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Four security guards at the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant were fired after testing positive for steroids, a spokeswoman for Wackenhut Services Inc., the government's security contractor, confirmed today. The guards union, however, is challenging two of the cases, claiming the positive readings were linked to use of over-the-counter supplements. Security police officers at Y-12 are subject to regular and random drug testing, but those tests are typically for Schedule I and II drugs - such as cocaine and marijuana. Courtney Henry of Wackenhut said the company began testing some guards for anabolic sterioids, a Schedule III drug, "for probable cause."

Two accidents at the Hanford vitrification plant construction project this month prompted the Department of Energy to send a second letter to its contractor outlining safety concerns. In one incident a worker fell 4 feet off a ladder and broke his arm and elbow. In the other, a worker needed 19 stitches after being cut with a saw. In early May, DOE told Bechtel National that it was concerned about an increase in accidents requiring medical attention and other safety-related incidents at the plant. Bechtel redoubled safety efforts then and succeeded in accumulating almost 900,000 employee work hours at the site without a worker accident that required medical attention.

Sellafield has pleaded guilty to health and safety breaches after two contractors were exposed to radiation. The workers were refurbishing a floor at the site's plutonium finishing and storage plant in July 2007 when they were exposed to airborne contamination. Sellafield Ltd admitted failing to discharge its duty under the Health and Safety Act 1974 at Whitehaven Magistrates' Court on Friday.

Areva, working in consortium with Korean engineering contractor Daelim Industrial, has secured a contract from Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, South Korean nuclear power plants operator, to replace the six steam generators on the Ulchin 1 and 2 nuclear power plants during outages planned for 2011 and 2012. Areva as original equipment manufacturer will lead the consortium and perform the primary system and licensing operations in co-operation with Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power (KHNP) and Korea Power Engineering (KOPEC). Daelim will implement all the secondary and local activities associated with the project. Areva said that its resources, practices and technologies in France, Germany and the US will also be rolled out for the project.

A nuclear leak, which could have caused a major disaster, was only averted by a chance decision to wash some dirty clothes, according to a newly obtained official report. On the morning of Sunday 7 January 2007, one of the contractors working on decommissioning the Sizewell A nuclear power station on the Suffolk coast was in the laundry room when he noticed cooling water leaking on to the floor from the pond that holds the reactor's highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel.

Nuclear Management Partners has a brief to clean up Sellafield, the largest and most hazardous UK nuclear site. With £1.3bn to spend annually, the work available should have a long half life. nuclear Late last year Amec, in consortium with Washington International Holdings and Areva, clinched a lucrative £22bn contract to oversee the decommissioning of Sellafield, the UK's biggest nuclear facility. The contract runs for an initial five years, with an option to renew for a total of 17 years.

Hanford workers have collected a first batch of samples of radioactive sludge from Hanford's K Basins to help design the system that will be used to get the sludge out of the basins and treat it. New contractor CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Co. wants to know as much as possible about the sludge as it prepares to treat it, hoping to avoid the sort of false starts and technical problems that have plagued earlier work with the sludge for the Department of Energy. CH2M Hill has submitted a plan for treatment of the sludge to DOE, which assembled a team of technical experts to review the proposal. The team's report is now being reviewed by DOE officials in Washington, D.C., who have not released information on the proposed plan.

CH2M-WG Idaho (CWI), contractor for the Idaho Cleanup Project, resumed work Wednesday morning on construction of the Integrated Waste Treatment Unit (IWTU) facility after suspending work on Tuesday, June 30, as a result of recent minor injuries to workers on the project. "We met with the IWTU construction workforce this morning to review the safety issues we've experienced and to get them involved in improving safety on the project," said Brent Rankin, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for CWI. "We know from experience that the workers on the front line can help identify issues or opportunities for improvement." The IWTU is being constructed to treat 900,000 gallons of liquid, sodium-bearing waste currently stored in three underground storage tanks at the Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center. Steam-reforming technology will be used to convert the liquid waste into a more stable granular solid for eventual disposal at a national geologic repository.

Poor planning has led to rising costs and huge delays for a nuclear reactor going up in Finland, the country's biggest-ever construction project, officials have said. The plant on the island of Olkiluoto in western Finland, to be run by Finnish nuclear power company TVO, was meant to start production this summer. But it is now not expected to open for another three years and Finnish authorities cannot hide their disappointment with Areva-Siemens, the Franco-German contractor running the building operations.

THE future for the workforce at Vulcan has become less secure now that it looks certain the Ministry of Defence will not be extending its current contract at its reactor base in Caithness. advertising Barring new commercial work being found, the site is set to go into decommissioning mode in five years' time. Such an outcome would add a fresh headache to the public agencies currently battling to replace the 2000-plus jobs which are to go at the next-door site at Dounreay. As with its defunct civil counterpart, Vulcan will require a workforce to decontaminate and dismantle its redundant plant. It is unclear how many of the 280 employees of site contractor Rolls-Royce would be required for the clean-up. The pressurised water reactor at Vulcan is used to test and trial the propulsion systems used on Britain's fleet of nuclear submarines. Up until recently there were positive noises about the prospects of the MOD extending its £360 million contract beyond 2014. But Royal Navy chief are now believed not to foresee a need for Vulcan to support the proposed next generation of Trident subs.

