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Senate panel cuts Yucca mountain waste site funds
Index:
Senate panel cuts Yucca mountain waste site funds
Turkey to try barring nuclear waste from straits
Maralinga documents reveal Australian safety concerns
Belgian gov't reluctant to release MOX fuel data
German sea winds may be answer to energy woes
Brazil takes new crack at controversial nuke plant
Colo. Nuclear Plant Problems Cited
=====================================
Senate panel cuts Yucca mountain waste site funds
WASHINGTON, July 12 (Reuters) - A Senate panel on Thursday passed a
$25 billion bill for energy programs that slashes funds for a nuclear
waste dump in Nevada while it boosts resources to tend the nation's
nuclear arsenal and reclaim sites contaminated in its development.
The bill to fund energy and water projects with the Oct. 1 start of
the next fiscal year passed unanimously by the Democratic-led Senate
Appropriations Committee, is $2.6 billion more than President George
W. Bush sought and $1.4 billion above the version passed by the
Republican-led House of Representatives.
While committee members said their bill would fix shortcomings in
Bush's budget, they warned that funds likely would drop as
differences are worked out with the House bill and lawmakers struggle
to stay within overall budget limits.
In a bow to Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, the assistant majority leader who
also chairs the subcommittee that crafted the bill, $125 million was
sliced from a program to build an underground dump in Nevada's Yucca
Mountain to hold radioactive spent fuel from nuclear power plants.
Nevada is fighting the nuclear power industry's push to make it the
nation's repository for spent fuel that remains dangerous for
thousands of years and is accumulating in above-ground storage at
plants across the country.
Some $8 billion has been spent over the last 20 years to determine if
Yucca Mountain will offer safe storage, with critics contending the
studies have shown it is unsuitable.
The House's energy and water bill has the $435 million for Yucca
Mountain that Bush sought, while the Senate panel provided $275
million.
The Senate committee bill contains $6 billion to maintain the
nation's nuclear weapons stockpile, up $925 million from the House
bill and $705 million more than Bush had sought.
To continue to clean-up the radioactive mess at various sites across
the country left by building the arsenal, the bill earmarks $7.23
billion, $200 million above the House allocation and $900 million
more than had Bush wanted.
While the Senate bill emphasized the nuclear weapons complex, it
offers less money than the House version to the Army Corps of
Engineers for flood control, river dredging and other water projects.
The Senate plan has $4.3 billion for water projects, $162 million
less than the House but $405 million more than Bush's plan, which
targeted them as unnecessary pork.
But the Senate offered more money for research and development of
renewable energy sources such as solar and biomass, providing $435
million, compared with the House's $375 million. Bush sought $275
million.
-----------------
Turkey to try barring nuclear waste from straits
ANKARA, July 13 (Reuters) - Turkey said on Friday it would pursue all
legal measures to stop nuclear waste shipments to Russia via busy
Turkish waterways, fearing the cargo could wreak an environmental
disaster in Istanbul, a city of 10 million.
Russian President Vladimir Putin approved bills on Wednesday opening
Russia to imports of spent nuclear fuel, sparking fears that unusable
nuclear waste, rather then recyclable fuel, might also find its way
into the country.
Ankara objects to more traffic in the Bosphorus and Dardanelles
straits -- the only link between Russia's Black Sea region and the
world's oceans, arguing that they are already overcrowded and ships
with risky cargo menace the environment.
"The Environment Ministry will apply all legal methods in order to
prevent the passage of nuclear waste through Turkish territorial
waters," Minister Fevzi Aytekin said in a statement.
The ministry statement did not say what measures Turkey would take.
The 1936 Montreux Convention bars the country from stopping ships
from using its waterways in peacetime.
Turkey's stance will probably compound a dispute with Russia over
Ankara's wish to limit the number of Russian tankers carrying Caspian
Sea oil to Western markets through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles.
Critics have said Turkey uses the argument that its waterways have
limited capacity as a way to win control of the lucrative Caspian Sea
oil trade. Russia and Iran are also involved in projects to import
the crude to world markets.
But collisions are frequent in the Turkish straits. In 1994, 30
seamen were killed and 20,000 tonnes of oil spilled into the
Bosphorus after two vessels collided.
Aytekin said he did not want to be a "prophet of doom," but a
possible collision between oil tankers and vessels carrying nuclear
waste or a crash on the coast could cause "a disaster."
"That would negatively impact people living in Istanbul as well as
the historical and cultural relics of the city and it could
exterminate the sea's eco-system and cause pollution in the air, in
the sea and on the coasts," Aytekin said.
