[ RadSafe ] [Nuclear News] U.S. panel shuns sick nuclear workers

[Sandy Perle]

Index:

U.S. panel shuns sick nuclear workers
PPL to Consider Adding Third Reactor to Pa. Nuclear Plant
Philipine Govt completes payment for idle nuclear reactor
Nuclear plant seeks source of tritium water
Train carrying nuclear cargo overheats
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U.S. panel shuns sick nuclear workers

DENVER, June 13 (UPI) -- A federal panel in Denver ruled against 
special consideration for about 3,000 former nuclear workers 
suffering from 22 kinds of cancer. 
After two days of hearings, the Advisory Board on Radiation and 
Worker Health voted 6-4 Tuesday against expediting health claims of 
$150,000 each for the former employees of the Rocky Flats facility 
outside Denver, the Denver Post reported Wednesday. 

The factory northwest of Denver opened in 1951 and made plutonium 
triggers for nuclear warheads and was shut down in 1991. 

Out of 6,140 claims filed, 802 payments have been made to cancer 
victims or their families, the report said. 

Advisory board chairman Paul Zeimer said Congress had created a 
"convoluted process" in the compensation process. 

"Unfortunately the burden has been passed to a group like this to 
correct what Congress did," Zeimer said in the Post article. 

Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers union, which 
represented many of the workers, said there would be more 
congressional appeals. 
----------------

PPL to Consider Adding Third Reactor to Pa. Nuclear Plant 

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) -- PPL Corp. said Wednesday that it is 
considering building a third reactor at the nuclear power plant it 
operates in northeastern Pennsylvania.
PPL notified the Nuclear Regulatory Commission of its intent to apply 
for a combined construction and operating license.

The Allentown-based utility said it is mulling a third reactor at the 
Susquehanna plant near Berwick as part of a broader strategy to 
expand its generating capacity. PPL said it will also explore the 
acquisition or construction of coal, hydro, natural gas and renewable 
energy plants.

A decision to expand the nuclear plant could take up to four years, 
PPL said, adding that it would only build a new reactor in 
partnership with another company.

PPL said it has also asked Valley Forge-based PJM Interconnection, 
the company that operates the mid-Atlantic power grid, to study how a 
new reactor would be connected to the network.

"Given the growing concerns regarding climate change around the world 
and the growing need for power plants in the PJM, it absolutely makes 
sense to create this valuable option -- for the electricity users in 
the mid-Atlantic region and for the shareowners of PPL," James H. 
Miller, PPL's chairman, president and chief executive said in a 
statement.

The two existing reactors at the Susquehanna plant were built in the 
1980s at a cost of $2 billion each. Together, they are responsible 
for 25 percent of PPL's annual output, said company spokesman Dan 
McCarthy.
-----------------

Philipine Govt completes payment for idle nuclear reactor

The government has finally paid off the Bataan nuclear power plant 
almost 32 years after work began on what became the country´s biggest 
white elephant that never produced a single watt of electricity, a 
government official told Agence France-Presse Wednesday. 

"The final payment of $15 million was settled in April," Filemon 
Condino head of the fiscal planning and assessment division of the 
Bureau of the Treasury said. 

One of the pet projects of late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, the 
controversial power plant cost the Filipino taxpayer a total of P21.2 
billion ($460 million at today´s exchange rate) on a debt of $1.06 
billion. 

"It is now officially off the books," he said. "Today it is just a 
big white elephant." The plant, located in Bataan, was a knee-jerk 
reaction by Marcos to the energy crisis of the early 1970s. 

The Middle East oil embargo of the time put a heavy strain on the 
Philippine economy and Marcos saw nuclear power as the best way 
forward in terms of meeting the country´s future needs and reducing 
reliance on imported oil. Construction began in 1976 and was 
completed in 1984 at a cost of $2.3 billion. "The plant is basically 
still intact, including the reactor," Mauro Marcelo, manager of asset 
preservation for the Energy Department, said. 

Although the plant has been up for sale for decades, he said it was 
unlikely anyone would want to buy a reactor whose technology dates 
back to the 1980s. 

Energy Secretary Raphael Lotilla said given the strict requirements 
of the International Atomic Energy Agency, it would be far more 
expensive to rehabilitate the plant than to build a new one. 

"Apart from being developed as a monument to folly or a tourist 
attraction, the property is now under the Asset Privatization Trust," 
he said. 

"The site could be used for a new power plant using other kinds of 
fuel but to convert the existing plant is not economically feasible," 
he said. 

"Somebody might come up with a brilliant idea later on but right now, 
that is where we are," he said. "Since we can´t make use of it as a 
power plant, it might attract tourists who want to see what a nuclear 
power plant looks like." 

The power station has been the center of controversy from the day 
construction began. 

When Marcos was overthrown in early 1986, a team of international 
inspectors visited the site and declared it unsafe and inoperable as 
it was built near major earthquake fault lines and close to the then 
dormant Pinatubo Volcano. 

Debt repayment on the plant became the country´s biggest single 
obligation. 

Successive governments looked at ways of converting the plant into an 
oil, coal or gas fired power station but found the cost to be too 
expensive. 

The plant itself has been maintained despite never having been 
commissioned. 

A Westinghouse light water reactor, it was designed to produce some 
621 megawatts of electricity. 

Much of the technology used in the plant was early 1970s but modified 
following the Three Mile Island accident in the United States in 
1979.
--------------

Nuclear plant seeks source of tritium water

A radioactive isotope has been detected in standing water on 
Brunswick Nuclear Plant property.

The material, tritium, was discovered in water contained in two on-
site manholes this week during a routine environmental check, 
according to Rick Kimble, a spokesman with Progress Energy corporate 
headquarters in Raleigh.

