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From the White House press release (4/30/2012; emphasis is mine): Bilateral Commission on Civil Nuclear Cooperation: Building on the close U.S.-Japan cooperation following Japan’s March 2011 nuclear accident, Japan and the United States will establish a high-level Bilateral Commission on Civil Nuclear Cooperation to further strengthen our work in this field. The Commission will foster comprehensive strategic dialogue and joint activities related to the safe and secure implementation of civil nuclear energy and the response to the accident such as decommissioning and decontamination. The Commission is to coordinate more robust research and development exchanges in areas which may include nuclear energy, safety, and security, environmental management, and nonproliferation. It builds upon our March 2012 agreement on cooperation in the field of nuclear energy R&D, and also supports the commitments made by both countries at the 2012 Nuclear Security Summit. It is anticipated that the Commission will hold its first meeting at the earliest mutually convenient date. Japan and the United States will work for the success of the Fukushima Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Safety held by Japan in co-sponsorship with the IAEA in December this year.

A team of US diplomats are expected to visit the Saudi capital of Riyadh to "discuss the possibility of moving forward on a nuclear cooperation agreement," a congressional aide said on the condition of anonymity, AFP reported. Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, a lawmaker from the Republican Party has criticized the move, saying that "its ties to terrorists and terror financing alone should rule it out as a candidate for the US nuclear cooperation." "I am astonished that the administration is even considering a nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia," she added.

Washington and Riyadh signed a tentative agreement on developing civilian nuclear technologies in 2008. The Obama administration, like its predecessor, has sought to promote nuclear cooperation with allies. Washington also signed a nuclear cooperation deal with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in 2009. The deal meant that the UAE would renounce their plans to enrich and reprocess uranium in exchange of having the right to purchase the material from international suppliers. Furthermore, Saudi Arabia has also been pursuing nuclear cooperation agreements with South Korea, Japan, France and Russia. In February, 2011, France singed a nuclear cooperation deal with Saudi Arabia, offering the kingdom nuclear know-how.

The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) today announced that it has signed a new agreement with the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) to promote greater cooperation in nuclear security and nonproliferation. NNSA Assistant Deputy Administrator for Nonproliferation and International Security, Mark Whitney, and Dr. Roland Schenkel, Director General of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), signed the agreement at a nuclear safeguards symposium at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, Austria

The agreement provides a framework for greater technical cooperation between the United States and Europe in areas such as nuclear safeguards, border monitoring, nuclear forensics, export controls, and physical protection of nuclear materials facilities. It also calls for closer collaboration on research and development of nuclear security and nonproliferation technologies, and for enhanced coordination of outreach to third countries

“This agreement is an important step in achieving President Obama’s goal of securing vulnerable nuclear material, preventing nuclear smuggling, and strengthening the international nuclear nonproliferation regime.”

Energy leaders from Russia and America have made a "commitment to supporting the safe and secure expansion of civil nuclear energy" on the sidelines of the International Atomic Energy Agency's General Conference.    Officials from the US Department of Energy and Russia's Rosatom signed what the US side called a "joint statement on strategic direction of US-Russia nuclear cooperation." US energy secretary Stephen Chu said it was a milestone for the two nuclear energy pioneers. They were long separated by their opposition during the Cold War, but now share a leading role in nuclear security and disarmament.

Chu said in his address to the conference that nuclear energy's role grows more valuable as we confront a changing climate, increasing energy demand and a struggling economy. "At the same time, Fukushima reminds us that nuclear safety and security require continued vigilance." He noted the agreements made by Russia and the USA to reduce their weapons stockpiles and the importance of the widest possible sign-up to the framework of international conventions supporting the safe use of nuclear energy.   Russian nuclear energy chief Sergei Kiriyenko focused comments on his country's efforts to help new nations enjoy the benefits of nuclear energy. Their entrance to the field raises "questions of nuclear safety, infrastructure, creation of licensing and safety oversight and development of a clear legal framework in accordance with the requirements and recommendations of the IAEA," he said.  