He said many international agreements to which Turkey is a signatory
prevent exporting or importing nuclear waste.
"The Environment Ministry is totally against the use of the Aegean-
Black Sea route to transport nuclear waste to Russia's Siberia from
Europe for reasons of human and environment safety."
-----------------
Maralinga documents reveal Australian safety concerns
13 July, 2001, Australian Broadcasting Corporation - It is claimed
that Australian officials were alarmed by the safety measures
available to workers at the Maralinga nuclear weapons tests.
British researcher Sue Rabbitt Roff says archival documents just
obtained reveal concerns by senior officials that the manager of the
Australian Radiation Detection Unit had no higher qualifications
than his school leavers certificate.
She says the 50 members of the unit took part in a two-week training
course before becoming responsible for the health and safety of
thousands of men working at Maralinga during the 1950s.
Ms Rabbitt Roff says radiation protection regimes at Maralinga relied
on very simplistic cleaning techniques, such as scrubbing under
fingernails.
"I think what it shows is the lack of concern, under the period of
great pressure that the British were under... that they didn't
prioritise this work," she said.
"You'd think that having your own citizens on the ground at a nuclear
weapons test you might put them first, but what the British
Government was most concerned about was to analyse the contents of
the bomb as they were being developed."
-----------------
Belgian gov't reluctant to release MOX fuel data
BRUSSELS, July 13 (Kyodo) - Belgian Interior Minister Antoine
Duquesne indicated Friday his government will not likely disclose
quality control data on plutonium-uranium mixed oxide (MOX) fuel
intended for use at a nuclear power plant in Japan.
The minister told the Senate that the government will not positively
deal with a request to disclose the data on MOX fuel produced by
Belgonucleaire S.A. in Belgium for use at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa
nuclear plant in Niigata Prefecture on the Sea of Japan coast.
The disclosure request was made by Sen. Anne-Marie Lizin, who was
asked to do so by members of the Kashiwazaki municipal assembly
during their visit to Belgium in June.
Lizin, also mayor of Huy, led a movement opposing the construction of
a nuclear power plant in Huy in the mid-1990s.
Japanese civic groups opposed to the nuclear plant operated by Tokyo
Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) have demanded that Belgonucleaire and
TEPCO disclose the MOX fuel data following a revelation nearly two
years ago of data falsification by British Nuclear Fuels PLC (BNFL)
on fuel manufactured for shipment to Japan.
In September 1999, it came to light that quality-assurance data on a
consignment of MOX fuel intended for use at the Takahama nuclear
power plant in Fukui Prefecture had been falsified by workers at
BNFL's Sellafield plant in Cumbria, northwest England.
Duquesne said the disclosure request for the MOX fuel data should be
sent to Belgonucleaire and that the government cannot do anything on
the matter.
He also said the data have been conveyed to TEPCO and Japanese
authorities and requests should be made to these bodies.
TEPCO has offered data on the MOX fuel pellets' external diameter and
other numerical figures, but antinuclear groups demand more precise
data.
It remains unknown whether the data allegedly sent to TEPCO and
Japanese authorities by Belgonucleaire were what the civic groups
requested.
TEPCO has told the groups it cannot release the more precise data
because Belgonucleaire prohibits them from being taken out of its
plants.
----------------
German sea winds may be answer to energy woes
LUEBKE-KOOG, Germany, July 13 (Reuters) - How do you meet the energy
needs of Europe's largest economy without exceeding pollution limits
set out in the Kyoto treaty, just months after you abandoned nuclear
power?
The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind, says German pig farmer
Hans-Detlef Feddersen.
Just off the North Sea coast of Germany in fact.
Feddersen and other farmers in his community have installed 32 wind
turbines behind the dikes on Germany's northern coast, producing a
hefty 55 million kilowatt hours of electricity a year, enough to
supply power for around 16,000 households.
As the three blades of a turbine drone 60 metres (197 feet) overhead,
Feddersen points out to the grey waves near the popular German
holiday resort island of Sylt.
"That's where we want to go next. Offshore."
Germany leads the world in using clean or renewable energy. Half of
all the wind power in Europe is produced in Germany, which is around
a third of the world total.
Feddersen and those like him have transformed wind power from the
crackpot dreams of a few ex-hippies into a serious option for
supplying a large chunk of world energy needs.
Now the big power companies are starting to take notice and wind
power will be a major talking point at the Bonn climate conference
which starts on July 16, where countries will try to reach a deal on
cutting greenhouse gas emissions, many of which are produced in coal,
gas or oil-burning power stations.
