[ RadSafe ] [Nuclear News] Government rethinks nuclear plan

[Sandy Perle]

Index:

Government rethinks nuclear plan
Revealing X-ray scanner makes its debut 
Israel to hold nationwide nuclear attack drill
Iran Earmarks $1.4 Billion Funding For Nuclear Power Plants - TV 
The ups and downs of TVA's nuclear program
India likely to export nuclear power technology 
Nuclear waste could be routed through Ga.
Solar System Offers No Safe Place from Radiation
----------------------------------------------------

Government rethinks nuclear plan

(Croydon Guardian) Feb 26 - A campaign led by Greenpeace has forced 
the Government into a rethink over its nuclear power plans.

The move came after a legal challenge against the consultation 
process was upheld.

A High Court judge ruled that the process undertaken before making 
the decision last year was "misleading, seriously flawed and 
procedurally unfair".

advertisementGreenpeace said it was pleased the court agreed with 
them. It also urged ministers to "go back to the drawing board".

Industry Secretary Alistair Darling said the Government would not 
appeal and accepted the decision.
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Revealing X-ray scanner makes its debut 

PHOENIX (USA TODAY) Feb 26 - The nation's newest airport-security 
machine scanned traveler John DeSoto this weekend and found something 
that had eluded metal detectors in the past: the thin gold chain and 
cross he wears under his shirt.

Backscatter X-ray, which photographs passengers under their clothing, 
could close a major security loophole by finding plastic bombs 
strapped to a terrorist's chest or other hidden non-metal weapons. 
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) began testing the 
advanced technology on Friday at Phoenix Sky Harbor International 
Airport and vows to find items elusive to metal detectors and more 
consequential than jewelry.

"It's a new day in aviation security," said TSA technology chief 
Michael Golden.

Advanced scanners became a higher priority in August after 
authorities foiled an alleged plot by terrorists in Britain to bomb 
U.S.-bound airplanes with liquid explosives. Similar machines will be 
tested this year at Los Angeles International Airport and New York's 
Kennedy International Airport and could be installed in airports 
across the USA.

The test, slated to last several months, will determine how well the 
machine finds weapons, how quickly it scans passengers and how people 
feel about a device the American Civil Liberties Union has branded a 
"virtual strip search."

The TSA ordered the machines modified to produce cartoon-like 
sketches of passengers instead of the graphic photos backscatter 
ordinarily generates.

The American Civil Liberties Union remains skeptical. "The problem 
with the obscured images is that they obscure weapons," said Barry 
Steinhardt, head of the ACLU's technology and liberty program. Even 
if passengers can choose between backscatter and a pat-down, "That's 
a false choice," Steinhardt said. "Both are intrusive."

Backscatter makers American Science and Engineering and Rapiscan 
Systems acknowledge that erasing body-part images also inhibits 
weapons detection.

Backscatter X-ray is used only on passengers getting extra screening 
- those who trip a checkpoint alarm or those selected by a 
computerized profiling system. The passengers can choose a 
traditional pat-down or opt to be screened by the backscatter X-ray. 
The TSA said about 70% of passengers who required extra screening at 
the test checkpoint in Phoenix this weekend chose the backscatter X-
ray method.

DeSoto was impressed with the new technology.

"I was really happy to see they were able to pick up my chain," 
DeSoto, 48, said Friday after he was the third U.S. passenger 
screened by backscatter. "It's very thorough."

Other Phoenix passengers liked backscatter for more personal reasons. 
"I didn't really want people touching me," said Sarah Atwill, a high-
school junior from Phoenix who was flying to Long Beach.

In Phoenix, the machine operates in Terminal 4 at a checkpoint used 
by about 8,000 US Airways or international passengers. Those getting 
extra screening are handed a backscatter brochure that emphasizes its 
low radiation, equivalent to the exposure from two minutes of flying.

Joe Reiss, vice president of marketing for American Science, which 
makes the machine in Phoenix, predicted most passengers will opt for 
backscatter because, "People feel that employing this technology can 
be helpful for security."

The $100,000 machine, on loan for the test, is as big as an 
industrial-size refrigerator. It photographs the front and back of a 
passenger as he or she stands inches away with arms raised. A 
screener, who is the same gender as the passenger being screened, 
studies the photos on a screen in a room 50 feet away. She radios to 
a screener stationed at the machine and describes objects on the 
passenger that need to be hand-checked.

The process takes about a minute - roughly as long as a pat-down - 
but longer if any suspicious item is found. Passenger images are 
deleted immediately, the TSA says.