Kiriyenko noted Russia's cooperation towards nuclear build with Bangladesh, Belarus, Nigeria and Vietnam. "In the last year," he said, "we have proposed a new model of cooperation.. based on the principle of 'build-speak-operate'." The 'speak' component would refer to the lending of specific Russian expertise in the areas of law and regulation. This would come in addition to extensive and expanding lines of support from the IAEA. He said that "experience in this model confirms that this scheme can provide a higher level of safety and operational success."   The nuclear project in Turkey was said to be the first example of this mode of cooperation: Russia will build, own and operate a four-unit power plant at Akkuyu, supplying the state utility with electricity at a fixed price for at least 15 years. Rosatom will initially own 100% of the project and it intends to retain at least 51% in the long term.

Global growth in the civilian nuclear energy sector represents an annual trade market estimated at $500 billion to $740 billion over the next 10 years.  As new nations consider nuclear energy technology to produce low-carbon electricity, the United States should take a leadership role that will enhance the safety and nuclear nonproliferation regimes globally, while creating tens of thousands of new American jobs. The United States is the world leader in safe and efficient operation of nuclear power plants, with an average capacity factor of 90 percent or higher in each of the past 10 years.  When ranked by 36-month unit capability factor, the United States has the top three best performing nuclear reactors in the world, seven of the top 10, and 16 of the top 20.  Nuclear energy facilities produce electricity in 31 states and have attained a four-fold improvement in safety during the past 20 years.  This underpinning in safety and reliability is one reason why America generates more electricity from nuclear energy than the next two largest nuclear programs combined.

Bilateral agreements on nuclear energy cooperation are vital to advancing global nonproliferation and safety goals as well as America’s interests in global nuclear energy trade.  A 123 agreement, named after section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act, establishes an accord for cooperation as a prerequisite for nuclear energy trade between the United States and other nations.  The agreement contains valuable nonproliferation controls and commitments.  One of the most significant elements of U.S. agreements is approval granted by our government as to how other countries process uranium fuel after it is used in a commercial reactor.  Under U.S. agreements, these nations cannot reprocess the fuel—chemically separating the uranium and plutonium—without U.S. notification and consent to do so.  This is a significant safeguard against the potential misuse of low-enriched uranium from the commercial sector.

Several public policy considerations must be weighed in evaluating the impact of 123 agreements, including those related to national security, economic development, energy production, and environmental protection. In the competitive global marketplace for commercial nuclear technology, inconsistent bilateral agreements will have unintended consequences for U.S. suppliers.  Imposing overly restrictive commercial restrictions or conditions in U.S. 123 agreements that are not matched by other nations’ bilateral agreements may significantly bias the country against selecting U.S.-based suppliers, even if the agreements don’t have malicious intentions. 

The Senate Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee included extensive language in their FY 2012 committee report about nuclear energy.  They wrote of being “extremely concerned that the United States continues to accumulate spent fuel from nuclear reactors without a comprehensive plan to collect the fuel or dispose of it safely, and as a result faces a $15,400,000,000 liability by 2020,” called for the development of “consolidated regional storage facilities,” and mandated research on dry cask storage, advanced fuel cycle options, and disposal in geological media.  The appropriators provided no funding for the Next Generation Nuclear Plant program or Light Water Reactor Small Modular Reactor Licensing Technical Support.  In a separate section, they direct the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to contract with the National Academy of Sciences for a study on the lessons learned from the Fukushima nuclear disaster, and discuss beyond design-basis events and mitigating impacts of earthquakes. Language from the committee report 112-75 follows, with page number references to the pdf version of this document.

Nuclear Energy The FY 2011 appropriation was $732.1 million The FY 2012 administration request was $754.0 million The FY 2012 House-passed bill provides $733.6 million, an increase of $1.5 million or 0.2 percent from the current budget. The Senate Appropriations Committee bill provides $583.8 million, a decline of $148.3 million or 20.3 percent.

