Despite hoopla no new U.S. nuclear plants soon

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@EARTHLINK.NET>]

Index:



Despite hoopla no new U.S. nuclear plants soon

Nuclear Plant Owner Wants Fewer Staff

Jeffords to Chair Environment Panel

Russian Minister Denounces Waste Plan

Russia votes to accept spent foreign nuclear fuel

===================================



Despite hoopla no new U.S. nuclear plants soon



NEW YORK, June 7 (Reuters) - Despite haunting memories of the Three 

Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents, the U.S. nuclear power industry 

appears poised for a rebirth as a worsening energy shortage and the 

high price of alternative fuels force utilities to seek new supply. 



But energy executives caution it may be years before completion of 

the next new plant. 



"I'm a huge believer that nuclear power should play a part in our 

energy needs," Michael Morrell, president and chief operating officer 

of Allegheny Energy Supply Co., a subsidiary of utility Allegheny 

Energy Inc. <AYE.N>, said at a recent conference. 



"But I don't believe there will be a nuclear plant built in my 

lifetime." 



Morrell, 53, was an engineer at GPU Inc. <GPU.N> during the 1979 

meltdown of the utility's Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania, 

the U.S. industry's worst nuclear accident, and knows whereof he 

speaks. 



Three Mile Island was followed by the world's worst nuclear accident 

at the Chernobyl plant near Kiev in Ukraine in 1986. 



Not all industry executives are as pessimistic -- or blunt -- as 

Morrell. 



But, as much as they all hope that a national energy crisis and an 

improved safety record pave the way for new plants, they realize that 

issues like deciding where to dispose of waste, improving licensing, 

attracting people to the industry and, not least, mustering public 

support continue to stand in the way. 



And that means new plants won't go up any time soon -- certainly not 

in time to solve today's power problems. 



Already, nuclear power supplies about 20 percent of U.S. energy 

needs, but those needs are rapidly expanding. Supplies are scant, 

even as electricity demand nationally is set to rise about 20 to 25 

percent over the next decade. 



Don Kirchoffner, spokesman for utility Exelon Corp. <EXE.N>, said he 

thinks 2006 is the earliest for construction of a new plant. But Lou 

Long, vice president of technical services at Southern Co. <SO.N> 

unit Southern Nuclear Operating Co., is slightly more optimistic, 

estimating that a new plant could be in place by 2005 but only "if 

you started today." 



In other words, nuclear power isn't going to be much help in the 

current crisis in California, which remains at the mercy of a flawed 

deregulation plan that's resulted in power shortages and a series of 

rolling blackouts. 



THINGS HAVE CHANGED 



Nevertheless, energy executives say nuclear power could do its part 

to provide energy for the country's future needs, and the industry is 

poised to press ahead, given the imprimatur of President George W. 

Bush as well as nascent public approval. 



The national energy policy announced last month by the administration 

called for increased use of nuclear power. "Existing and new 

technologies offer us the opportunity to expand nuclear generation as 

well," the policy stated. "This power source, which causes no 

greenhouse gas emissions, can play an expanding part in our energy 

future." 



Even Stephen Dolley, research director of the anti-proliferation 

Nuclear Control Institute, admitted, "It's the strongest support 

nuclear power has had in the White House in 20 years." 



And a recent poll by the Field Institute, a nonprofit public policy 

research group, revealed that 59 percent of Californians support 

building more nuclear power plants.  



The realization that California's problems aren't necessarily unique 

has propelled nuclear power onto the national energy agenda. And high 

natural gas prices have utilities looking at alternative fuel sources 

like nuclear or cleaner-burning coal.  



"Our industry was caught off guard in that we really weren't 

seriously looking at nuclear power plants because the price of gas 

was so low," explained Southern's Long. "Suddenly things changed 

dramatically." 



More encouragement came when the state of Georgia recently issued a 

request for power in 2005-2006, from either a coal-fired plant or a 

nuclear plant, according to Long. 



