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Germany to ship nuke waste to France-Greenpeace
Index:
Germany to ship nuke waste to France-Greenpeace
British Energy Plans to Restart 2 Canadian Reactors by 2003
Bruce Power to spend C$340 million on reactor startup
EIS draft guidelines issued for nuclear waste dump
Hanford nuclear facility evacuated on false alarm
EBRD opens funds to Lithuania for closing N-plant
Newly created material defies laws of physics
=====================================
Germany to ship nuke waste to France-Greenpeace
BERLIN, April 6 (Reuters) - Germany plans to send nuclear waste to
France next week for the first time in three years since Berlin
banned the return of its reprocessed waste from France, anti-nuclear
activists said on Friday.
The environmental group Greenpeace said it planned peaceful protests
against what it expected to be shipments of some 30 tonnes of waste
on Monday or Tuesday from three power stations in southwest Germany
to the French reprocessing plant at La Hague.
Anti-nuclear activists clashed with police last week when Germany
took back the first cargo of reprocessed waste from France since
Berlin banned the shipments in 1998 over concerns about radioactive
leaks.
France agreed in January to take more material from Germany's nuclear
power plants for reprocessing if Germany accepted back waste already
reprocessed in La Hague for long-term storage.
Greenpeace spokesman Veit Buerger told a news conference in Berlin
that last week's transport to Gorleben storage plant was "nothing
more than a door opener."
"The government is treating France as the atom toilet of Germany," he
said.
Protesters held up last week's shipment for a day by chaining
themselves to the railway. German police said a week-long train
strike in France could delay next week's shipment.
German officials declined to give details of timings of the shipments
for fear of attracting demonstrators. French reprocessing firm Cogema
was not immediately available for comment on whether it was expecting
new shipments from Germany.
Buerger said the government planned 40 more waste shipments to La
Hague this year. The deployment of some 30,000 police officers last
week to guard the first transport to La Hague since 1997 cost the
state around $50 million.
Greenpeace would not give any details about its planned protests, but
many activists say they hope that by driving up the cost of policing
such transports they will persuade the government to withdraw more
quickly from nuclear energy.
--------------
British Energy Plans to Restart 2 Canadian Reactors by 2003
Toronto, April 6 (Bloomberg) -- British Energy Plc, the U.K.'s
biggest power generator, said it expects to restart two reactors at
Canada's Bruce Power nuclear station, one of the world's largest, by
2003.
Restarting the reactors will cost C$340 million ($217 million),
British Energy said in a statement released by Regulatory News
Service. The Bruce station, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) northwest
of Toronto, has eight nuclear units, four of which are currently out
of service.
British Energy last year agreed to lease the Bruce station from
province-owned Ontario Power Generation Inc. in a contract worth as
much as $3.5 billion over 43 years.
Closing of the lease transaction is expected ``early this summer''
following a review by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, British
Energy said.
British Energy owns about 80 percent of Bruce Power LP, the limited
partnership that leases and operates the station. Canada's Cameco
Corp. holds 15 percent, while two Canadian unions control the rest,
said Cameco spokesman Jamie MacIntyre.
Cameco, a Canadian uranium producer, is the sole supplier of fuel to
the Bruce reactors
--------------
Bruce Power to spend C$340 million on reactor startup
TORONTO, April 6 (Reuters) - Bruce Power said on Friday it will spend
C$340 million over the next two years to restart two nuclear reactors
at its Bruce A nuclear power plant.
Bruce Power, a partnership between British Energy Plc <BGY.L> and
uranium producer Cameco Corp. <CCO.TO>, said in a release that it
will spend C$30 million over the next three months in the first phase
of the start-up plan to bring units 3 and 4 of the Bruce A station
back into service by the summer of 2003. The two units have a total
generating capacity of 1,500 megawatts.
All four units, leased by Bruce Power from Ontario Power Generation,
are currently laid-up.
The restart of the two reactors is conditional on a number of factors
including financial closing of the Bruce transaction, expected by
summer 2001, obtaining regulatory approval for the restart, and
meeting performance targets for the four operational reactors at the
Bruce B plant.
-------------
EIS draft guidelines issued for nuclear waste dump
6 April - Australian Broadcasting Corporation - The Federal
Government has issued draft guidelines for an environmental impact
statement for a proposed national low level radioactive waste dump
in the central north of South Australia.
Federal Environment Minister Robert Hill says the draft guidelines
will cover the complete assessment of three potential sites near
Woomera.
He says the notion of a radioactive waste repository is a sensitive
one, and the guidelines will allow for full public access and
comment .
