[ RadSafe ] [Nuclear News] Westinghouse cements deal for China nuclear plants

[Sandy Perle]

Index:

Westinghouse cements deal for China nuclear plants
American acceptance of nuclear power grows
Energy industry gears up for 'nuclear renaissance' by Jacques Lemieux
FDA ruling gives market boost to anti-radiation pill
IAEA to send team to quake-hit nuclear plant
Small fire breaks out at Japanese nuclear plant
Earthquake stokes fears over nuclear safety in Japan
Japan underestimated fault line at nuclear plant
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Westinghouse Electric Co. agreed Tuesday to build four nuclear power 
plants in eastern China.

Monroeville, Pa.-based Westinghouse and partner Shaw Group of 
Louisiana, agreed to the deal involving the State Nuclear Power 
Technology Co. of China (SNPTC), Sanmen Nuclear Power Co., Shandong 
Nuclear Power Co. Ltd., and China National Technical Import & Export 
Corp.

Construction will begin in 2009, with the first plant slated for 
operation in 2013 and the remaining three coming on line in the next 
two years, Westinghouse said in a statement. It did not give specific 
financial terms but said the deal would create some 5,000 jobs in at 
least 20 states in the United States.

Westinghouse will build four 1.1-gigawatt reactors using its advanced 
AP1000 design, a technology the company said is the basis for nearly 
half of the world's operating nuclear plants.
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American acceptance of nuclear power grows

BOSTON (Reuters) JUL 24 - As the price of oil rises, so has the 
number of Americans who believe nuclear energy is an acceptable 
source of power, although the pro-nuclear camp is still a minority, a 
study showed on Monday. 
 
The survey by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found 35 
percent of people in the United States favored increasing the 
nation's reliance on nuclear energy, up from the 28 percent who held 
that view five years ago.

The 35 percent who wanted to increase nuclear power usage exceeded 
the 28 percent who wanted to reduce its use, it said.

Concerns about how to safely store nuclear waste were one of the main 
factors influencing those who remain reluctant to expand nuclear 
operations, said Stephen Ansolabehere, the MIT political scientist 
who conducted the March survey of 1,200 people across the country.

"That uptick is favorable, but it's not a huge transformation. It's 
not like we've gone from a solid majority against to a solid majority 
in favor," Ansolabehere said.

"The level of discomfort with the technology has a lot to do with 
what is the big unsolved problem both at the elite level and at the 
public level -- which is how do you handle the waste?"

The survey found only 28 percent of U.S. residents believed nuclear 
waste could be stored safely.

The finding comes at a time when officials in Washington and the 
power industry are calling for a "nuclear renaissance." The 100 U.S. 
nuclear reactors are approaching the end of their lifespans, and 
power industry officials have said a wave of construction will be 
needed to keep nuclear's current share of 20 percent of the nation's 
electricity supply.

Merchant power company NRG Energy Inc. is planning to build a plant 
in Texas that would be the nation's first new nuclear power facility 
in about three decades.

Industrial conglomerates including General Electric Co., Hitachi 
Ltd., which have joined forces in the nuclear business, and Toshiba 
Corp. are stepping up their efforts to capitalize on the potential 
building boom.
------------------

Energy industry gears up for 'nuclear renaissance' by Jacques Lemieux 

MCCLEAN LAKE, Canada (AFP) Jul 24 - Twenty years after the Chernobyl 
disaster poisoned the world's taste for reactors, a French firm is 
sniffing out fresh uranium supplies in Canada. And the race for 
nuclear power is back on. 
 
After the deadly Chernobyl reactor explosion in Ukraine in 1986 and a 
lesser scare at the Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania that rattled 
the United States in 1979, "people were wondering whether nuclear 
power even had a future," said Yves Dufour, one of the directors of 
Areva, the world's leading civilian nuclear power provider.

"For 20 years, we've been crossing a desert," the industry's very own 
"nuclear winter," said Dufour.

The Three Mile Island meltdown apparently harmed no one but shook 
public confidence in nuclear plants. The fallout from Chernobyl, 
however, spread widely and affected an estimated five million people.

