Kariwa, Tokyo residents discuss nuclear power

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

Index:



Kariwa, Tokyo residents discuss nuclear power

Exelon Illinois nuclear unit prepares to restart

Iran to Do Atom Smasher Experiment

Feds Halt Radioactive Shipments

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



Kariwa, Tokyo residents discuss nuclear power



TOKYO, July 7 (Kyodo) - Residents of the village of Kariwa in 

Niigata Prefecture met Saturday with residents of the Tokyo 

metropolitan area to discuss nuclear power as an energy source in 

the wake of the village's rejection of a plan to use plutonium-

uranium mixed oxide (MOX) fuel in a nuclear plant in the village. 



About 130 people participated in the meeting in Tokyo, with some 

Kariwa residents asking consumers in the metropolitan area to 

share the burden of hosting nuclear power plants. The village is the 

site of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant operated by Tokyo 

Electric Power Co. (TEPCO). 



They suggested that any further TEPCO nuclear facilities should be 

built in Tokyo. 



Other Kariwa residents called for a national consensus on the 

nuclear power issue. 



In a legally nonbinding plebiscite May 27, a majority of Kariwa 

residents rejected a plan to use MOX fuel at the nuclear power 

plant in the village in Japan's first plebiscite on use of the fuel. 



Under Japan's so-called ''pluthermal'' project, the government and 

power companies want to use MOX fuel in commonly used light-

water reactors. The fuel is made by mixing uranium with plutonium 

extracted from spent nuclear fuel. 



Saturday's meeting was organized by a civic group in Kariwa. 

Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara declined the group's invitation to 

participate in the parley. 

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



Exelon Illinois nuclear unit prepares to restart



SAN FRANCISCO, July 6 (Reuters) - Exelon Nuclear said on 

Friday its 800-megawatt Dresden 3 nuclear unit in Morris, Illinois, 

was preparing to resume power production after being shut down 

Thursday in a safety alert caused by high pressure in the building 

housing the nuclear reactor. 



A spokesman for Exelon Nuclear, a unit of Chicago-based Exelon 

Corp. <EXC.N>, said plant operators discovered that a faulty 

control valve caused the temperature in the building to rise, which 

led them to shut down the reactor and call the alert. 



The alert was canceled just under six hours after the unit was shut. 



The company said in a statement that the plant's reactor cooling 

systems and radiation levels inside the containment building were 

normal and there was no release of radioactivity. 



An alert is the second-lowest level on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory 

Commission's four-level safety scale. 



An alert signals the actual or potential "substantial degradation of 

the safety of a nuclear plant," according to the safety code used at 

the nation's nuclear power stations. 



On Thursday Exelon Nuclear said the public was in no danger and 

didn't need to take any special actions. 



Exelon Nuclear repaired the faculty control valve, and the plant was 

in the early stages of start-up on Friday, the spokesman said. 



The company said it expects the unit to connect to the 

transmission grid late Friday or early Saturday and return to full 

power production later this weekend. 



The adjacent 800-megawatt Dresden 2 nuclear unit continued to 

operate at full power. 

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



Iran to Do Atom Smasher Experiment



GENEVA (AP) - The Iranian government has signed an agreement 

that will allow its scientists to participate in experiments using the 

world's largest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider, being 

built at Europe's particle physics laboratory. 



Four Iranian researchers will join 1,800 other scientists working in 

the 17-mile circular tunnel laboratory under the Swiss-French 

border, known by its French acronym CERN, the facility said 

Thursday. 



Iranian industry will contribute equipment worth $378,000 for the 

construction of a major experiment, which will include a particle 

detector to study high energy collisions between protons in the 

Large Hadron Collider, according to a CERN statement. 



The experiment is aimed at understanding why subatomic particles 

have mass and other questions about the makeup of matter and 

the universe. 



``The answers to these questions will have a profound impact on 

our understanding of the universe, its origins and its future,'' CERN 

said in the statement. 



The United States and Israel have expressed concern that Iran, 

which has a nuclear weapon program, is seeking to produce 

weapons of mass destruction. 



The International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna said information 

obtained by a scientist working at CERN could not be used to 

make a nuclear weapons. 



CERN has nothing to do with ``nuclear weapons design or fissile 

explosions,'' said IAEA spokesman David Kyd. ``There's no 

congruence between the two areas of study.'' 



CERN has 20 European member countries and also receives 

support from other nations, including the United States, which is 

giving $530 million in equipment toward the construction of the 

collider. 



This is believed to be the first time the Iranian government has 

signed an agreement to support the laboratory, said Roger 

Cashmore, director of research. 



A number of individual Iranian scientists have worked on earlier 

experiments at CERN, however, ``because we're an open 

laboratory,'' Cashmore said. 



CERN has 7,000 researchers from more than 500 institutions in 80 

countries. 



``Pure science has always brought together scientists united by a 

common desire to learn more about their universe,'' the CERN 

statement said. 

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



Feds Halt Radioactive Shipments



LOS ANGELES (AP) - Large shipments of radioactive medical 

materials were halted by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission 

over concerns their packaging could break open in an accident. 



A device used to beam radiation into blood was shipped last 

summer from JL Shepherd & Associates of San Fernando to New 

York and then on to the United Kingdom. French officials then 

refused to accept it and complained to the commission that the 

packaging did not conform with U.S. regulations. 



The device contains cobalt-60, a highly radioactive material. While 

no one had been exposed to radiation, it could cause serious 

injuries or death outside of its protective packaging. 



NRC inspectors ordered the shipments stopped after they found 

the company had changed its packaging without government 

approval. The company declined to comment on the action. 



The company now has 20 days to answer the order. It may also 

request a formal hearing. 



On the Net: 



http://www.nrc.gov/ 



http://www.jlshepherd.com/ 



**************************************************************************

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 				                           

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Costa Mesa, CA 92626



Personal Website: http://www.geocities.com/scperle

ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Website: http://www.dosimetry.com

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