[ RadSafe ] [Nuclear News] Local SC utilities put nuclear plans on hold

[Sandy Perle]

Index:

Local SC utilities put nuclear plans on hold
Ministers' nuclear-free zone call
UN's ElBaradei: Unconcerned With Arab Nuclear Pgms For Power
No nuclear energy plant wanted on Pittsburgh township land
Thailand opens study on possible nuclear plant
Westinghouse seeks African nuclear business
Developing System for Detecting 'Dirty Bombs' Hits Snags, Criticism
Feds Fund Study Of Drug That May Prevent Radiation Injury
----------------------------------------------

Local SC utilities put nuclear plans on hold

Charleston Regional Business Journal Feb 4 - The utility industry´s 
attempt to re-establish nuclear energy as a credible power source for 
the future is like trying to come back to work after a long vacation 
or hitting the gym after skipping several months of workouts.

Getting started again is never easy.

Under a partnership, Santee Cooper, the state´s publicly owned 
utility, and Columbia-based SCANA Corp. would like to build a new 
1,100-megawatt nuclear reactor next to their existing jointly owned 
V.C. Summer Nuclear Station near Jenkinsville. They hoped to have it 
online by 2016.

"It´s definitely behind what we had projected," Santee Cooper CEO 
Lonnie Carter said. "It´s taking longer than we thought it would and 
the prices are so much higher - the prices are way, way higher than 
what was originally projected."

It´s been more than 30 years since the Nuclear Regulatory Commission 
has issued a new permit for construction of a nuclear reactor, but 
recently enacted federal policies that streamlined the application 
process and provided tax incentives to build seemed to prime the 
industry for a rebirth.

Growth pushes demand

Utilities across the country scrambled to ready applications, 
particularly in the Southeast where nuclear power plants have been 
largely welcomed. Population growth also is pushing the demand for 
more base-load generation.

With the environmental implications of coal and the rising price of 
natural gas casting a shadow, visions of a nuclear revival danced in 
utility executives´ heads.  

Then the price tags came rolling in like a wave of bad news.

"We´re seeing a significant upward trend in the pricing," said Mitch 
Singer, senior media relations manager for the Nuclear Energy 
Institute, the public policy organization representing owners and 
operators of nuclear power plants in the United States.

"The fact remains that in the last couple of years there has been an 
increase in the price of commodities like steel and concrete, and 
that´s having an effect on the overall price of plants, not just 
nuclear, but any capital projects."

Benefits outweigh costs?

The high cost of the reactors historically has been a roadblock to 
building nuclear plants. Throughout the ´70s and ´80s, millions of 
dollars went to waste in states across the country as nuclear plant 
construction sites were abandoned. 

In 1983, for instance, Charlotte, N.C.-based Duke Energy Corp. 
attempted to make the best of its soiled project in upstate Cherokee 
County. The half-built nuke plant there instead became the movie set 
for the popular 1980s science-fiction thriller, "The Abyss."

Recently, Duke repurchased the land and is in the process of tearing 
down the old reactor with plans to build anew, Duke spokeswoman Rita 
Sipe said. The utility filed its application on Dec. 13 and is 
expecting to hear back any day whether the Nuclear Regulatory 
Commission will consider the request. Should it make the docket, it 
could take up to 42 months before the commission issues a final 
decision on whether to issue a construction and operating license, 
she said.  

Even with the uptick in projected costs, Singer said he expects 
several utilities will move forward with plans for new nuclear units. 
Once the plants are operational, atomic energy - created by inducing 
the fission of uranium - is relatively cheap to produce, generally 
less expensive than coal and far below the price of natural gas.

Further, Singer noted, the U.S. Department of Energy is predicting a 
30% increase in energy usage by 2030, with much of that demand being 
driven by newcomers to the East Coast. 

The price of electricity will rise along with demand, and utilities 
will be able to recoup construction costs, Singer said.

"In the long run what is really to determine whether or not utilities 
build new plants is the price of electricity going out the door to 
the consumer," Singer said.

Not off the table

Even though bids came in much higher than expected, Carter did not go 
so far as to say nuclear plans are off the table.

Carter said he will ask the utility´s board of directors within the 
next few months to make a policy decision about whether it is cost 
effective to move forward with the lengthy permitting process.

"There´s no use to start that process if we can´t afford it," Carter 
said. He declined to discuss the cost estimates, citing the ongoing 
negotiations.

Santee Cooper has already spent millions of dollars laying the 
groundwork for the application process, and last spring the board 
agreed to spend upward of $390 million just to secure a permit.

