nuke.news

"The Vermont Public Service Board sanctioned Entergy Corp., owner of the state's lone nuclear plant, after company officials provided misinformation about underground piping carrying radioactive materials. According to the PSB, the false testimony by Entergy witnesses was sufficiently damaging enough to merit sanctions. The New Orleans-based company, which operates the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant in Vernon, will have to reimburse costs to the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, the New England Coalition and the Windham Regional Commission attorney fees and other legal costs related to the plant's misrepresentations about whether it had underground pipes carrying radioactive materials. During 2009 hearings on the proposed extension of the plant's continued operations beyond its scheduled closing in March 2012, Entergy management repeatedly testified that Vermont Yankee has no underground piping carrying radionuclides. "

"The American nuclear industry, primed to begin new construction projects for the first time in 30 years, is about as eager for an operating problem at an old reactor as the oil industry was for a well blowout on the eve of opening the Atlantic coast to oil drilling. Nonetheless, a nuclear reactor where a hidden leak caused near-catastrophic corrosion in 2002 has experienced a second bout of the same problem. In 2002, the plant, Davis-Besse, in Oak Harbor, Ohio, developed leaks in parts on the vessel head, allowing cooling water from inside the vessel, at 2,200 pounds per square inch of pressure, to leak out."

"Colorado Governor Bill Ritter stood by the banks of the Arkansas River near a neighborhood contaminated by a uranium mill today and signed legislation that will force uranium mills to clean up existing messes before launching new projects. "This just gives us a better hold on the milling process," Ritter said before signing the bill, a bipartisan measure sponsored by Rep. Buffie McFadyen, and Sens. Ken Kester and Bob Bacon. Greenwood Village based Cotter Corp. operates the mill that became a Superfund cleanup site in 1984. During the statehouse battle over the law, Cotter vice president John Hamrick said the legislation would kill Cotter's proposed project to refurbish the mill and haul 12.5 million tons of uranium ore from New Mexico for processing. Hamrick on Tuesday declined to comment on the status on any future project."

"The United States has an atomic waste problem. Nuclear power is without a doubt a viable source of cleaner energy, but the problem has always been what to do with the process' byproducts. A new Wall Street Journal report details the U.S. Department of Energy's problems cleaning up temporary caches of steel-and-concrete casks filled with radioactive waste at now-defunct reactor sites. The Energy Department is legally obligated to relieve nuclear plants of radioactive waste. But it hasn't, because there's nowhere permanent to put it."

"A nuclear explosion was set off 37 years ago, near Krestishche village in Krasnograd district, Kharkiv Region. It was the first in Ukraine and probably the only one in the European part of the Soviet Union. Scientists had determined that a large gas condensate field in the area which was discovered in 1970 could hold up to 300 billion cubic meters of fuel. In 1971, 17 wells were already operating in the Krasnograd district. But an accident occurred when drilling a new well at the field in July 1971. Gas came to the surface before the well reached its planned depth and the force of the spewing gas condensate reached 400 atmospheres, throwing two workers into the air. Engineers took days deciding what to do to stop the well. The nearest village was just 500 meters away. Residents were told to not light any fires and to stay out of their homes and not turn on any lights. Unable to stop the gas, the engineers decided to light it. By the next day, the burning flare was tens of meters high. Several attempts were made during the next year to put out the fire. Filling the well with tons of concrete slabs did not work - they flew apart like toys. Such flares are normally put out by capping the well. But for this case, specialists from Moscow offered an original solution - an underground nuclear explosion."

"Disturbing reports are coming from Russia that the former nuclear maintenance vessel Severka may have sunk at the wharf of a shiprepairing yard in Alexandrovsk (former Polyarny) on the Kola Peninsula, in close vicinity to the large administrative centre of Murmansk. Russian authorities have yet to confirm or deny the information. Before the 1990s, the Severka was used to move spent nuclear fuel in Soviet-produced shipping containers of the type TK-12 from Andreyeva Bay - the former naval base in the northwestern part of the Kola Peninsula - to a transshipment site in Murmansk dubbed Area SRZ-35. There, not far from the grounds of Atomflot, Russia's nuclear fleet operator, the spent nuclear fuel was reloaded into railway cars to be shipped off to the reprocessing plant Mayak in the Urals. The Severka was also equipped with special tanks for shipments of liquid radioactive waste."