“The Committee has provided more than $500,000,000 in prior years toward the Next Generation Nuclear Plant [NGNP] program.  Although the program has experienced some successes, particularly in the advanced research and development of TRISO [tristructural-isotropic] fuel, the Committee is frustrated with the lack of progress and failure to resolve the upfront cost-share issue to allocate the risk between industry and the Federal Government. Although the Committee has provided sufficient time for these issues to be resolved, the program has stalled. Recognizing funding constraints, the Committee cannot support continuing the program in its current form. The Committee provides no funding to continue the existing NGNP program, but rather allows the Department to continue high-value, priority research and development activities for high-temperature reactors, in cooperation with industry, that were included in the NGNP program.”

A national fisheries cooperative has decided to ban saury fishing within a 100-kilometer radius of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant in an effort to gain consumer confidence in the safety of saury caught in other areas.

A top regulator said on Sunday that a nuclear power plant threatened by flooding from the swollen Missouri River was operating safely and according to standards. "I got to see a lot of efforts they're taking to deal with flooding and the challenges that presents," Gregory Jaczko, the chairman of the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said after touring the Cooper Nuclear Station near the village of Brownville and meeting with plant officials and executives.

Right now, we think they're taking an appropriate approach. This is a plant that is operating safely and meeting our standards," he added.The plant is located about 80 miles south of Omaha, where snow melt and heavy rains have forced the waters of the Missouri River over its banks, although they have not flooded the plant and receded slightly on Sunday.Jaczko said he was not doing an official plant inspection. He was briefed by NRC resident inspectors -- the agency staff who work on-site every day -- plant officials and executives, said Mark Becker, a spokesman at the Nebraska Public Power District, the agency that runs the plant.The power plant sat about 4 feet above the river's level on Sunday. The river had surged over its banks near the plant and filled in low-lying land near the Cooper plant.Water levels there are down after upstream levees failed, Becker said, relieving worries that water will rise around the Brownville plant as it has at another nuclear plant north of Omaha in Fort Calhoun.Art Zaremba, director of nuclear safety at Cooper, backed the assessment."The plant is very safe right now, and we've taken a lot of steps to make sure it stays that way," Zaremba said.

at the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Station near Blair, Nebraska, the river is already lapping at the Aqua Dams -- giant plastic tubes filled with water -- that form a stockade around the plant's buildings. The plant has become an island.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued a "yellow finding PDF" (indicating a safety significance somewhere between moderate and high) for the plant last October, after determining that the Omaha Public Power District (OPPD) "did not adequately prescribe steps to mitigate external flood conditions in the auxiliary building and intake structure" in the event of a worst-case Missouri River flood. The auxiliary building -- which surrounds the reactor building like a horseshoe flung around a stake -- is where the plant's spent-fuel pool and emergency generators are located.

OPPD has since taken corrective measures, including sealing potential floodwater-penetration points, installing emergency flood panels, and revising sandbagging procedures. It's extremely unlikely that this year's flood, no matter how historic, will turn into a worst-case scenario: That would happen only if an upstream dam were to instantaneously disintegrate. Nevertheless, in March of this year the NRC identified Fort Calhoun as one of three nuclear plants requiring the agency's highest level of oversight. In the meantime, the water continues to rise

GE and Hitachi nuclear alliance companies are taking steps to strengthen their positions in emerging nuclear energy countries, with Hitachi-GE inaugurating a human resource training program for Southeast Asia and GE-Hitachi expanding its supplier network in Poland.   Japan-based Hitachi-GE has announced the establishment of a course at the Electric Power University (EPU) in Vietnam under a joint human resource training program with the Tokyo Institute of Technology (Titech).

A lack of human resources trained in nuclear power, energy and the environment, including within the academic sector, is a pressing issue for southeast Asian countries planning to introduce nuclear power. Indeed, when Japan was identified as the preferred partner for the construction of Vietnam's second nuclear power plant in 2010, a primary condition was cooperation in nuclear energy human resources development.