But now a breath of optimism is warming the sector up, just as it did 
during the petrol crisis of 1973.

Areva, based in France -- which alone among western countries 
continued to build nuclear power plants after these scares -- is 
angling for new uranium supplies for its reactors. Such prospecting 
declined sharply in the dark days after Chernobyl.

"The nuclear renaissance has become a fact -- it's a certainty," 
Areva's spokesman Charles Hufnagel told AFP during a tour of this 
uranium mine that the company is exploiting in the western Canadian 
province of Saskatchewan.

There are 438 nuclear reactors in 30 countries which provide 16 
percent of the world's electricity, according to the latest industry 
figures.

Most of them were built from the 1960s to early 1980s, and are 
getting old. Replacing them could answer concerns about the harmful 
global warming caused by the carbon dioxide (CO2) released by burning 
fossil fuels.

"Global warming fears, rising fossil fuel prices and surging power 
demand in the Far East are fueling a new wave of nuclear plant 
construction," according to a report by the Canadian bank CIBC World 
Markets.

Hufnagel meanwhile insists economic factors are behind the decisions 
of countries such as Finland, Britain, Canada and the United States 
to re-launch nuclear power projects.

The aim is "not only to produce electricity that is cheap but above 
all at a stable price in the long term," he said. "No country has yet 
decided to re-launch a nuclear program just to fight against CO2."

"The nuclear renaissance is also a thing of the south, with big 
countries that also wish to be the leaders of their region," he 
added, citing the notable examples of China, Brazil and South Africa.

Some 150 new reactors are expected to be built in the next two or 
three decades, many of them in China, with the number of active 
plants set to double by 2070.

A scramble has begun to start bagging uranium to feed them. Current 
uranium production -- after the post-Chernobyl decline in investment 
in the sector -- can only feed 60 of the existing reactors' capacity.

Much of the rest comes from stockpiles dating back to the petrol 
crisis and recycled nuclear material from ex-Soviet warheads, Dufour 
said.

These uranium sources however will soon be exhausted. Mining analyst 
John Redstone of Montreal-based investment broker Desjardins 
Securities, says uranium supply falls some 1,000 tonnes short of the 
current world demand of 66,800.

This is pushing up the price of uranium to new highs, topping 130 
dollars per pound compared to less than seven dollars in 2001, he 
said. 

Producers are responding by stepping up their capacity, said Dufour, 
as well as scouring the planet for new sources of the crucial 
mineral. "The difficulty for production will be the next three 
years." 

The opening of new mines in Canada starting in 2009 would boost 
supplies and lessen the strain. 

But at today's consumption rate, the proven and probable global 
reserves of 4.74 million tonnes could feed existing reactors for only 
65 years, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). 


Those reserves are found mostly in Australia, Kazakhstan, Canada, the 
United States and South Africa. 

Another 10 million tonnes of uranium that are believed to exist would 
push the deadline into the next century. "But we have to go find 
these 10 million tonnes," said Dufour.
-----------------

FDA ruling gives market boost to anti-radiation pill

Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal - July 20, Federal regulators 
have granted "orphan drug" status to Humanetics Corp.'s product for 
combating acute radiation sickness, a decision that will give the 
biotech firm tax benefits and rights to market its drug exclusively 
for seven years. 

The drug, dubbed BIO 300, is still undergoing clinical trials and 
hasn't received final approval from the U.S. Food and Drug 
Administration (FDA). However, the designation will provide the firm 
with additional patent protection and other perks.
------------------

IAEA to send team to quake-hit nuclear plant
 
VIENNA (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog will send a team of 
experts to Japan in the coming weeks to check the world's biggest 
nuclear power plant after a powerful earthquake last week caused 
radiation leaks, the agency said on Tuesday. 
 
Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant 
leaked water containing radioactive materials from a reactor after a 
6.8 magnitude quake struck northwest Japan on Monday last week. The 
leaks rekindled fears about the safety of Japan's nuclear industry.

"This invitation is important for identifying lessons learned that 
might have implications for the international nuclear safety regime," 
the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in a statement.