"This is very easy," said Kenneth Johnson, 64, of Mesa, Ariz., after 
he became the first passenger screened by backscatter. A dozen TSA 
screeners and officials, including a few who had flown from 
Washington to launch the machine, stood by and applauded.

Cici Stevens of Prescott, Ariz., opted to be patted down Friday in 
Phoenix. Stevens, 42, had recently undergone a slew of medical tests 
that left her wary. "I'm just scared of going through anything 
electronic," Stevens said. "I don't trust technology."
---------------

Israel to hold nationwide nuclear attack drill

JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israel will next month stage its first-ever 
nationwide drill simulating a nuclear and chemical missile attack on 
its cities, rescue services said Monday. 
 
The exercise was initiated by the army's homefront corps in the wake 
of last summer's war in Lebanon and Iran's calls for the destruction 
of the Jewish state and its controversial nuclear programme.

Israel suspects is Iran is aiming to develop an atomic bomb, but 
Tehran insists its programme is for civilian energy purposes.

The main scenarios which will be simulated are a massive rocket 
attack on cities as well as a "conventional and non-conventional 
missile attack," Magen David Adom rescue services spokesman Yerucham 
Mandola told AFP.

During the drill -- which will include army rescue forces, police, 
medical and firefighting services -- air-raid sirens may be sounded 
across the entire country.

The Hezbollah militia fired over 4,000 rockets against northern 
Israel during the war last summer, killing more than 40 civilians and 
paralysing the region's industry and economy.

During the 1991 Gulf War, Israeli citizens were equipped with gas 
masks out of fear of a chemical attack. None of the missiles fired 
from Iraq against Israel were equipped with chemical warheads.
------------------

Iran Earmarks $1.4 Billion Funding For Nuclear Power Plants - TV 

TEHRAN (AP)--Iran said Monday it has earmarked $1.4 billion for 
construction of nuclear power plants amid international pressure to 
abandon its nuclear program, state television reported.

Word of the planned funding came as top members of the U.N. Security 
Council were meeting in the U.K. Monday to consider additional 
sanctions on Iran for its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment, a 
key nuclear process.

An Iranian parliament committee, reviewing next year's budget, 
approved the $ 1.4 billion appropriation for building new reactors, 
10% of which will go for training staff, the TV report said.

The decision requires approval by the majority of 290-seat parliament 
members and a constitutional watchdog to be a law.

Iran has already said it plans to build as many as 20 nuclear 
reactors, part of a project to generate 20,000 megawatts of 
electricity through nuclear power within the next two decades.

But it could face delays in opening its first nuclear plant, a $1 
billion project still under construction with Russian help at 
Bushehr. Russia said earlier this month its uranium fuel deliveries 
for Bushehr could fall behind schedule because of Iran's delays in 
payment.

Iran denied it had failed to make payments and raised concerns Moscow 
was buckling under international pressure and delaying the reactor's 
launch. Iran expects the Bushehr plant to begin generating 
electricity this year.

The TV report didn't say if any of the new appropriation by 
parliament would go toward the Bushehr plant.

The U.S. and other Western nations accuse Iran of seeking to develop 
nuclear weapons, a claim Iran denies, saying its nuclear program is 
intended only to generate electricity.

The U.N. has demanded Iran suspend uranium enrichment, a process that 
can either produce fuel for a reactor or the material needed to build 
a nuclear warhead.
----------------

The ups and downs of TVA's nuclear program   
  
Twenty-eight percent of the power produced by TVA comes from five 
nuclear reactors at three different plants. This falls far short of 
the seven plants and 17 reactors that were once on the TVA drawing 
boards.

Demand for electricity had mushroomed in the 1960s and 70s. To meet 
the demand, work began on nuclear plants at Bellefonte in Alabama, 
Yellow Creek in Mississippi, Hartsville in Middle Tennessee, and 
Phipps Bend in upper East Tennessee.

But in the early 1980s, demand for electricity leveled off, and two 
members of the three-member TVA Board, S. David Freeman and Richard 
Freeman (no relation) wanted to stress conservation rather than 
continue to pour money into TVA nuclear plants.

After already spending billions on the uncompleted plants, they were 
deferred, one after another, and later, canceled altogether. After 
Phipps Bend was canceled, the huge reactor was cut up into scrap 
metal. The $11 billion spent on canceled nuclear plants is a large 
part of TVA's current $25 billion debt. 