Against this backdrop, Hitachi-GE launched a joint international training program with Titech. As well as initiatives within Titech's Department of Nuclear Engineering (DNE), Hitachi-GE and Titech's efforts to promote human resource activities in Vietnam and other southeast Asian countries include establishing courses at local universities, Hitachi-GE scholarships for southeast Asian students at Titech's DNE, and offering student internships at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The course at EPU will be taught by Hitachi-GE engineers and Titech professors, and will be attended by around 40 EPU undergraduates. Hitachi-GE and Titech plan to implement similar initiatives in cooperation with other Southeast Asian universities.

"The radiation from this unreported but very dangerous event was released without protecting the residents of Fukushima Prefecture -- especially the children. But the radiation was detected at elevated levels from 2:30 AM until 7:30 AM on a monitor in Ibaraki Prefecture. How many Curies were released? When will this nuclear war against the Japanese people and the Northern Hemisphere ever end? Instead of evacuation, the government gives the children (sick with radiation symptoms) film badges to measure the external exposure dose ... another study group like US govt. studies on Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims (they are still being studied), Iraq victims, Gaza victims. And the US government did the same thing to Americans during 1,300 nuclear bomb tests in the US."

And if that's not enough bad news, we have another big problem. Here at home we have two Nebraska nuclear power stations located near the Missouri River, and one is already submerged in flood waters. A hole torn in a 2,000-foot, inflatable barrier placed around the facility allowed over several feet of water to pour into containment buildings and electrical transformers at the plant. This disaster was reported -- and then quickly silenced -- by mainstream media. Cooper Nuclear Station, one of the nuclear power plants in the area, declared a "Notification of Unusual Event" after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released massive amounts water from two dams. This event is ongoing. ...

I wish I knew how all of this will play out. All I know is sometimes we all feel like we're just communities of puny little ants who can never change a thing. But don't despair, for we are many ... and when we combine our numbers, we are a very powerful force! I truly believe that we are the ones we have always waited for. As a lover of American Indian culture, I recall an old Indian wise man once said...

Soon after Japan's triple disaster, I suggested that an official cover-up of a nuclear-weapons program hidden inside the Fukushima No.1 plant was delaying the effort to contain the reactor meltdowns. Soon after the tsunami struck, the Tokyo Electric Power Company reported that only three reactors had been generating electricity on the afternoon of March 11.. (According to the initial report, these were the older GE-built reactors 1,2 and 6.). Yet overheating at five of the plant's six reactors indicated that two additional reactors had also been operating (the newer and more advanced Nos. 3 and 4, built by Toshiba and Hitachi). The only plausible purpose of such unscheduled operation is uranium enrichment toward the production of nuclear warhead

On my subsequent sojourns in Japan, other suspicious activities also pointed to a high-level cover-up, including systematic undercounts of radiation levels, inexplicable damage to thousands of imported dosimeters, armed anti-terrorism police aboard trains and inside the dead zone, the jamming of international phone calls, homing devices installed in the GPS of rented cars, and warning visits to contacts by government agents discouraging cooperation with independent investigations. These aggressive infringements on civil liberties cannot be shrugged off as an overreaction to a civil disaster but must have been invoked on grounds of national security.

One telltale sign of high-level interference was the refusal by science equipment manufacturers to sell isotope chromatography devices to non-governmental customers, even to organizations ready to pay $170,000 in cash for a single unit. These sensitive instruments can detect the presence of specific isotopes, for example cesium-137 and strontium-90. Whether uranium was being enriched at Fukushima could be determined by the ratio of isotopes from enriched weapons-grade fissile material versus residues from less concentrated fuel rods.

Vienna, Sept 14, IRNA – Non-Aligned Movement in a statement read out at the meeting of International Atomic Energy Board of Governors on Wednesday underlined countries’ indisputable right to the development, research and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

The statement read by Egyptian envoy Khaled Sham’e said that NAM believes that all countries are entitled to the peaceful use of nuclear energy without any discrimination. Therefore, no country should be deprived of nuclear development for peaceful purposes. The countries’ decisions in the nuclear field such as Iran’s policies on fuel cycle should be respected, it noted.