"It was another sign that the landscape has changed," he said. "From 

Georgia's perspective, they're just beginning to say, 'Oops, we don't 

want the same situation as California.'" 



Exelon, for one, is seeking to build a cheaper and more efficient 

type of plant called a pebble bed modular reactor, pending a 

feasibility study that has cost $8 million already. The study will be 

completed in six to nine months. 



Until new plants are built, the energy industry is working on 

renewing current 40-year licenses, which would extend them by another 

20 years. While praising the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for 

starting to expedite the license renewal process, Dominion Resources 

Inc. <D.N> unit Dominion Energy Chief Executive Thomas Farrell II 

told the Nuclear Energy Assembly last month, "We need assurance that 

the process won't get stalled." 



However, David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer at the Union of 

Concerned Scientists, thinks that renewals work against the 

construction of new plants. "There are 103 plants. Renewals of 103 

plants is 103 fewer reasons to build," he said. 

------------



Nuclear Plant Owner Wants Fewer Staff



HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) - Exelon Corp., the nation's largest operator of 

nuclear plants, hopes to trim emergency planning staff at its three 

Pennsylvania stations and move an operations center for the Three 

Mile Island plant so it can save money. 



The Chicago-based company proposed cutting 23 of the 53 planning 

positions for its Three Mile Island, Limerick and Peach Bottom 

generating stations. 



The company, formed by the merger of Philadelphia's PECO Energy and 

Chicago's Commonwealth Edison, also wants the federal Nuclear 

Regulatory Commission to let it move its emergency operations 

facility for Three Mile Island about 57 miles east from Harrisburg to 

Coatesville and increase the response time for certain personnel to 

be in place at the center. 



Emergency operations facilities are located at least 10 miles away 

from a plant and serve as headquarters for decision-makers in the 

event of an accident. They were established at the urging of a 

presidential commission that investigated the nation's worst 

commercial nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in March 1979. 



Coatesville, which is near Exelon's mid-Atlantic headquarters, is the 

site of a combined operations center that serves the Peach Bottom and 

Limerick plants. 



Three Mile Island is located near Middletown, about 10 miles south of 

Harrisburg. Peach Bottom is located just north of the Maryland state 

line, about 58 miles west of Philadelphia, and Limerick is 21 miles 

northwest of Philadelphia. 



A spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which will decide 

on the request, called the changes ``significant.'' Of special 

concern was the proposal to lengthen the response time for emergency 

center personnel from 30 minutes to 60 minutes, NRC spokesman Neil A. 

Sheehan said. 



Exelon has already consolidated its emergency-response operations for 

plants in the Midwest, reflecting a trend within the nuclear 

industry, Sheehan said. 



A representative of a watchdog group that monitors Three Mile Island 

said the proposal ``demonstrates the worst aspect of deregulation.'' 



``In the event of an emergency, you would like to be able to plan the 

response from a location that has the same area code,'' said Eric 

Epstein, president of TMI Alert. ``Right now, we have a state of the 

art planning facility outside the 10-mile zone. It's well-equipped to 

handle a dedicated emergency at TMI.'' 



Company officials said the consolidation would improve training and 

standardize operations at the three plants. 



Exelon presented its plan to the NRC during a May 16 meeting and 

expects to submit a formal proposal by the end of the month. 

---------------



Jeffords to Chair Environment Panel



WASHINGTON (AP) - Sen. James Jeffords is going to be creating a lot 

more headaches for President Bush besides turning the Senate over to 

Democratic control. 



The newly independent Vermont lawmaker who soon will become chairman 

of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee has an 

environmental and energy agenda sharply different from the White 

House's. 



``I have been disappointed in the president's actions so far this 

year on environmental issues,'' Jeffords told The Associated Press on 

Thursday. ``In the weeks ahead, I'll be working to put together an 

environmental agenda that will garner bipartisan support.'' 



A top priority will be trying to persuade President Bush to return to 

the positions he held as a presidential candidate on global warming 

and power plants' carbon dioxide emissions. 