Initially, Japan had told the IAEA it did not need help, but on 
Monday it said it would allow inspectors into the quake-hit plant 
after coming under pressure from local authorities.

The plant was shut down automatically in the quake and will remain 
closed indefinitely for safety checks. Japan has ordered other 
nuclear plant operators to make strict safety checks.

The exact timing of the joint Japanese-IAEA examination will be 
decided in consultation with the Japanese authorities, the IAEA said, 
stopping short of giving any dates. The Nikkei business daily 
reported that four IAEA inspectors would visit the site as soon as 
early August.

Nuclear energy supplies around one-third of the country's electricity 
needs in Japan, which now has 55 nuclear reactors.
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Small fire breaks out at Japanese nuclear plant

TOKYO (AP) Jul 24 - A small fire has broken out at a nuclear power 
reactor under construction in northern Japan, the third blaze there 
this month. 

The plant's operator, Hokkaido Electric Power Co., said in a 
statement today that workers immediately doused the flames and there 
were no injuries and no danger of a radiation leak. 

Authorities were investigating the fire, the third this month at the 
Tomari nuclear plant on Hokkaido island, where two other reactors 
were operating normally. 

Kyodo News agency said investigators found damage to electric wiring, 
and suspected foul play. 

The fires come amid heightened concerns over nuclear safety in Japan 
after an earthquake ravaged a nuclear power station on the country's 
main island of Honshu, causing radiation leaks, burst pipes and 
flooding. 
----------------

Earthquake stokes fears over nuclear safety in Japan

TOKYO: Japanese concerned over nuclear safety

After a deadly earthquake struck northwestern Japan last week, the 
nation was stunned when a nuclear power plant near the earthquake's 
center suffered widespread damage, including minor radiation leaks, 
ruptured pipes, flooding and a fire that belched black smoke for more 
than an hour on live television.

But perhaps the most startling discovery came in the days that 
followed, when scientists used data from the magnitude 6.8 earthquake 
to conclude that the builders of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, the 
world's largest by electrical output, may have unknowingly 
constructed it directly on top of an active seismic fault.

"Not finding the fault was a miss on our part," said Toshiaki Sakai, 
who heads the engineering group in charge of Tokyo Electric's nuclear 
plants. "But it was not a fatal miss by any means."

The earthquake, which killed 11 people and destroyed hundreds of 
homes in the nearby city of Kashiwazaki, has raised questions about 
the safety of Japan's nuclear plants.

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 The plants in this earthquake-prone nation are supposed to be nearly 
quake-proof, built to withstand the most powerful punch. Tokyo 
Electric Power, the plant's operator, said the tremors last week were 
more than twice as strong as the plant's design limits. So the 
plant's vulnerability to damage has distressed many Japanese.

The damage at the Kashiwazaki facility also offered a vivid reminder 
of the risks of nuclear power at a time when the United States, 
Europe and countries elsewhere are giving atomic energy a second look 
as a clean, plentiful alternative to oil and other fossil fuels. 
Resource-poor Japan kept building new nuclear plants even after 
accidents like Three Mile Island in 1979 in the United States and 
Chernobyl in 1986 in Ukraine froze construction in the United States 
and parts of Europe for decades.

Nuclear experts applaud the fact that all four of the Kashiwazaki 
plant's seven reactors that were operating when the earthquake struck 
were safely shut down, despite the unexpected strength of the 
tremors. But Tokyo Electric's failure to predict the possible size of 
the tremors that could strike the area and to detect the fault line 
have left many here wondering whether regulators and plant operators 
could also have underestimated the potential for devastating 
earthquakes at Japan's 48 other nuclear reactors.

"The plant did an excellent job of ensuring the safety of the 
reactors themselves," said Michio Ishikawa, president of the Japan 
Nuclear Technology Institute, an industry-sponsored research group. 
"But how could they have not known about the active fault line?"

On Tuesday, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, which 
oversees energy-related policy, said it would create an independent 
panel to investigate the damage at the Kashiwazaki plant, in Niigata 
Prefecture. The panel's findings will be presented to the United 
Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency, which also will send 
inspectors to the plant.

