARINGTON -- Workers at the Darlington nuclear station filled the wrong tank with a cocktail of water and a radioactive isotope Monday, spilling more than 200,000 litres into Lake Ontario. Ontario Power Generation is investigating how the accident happened and officials say hourly tests of the lake water show that the level of tritium - the radioactive isotope of hydrogen - poses no harm to nearby residents.

Several federal agencies share responsibility for the inadvertent publishing by a government office of sensitive U.S. nuclear power information on the Web last May, Congressional investigators said on Wednesday. U.S. The Government Printing Office published the 266-page document, which gave details on nuclear power sites, locations, facilities and activities, on the Web on May 7. It included 14 diagrams of buildings or facilities at U.S. nuclear sites, two of which were marked "Official Use Only" and described activities at national laboratories. None of the agencies that had prepared the draft document for the International Atomic Energy Association -- the Departments of Energy and Commerce and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission -- had made sure it was marked with U.S. security designations, the Government Accountability Office said in a report about its investigation.

Several federal agencies share responsibility for the inadvertent publishing by a government office of sensitive U.S. nuclear power information on the Web last May, Congressional investigators said on Wednesday. U.S. The Government Printing Office published the 266-page document, which gave details on nuclear power sites, locations, facilities and activities, on the Web on May 7. It included 14 diagrams of buildings or facilities at U.S. nuclear sites, two of which were marked "Official Use Only" and described activities at national laboratories. None of the agencies that had prepared the draft document for the International Atomic Energy Association -- the Departments of Energy and Commerce and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission -- had made sure it was marked with U.S. security designations, the Government Accountability Office said in a report about its investigation.

A sample taken from the west storm drain at Entergy's James A. Fitzpatrick nuclear power plant has tested positive for tritium, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Station management was notified Dec. 23 that a sample taken from the west storm drain tested positive for tritium. The sample results were confirmed at a level of 984 picocuries per liter of tritium. The sensitivity of the analysis is 800 picocuries per liter of tritium. The increase level in tritium, however, poses no health risk, officials state.

A sample taken from the west storm drain at Entergy's James A. Fitzpatrick nuclear power plant has tested positive for tritium, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Station management was notified Dec. 23 that a sample taken from the west storm drain tested positive for tritium. The sample results were confirmed at a level of 984 picocuries per liter of tritium. The sensitivity of the analysis is 800 picocuries per liter of tritium. The increase level in tritium, however, poses no health risk, officials state.

The most recent shutdown of a nuclear reactor at Dominion Virginia Power's North Anna Power Station also involved the accidental discharge of tens of thousands of gallons of cooling water into Lake Anna. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Wednesday's shutdown of Unit 2, caused by an electrical malfunction, also prompted the discharge of what was originally thought to be up to 59,500 gallons of cooling water into the Louisa County lake. The NRC said Dominion Virginia Power told the agency that it later appeared that the amount of discharge was actually closer to 35,000 gallons. Dominion Virginia Power also told the NRC that the lake water was tested after the discharge and was found to be within government-approved limits.

The most recent shutdown of a nuclear reactor at Dominion Virginia Power's North Anna Power Station also involved the accidental discharge of tens of thousands of gallons of cooling water into Lake Anna. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Wednesday's shutdown of Unit 2, caused by an electrical malfunction, also prompted the discharge of what was originally thought to be up to 59,500 gallons of cooling water into the Louisa County lake. The NRC said Dominion Virginia Power told the agency that it later appeared that the amount of discharge was actually closer to 35,000 gallons. Dominion Virginia Power also told the NRC that the lake water was tested after the discharge and was found to be within government-approved limits.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is eying Braidwood Gen-erating Station in the wake of a valve failure last summer in Unit 2. The June 24 failure involves a valve located outside the containment area. It controls the sump pump that drains water from the reactor, should it be necessary. The valve in question, and others on the two units, are located on the nuclear side of the station. NRC spokesman Viktoria Mitlyng said today the valve has since been repaired, and there is no longer any kind of safety concern to the station and the public. The NRC is now looking at what happened in the incident and why. "At what kind of weaknesses in the station's programs would have caused such a situation," she said. The NRC's report was issued Nov. 30, and received at Braidwood Station on Wednesday of this week, spokesman Neal Miller said today.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is eying Braidwood Gen-erating Station in the wake of a valve failure last summer in Unit 2. The June 24 failure involves a valve located outside the containment area. It controls the sump pump that drains water from the reactor, should it be necessary. The valve in question, and others on the two units, are located on the nuclear side of the station. NRC spokesman Viktoria Mitlyng said today the valve has since been repaired, and there is no longer any kind of safety concern to the station and the public. The NRC is now looking at what happened in the incident and why. "At what kind of weaknesses in the station's programs would have caused such a situation," she said. The NRC's report was issued Nov. 30, and received at Braidwood Station on Wednesday of this week, spokesman Neal Miller said today.

"Operators of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant knew as recently as November of 2007 that there were underground pipes at the plant that top plant officials later said didn't exist, documents filed with state officials indicate. A sworn statement from Vermont Yankee chief engineer Norm Rademacher could help determine whether the plant officials intentionally misled state officials about the underground pipes in sworn Public Service Board testimony, unsworn testimony to lawmakers and at least one e-mail to a legislative consultant. Questions about the pipes came up repeatedly in a special investigation ordered by the Legislature in 2008, as it prepared to decide a question it still hasn't: whether Vermont Yankee should be allowed to operate for 20 years past its current license expiration date of March 2012. "

"Extraordinarily high levels of radioactive water was discovered in a trench at the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant this week, lawmakers revealed Wednesday. Senate President Pro Tem Peter Shumlin, D-Windham, told reporters that surface water discovered in a trench at the site of the Vernon nuclear reactor has tested positive for tritium, with levels ranging from 1-2 million picocuries per liter. That's about 100 times the amount of the radioactive isotope discovered late last year in groundwater surrounding Vermont Yankee."

"On Nov. 4, 2008, two divers were cleaning sludge and silt from an entry bay for water pumps that serve Constellation Energy Nuclear Group's Nine Mile Point nuclear power plant near Oswego, N.Y. In the midst of the operation, the diver and the hose tender shifted their positions and the diver lost control of a plastic suction hose, leaving its trailing section in front of one of the water pipe entries. The force of the water flow, at 9,000 gallons a minute, severed a section of hose and sucked it into one of the system's pumps, fouling it. As the team tried to cope with that problem, a smaller piece of the unattended free end of the hose was pulled into a second water pump, according to an inspection report by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission."

"Traces of radioactive tritium have been found in a storm drain system at the Salem 2 nuclear reactor on Artificial Island here, federal and utility officials said Thursday. The tritium was found in water samples taken from the drain catch basin located north of the Salem 2 reactor. The amount of tritium found in two samples closest to the plant structure registered 1.1 million picocuries per liter, according to Neil Sheehan, spokesman for the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Other samples taken farther away from the plant structure in the drain registered at 260,000 picocuries per liter and at 3,000 picocuries per liter."