SCANA´s outlook on the project was less dire, but company spokesman 
Robert Yanity acknowledged that the utility has "taken a step back" 
to analyze the options. 

The company, either by purchasing power on the open market or by 
generating electricity itself, needs to come up with an additional 
600 megawatts by 2016.

The utilities anticipate it would take eight to 10 years to get a new 
nuclear unit online. SCANA is considering a combined-cycle natural 
gas turbine plant if nuclear plans fall through or take longer than 
anticipated. 

Citing environmental implications and the possibility of a federal 
carbon tax, the utility considers coal-fired plants an option of last 
resort, Yanity said.

Nuclear facilities do not emit any of the greenhouse gases that have 
been linked to global warming, though they evoke other environmental 
concerns, mostly regarding where and how to store the radioactive 
nuclear waste byproduct.

"We´re not closing the door on nuclear by any stretch of the 
imagination," Yanity said. "It´s kind of a pause. From the input 
we´re getting on price, we want to make sure we´re doing the right 
thing."

Still, it´s unlikely SCANA would make a go of it alone if Santee 
Cooper bows out, Yanity said.

Along with the rising cost of construction materials, another 
explanation for the high-valued bids is that only three major 
companies in the world build nuclear reactors approved for use in the 
United States - Westinghouse, General Electric Co. and French-based 
AREVA, which through a joint venture with Constellation Energy Group 
formed UniStar Nuclear to deploy its technology in the United States.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 included tax incentives to help offset 
those costs for utilities that build nuclear plants.

But in studying the process, Santee Cooper discovered those tax 
incentives do not apply to publicly owned utilities. Carter said he 
has asked the S.C. congressional delegation to fix what he hopes was 
simply an oversight.

"This whole nuclear industry getting restarted in this country is 
proving to be a little more difficult than the utility industry 
thought it would be," Carter said. "I´m disappointed that ... we really 
haven´t gotten together as a country to make it take off." 
------------------

Ministers' nuclear-free zone call

Social Development Minister Margaret Ritchie and Irish Environment 
Minister John Gormley made a joint call.

They are concerned about proposals to include nuclear power as a 
means of reducing the UK's carbon footprint.

"It is bad enough having a nuclear threat off our shores. We should 
not contemplate having one within our shores," Ms Ritchie, SDLP, 
said.

"The shift back towards a nuclear power energy policy in Great 
Britain greatly concerns me, especially given its close proximity.

'Constant threat'

"We live with the constant threat of harm from Sellafield if a 
disaster ever happened there and that is on top of constant radiation 
pollution in the Irish Sea."

She said it was vitally important all political parties signed up to 
a nuclear free Ireland, north and south.

Mr Gormley said he stood alongside her in saying that nuclear power 
was not the way forward for the island.

"There is now the potential for renewed energy in many areas such as 
wind and wave power," he said.

"Remember also, with nuclear power there is still the key problem of 
how we deal the waste." 
----------------

UN's ElBaradei: Unconcerned With Arab Nuclear Pgms For Power

CAIRO (AP)--The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said Sunday 
that he is not concerned about Arab countries using nuclear energy 
for power development, despite international controversy over Iran's 
atomic program.

Many countries in the Mideast have expressed interest in developing 
peaceful atomic energy programs in response to rising domestic energy 
consumption and possibly to counter Iran's nuclear activities.

"All the Arab countries' nuclear activities will be under agency 
safeguard systems, so I don't see a reason why anybody should be 
concerned about ... Arab countries using nuclear energy for power 
development," Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic 
Energy Agency, told reporters after meeting with Arab League chief 
Amr Moussa in Cairo.

The IAEA chief said Arab countries were not focused on the 
"sensitive" parts of the nuclear fuel cycle, which he argued should 
be under multinational control.

"Usually there is concern where there is more proliferation with 
regard to the sensitive parts of the fuel cycle: enrichment 
activities, reprocessing activities," said ElBaradei. "All 
enrichment, all reprocessing activities should be under regional or 
multinational control, but we are not at this stage here in the 
Middle East."

ElBaradei said the IAEA was making "good progress" resolving 
outstanding questions about the history of Iran's nuclear program and 
called on Tehran to cooperate with the agency to clarify its present 
activities.

"I hope again that Iran will continue to demonstrate full cooperation 
with the agency because the more we can clarify the past, have a good 
grasp on the present, the more we can help to build confidence about 
the future nuclear activities of Iran," said ElBaradei. 
----------------

No nuclear energy plant wanted on Pittsburgh township land

Peters Township the next Chernobyl?

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette FEb 3 - No way, said shocked Peters council 
members to a request Monday night that they look into nuclear energy 
as a cleaner, cheaper alternative energy source.