The discovery of the fault line below the Kashiwazaki plant has 
attracted intense media attention in Japan, partly because it echoes 
problems that have already plagued nuclear plants elsewhere in the 
country. There have been lawsuits seeking the closure of at least 
four other plants because of nearby fault lines, including a plant in 
the western town of Shika, where a large fault was discovered in 
2005, just before the plant's completion.

The earthquake also defied expectations by moving in a different way 
from previous earthquakes in the region, Tokyo Electric said. The 
plant was designed to withstand shorter, more intense tremors. But 
the quake last week struck with a broad, wrenching, horizontal 
swaying that caused water to slosh out of storage pools.

About 1,200 liters, or more than 300 gallons, of that spilled water, 
contaminated by tiny amounts of radioactive material, made its way 
into the nearby Sea of Japan. Tokyo Electric said the levels of 
radioactivity in the spill and a separate leak of contaminated 
exhaust were far too low to harm the environment. It also said damage 
at the plant occurred only in less critical parts of the plant, which 
are built to less stringent standards than the reactors, which are 
housed in bunker-like concrete buildings.

Tokyo Electric admitted that it had failed to find the fault that 
caused the earthquake. The company said the fault line did not show 
up in surveys of the area made in the late 1970s, when it started 
constructing the plant. But the company said the plant was still safe 
because the fault line appeared to lie more than 20 kilometers, or 12 
miles, beneath it, too deep to cause the sorts of big cracks and 
other surface movement that could damage the reactors' thick concrete 
buildings.

Still, critics said the fact that the fault could go unseen pointed 
to a bigger problem: the broad discretion that the government gives 
power companies in deciding whether a site is safe.

Katsuhiko Ishibashi, a professor at Kobe University who studies 
earthquakes and urban safety, was a member of a committee last year 
that set new earthquake-safety guidelines for nuclear reactors in 
Japan. He said some of the committee's 20 members were academics and 
engineers with close ties to power companies, including one who 
served as an adviser to those companies.

Ishibashi said the new guidelines, approved in September, were too 
vague and left too much discretion to power companies in deciding 
whether a plant site was seismically safe. He said he got so angry at 
the lack of discussion within the committee about the new guidelines 
that he resigned during the final meeting.

The strength of the earthquake in Kashiwazaki "could have been 
predicted, and should have been predicted," Ishibashi said. "The new 
guidelines are very insufficient and have loopholes."

Plant operators and government regulators called such criticism 
unfair. They said the companies' plans face intense scrutiny from 
committees of independent academics. They also said the Kashiwazaki 
plant was just unlucky: The quake struck a year before Tokyo Electric 
was to finish a new survey of the site to ensure that the plant met 
the new seismic safety guidelines.

"The company did the best it could with the technology that it had 
available when the plant was constructed," said Hitoshi Sato, deputy 
director general for nuclear safety at the Ministry of Economy, Trade 
and Industry. "If you insisted on being 100 percent sure about 
finding all active fault lines, you'd never get anything built."
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Japan underestimated fault line at nuclear plant

Australian Broadcasting Company JUL 24 - Japan's industry minister 
has admitted the government had underestimated the possible risks of 
building the nation's biggest nuclear power plant near a seismic 
fault line.

A deadly earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale on July 16 
caused a small amount of radiation to leak from the Kashiwazaki-
Kariwa plant north-west of Tokyo, fuelling public concerns.

The earthquake struck off the coast just nine kilometres from the 
power plant.

"In the way we dealt with it (the fault line) in the ocean area, we 
have to agree that the government's action was inadequate," Minister 
of Economy, Trade and Industry Akira Amari said.

Before building the plant in the 1970s, operator Tokyo Electric Power 
Co submitted a pre-construction report, in which the firm allegedly 
underestimated the earthquake risks linked with the fault line in the 
area.

The government approved the company's assessment.

Mr Amari said his ministry would toughen its earthquake preparedness 
standards when reviewing construction plans for future nuclear 
plants.

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Sander C. Perle
President
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/