NAM recognizes International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as the only qualified authority to verify commitment of the member states to the Safeguard Agreement and believes that it should not come under pressure in the process, the statement said. NAM considers building a region free of nuclear weapon in the Middle East as a positive step in line with the materialization of global nuclear disarmament and will extend its support to this end.

A new study by Dr. Mark Cooper of Vermont Law School, released today, warns "it is highly unlikely that the problems of the nuclear industry will be solved by an infusion of federal loan guarantees and other subsidies to get the first plants in a new building cycle completed. U.S. policymakers should resist efforts to force the government into making large loans on terms that put taxpayers at risk in order to ‘save' a project or an industry that may not be salvageable." The press release contains a link to the executive summary and the full report. Steven Thomas of Greenwich University in London, expert on Electricite de France and Areva economic woes, joined Dr. Cooper for the press conference, a full audio recording of which can be found at www.nuclearbailout.org after 6 p.m. today.

The seventh round of high-level talks between Taiwan and mainland China is scheduled for Tianjin Oct. 19 to 21, with the two sides expected to sign an agreement on nuclear power safety cooperation, the Straits Exchange Foundation said Oct. 12. SEF Chairman Chiang Pin-kung and his delegation will leave for Tianjin Oct. 19, according to an SEF news release. Chiang and his counterpart Chen Yunlin, head of the Beijing-based Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits, will sign the nuclear pact the following day.

Cross-strait relations have improved significantly since ROC President Ma Ying-jeou took office in 2008. Since then, the Chiang-Chen meetings have alternated twice a year between Taiwan and mainland China. The SEF and ARATS serve as intermediary agencies for institutionalized talks between the two sides. Lai Shin-yuan, minister of the Mainland Affairs Council, top planner for Taiwan’s mainland China policy and supervisor of the SEF, said the impending agreement will ensure frequent and transparent information exchanges on nuclear safety. Taiwan and mainland China began discussing nuclear power safety cooperation in May in the wake of the nuclear crisis in Japan following the magnitude-9 earthquake and ensuing tsunami that hit the country in March, according to Lai.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. on Oct. 21 decided to sell off 400 billion yen ($5.2 billion) in assets this fiscal year. While the utility plans to sell off some 700 billion yen in assets within three years, it plans to sell more than half that amount before this fiscal year ends in March. The measure is intended to demonstrate TEPCO's earnestness in restructuring efforts at a time when it is seeking government funding to help compensate sufferers of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant accident. The planned asset sales will be included in TEPCO's "emergency special business plan" that will be drawn up jointly with the government's Nuclear Damage Compensation Facilitation Corp. toward the end of October. The Compensation Facilitation Corp. on Oct. 21 held a meeting of its steering committee and approved TEPCO's policy on the sale of assets.

The plan assumes that about 700 billion yen will be needed for compensation payments in the current fiscal year. Also put forth will be restructuring measures in an effort to win industry minister Yukio Edano's approval for government funding. TEPCO will tap into the government funds, which will be provided by way of the Compensation Facilitation Corp., to compensate sufferers and will pay back the money out of its annual profits. Stocks will account for most of the asset sales. TEPCO possessed a total of 350 billion yen's worth of stocks as of the end of March. TEPCO plans to sell off 300 billion yen of these holdings by the end of the current fiscal year, except for those indispensable to electric power business operations. The utility will also sell 10 billion yen in real estate, including an office building close to its head office in Tokyo. Further, it will also sell parts of its affiliated companies.