Council shot down the idea from resident Ron Boocks, who asked 
members to form a study committee to investigate a nuclear power 
plant in the township as a way to reduce dependence on fossil fuels 
as costs and demand climb.

Nuclear energy, he said, is now safer, cleaner and less wasteful than 
coal-fired plants, and about one-tenth the cost.

Council members said there was no way they would consider a nuclear 
power plant, but would investigate other alternative energy sources.

"We have trouble putting a garbage plant down the road," said 
Councilman James Berquist.

Council also discussed stiffer fines for developers and builders who 
have been burning construction waste at building sites.

Residents have been reporting fires that include plywood, insulation, 
plastic sheeting and containers, and particle board, which contains 
formaldehyde. The toxic emissions and odor have been making some 
residents near the Old Trails development sick.

Although fines for such burning range from $50 to $1,000, the cost to 
haul and properly dispose of the waste usually is more expensive. 
Citations issued by police haven't been enough to curtail the 
activity.

Council discussed raising the fine significantly and doing more to 
enforce the ban on burning construction debris. Special exceptions 
are made for the burning of cleared brush, but council discussed 
possibly doing away with all burning.

"It should start at $1,000 and scale up," council President Frank 
Arcuri said of fines.
----------------

Thailand opens study on possible nuclear plant

BANGKOK : Thailand has launched a three-year study to decide whether 
the kingdom should build a nuclear power plant to meet its growing 
energy needs, a top energy official said Friday.

The study, which will cost about 1.8 billion baht (54.5 million 
dollars), will include a survey of potential sites, developing safety 
regulations and a public education campaign, said Kopr Kritaykirana, 
an adviser to the project.

The research is being undertaken by the new Nuclear Power Program 
Development Office, which was officially opened by the energy 
ministry on Thursday, he said.

If the new government embraces the plan, construction of a nuclear 
power plant could begin by 2014, he said.

Nuclear power has recently gained support from Thailand's business 
and industrial interests, which see it as a reliable domestic source 
of energy.

Thailand imports most of its energy needs, leaving the country 
particularly vulnerable to shifts in energy prices.

Piyasvasti Amranand, the outgoing energy minister in a military-
installed government, has enthusiastically promoted nuclear energy.

A new elected government is expected to take office next week.

Currently Thailand relies on natural gas for about two thirds of its 
electricity production. The rest comes mainly from coal and 
hydropower.

Demand is higher than Thailand's production capacity, forcing the 
kingdom to import electricity from neighbours like Laos and Malaysia. 
---------------

Westinghouse seeks African nuclear business

Westinghouse Electric, the company that the Shaw Group bought a 20 
percent stake in during 2006, has submitted a proposal to deliver 
three nuclear reactors to the Republic of South Africa by 2016.

Westinghouse said its proposal was made in conjunction with Shaw, 
which has an exclusive agreement to do project engineering and 
construction on Westinghouse reactor projects. Westinghouse also is 
vying for additional power capacity business due by 2025 in South 
Africa.
-----------------

Securing the Cities No Easy Task
Developing System for Detecting 'Dirty Bombs' Hits Snags, Criticism

NEW YORK (Washington Post) Feb 3 -- A New York City Police Department 
helicopter with an ultra-sensitive radiation detector affixed to its 
tail whipped through a wintry sky over Lower Manhattan last month, 
hunting block by block through the concrete canyons of Wall Street 
for a black SUV containing the components of a homemade radiological 
"dirty bomb."

The 30-minute training exercise failed to detect a deliberately 
planted chunk of radioactive cesium-137, a material that -- if 
dispersed by an explosive -- could paralyze the nation's financial 
nerve center. With time running short, police operators blamed 
technical glitches, and the pilot turned back to a West Side landing 
pad.

The test sweep, which followed a secret, concerted search for 
radioactive materials in Manhattan by hundreds of local, state and 
federal officers before the city's New Year's Eve celebration, 
underscores the government's determination to prove this year that it 
can detect and disrupt nuclear threats to major cities.

At an estimated cost of $90 million, the Securing the Cities program 
absorbs a small fraction of the Bush administration's overall 
national security and counter-proliferation expenditures. But critics 
have raised questions about its value, noting its rapid growth in the 
absence of a specific threat of urban nuclear terrorism, as well as 
the program's technical challenges and operational limitations.

Its aims, Senate appropriators warned in a report last year, may be 
technologically unfeasible. The attempt to create a detection system 
in New York as a model for other cities is based on assumptions "that 
run counter to current intelligence in this threat arena, and has no 
measure of success, nor an end point," they said.

