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The focal point of most of the safety concerns at the Oyster Creek nuclear plant recently has been the drywell, a steel barrier surrounding the plant's reactor vessel that is supposed to contain radiation in the event of an accident. The fear is that the 40-year-old drywell is continuing to erode to the point it could buckle, creating a potentially cataclysmic accident. That concern is well-warranted. Thanks to the tenacity of citizen activists, approval of a 20-year license renewal is being held up pending further analysis of the drywell's structural integrity. If it receives a clean bill of health, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is all but certain to approve a 20-year license extension for the plant, the nation's oldest commercial reactor.

Less than a week after the Interior Department published the findings of a report claiming that 25% of the nation's electricity could be supplied by offshore wind farms, the Department also reached an agreement with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) over how the two agencies would handle the permitting and licensing of all types of renewable energy development on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) of the United States. On Thursday, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Jon Wellinghoff signed a memorandum of understanding (pdf) that establishes a streamlined process by which Interior's Minerals Management Service and the FERC will lease, license and regulate all renewable energy development activities on the OCS. According to Interior Secretary Salazar, the agreement will spur the development of clean, renewable energy, which he called, "the growth industry of the 21st Century," adding that, "Our nation's economic future demands we lead that competition."

About 350 people attended a meeting on a proposed $2 billion uranium enrichment plant planned by French-owned Areva SA to make fuel for commercial nuclear power reactors. The meeting was held by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission to outline its licensing process for the plant, slated to be operating by 2014. In a community that's been home to the Idaho National Laboratory since 1949, many at Wednesday's event said they were eager for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to allow construction of the proposed plant to be located about 20 miles from Idaho Falls.

Global recession? Must be time for the media's alternative-energy backlash My father used to say of his profession that newspaper editors are the people who come down from the mountaintop at the end of the battle and shoot the wounded. A massive credit crunch and a drop in the price of fossil fuels can mean only one thing to the editors of the traditional media -- an excuse for their favorite activity in the whole world, the backlash story. Faster than you can say "Joe the Plumber" isn't a licensed plumber, his name isn't Joe, and he has a tax lien against him, you can be sure that if the media ever lets itself fawn over you for even a nano-second, it will turn its coverage on a dime and run the minute a few whispy short-term clouds appear in the horizon. And so we have the New York Times story, "Alternative Energy Suddenly Faces Headwinds," which is supposed to be a clever headline, but the NYT, which accompanies the story with a picture of wind turbines, seems to have missed the irony that wind turbines like strong winds.

Two congressmen argue in a letter sent Wednesday that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission lacks power to grant a license for Salt Lake City-based EnergySolutions to import 20,000 tons of Italian low-level radioactive waste into the United States. Saying they understand a decision may be granted soon on EnergySolutions' request, Reps. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, and Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., ask the NRC to reject the application to bring the waste to American shores because there is no site to store it. "The NRC has no authority to import waste when there is not a facility to ultimately dispose of it," Matheson and Gordon wrote.

This may be the beginning of a bright new future for uranium mining in New Mexico. Uranium Resources, Inc., announced that the Mining and Minerals Division of the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department granted the company a permit to conduct exploratory drilling in the Ambrosia Lake area, where the company has approximately 2.4 million pounds of mineralized uranium material combined on several sections. The permit allows URI to drill 10 uranium exploratory holes about six miles west of the village of San Mateo.