Hanford workers have evaporated enough excess water from radioactive waste in underground tanks to free up space nearly equivalent to a new tank. Washington River Protection Solutions removed 940,000 gallons of condensate from two double-shell tanks with the nuclear reservation's 242-A Evaporator in work completed last week. The Department of Energy contractor is emptying waste from leak-prone single-shell tanks into newer and sturdier double-shell tanks to be stored until the waste can be processed for disposal at the vitrification plant. Space is at a premium in the double-shell tanks. Hanford has about 53 million gallons of radioactive waste stored in underground tanks, and the double-shell tanks can hold just 28 million gallons of waste.

Hanford workers have begun operating the nuclear reservation's evaporator to create about 900,000 gallons of additional space to hold radioactive waste in the site's sturdiest underground tanks. Department of Energy contractor Washington River Protection Solutions is working to empty the waste from leak-prone single shell tanks to newer double shell tanks. Space in the double-shell tanks is at a premium, but removing excess water from the waste frees up space. The double-shell tanks can hold about 28 million gallons of waste, but Hanford has 53 million gallons of waste in underground tanks waiting to be processed at the vitrification plant under construction. "Without the evaporator, we would have no storage space and without storage space, we can't retrieve waste from old single-shell tanks," said Rebecca Raven, the evaporator's operations manager for Washington River Protection Solutions, in a statement. "That's why it is so critical to upgrade and maintain the facility." This is the first evaporator run since 2007 when processing campaigns reduced waste volume by about 1.2 million gallons.

The operators of Sellafield are to be prosecuted after two contractors received a "higher than anticipated" dose of radiation. The workers were refurbishing a floor at the site's plutonium finishing and storage plant in July 2007 when they were exposed to airborne contamination. Sellafield Ltd is accused of failing to discharge its duty under Section 3 (1) of the Health and Safety Act 1974. The case will be heard at Whitehaven Magistrates' Court on 24 July.

The Department of Energy (DOE) spends billions of dollars annually to clean up nuclear waste at sites across the nation that produced nuclear weapons from the 1940s through the end of the Cold War. This waste can threaten public health and the environment. For example, contaminants at DOE's Hanford site in Washington have migrated through the soil into the groundwater, which generally flows toward the Columbia River. The river is a source of irrigation for agriculture and drinking water for downstream communities as well as a major route for migrating salmon. Cleanup projects decontaminate and demolish buildings, remove and dispose of contaminated soil, treat contaminated groundwater, and stabilize and dispose of solid and liquid radioactive wastes, among other things. DOE's Office of Environmental Management currently oversees more than 80 of these cleanup projects, primarily at government owned, contractor-operated sites throughout the nation. Some of these highly complex projects have completion dates beyond 2050.

The US Department of Energy on Wednesday said it would use $44 million to fund 71 nuclear energy research and development projects. The funding will go to 31 universities and fund projects for the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative, the Next Generation Nuclear Plant, Light Water Reactor Sustainability, as well as Investigator-Initiated Research, according to DOE. "As a zero-carbon energy source, nuclear power must be part of our energy mix as we work toward energy independence and meeting the challenge of global warming," Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in a statement. "The next generation of nuclear power plants -- with the highest standards of safety, efficiency and environmental protection -- will require the latest advancements in nuclear science and technology." Chu has voiced his support for nuclear energy since becoming energy secretary in January, but the administration's decision to stop pursuing a national nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain has led some to charge that DOE no longer supports nuclear power. The $44 million in funding announced Wednesday will be provided over three years and the project contracts will be awarded by Idaho National Laboratory contractor Battelle at the end of September.

Neighbors in the Tri-Cities, exposed to radioactive material from the Hanford Nuclear Facility, are one step closer to getting justice. For the past 20 years, the affected neighbors have been in and out of court, trying to get the contractors who ran Hanford to accept responsibility for what happened. On Tuesday, a federal judge asked both sides to lay out a road map to resolve close to 2,000 cases.

More than two years after a federal investigation found that guards were sleeping on the job at Florida Power & Light's Turkey Point nuclear plant, the utility has paid a six-figure fine to resolve the case. FPL sent the Nuclear Regulatory Commission a check for $130,000 in January, the commission confirmed Monday. FPL spokesman Tom Veenstra confirmed late Monday that the company had paid the fine. Six guards at the Miami-Dade County plant slept or served as lookouts for other guards who were sleeping ''on multiple occasions'' between 2004 and 2006, the commission concluded. All of the guards were contractors with Palm Beach Gardens-based Wackenhut. None remained on the job after the violations were announced last year, officials said.

A $90 million project has provided more confidence that Hanford's one-of-a-kind, $12.2 billion vitrification plant should operate as expected, according to the Department of Energy. DOE and its contractors just completed the first phase of testing at the Pretreatment Engineering Platform, a quarter-scale model of the process that will be used at the vit plant to separate Hanford tank waste into high-level waste and low-activity waste for separate treatment. DOE's goal is to minimize the amount of costly high-level waste canisters produced. "The facility has verified some of the key processes at the vitrification plant will work," said Bill Gay, a URS employee and assistant project director for the plant, formally called the Waste Treatment Plant.

The Government Accountability Office is taking aim at continuing problems with security at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, a significant proportion of which is provided by contractors. The place has been bedeviled by questions about breaches in recent years, some of them really over the top.

When TVA canceled plans to finish its Bellefonte Nuclear Plant here in 2006, contractors began ripping out steel tubes and pipes from heat exchangers, steam generators and main condensers to sell for scrap metal. Advertisement The salvage effort proved to be short-lived. Critics also say it was shortsighted and could leave ratepayers short-changed.