"The issue is to make sure that we've got the right site, we're using
the right processes for encasement of the waste, that the transport
is safe, that the conditions for work of the staff at the repository
are safe from both the health and environmental perspective, all of
that detail is what is being examined now," he said.
------------
Hanford nuclear facility evacuated on false alarm
RICHLAND, Wash., April 5 (Reuters) - Alarm bells forced 400 workers
to evacuate a plutonium processing plant at the Hanford nuclear
reservation on Thursday, though officials said no radiation had
escaped.
The site, which houses millions of gallons of highly radioactive
waste dating back to the dawn of U.S. nuclear weapons production, has
checked out clean, an Energy Department spokesman said.
"There are absolutely no indications at this stage that we had any
kind of a release of radioactivity," said Energy Department spokesman
Mike Talbot.
"The first order of business was to survey (workers) and assure that
they had not been contaminated or exposed and they've all come back
negative," Talbot said.
False alarms are rare at Hanford, but Talbot said that appeared to be
the only explanation.
"Everybody is okay and at this point what we really think we are
seeing is a mechanical difficulty with the alarm," he added.
Talbot could not immediately say when the facility might reopen.
"It would take a little time to recover," Talbot said.
Officials in Washington and other Western U.S. states have urged the
federal government to boost funding for nuclear cleanup in the
region.
According to Washington Attorney General Christine Gregoire, Hanford
contains 53 million gallons of radioactive waste in underground tanks
and about a million gallons have leaked into the soil and
contaminated groundwater.
The Energy Department is legally required by July 31 to break ground
on a facility to convert the liquid waste into more easily stored
glass but has yet to design the facility and probably will miss that
deadline, Gregoire said last month.
-------------
EBRD opens funds to Lithuania for closing N-plant
VILNIUS, April 5 (Reuters) - The European Bank for Reconstruction and
Development said on Thursday it had reached agreement allowing
Lithuania to access funds for closing the first of two units at the
Ignalina nuclear power plant.
The EBRD said in a statement the agreement was also approved at a
meeting of the 11 countries contributing to the Ignalina
decommissioning support fund.
"Today's meeting is a clear sign that the implementation of the
decommissioning programme has started," Matthias Ruete, an
enlargement director in the European Commission said.
Last June Lithuania received pledges totalling about 208 million
euros ($186.7 million) from the international community for projects
related to decommissioning the first reactor that will cost Lithuania
200 million euros up to closure in 2005.
Countries donating to the fund so far include Austria, Belgium,
Denmark, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Sweden,
Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
The European Union (EU) pledged 165 million euros. It considers
Ignalina unsafe because it was built to the same design as Ukraine's
Chernobyl plant, cause of the world's worst civilian nuclear accident
in 1986.
EU-aspirant Lithuania has pledged to make a decision over closing
Ignalina's second reactor in 2004, but the EU has said the country
will have to make the decision before completing all its accession
negotiations.
Many in former Soviet Lithuania have been reluctant to shut Ignalina,
which was built in the 1980s on Moscow's orders, as the country is
heavily dependent on nuclear power for its energy needs.
-------------
Newly created material defies laws of physics
WASHINGTON, April 5 (Reuters) - Experiments on a newly created
composite material have shown that it bends microwaves passing
through it in a direction that seems to defy the laws of physics,
scientists said on Thursday, in a discovery that could help in making
more advanced lenses and antennas.
The composite, made of fiberglass and copper, caused microwaves shot
through it to bend in an opposite direction than the laws of physics
predict, making it the first material to have a "negative index of
refraction," physicists said in a study appearing in the journal
Science.
Electromagnetic radiation -- such as light and microwaves -- passing
through ordinary materials is deflected in the same direction, giving
those materials a "positive index of refraction," they said. An
example is the way light bends when it passes from air to water.
The composite could be useful in developing better antennas and other
technology for the cellular communications industry, said physicist
Sheldon Schultz, who created the material along with colleagues David
Smith and Richard Shelby at the University of California at San
Diego.
Although the composite cannot focus visible light, Schultz said he
hopes that obstacle can be overcome in the future.
Physicist John Pendry of London's Imperial College has said that a
material with a "negative refraction" would make possible the
construction of a lens capable of focusing light to limits not
currently achievable.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sandy Perle Tel:(714) 545-0100 / (800) 548-5100
Director, Technical Extension 2306
ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Service Fax:(714) 668-3149
ICN Pharmaceuticals, Inc. E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net
ICN Plaza, 3300 Hyland Avenue E-Mail: sperle@icnpharm.com
Costa Mesa, CA 92626
Personal Website: http://sandyfl.nukeworker.net
ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Website: http://www.dosimetry.com
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