The government's third-party investigation committee on TEPCO's management and finances had called on TEPCO, in a report released Oct. 3, to sell 700 billion yen in assets within three years. The emergency special business plan will also include cooperation from financial institutions. Key cooperation measures include maintaining 2 trillion yen in outstanding loans, which the utility borrowed before the March 11 disaster, until the end of this fiscal year and allowing the loans to be used not only for business operations but also for compensation payments. These measures are intended to prevent the company from falling short of cash before it receives government funding, as it has already started compensation payments. Toshio Nishizawa, TEPCO's president, on Oct. 21 told a news conference that the utility had paid a total of 151.6 billion yen in compensation, including both temporary and final payments.

"Absolutely no progress is being made" towards the final resolution of the crisis, Suzuki told reporters at a Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan news conference on Dec. 15. Suzuki, 55, worked for a Toshiba Corp. subsidiary as a general laborer there from July 13 to Aug. 22, documenting sloppy repair work, companies including plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) playing fast and loose with their workers' radiation doses, and a marked concern for appearances over the safety of employees or the public.

For example, the no-entry zones around the plant -- the 20-kilometer radius exclusion zone and the extension covering most of the village of Iitate and other municipalities -- have more to do with convenience that actual safety, Suzuki says. "(Nuclear) technology experts I've spoken to say that there are people living in areas where no one should be. It's almost as though they're living inside a nuclear plant," says Suzuki. Based on this and his own radiation readings, he believes the 80-kilometer-radius evacuation advisory issued by the United States government after the meltdowns was "about right," adding that the government probably decided on the current no-go zones to avoid the immense task of evacuating larger cities like Iwaki and Fukushima.

The situation at the plant itself is no better, where he says much of the work is simply "for show," fraught with corporate jealousies and secretiveness and "completely different" from the "all-Japan" cooperative effort being presented by the government.

Here was the handwritten log kept by a senior engineer at the nuclear power plant:

Wiesel was very upset. He seemed very nervous. Very agitated. . . . In fact, the plant was riddled with problems that, no way on earth, could stand an earth- quake. The team of engineers sent in to inspect found that most of these components could "completely and utterly fail" during an earthquake. "Utterly fail during an earthquake." And here in Japan was the quake and here is the utter failure. The warning was in what the investigations team called The Notebook, which I'm not supposed to have.  Good thing I've kept a copy anyway, because the file cabinets went down with my office building .... WORLD TRADE CENTER TOWER 1, FIFTY-SECOND FLOOR

[This is an excerpt in FreePress.org from Vultures' Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates and High-Finance Fraudsters, to be released this Monday.  Click here to get the videos and the book.] Two senior nuclear plant engineers were spilling out their souls and files on our huge conference table, blowing away my government investigations team with the inside stuff about the construction of the Shoreham, New York, power station. The meeting was secret. Very secret. Their courage could destroy their careers: No engineering firm wants to hire a snitch, even one who has saved thousands of lives. They could lose their jobs; they could lose everything. They did. That’s what happens. Have a nice day.

GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) president and CEO Caroline Reda is the top U.S. nuclear industry executive participating in a trade mission to India February 6-11. Reda will join U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, who is leading the mission, and senior officials from the Export-Import Bank (EX-IM), the Trade Development Agency (TDA), and executives from almost two dozen other U.S. companies

Reda is participating in her first mission to India since becoming GEH’s CEO in July 2010

The group will be visiting several cities in India, among them New Delhi and Mumbai, in order to explore export opportunities in a broad range of advanced industrial sectors including civil nuclear power generation, trade, defense and security, civil aviation, information and communications technologies.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. (MHI) has agreed with IBERDROLA Ingenieria y Construccion, S.A.U. (IBERDROLA Engineering & Construction), a Spanish engineering company, to collaborate for the bidding of constructing potential nuclear power generation plants (NPP) in some European countries

The two companies have already signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to cooperate on an exclusive basis for the qualification process to a European utility. Through this collaborative initiative MHI aims to accelerate market penetration of its EU-APWR, one of the world's largest - 1,700 MWe (megawatts of electricity) class - advanced pressurized water reactors (APWR) targeted at major European utilities. The agreement marks MHI's first collaborative partnership with a European company relating to the EU-APWR