In March, Bush backed out of a 1997 international global warming 

treaty, negotiated in Kyoto, Japan, and abandoned his campaign 

promise to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant. 



The administration is again rethinking its approach, focusing on 

largely voluntary measures. 



``I am deeply depressed by the fact we removed ourselves from the 

Kyoto agreement,'' said Jeffords, who has sponsored legislation to 

treat carbon dioxide as a pollutant. ``Obviously, we can't do much to 

reinstate (our) country except to put the pressure on and hopefully 

to convince the administration that that was a bad idea.'' 



On some issues, Bush's agenda is not that far apart from Jeffords'. 



A month before the president released his energy plan, Jeffords 

joined Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., in 

sponsoring a bill to promote cleaner vehicles and reduce fuel 

consumption through tax credits. Bush's energy package has similar 

tax incentives. 



But Jeffords wants a stronger government role in improving energy 

efficiency and in looking beyond fossil fuels and nuclear power for 

energy resources. 



``I was one of those who started the alternative energy field, wind 

energy. I also some time ago got the present energy bill put into 

place that looks for more efficiency and alternative forms of 

energy,'' he said. ``I have been out front on these issues and I will 

continue to be out front.'' 



Jeffords was one of the principal negotiators of the 1990 Clean Air 

Act. In recent years, he has stood watch against efforts by some 

Republicans to attach provisions to spending bills that would weaken 

environmental laws. 



He also was one of two Republican co-sponsors of a bill opposing oil 

exploration in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a 

centerpiece of Bush's energy plan. 



Environmentalists see Jeffords signaling a shift from Bush's emphasis 

on market-based energy and environmental policies and toward 

strengthening traditional emphasis on governmental regulations. So 

does Sen. Robert Smith, R-N.H., who led the committee Jeffords is 

taking over. 



Smith said he expects more regulation and less negotiation on 

environmental policy under Jeffords. 



``I've tried to move to ... more market-based initiatives to get more 

voluntary reductions in emissions,'' Smith said. As an example, he 

cited a ``cap and trade'' policy under which polluters who reduce 

emissions below set limits can get credits they can sell to other 

polluters. 



Supporters of the administration's policies say they do not believe 

Jeffords' ascension will produce many changes. 



``Whether it's Smith or Jeffords, they are both going to be pro-

environmental. The real problem is that the committee is green,'' 

said Bill Kovacs, vice president for environment and regulatory 

affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. 



``Certainly, Jeffords may try to block some of the administration's 

positions from going through,'' Kovacs said. ``But there's not going 

to be much he can do about it.'' 



On the Net: 



Senate Environment and Public Works Committee: 

http://www.senate.gov/(tilde)epw 



Sen. Jeffords' site: http://www.senate.gov/(tilde)jeffords/energy-

enviro.html 

-------------



Russian Minister Denounces Waste Plan



MOSCOW (AP) - Russia will not be ready to take in spent nuclear fuel 

from abroad this year, even if legislation allowing imports of waste 

passes quickly, the nuclear energy minister said Thursday. 



Alexander Rumyantsev's comments came a day after the lower house of 

parliament easily passed a bill approving imports of nuclear waste, 

in a move critics said would turn Russia into the world's nuclear 

dump. 



Proponents, including Rumyantsev, say the law will bring in billions 

of dollars of revenue that can be used to clean up decades of past 

radioactive contamination in Russia. 



Rumyantsev on Thursday predicted quick passage in the upper house of 

parliament, but said the country has extensive preparation work to do 

before it's ready for new deliveries, according to the Interfax news 

agency. 



Deputy Nuclear Energy Minister Bulat Nigmatulin said Russia would 

need to spend $300 million to upgrade existing reprocessing and 

storage facilities to handle the waste, according to Interfax. 



Environmental groups have said it would cost much more than that to 

ensure that Russia can safely handle the foreign fuel, and question 

whether the money earned by the plan would be spent as promised. 