And in another blow to TVA's once-thriving nuclear program, the 
operating plants were in trouble, due to documentation problems, 
safety defects and employee complaints. Retired Admiral Steven White, 
a veteran of the Navy's nuclear program, was brought in to turn TVA's 
troubled nuclear program around.

After years of struggle and criticism, TVA's nuclear program has re-
emerged in the past decade, winning industry awards for safety and 
performance. Brown's Ferry will see another reactor come on line in 
May 2007, and there's talk of further expansion.

TVA's nuclear program is one of "Our Stories: 51 years of East 
Tennessee on TV." 
 ----------------

India likely to export nuclear power technology 

(IRNA) India may soon become an exporter of nuclear power technology 
with at least two south Asian countries having approached the Nuclear 
Power Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL) to develop plants for them. 

Two countries have approached them to develop 220 MW plants and to 
train the personnel necessary to man the plants, PTI reported here 
quoting NPCIL Chairman and Managing Director S K Jain. 

Refusing to name the countries, Jain said their delegations had 
already met him and were shown existing plants, designs, schedules, 
costing and safety parts -- all of which had met with their approval. 

"However, since we at present do not have sanction to export nuclear 
technology we will have to wait until it is granted by the 
international community," Jain said. 

He was speaking to reporters after Unit 3 of Kaiga Atomic Power 
Station, Karnataka, achieved criticality today after its first self- 
sustained thermo-nuclear reaction. 

Jain said NPCIL plans to construct eight 700 MW units and ten 1,000 
MW units in five years. 

"Construction of these projects matches the progress made in mining 
of uranium in the country, whose supply is expected to double. 

By the time construction of the plants is completed there will be 
sufficient fuel for them," Jain said. 
------------------

Nuclear waste could be routed through Ga. 
 
North Augusta, S.C.(The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) Feb 25  - Two 
South Carolina sites are in the running for a federal initiative that 
could send thousands of truckloads of nuclear waste through metro 
Atlanta.

Proponents of the plan say it's safe and that nuclear materials have 
been transported through the state before without incident.

A truck carrying silos of nuclear trash rolls through metro Atlanta 
on its way to South Carolina in 2001. Truck transport of nuclear 
materials, in Georgia and elsewhere, has a good safety record. But 
critics fear the region could become a nuclear dumping ground.
  
But transport is the least of the concerns of environmentalists and 
anti-nuclear activists who oppose President Bush's Global Nuclear 
Energy Partnership.

They are more concerned about what will happen if Savannah River 
Site, a federal facility near Augusta that made nuclear weapons 
materials during the Cold War, or a landfill for low-level 
radioactive waste next door in Barnwell, S.C., are chosen for the 
nuclear initiative.

If the U.S. Department of Energy selects one or both, opponents fear 
they will become the de facto Yucca Mountain. The Nevada depository 
is the only long-term solution for the country's nuclear waste, but 
it's at least 10 years away from opening and is gaining opposition.

Robert Guild of the South Carolina chapter of the Sierra Club warned 
that his state "will become the world's nuclear waste dumping 
ground."

But backers of moving the materials to South Carolina say the 
concerns are overblown. Many are people who have lived close to SRS 
and its nuclear materials for decades, and they say there have been 
comparatively few problems.

Local supporters also estimate the initiative could bring 7,000 jobs.

"The nuclear industry is the most highly regulated industry in the 
world and is one of the safest," said Carl Gooding, a council member 
from nearby Allendale County, S.C.

The Energy Department is considering 13 locations nationwide for one 
or more components of the president's global nuclear initiative, 
which is still years from reality.

Details of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership still need to be 
worked out - including taxpayers' cost - but the first phase of the 
plan calls for collecting used nuclear fuel, or spent nuclear rods, 
from commercial reactors and shipping it to a reprocessing facility 
where it would be converted into fuel for a commercial reactor.

The spent fuel, which would be shipped in stainless steel and lead 
casks, could come from any of the 65 nuclear reactor sites in the 
United States. most of them east of the Mississippi River.

Eventually the program would help U.S. companies sell the reprocessed 
nuclear fuel abroad for electricity.

The Department of Energy is scheduled to narrow its choices of sites 
for the program, and which companies could run it, by the summer of 
2008.

Radioactive tanks leak

Savannah River Site already has about 37 million gallons of 
radioactive liquid waste in large tanks, some of which are more than 
50 years old and leaking. Every year, the federal government spends 
more than $1 billion a year on cleanup at SRS.

But at a Department of Energy public hearing this month, federal 
officials heard many positive comments about the proposal for the 
Global Nuclear Energy Partnership from elected representatives and 
business leaders eager for the economic boost. Jobs and the tax base 
in the region have eroded since SRS started ramping down in the 
1980s.

