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Energy Northwest has taken prompt and aggressive action to address a string of unplanned shutdowns, said Scott Oxenford, chief nuclear officer of the Columbia Generating Station. Tuesday night the Nuclear Regulatory Commission held a meeting in Richland to provide the public with information about the Richland nuclear power reactor's performance last year. About 30 people attended. Because of the unplanned shutdowns, or scrams, the plant has been receiving heightened oversight. As of Tuesday, 29 of the nation's 104 power reactors were receiving heightened oversight because of issues. "

"A commission examining U.S. nuclear waste policies amid a plan to abandon a proposed repository will hold its next meeting at the nation's most contaminated nuclear site. The meeting will be July 14-15 at south-central Washington's Hanford nuclear reservation. Some Hanford waste has long been planned for disposal at a nuclear waste repository. However, the Obama administration wants to withdraw its application to build the repository at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles from Las Vegas."

"Iran's recent formal notification to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of its nuclear fuel swap deal with Turkey and Brazil - a move aimed at budging from its previous tough stance - is expected to undercut the US-led international campaign for fresh sanctions against Teheran. Due to deep concerns over Iran's nuclear program, the international community has pushed for several rounds of Teheran-targeted United Nations Security Council resolutions, urging the Islamic nation to put a moratorium on its uranium enrichment."

"Teams of American special forces have been authorised to conduct spying missions intended to pave the way for a military strike on Iran in case President Obama orders one, US government sources have confirmed. The military units would penetrate Iranian territory to reconnoitre potential nuclear targets and make contact with friendly dissident groups, according to a secret directive written by General David Petraeus. The document's existence was disclosed for the first time yesterday. It authorises an expansion in the use of US special forces throughout the Middle East, US officials said. However, it is the possibility of American troops operating covertly inside Iran that has the greatest potential to destabilise regional security. "

"Breaking the tradition of not naming countries, the first draft of the final document of 2010 Nuclear-Non Proliferation Treaty Review conference has asked India, Pakistan and Israel to join NPT and CTBT. "The conference calls upon India, Israel and Pakistan to accede to the treaty as non-nuclear weapon States, promptly and without conditions, thereby accepting an internationally legally binding commitment not to acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices," the first draft of the document said. "The conference also calls upon India and Pakistan to maintain moratoriums on nuclear testing and calls upon India, Israel and Pakistan to sign and ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) without delay and without conditions," it said."

"The US' search for a new spent fuel storage or disposal facility must be transparent, and state and local governments should be part of any early siting discussions, speakers told President Barack Obama's blue ribbon commission on nuclear waste Tuesday. The common threads of openness, and community and state engagement, were woven through many of the presentations the commission heard as it starts to evaluate how the US should proceed with a new strategy for managing utilities' spent fuel and the US Department of Energy's highly radioactive nuclear defense waste. The Obama administration established the commission to evaluate alternatives to the proposed nuclear waste repository project at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, roughly 95 miles outside Las Vegas. "

"A Connecticut River fish caught four miles upstream from the Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor this winter tested positive for low levels of strontium-90, a highly dangerous radioactive isotope recently confirmed in soil outside the plant. But the Department of Health said Monday that the fish's strontium-90 was not related to this winter's radioactive leak at Vermont Yankee, and state officials attributed the strontium to atmospheric testing in the 1960s and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster 20 years ago, which spread radioactive fallout even as far away as Vermont."

"In a letter dated May 20, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Petition Review Board denied a request by Rep. Paul Hodes, D-N.H., that it order Entergy to keep its Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant off-line until a number of actions have been completed regarding a recent leak of contaminants into the groundwater under the site. Hodes had asked the NRC to prevent Yankee from restarting after its current refueling outage until the removal of tritiated water from the ground is completed. He also asked that Entergy finish removing soil that was contaminated with radioactive cesium, manganese, cobalt, zinc and strontium before the plant is restarted. In addition, Hodes requested that the root cause analysis, the final report on why tritium leaked from the plant, and the NRC's review of documents submitted to it are both completed prior to restart. "

"The issue of tritium-contaminated water that leaked from the Oyster Creek nuclear generating station in Lacey dominated the annual briefing Tuesday night of the plant's safety performance. The May 14 discovery of water containing tritium - a weak radioactive isotope that is a byproduct of nuclear fission - has been of especial interest to environmentalists and other plant critics, who attended the meeting conducted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Exelon Nuclear, which operates the plan, has said the water was residue from a July 2007 leak from pipes in an underground vault. The NRC is in the process of verifying that statement. "The outstanding question, which we hope will be clarified, is whether the NRC helped Exelon to hide the truth from the public" regarding the May 14 discovery, Richard Webster, legal director of the Environmental Law Center, said prior to the assessment meeting held at the Toms River Holiday Inn."

"EnergySolutions today announced that it will relocate the center of its Government Group operations to Oak Ridge. As part of that move, Alan Parker, the president of the Government Group, will be moving to the area. "Under the organizational structure, Mr. Parker will be responsible for all of the company's work with the federal goverment. He will also be the lead representative for the company in the Oak Ridge and Knoxville areas as well as around the state of Tennessee," EnergySolutions said in the announcement."

"EnergySolutions announced today that it plans to relocate the Government Group operations to Oak Ridge, basically making Tennessee's Atomic City the headquarters for the company's work for the federal government. That's pretty interesting. I asked for more details and got a few, but there are still plenty of questions. Is the Dept. of Energy pressuring EnergySolutions for more of an Oak Ridge presence because of the troubled Isotek Services project (a partnership headed by EnergySolutions) with hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars at stake? Is EnergySolutions growing weary of its critics in Utah, perhaps thinking Oak Ridge is friendlier to its nuclear agenda?"