While employees are working now to trace the "footprint" of the 
tritium, a naturally occurring variant of hydrogen used in fusion 
reactors and neutron generators, Kimble said Tuesday that, so far, 
there is no evidence that the radioactive element has made its way 
off plant property 
and into area waters.

"Tests from drinking water wells on-site show no traces of tritium, 
and we have no evidence that drinking water has been affected," 
Kimble said in a company statement e-mailed Tuesday. "The discovery 
of tritium in the areas identified does not pose a health or safety 
hazard to the public. Tests also indicate that the measurable tritium 
is confined within the plant´s property boundaries."


The manholes, Kimble explained, are adjacent to a stabilization pond 
used to collect condensation from the reactor cooling system and 
storm drain runoff from the Brunswick Nuclear Plant.

"The assumption is that the tritium came from the pond. 

The only thing to do in this situation is to immediately dig more 
wells to identify the footprint of the tritium," Kimble said in a 
phone interview Tuesday. 

It will take nearly six weeks of drilling and testing to gather 
comprehensive and detailed data concerning the radioactive element´s 
path. 

But Kimble said early indications are that the leak was small and 
will be controllable inside plant property.

"There is no indication it has migrated to drinking water or even off-
site at all. The drilling will tell us more," he said.

Progress Energy has already hired an independent hydrologist and 
geologist to drill monitoring wells and to assist the Brunswick plant 
in resolving the problem.

Tritium is produced naturally in the upper atmosphere and used in 
small amounts in the manufacture of wristwatches, exit signs and 
other luminescent devices. It is a byproduct of nuclear reactors 
during electricity production. 

Kimble said tritium is also commonly found in water and in low doses, 
is not considered hazardous.

"It is an almost benign radionuclide. It almost always attaches in 
water and is managed normally by dilution," he noted.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) classifies tritium as 
one of the "least dangerous radionuclides" because it emits low 
amounts of radiation and, when ingested, usually through water, it is 
excreted through urine in approximately a month. It has a half-life 
of 12.3 years.

Tritium is found naturally in many water supplies in low 
concentrations, according to the EPA website. It is produced through 
the erosion of natural deposits of radioactive rocks and soils.

But the EPA´s radiation report also cautions that exposure to the 
compound, the EPA has determined, may be elevated in people who live 
near or work in nuclear facilities. The EPA has standards for nuclear 
facilities regulating the amount of tritium released into the 
environment.

Kimble said Progress Energy is committed to fixing the problem and 
added that the company would keep area residents notified as drilling 
tests continue.

"We remain deeply committed to the health and safety of the public 
and our employees and we will provide further updates as we learn 
more," he said.

Tritium is a hydrogen atom with an extra neutron and occurs as a gas, 
but is most often found in water since tritium readily combines with 
oxygen to form what is called tritiated water. Tritium emits a form 
of radioactive energy called a weak beta particle.

In drinking water, alpha and beta radiation is measured in picocuries 
per liter (pCi/L). The EPA limit for all beta radiation combined is 
50 pCi/L. The most recent tests of Southport´s two wells for beta 
radiation was in 2004 and no alpha or beta radiation was detected.

Southport also draws some of its drinking water from the Brunswick 
County public utilities well north of the city. The most recent test 
of that well for beta radiation showed a level of 2.48 pCi/L in the 
year 2000.
----------------

Train carrying nuclear cargo overheats

Available Frank began a job he had to figure out as he went along. 
The train car with the nuclear products was attached at the end of 
the train to a caboose. An armed military person had to be in the 
watchtower of the caboose 24/7 to keep an eye on the train car. Thus 
began a long, hot, frustrating trip on a caboose attached to a car of 
nuclear components.

Smoky caboose
The first problem started shortly after pulling out, and they hadn´t 
gotten very far when suddenly the caboose filled with smoke. Coughing 
and with his eyes burning, and trying to figure out what was 
happening, the train finally came to a halt. It seemed the caboose 
had gotten a "hotbox" and caught on fire. Dandy, Frank thought.

The two cars could not continue, so they were disengaged from the 
train and left there until another engine could come and get them to 
take them to Kansas City. 

Seemingly abandoned in the middle of nowhere, the sun beat down on 
Frank as he paced alongside the rail car full of nuclear stuff. From 
time to time, Frank could kick a thistle but that was about all there 
was alongside that train track. There wasn´t a lick of shade and all 
he and his three men could do was cuss. Finally, an engine came for 
them and took them to the rail yard in Kansas City, which was the 
biggest, emptiest place Frank had ever seen, miles of track as far as 
the eye could see. The engine simply stopped and left the car with 
the nuclear components and the caboose in the vast rail yard. Frank 
guessed the temperature was way over 100 degrees and when looking in 
any direction, all he saw was rail line with heat waves dancing off 
them. Finally, Frank flagged down someone to take him to the rail 
yard headquarters.

Looking disheveled, his uniform wrinkled, damp and smoke smudged, his 
face streaked with smoke encrusted sweat, Frank entered the 
headquarters and faced a gray-haired receptionist who looked at Frank 
as if he were the Slime Monster From The Black Lagoon. After 
reassuring her that he was an officer in the United States Army, 
Frank explained their situation.

The superintendent for the rail yard arrived and Frank told him that 
he and his men were stuck out on the rail yard and were near the 
broiling point and so, too, was the train car with nuclear 
components.

The superintendent brought a bunch of fans out to the caboose and 
then put his hands on his hips as he looked at the rail car Frank 
guarded. "Do you want fans in that car too?" he asked.

Frank got in his face and snapped, "Don´t you touch that car."

The superintendent nodded. "How about food?"

"That would be great," Frank said.
-----------------------------------------
Sandy 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/