Scott MacGregor, vice president of the Augusta Metro Chamber of 
Commerce, said the partnership is "the type of forward-thinking 
Augusta is proud of ... together we can meet the needs of the 
future."

Residents of Augusta and, just over the state line, the South 
Carolina communities of Aiken, North Augusta and Jackson, are 
accustomed to the 198,000-acre nuclear facility, which has operated 
in their backyard for more than 50 years.

Several generations of families have gotten their paychecks from SRS 
and no major accident has occurred. A report by the Atlanta-based 
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently predicted a 
minimal risk of cancer for people living nearby.

Proponents and opponents of Bush's plan agree the adjacent South 
Carolina sites both have a good chance for two reasons. The location 
is close to many of the nation's nuclear reactors that will provide 
the waste for reprocessing, and to major ports. Second, a 
reprocessing facility was built in Barnwell, near SRS, in the 1970s, 
but never opened.

Much will depend on congressional support. Congress sliced this 
year's proposed funding from $380 million to $120 million.

Jim Hardeman, manager of the Georgia Environmental Protection 
Division's Environmental Radiation Program, said if a South Carolina 
site is chosen, there's a good possibility most of the shipments of 
spent nuclear rods would either be trucked around I-285 or railed 
through downtown Atlanta, winding past Philips Arena and the state 
Capitol.

"Some of the maps they've put together to show nuclear waste 
transportation to Yucca, flip around and show them going to Savannah 
River Site," Hardeman said. "That's kind of what it would look like."

Government officials say the transportation of spent nuclear rods 
poses minimal risks to the public. According to the Department of 
Energy, a person standing 6 feet from a truck carrying casks full of 
spent nuclear fuel for one hour would receive a radiation dose 
equivalent to a chest x-ray.

They also say terrorism risks are minimized by keeping shipment 
routes and schedules secret. Only a designee in the governor's office 
of each state on the route is notified, officials said. Some 
shipments get law enforcement escorts.

Train and traffic accidents are always possible, but in 50 years of 
shipping radioactive material in the United States, there have been 
fewer than a dozen traffic accidents and no release of radioactive 
material, said James Giusti, spokesman for the Department of Energy.

When the Department of Energy studied transportation routes for Yucca 
Mountain, it concluded a release of radioactive material is likely to 
occur twice in 10 million years. Such an event would not cause even 
one cancer death, the government said.

Hardeman, with Georgia's EPD, said his office is monitoring the 
latest proposal for the Savannah River Site.

The plutonium route

If the South Carolina sites are chosen, it won't be the first time 
radioactive material has traveled over Georgia roads and rails.

Starting in 2002, about six tons of bomb-grade plutonium was trucked 
through Georgia from a Colorado nuclear weapons plant to Savannah 
River Site. South Carolina's governor at the time, Jim Hodges, 
protested the shipments. He unsuccessfully sued the federal 
government over concerns that it did not have a plan for permanently 
storing the material.

In a separate plan already approved and in the works at Savannah 
River Site, many more plutonium shipments are slated to begin once 
the government completes construction of a new plant there: the fuel 
facility.

The plant will convert weapons-grade plutonium into commercial 
reactor fuel to produce electricity. The $1 billion facility will 
bring thousands of radioactive truck shipments to and from SRS and 
over Georgia roads.

Among the proponents of South Carolina's sites are Sens. Saxby 
Chambliss (R-Ga.) and Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.). In a joint letter read 
at a February hearing before the DOE, they said nuclear energy is 
"safe, affordable and environmentally friendly."

"Be careful what you ask for," says Glenn Carroll, coordinator for 
Nuclear Watch South in Atlanta, formerly Georgians Against Nuclear 
Energy. "We already have 35 million gallons of high-level waste [at 
Savannah River Site], and we don't know what to do with it."
----------------

Solar System Offers No Safe Place from Radiation

(Red Orbit) Feb 26 - Imagine hiking across Antarctica, through ice, 
cold and bitter wind, enduring months of hardship, and finally 
arriving at the doorstep of the South Pole itself. 

At that moment you get hit by a Sahara sandstorm.

That's the analogy scientists are using to describe what happened to 
the ESA-NASA Ulysses spacecraft last December. "Ulysses was 
approaching the South Pole of the sun when it was 'sandblasted' by a 
cloud of high-energy particles-protons, electrons and heavy ions," 
says Arik Posner, Ulysses Program Scientist at NASA headquarters. The 
cloud was as foreign to the sun's South Pole as a Sahara sandstorm 
would be to Antarctica.