"A man died Monday as he was working under water at the Indian Point nuclear power plant in Buchanan, N.Y., officials said. The unidentified diver was doing working on a wall that separates the Hudson River from a discharge canal when he stopped responding to communication checks, according to Entergy Nuclear, which owns the Indian Point Energy Center. A canal channels water back to the river after being used to cool a reactor or make steam. "The gentleman was doing some maintenance work under water, and when a co-worker up above asked him a question and he did not respond, he was pulled up immediately," said Jerry Nappi, a spokesman for the Indian Point plant."

"Two local nuclear energy facilities reported incidents to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in recent days. Global Nuclear Fuel closed part of its Castle Hayne fuel manufacturing operation Friday after discovering some safety-related documents were missing. The dry scrap recycle furnace was shut down Friday morning when it was determined the list of items relied on for safe operation was incomplete, the company told the NRC, explaining the equipment was shut down pending revision of the safety documents."

"Much like Captain Renault in Casablanca, the White House is suddenly shocked, shocked to find that oil rigs can explode, destroying ecosystems and livelihoods. The Obama administration has backed away from its offshore oil expansion policy in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe as the long-term environmental and economical consequences unfold in the Gulf States. Headlines are clamoring for the criminal investigations of BP, TransOcean, Halliburton and ultimately, the federal regulator, Mineral Management Services (MMS). Rather paradoxically, President Obama is using the oil spill to call for more nuclear power. Yet, with the exception of a handful of insightful political cartoonists, the obvious parallel between the regulatory delinquency of MMS and that of its nuclear equivalent - the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) - and the potential for an equally catastrophic accident in the nuclear sector, has not been drawn. As with the MMS debacle, the NRC is gambling with inevitable disaster with the same spin of the wheel of misfortune and with potentially even higher stakes. "

"India has claimed that its nuclear assets are not under the threat of extreme left-wing Naxal rebels who have staged a series of high-profile attacks against government forces and were suspected to have sabotaged a passenger train recently, according to local daily The Hindu on Sunday. Indian National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Menon told participants at an international conference in Singapore on Saturday that they "don't need to worry about" the rebels affecting the security of India's nuclear assets, according to the daily."

"Enormous quantities of radioactive waste and other hazardous materials are being transported from cleanup sites on the Dept. of Energy's Oak Ridge reservation. Much of the waste is moved to disposal sites elsewhere on the federal reservation, and the good news is that most of it never traverses public roads. More than $20 million was spent a few years ago to construct a special haul road to allow daily truck convoys to move waste from demolition projects at K-25 to the DOE CERCLA landfill several miles away. It's expected to take about 40,000 truckloads to move the K-25 contaminated debris to the landfill."

Work has halted to empty the only Hanford tank on which work has been under way to retrieve radioactive waste, but the Department of Energy and its contractor have ambitious plans for the remainder of the year. "Washington River Protection Solutions is going to be working very hard this summer to pull this off," said Steve Pfaff, DOE project director for tank waste retrieval. Work started in January to remove 260,000 gallons of solids from Tank C-104, one of 142 leak-prone single-shell tanks at Hanford that still hold radioactive waste from the production of plutonium during World War II and the Cold War. But this spring the pump lowered into the tank to help remove waste hit an obstruction hidden in the sludge. It was a broken piece of an old pump that Washington River Protection Solutions had removed from the tank to make way for the pump used for waste retrieval."

"n a clear reference to Pakistan, India today said clandestine proliferation network in the region had adversely affected its security and pitched for a new global paradigm to meet the challenge, factoring in the "real" risks of terrorists gaining access to nuclear material. National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon also highlighted the dangers India faces by being in the vicinity of "epicentre" of global terrorism and pressed for increased global collaborative efforts to defeat the menace particularly when terror groups are "networked to an unprecedented extent"."

"Documents smuggled out of Myanmar by an army defector indicate its military regime is trying to develop nuclear weapons and long-range missiles, and North Korea is probably assisting the program, an expatriate media group said Friday. The Norway-based Democratic Voice of Burma said the defector had been involved in the nuclear program and smuggled out extensive files and photographs describing experiments with uranium and specialized equipment needed to build a nuclear reactor and develop enrichment capabilities. But the group concluded in a report that Myanmar is still far from producing a nuclear weapon."