About 2.5 percent of Germany's energy needs come from wind turbines
but that could increase dramatically once the latest stage of wind
power generation moves from drawing board to reality.
"We've got a lot of wind up here, but we never knew what to do with
it. All the cheap energy today is going to cause problems for the
next generation. But wind power doesn't leave a trace," says
Feddersen.
OFFSHORE DREAMS
Environment Minister Juergen Trittin, a member of the Greens who was
largely responsible for coordinating Germany's decision to abandon
nuclear power over the coming years, shares Feddersen's vision of
offshore wind farms.
"The boom in wind power is a sign that Germany is taking the issue of
renewable energy seriously, despite difficulties at an international
level," Trittin said as he launched a position paper setting out the
government's goals for wind energy.
Germany's roughly 9,400 existing land-based wind turbines produce
around 6,100 megawatts of power a year.
"But we can only reach our goal of doubling the share of renewable
energy use in Germany by 2010 if we begin wind energy generation at
sea," Trittin said.
European countries want to boost sea wind energy because the supply
of land-based sites is rapidly running out. The increasing efficiency
of turbines means that wind energy could be the answer to the
continent's electricity needs.
One of the main reasons for the success of wind energy in Germany is
that since April 2000 the country has had a new renewable energy law
with fixed guaranteed prices -- a model hailed widely in the industry
as a basis for growth.
Feddersen and other farmers in the area have set up a shareholding
fund to allow people to buy shares in their offshore wind project,
with hundreds of concrete windmills producing millions of kilowatt
hours of energy.
Other groups examining offshore wind farms include Energiekontor AG,
a Bremen-based renewable energy firm and one of a number of
alternative energy companies in Germany who have gone to the stock
exchange for funding for such projects.
"We've seen a dramatic rise in the use of wind power in recent years,
a real explosion since we set up in 1990. We are looking at four
sites, three off the German coast and one off Britain," says
Energiekontor spokeswoman Cerstin Lange.
Lange says one of Energiekontor's North Sea projects would have 450
turbines, producing 1.8 million kilowatts of power with an estimated
investment of five billion marks ($2.18 billion). They hope to have
the offshore farms operational by 2004.
And the big multinational energy firms are listening too,
particularly as growing numbers of activist shareholders demand more
investment in environmentally-friendly power.
"We're working on it," runs an advertisement by the north German
energy company Schleswag, showing a picture of a woman drying her
hair with a hair dryer plugged into a potted plant.
The Anglo-Dutch oil and gas giant Royal Dutch/Shell said last month
that it would renew its billion-dollar renewable energy investment
programme for the next five years.
While Shell Renewables concentrates mainly on solar power, it is
currently participating in two trial projects totalling eight
megawatts of wind generating capacity.
SHREDDING BIRDS?
Not everyone is happy about offshore wind farms.
There have been complaints about the environmental effects of wind
turbines, particularly noise, and concerns that they spoil areas of
natural beauty in seaside areas.
Ornithologists fear the blades could act as bird-shredders, or they
could throw songbirds off course. Others are worried that sea mammals
might become disoriented by wind turbines, while fishermen fear their
fishing grounds may be affected.
On top of this there are uncertainties about the authorisation
procedures and the lengthy consultation process involved in getting
permission for an offshore wind farm.
Feddersen says the first tranche of funding for his group's offshore
wind farm will be used to investigate the environmental impact but
says it's important to try this new approach.
"There's a lot of idealism in this. It could be that in 20 years time
my daughter turns around to me and laughs at our misguided efforts,"
he says.
"But then we'll just turn the windmills into ships' masts and that's
it. Unlike the other forms of energy production we have today, there
will be no harm done."
-----------------
Brazil takes new crack at controversial nuke plant
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil, July 12 (Reuters) - Brazil, in the grips of
an acute energy crisis, is mulling plans to expand its controversial
nuclear complex amid an international debate on whether atomic power
plants should be phased out.
Government officials expect a tough discussion in the National Energy
Council later this month, but indicate the $2.4 billion new reactor
at Angra dos Reis, 80 miles (130 km) west of Rio de Janeiro, will
likely go ahead.
The two-reactor Angra complex, surrounded by lush tropical forest and
a popular bay resort area, is a constant target of environmentalist
attacks.
They argue the plant's first reactor, built in the 1980s under the
nuclear program drawn up by Brazil's military rulers, has a
dangerously high level of shutdowns, the reactors are too expensive
and there is little space to store nuclear waste.
Advocates of the expansion say the plant is safe, clean and the
location is ideal for supplying the two key cities of Sao Paulo and
Rio with cheap energy produced by Brazil's own uranium. Brazil has
the world's sixth-largest uranium reserves.