The strange tale begins on Dec. 5, 2006. 

Astronomers were in a state of excitement due to the sudden 
appearance of a giant and angry-looking sunspot on the sun's eastern 
limb-"sunspot 930," says Posner. On Dec. 5th it exploded, producing 
one of the strongest solar flares of the past 25 years. On the 
"Richter scale" of solar flares, X1 is considered intense; the Dec. 
5th flare was an X9. A flash of X-rays announced the blast to sensors 
in Earth orbit, and moments later a cloud of protons, electrons and 
heavy ions came rushing out of the blast site. This is the cloud that 
pelted Ulysses.

The process repeated on Dec. 6th (X6) and Dec. 13th (X3). Each 
explosion created its own cloud of high-energy particles. "We call 
these clouds 'radiation storms,'" says Posner. "They are common after 
big flares."

What's strange about these storms is where they went-to the South 
Pole. "All three storms were detected by the Ulysses spacecraft," 
says University of New Hampshire physicist Bruce McKibben. He is 
principal investigator for COSPIN (Cosmic and Solar Particle 
INvestigation), an array of sensors onboard Ulysses that counts high 
energy particles. "The Dec. 6th event was particularly strong and 
rich in heavy ions."

The Dec. 6th storm was so strong, in fact, "that if Earth had been 
where Ulysses was, we would have experienced a full-fledged Ground-
Level Event," says Prof. Bernd Heber of the Institute for 
Experimental and Applied Physics in Keil, Germany. In other words, 
the particles were capable of tunneling all the way through Earth´s 
atmosphere to reach the ground. Heber is principle investigator for 
the Kiel Electron Telescope (KET), a sensor onboard Ulysses able to 
detect such super-energetic electrons, protons and ions.

These observations add up to "a big puzzle," says McKibben. Sunspot 
930 was near the sun's equator, while Ulysses was over the sun's 
South Pole. The sun's magnetic field should have kept the storms 
bottled up at low latitudes. How did they reach Ulysses?

It's a puzzle NASA is keen to solve. Solar radiation storms can cause 
communication blackouts on Earth; they can disable satellites in 
Earth-orbit; and in extreme cases they could be deadly to astronauts. 
"We need to be able to predict the trajectory of these storms," says 
Posner.
 
Heavy ions (Z>2) counted by Ulysses over the sun's south pole vs. ACE 
over the sun's equator in Dec. 2006.  
The Parker Spiral. Image credit: Steve Suess, NASA/MSFC. The key is 
the sun's magnetic field. Just as Earth's magnetic field guides 
compass needles, the sun´s magnetic field guides radiation storms. 
"Radiation storms consist of charged particles which naturally follow 
lines of magnetic force."

To forecast the path of a radiation storm, researchers have in the 
past relied on the "Parker spiral," a pioneering magnetic model 
developed by University of Chicago physicist Eugene Parker. According 
to his work, the sun's magnetic field emerges radially from the sun's 
surface and spirals outward into the solar system. "The spiral shape 
is caused by the spinning motion of the sun," explains Posner. "It's 
like a spiral stream of water from a spinning lawn sprinkler."

The Parker spiral makes a straightforward prediction: Radiation 
storms that begin near the equator should remain near the equator. A 
storm might expand into the solar system and hit Earth, which is not 
far off the sun´s equatorial plane, but it should not hit Ulysses 
over the sun's South Pole.

Clearly, there's more to the story than a graceful spiral. The real 
solar magnetic field may contain kinks and twists that provide a 
polar passage, a route storms can travel from equator to poles. There 
is evidence for the idea: In 2000 and 2001, the last Solar Max, the 
sun's magnetic field was full of convoluted, non-Parkerian 
structures. "During that time, Ulysses experienced six high-latitude 
radiation storms," notes McKibben: data.

Mapping and understanding these passages, if they exist, is work for 
the future. Meanwhile, one thing is clear: "There is no place in the 
inner solar system completely safe from radiation storms," says 
Posner

Sandy Perle
Senior Vice President, Technical Operations
Global Dosimetry Solutions, Inc.
2652 McGaw Avenue
Irvine, CA 92614 

Tel: (949) 296-2306 / (888) 437-1714  Extension 2306
Fax:(949) 296-1144

E-Mail: sperle at dosimetry.com
E-Mail: sandyfl at cox.net 

Global Dosimetry Website: http://www.dosimetry.com/ 
Personal Website: http://sandy-travels.com/