"How do wars begin? With a "master illusion", according to Ralph McGehee, one of the CIA's pioneers in "black propaganda", known today as "news management". In 1983, he described to me how the CIA had faked an "incident" that became the "conclusive proof of North Vietnam's aggression". This followed a claim, also fake, that North Vietnamese torpedo boats had attacked an American warship in the Gulf of Tonkin in August 1964. "The CIA," he said, "loaded up a junk, a North Vietnamese junk, with communist weapons-the Agency maintains communist arsenals in the United States and around the world. They floated this junk off the coast of central Vietnam. Then they shot it up and made it look like a fire fight had taken place, and they brought in the American press. Based on this evidence, two Marine landing teams went into Danang and a week after that the American air force began regular bombing of North Vietnam." An invasion that took three million lives was under way."

The use of nuclear energy to provide electricity is well-established. At least that is the case in France, which has been a leader in developing nuclear technology. Thus 75 percent of the nation's electricity is generated by nuclear power plants. Production is so high, France has been contracting out an 18 percent surplus to its neighboring countries. It has accomplished this with just 59 nuclear power plants in operation. However, it is expanding this number by building a more advanced reactor, called Generation III. Contrast France's application of nuclear reactors to a nation's need for energy with the absence of any progress in that direction in the United States. It's been 30 years since construction of any new nuclear power plants was undertaken. Some reasons suggested for the lack of new construction include opposition by some with interests in fossil fuels."

"The U.S. Department of Labor has announced that a new class of nuclear weapons workers from plants located in California and New Jersey have been added to the Special Exposure Cohort of the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act (EEOICPA), which provides compensation and medical benefits to workers who became ill as a result of working in the nuclear weapons industry. Survivors of qualified workers may also be entitled to benefits. All former Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory employees who worked at the Berkeley, Calif., site between Aug. 13, 1942, and Dec. 31, 1961, as well as former Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory employees who worked at the Livermore, Calif., site between Jan. 1, 1950, and Dec. 31, 1973, have been added to the Special Exposure Cohort. In addition, former Westinghouse Electric Corp. employees who worked at the Bloomfield, N.J., site between Aug. 13, 1942, and Dec. 31, 1949, are included. "

The average American receives 620 millirems of background radiation every year, as opposed to the 360 millirems as is often stated in the press. The number has crept up in the last two decades, from 180 millirems to 300 millirems, then to 360 millirems and most recently, in 2006, to 620 millirems. Two of the major reasons why the average dose has been adjusted is the recognition that radon poses a substantial threat to health, especially in areas where granite is in abundance, and an increase in the number of medical procedures involving radiation. Many people never reach the average, which includes exposure rates to people who undergo medical treatments with high levels of radiation. Ionizing radiation, the formation of ions by separating atoms or molecules or radicals or by adding or subtracting electrons from atoms by strong electric fields in a gas, can cause cancer. "

"DEP Commissioner Bob Martin today issued an action plan requiring the owner of the Oyster Creek nuclear power plant to take a series of steps to further investigate the 2009 leak of radioactive tritium into aquifers below the plant and ensure the radioactive substance does not endanger public health and safety. Under a directive of the state's Spill Act, the Exelon Corporation must drill new test wells, increase sampling of existing wells, review accuracy of existing data regarding water flow in and around the nuclear power plant, and expand the search area for a potentially contaminating tritium flow. "We have given Exelon very specific directions and they have agreed to cooperate and move quickly to comply,'' said Commissioner Martin, who will tour the Oyster Creek plant on Friday and meet with Exelon officials. "We need prompt action to prevent the continuing spread of the radioactive substance and to ensure it never gets near the region's potable water supplies. This requires immediate attention and Exelon has committed to move as fast as safely possible.''"

"The more one hears about BP's ruinous catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, the more one has to worry about the risks inherent in the proposed in situ uranium mining in nearby Weld County. Both BP's extraction of oil and Powertech's extraction of uranium depend on piping systems to bring the desired substance to the surface. The piping system Powertech proposes to use involves many injection wells to push chemically treated water down through the Laramie Fox-Hills aquifer, which thousands of people depend on for water, and into the uranium ore body. Many more extraction wells will be used to pull the dissolved uranium and other dangerous heavy metals to the surface."