"The five largest nuclear powers (USA, UK. France, Russia, and China) are set to impose tougher sanctions against non-nuclear Iran, while reminding the other two non-atomic states such as Turkey and Brazil, that only they can decide how and when to solve (or not) their purposely escalated conflict with Iran. In line with that, and in a decision clearly taken beforehand, the five permanent Security Council powers reached on May 19, 2010 a deal on a new set of tougher sanctions against Tehran. The decision was announced only few hours after Iran agreed to deliver to Turkey its low-enriched uranium and to receive, in exchange, nuclear fuel for its plants within one year. According to the terms of the agreement, the entire exchange process is to be carried out under the direct, strict supervision of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)."

"Israel's President Shimon Peres has denied a report which claims there was an alleged nuclear pact between Israel and apartheid South Africa. Documents to be published in a new book show Israel agreed to give South Africa nuclear weapons in 1975, the Guardian newspaper has reported. Mr Peres was Israel's defence minister at the time and was named in the Guardian article. "

AMEC, the international engineering and project management company, and EnergySolutions, the international nuclear services company, have formed a joint venture to bid for the Parent Body Organisation (PBO) contract at Dounreay Site Restoration Limited (DSRL). The joint venture, which will be called Caithness Solutions Limited, brings together two companies with unrivalled experience in the international nuclear decommissioning market as well as in other key industrial sectors. AMEC is a member of Nuclear Management Partners (NMP), the consortium that owns the shares in Sellafield Ltd and operates the site on behalf of the NDA. EnergySolutions, is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, and holds the contracts to manage and operate the ten Magnox nuclear sites in the UK on behalf of the NDA."

Bangladesh and Russia signed a framework agreement for Russian cooperation for Bangladesh's first nuclear plant. Bangladesh aims to produce at least 2,000 megawatts of electricity by 2020 from two units of the proposed Rooppur plant and also to have nuclear energy account for 10 percent of its total power generation by that time, Bangladeshi state news agency BSS reports. The agreement, signed Friday in Russia, calls for the transfer of materials, technologies, equipment and services to implement joint programs in the field of the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

"Entergy Corp Chief Executive J. Wayne Leonard said on Monday that building new nuclear plants remains too costly and will prevent many utilities from participating in the fledgling nuclear renaissance in the United States. "Utilities do not want to take that risk," Leonard said at the Reuters Global Energy Summit in Houston. "It's risk we don't control." New Orleans-based Entergy suspended two license applications filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for proposed new reactors to be built either in Louisiana or Mississippi in 2008 after being unable to negotiate a favorable construction contract."

"Stimulus funds at Savannah River Site are going to be used in spectacular fashion today, as a cooling tower is set to be demolished using 1,100 pounds of explosives. The K Cooling Tower stands 450 feet tall, weighs 24,000 tons and will be explosively imploded today around 10 a.m. The dramatic demolition will not be able to be viewed by the public or media; however, Doug Loizeaux of Controlled Demolition Inc. said that there will be six remote cameras in place to capture the event. One reason for letting the public know of the event is that S.C. Highway 125 will be closed for around 30 minutes the time of the event. American Demolition and Nuclear Decommissioning Inc. is performing all coordination and on-site activities associated with the demolition. The company is working with Controlled Demolition Inc., a company specializing in demolition, which is performing the implosion. The K Cooling Tower was constructed in 1992 to support nuclear production at the K Reactor; however, as the Cold War ended, the reactor and tower became unnecessary."

"The Tennessee Valley Authority has issued the Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement on the generation options associated with Bellefonte Nuclear Plant in north Alabama. With the statement final, four of five detailed studies are complete to support a future decision by the TVA Board of Directors about building or completing a reactor at Bellefonte. "Completing a nuclear unit is one option that would help us meet our customers' growing needs and provide a reliable and safe power source at significantly less cost per installed kilowatt than other generation options," said Ashok Bhatnagar, senior vice president of TVA's Nuclear Generation Development and Construction. "At the same time, additional nuclear generation leads to a reduction of our carbon footprint." The options being studied are whether to finish one of two partially built reactors at Bellefonte, build a newly designed Westinghouse Advanced Passive 1000 reactor there or take no action. "

"Gov. Brad Henry has vetoed a bill that would have eased restrictions on nuclear power in Oklahoma. Henry vetoed Senate Bill 2129 on Monday, saying the bill would "authorize actions that could serve as incentives for the construction of a nuclear power plant." 8 Talkback: Click Here to Comment on this Story The bill would have removed from law a prohibition against the Oklahoma Municipal Power Authority owning an interest in a nuclear generating plant. "

"Texas was all set to be part of an agreement with Vermont to dump nuclear waste in a remote region of the Lone Star state, and for the most part people living near the site were OK with it. Now, though, that compact could mushroom to include waste from 36 other states, reinvigorating those who oppose the project to fight harder. -- Kentucky US Senate candidate Rand Paul's Republican colleagues have tried to contextualize his controversial comments about anti-discrimination laws and the Obama administration's handling of the Gulf Coast oil spill, but privately they bemoan the political newcomer's gaffes and wish he'd focus less on the national media spotlight and more on Kentucky and the economy. "In any campaign there's going to be a few bumps," said Brian Walsh, a spokesman. "