Michael A. Levi, a Council on Foreign Relations scholar and the 
author of the recently published book "On Nuclear Terrorism," said 
the Securing the Cities program may be useful but that its backers 
should be more open about its goals and limits. He also worries that 
too much is being spent on technology and not enough on coordination.

Supporters say that however slight the odds, the risks of a nuclear-
related attack on New York or another U.S. city are not zero. And 
such an attack's consequences on the nation's economy, society and 
psyche would be too extreme to neglect a goal-line defense, they say.

Securing the Cities may not be perfect, but it will evolve, "and the 
only way to evolve it over time is to test it," said Jonah J. 
Czerwinski, an IBM homeland security consultant who pushed for its 
creation. The United States spends $11 billion on missile defense 
each year, so "it seems lopsided to . . . not spend $40 million on 
programs like this."

Vayl S. Oxford, director of the Department of Homeland Security's 
Domestic Nuclear Detection Office, which directs the program, said 
that his office hopes to complete in the next year a cost-benefit 
analysis of the New York effort to determine whether it can offer 
lessons to other cities based on resources, operational needs "and 
the likelihood of success."

"We don't want to wait until someone has attacked a city with a 
nuclear weapon or dirty bomb and wait to figure that out," Oxford 
said. "Together with the high risk New York always faces, we feel 
this is a prudent step to help secure that city, as well as to 
determine, 'Does this model work?' "

To New York leaders, the dirty bomb threat is real. Before New Year's 
Day in 2004, the U.S. government dispatched scores of nuclear 
scientists with covert detection gear to scour five major cities 
including New York for radiation, based on intelligence intercepts of 
al-Qaeda operatives discussing an unspecified new attack. On Aug. 10, 
New York authorities briefly increased their detection efforts after 
a Web site that monitors jihadist Internet sites reported a dirty-
bomb threat, which was subsequently discredited.

"We have to take it seriously -- because New York is at the top of al-
Qaeda's target list, and we are the last line of defense," said 
Richard A. Falkenrath, NYPD's deputy commissioner for 
counterterrorism and a former Bush White House homeland security 
aide.

Although a dirty bomb spewing nuclear materials would kill far fewer 
people than an improvised nuclear explosive, the materials could fuse 
with asphalt and concrete and prevent access to critical urban areas 
such as buildings, train stations or tunnels for years, causing a 
catastrophic economic impact, he said.

The DHS, New York police, the Port Authority of New York and New 
Jersey, and officials from three states and 91 localities have 
responded by forging a partnership that participants and outside 
experts have praised. More than 1,400 local officers have been 
trained in radiation detection operations, and basic, hand-held 
radiation detectors have been distributed to thousands of police 
officers and others whose daily work has them crisscrossing the 
region.

Half a dozen advanced, $500,000 trucks with detectors capable of 
distinguishing different radioactive materials are also in use in 
Manhattan, along with classified vehicles, and more are on the way. 
Additional funds have been designated for training, field exercises, 
security improvements at hospitals and other high-risk sites where 
radioactive materials are present, and research into the 
effectiveness of using scanners at fixed points such as 
transportation nodes, Oxford said.

The results were illustrated when hundreds of local, state and 
federal agents fanned out on highways and other approaches to 
Manhattan searching for telltale radiation signatures before New 
Year's Eve. Officers scanned warehouses, garages and other buildings 
as much as 80 miles away. On Dec. 31, authorities also set up 
checkpoints and monitored radiation sensors deployed on bridges, 
tunnels, boats and waterways around the island.

In addition to conducting periodic aerial screening, New York police 
routinely set up checkpoints twice a day on Manhattan roadways as a 
defensive, training and deterrence measure. On the day the helicopter 
search failed, a ground unit operating three kinds of vehicle sensors 
successfully detected the test sport-utility vehicle carrying cesium-
137 on 42nd Street near Eighth Avenue, close to Times Square.

But independent experts warn that existing detectors are far less 
capable of finding an improvised nuclear bomb with lead-shielded, 
weapons-grade uranium, which would emit a much smaller radiation 
signal. Policymakers in Washington regard that as a far more serious 
threat than dirty bombs. New York worries just as much about the 
latter, and believes the program can provide an effective defense.

Falkenrath said the New York system still has three pressing needs: 
better detection technology to find the most dangerous and shielded 
devices; better communications and data transfer links for managing 
monitoring efforts; and better procedures allowing police officers to 
investigate all alarms without disrupting traffic, which they can do 
in Manhattan but not on the approaching highways.