Meanwhile, the ministry denied a news report Thursday that Russia had 

signed a deal with Taiwan for the storage and reprocessing of nuclear 

waste. 



Taiwan's Liberty Times reported that Russia had signed the agreement 

with the state-owned Taiwan Power Co. to take what the Liberty Times 

said was 5,000 barrels of waste. 



Ministry spokesman Yuri Bespalko said no agreements had been signed 

for the import of spent nuclear fuel and no negotiations would be 

conducted before the bill becomes law. 



But he said Russia had held ``very preliminary'' talks with Taiwan 

five years ago and with Switzerland two years ago in order to study 

the market. 

--------------



Russia votes to accept spent foreign nuclear fuel



MOSCOW, June 6 (Reuters) - The Russian parliament passed a bill on 

Wednesday that is likely to open Russia to imports of spent nuclear 

fuel, a project environmentalists say will turn the country into a 

dangerous nuclear dump. 



The lower house, the State Duma, voted 243 to 125 in favour of the 

bill, which advocates say could earn Russia some $20 billion in much 

needed income over 10 years and help clean up the nation's own 

existing stocks of nuclear waste. 



The bill is now expected to win the approval of the upper chamber, 

the Federation Council, which is made up of regional leaders, and be 

signed into law by President Vladimir Putin. 



The international environmental group Greenpeace reacted to the vote 

by calling on Washington to veto any shipments of spent fuel to 

Russia from U.S.-designed reactors, a move it said could foil the 

whole project. 



Ecologists and liberals had mounted fierce opposition to the bill on 

grounds that proceeds, rather than going into reprocessing the spent 

fuel, might be spent in other ways and the radioactive waste would 

remain buried indefinitely. 



Grigory Yavlinsky, leader of the liberal Yabloko party and one of the 

main opponents of the bill, urged the chamber to reject the law for 

future generations. 



"The vote today can make history," Yavlinsky told parliament. "One 

hundred million Russian citizens are against it and only 500 people 

are for -- 300 members sitting here and 200 bureaucrats who will be 

getting the money." 



Yavlinsky says opinion polls show Russians overwhelmingly reject the 

plan. 



MONEY TO UPGRADE NUCLEAR FACILITIES 



Under the project championed by the Atomic Energy Ministry, Moscow 

would import about 1,000 tonnes of spent fuel a year, roughly the 

amount produced now by its own power plants and those in neighbouring 

Ukraine which sends fuel for reprocessing. 



The imported fuel would then be stored until 2021 while Russia 

upgrades its crumbling reprocessing facilities with the money earned 

from prospective exporters, such as Taiwan, Japan, China, Iran and 

eastern Europe. 



Russia is building a nuclear power plant in Iran despite strong 

opposition from the United States, which sees the development of 

nuclear technology in Tehran as a threat. 



Greenpeace immediately called on U.S. President George W. Bush to ban 

all shipments of spent fuel to Russia from U.S.-made reactors around 

the world, which would drastically reduce Moscow's prospective 

customer base since plant designers have a say in how waste from 

reactors is treated. 



"Without U.S. support the whole grandiose Atomic Energy Ministry 

programme shrinks down to the simple old Soviet practice of taking 

back spent fuel from the Socialist brother countries," Greenpeace 

International said in a statement. 



Reprocessing at Russian plants is scheduled to begin in 2021 and take 

place over a 20-year period. Opponents say there are no guarantees 

that everything will go according to plan and be free of accidents. 



"Mass imports of spent nuclear fuel mean unavoidable catastrophic 

consequences for the ecology which will threaten the lives of 

Russians for centuries to come," said an open letter from members of 

Russia's prestigious Academy of Sciences. 



The letter was handed out by demonstrators outside the Duma. 



Alexander Rumyantsev, appointed Atomic Energy Minister in March, says 

France and Britain have already carved up the market for depleted 

nuclear fuel and Russia will have to fight to secure a share. 

Reprocessed fuel can be used again, leaving small quantities of 

unusable radioactive waste.



------------------------------------------------------------------------

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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