"It's a difficult thing to do, and I'll be frank about it. . . . It 
requires really constant vigilance and effort to maintain it," 
Falkenrath said. "Certainly, if this model goes nationwide, they need 
a lot more help, because most other parts of the country are not 
going to have the ability to devote these sorts of resources" without 
cutting into everyday crime-fighting.

New York paid the Department of Energy $800,000 in 2005 to map 
background radiation sources in the city -- a critical baseline 
requirement for detection efforts. The survey found 80 unexpected hot 
spots, including a public park on Staten Island that was subsequently 
shut down. The DHS and the DOE were told to advertise their 
capability to other cities. So far, only Chicago and Washington have 
expressed interest, Oxford said.

The office that oversees Securing the Cities was created in 2006 with 
the support of Vice President Cheney, and its $485 million 2008 
budget is the largest part of the DHS's shrinking research portfolio, 
which includes aviation security, explosives and bio-defense.

But its efforts have hit turbulence. Homeland Security Secretary 
Michael Chertoff in October delayed the deployment of as much as 
1,400 advanced spectroscopic portal radiation detectors as part of a 
$1.2 billion program announced in July 2006 to screen trucks, cars 
and cargo containers at border crossings and ports. Congress withheld 
funds this year to buy the $377,000 machines amid concerns about the 
DHS's cost-benefit analysis used to justify their development. 
-----------------

Feds Fund Study Of Drug That May Prevent Radiation Injury

Houston, TX - The Department of Defense has commissioned a nine-month 
study from Rice University chemists and scientists in the Texas 
Medical Center to determine whether a new drug based on carbon 
nanotubes can help prevent people from dying of acute radiation 
injury following radiation exposure. The new study was commissioned 
after preliminary tests found the drug was greater than 5,000 times 
more effective at reducing the effects of acute radiation injury than 
the most effective drugs currently available.

"More than half of those who suffer acute radiation injury die within 
30 days, not from the initial radioactive particles themselves but 
from the devastation they cause in the immune system, the 
gastrointestinal tract and other parts of the body," said James Tour, 
Rice's Chao Professor of Chemistry, director of Rice's Carbon 
Nanotechnology Laboratory (CNL) and principal investigator on the 
grant. "Ideally, we'd like to develop a drug that can be administered 
within 12 hours of exposure and prevent deaths from what are 
currently fatal exposure doses of ionizing radiation."

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded 
Tour and co-principal investigators J. Conyers and Valerie Moore at 
the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UT-Houston) 
and Luka Milas, Kathy Mason and Jeffrey Myers at the University of 
Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center a $540,000 grant for a nine-month 
study of an experimental drug that the investigators have named 
Nanovector Trojan Horses (NTH).

NTH is made at Rice's Chemistry Department and Carbon Nanotechnology 
Laboratory in the Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science 
and Technology. The drug is based on single-walled carbon nanotubes, 
hollow cylinders of pure carbon that are about as wide as a strand of 
DNA. To form NTH, Rice scientists coat nanotubes with two common food 
preservatives -- the antioxidant compounds butylated hydroxyanisole 
(BHA) and butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) -- and derivatives of those 
compounds.

"The same properties that make BHA and BHT good food preservatives, 
namely their ability to scavenge free radicals, also make them good 
candidates for mitigating the biological affects that are induced 
through the initial ionizing radiation event," Tour said.

In preliminary tests at M.D. Anderson in July 2007, mice showed 
enhanced protection when exposed to lethal doses of ionizing 
radiation when they were given first-generation NTH drugs prior to 
exposure.

"Our preliminary results are remarkable, and that's why DARPA awarded 
us this grant with a very compressed timeline for delivery: nine 
months, which is almost unheard of for an academic study of this 
type," Tour said. "They are very interested in finding out whether 
this will work in a post-exposure delivery, and they don't want to 
waste any time."

Ionizing radiation is any form of radioactive particle or energy that 
converts an atom or molecule into an ion by altering the balance 
between the number of protons and electrons. In living organisms, 
ionization often results in the creation of free radicals -- highly 
reactive molecules that can wreak havoc by disrupting healthy 
physiological processes. These free radicals induce a cascade of 
deleterious biological events that cause further destruction to the 
organism in the days and weeks after initial radiation exposure 
event. NTH is designed to terminate the destructive biological 
cascade. 


----------------------------------------------------------------
Sander C. Perle 
President
Mirion Technologies, Inc., Dosimetry Services Division
2652 McGaw Avenue
Irvine, CA 92614

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

Mirion Technologies, Inc.: http://www.mirion.com/
Global Dosimetry Solutions, Inc.: http://www.dosimetry.com/