Brushing off criticism as ideologically charged, they insist that the
reactor would increase Brazil's power capacity and reduce the
country's dependence on water resources while providing more jobs to
local residents.
"The plant has total acceptance in the region. People consider it
safe. The opposition is all in universities ... all those professors
with ideological issues in mind," said Flavio de Moura, president of
Eletrobras Termonuclear, the nuclear energy arm of the federal power
holding Eletrobras <ELET6.SA>.
One government official, who did not want to be identified, said the
chronic power shortage, which made the government impose tough energy
rationing in June, would be the wild card in the hands of those
seeking a stamp of approval for Angra 3.
Latin America's largest country now relies on hydroelectric plants
for more than 90 percent of its power, but recent droughts have dried
up reservoirs there, triggering a major crisis.
Gas-fired plants are seen as the key answer, but a new 1,350-megawatt
nuclear reactor in five years would come in handy. De Moura said
atomic generation costs are lower at $37.8 per megawatt-hour,
compared to $38.6 at gas-fired plants.
Apart from the need for more power, de Moura is banking on the fact
that Brazil has already spent $700 million on the equipment for Angra
3: "We have to finish Angra 3, which is a great national necessity.
As a poor country, we cannot just forget about the millions already
invested."
ANTI-ATOM GERMANY STILL VIEWED AS NUCLEAR ALLY
De Moura denied some reports that Germany, which had long signed up
for the construction of Angra reactors, had refused to continue
financing and providing equipment for Angra 3, as it is preparing to
start phasing out nuclear power at home.
"German banks, state and private, are going to help with the
financing. There is no problem here. They will finance everything
that involves German equipment," said de Moura. Brazil needs some
$200 million worth of German equipment.
A senior German Embassy official said Germany had never formally
blocked the financing and was now awaiting proposals from the
Brazilian government. "Probably in August they will come up with
something concrete," he said.
As for the remaining $1.5 billion, Moura said Eletronuclear itself
would have to find financing. "We are on course for that. We don't
want the government's money." Some experts say parent company
Eletrobras could eventually fund the project.
Brazil's nuclear program ran into economic problems in late 1980s.
Angra 2 started working only last year after a delay of nearly a
decade and a big injection of German money.
De Moura, who expects the council to approve Angra 3, said Brazil
should build it as soon as possible and then "sit and analyze" the
world's stance on nuclear plants.
"The United States, where the Bush administration now sees a big
future in nuclear fuel, may well come up with a new-generation
reactor. Then we can follow that path."
Environmentalists disagree.
"The electricity crisis will pass, but a nuclear reactor is a problem
that Brazil will have forever due to nuclear waste," said Delcio
Rodriguez, head of Brazil operations of international environment
watchdog Greenpeace. "We hope the expansion plans get scrapped."
----------------
Colo. Nuclear Plant Problems Cited
DENVER (AP) - The former chief security officer at the Rocky Flats
nuclear weapons plant said it had serious security problems five
years ago and people who complained faced retaliation from the
federal government.
Edward McCallum, now an anti-terrorism official with the Defense
Department, told a federal judge Wednesday that the government barred
investigators from looking into security complaints for a month.
He also said he believed he was the target of retaliation for
exposing security risks at the now-closed plant 16 miles northwest of
Denver.
Jennifer Thompson, a spokeswoman for Kaiser-Hill Co., which is
cleaning up the plant under a federal contract, acknowledged there
were security problems in 1996. But she said the problems have been
fixed and the company is getting satisfactory ratings from the Energy
Department, which operated the plant.
U.S. Magistrate Patricia Coan is hearing testimony this week on a
motion to dismiss a $400 million lawsuit filed by three former
security workers at Rocky Flats.
Named as defendants are Kaiser-Hill, security contractor Wackenhut
Services and EG&G Rocky Flats, a former operator of the plant. The
plaintiffs are seeking to recover money paid to contractors, claiming
they ignored security in a rush to clean up the plant.
McCallum, who testified for the plaintiffs, was allowed to speak only
after the government put a specialist in the courtroom to advise both
sides on what matters were official secrets that could not be
discussed.
McCallum said Rocky Flats officials made misleading statements when
they said the plant had no serious security deficiencies.
``I don't know if I would use the term 'cover-up.' I was aware of
deficiencies that existed over numerous years that were not
corrected,'' McCallum said.
McCallum also said he was prevented from testifying about some of the
problems before Congress, and the government tried to prevent other
whistle-blowers from going public.
The plant, which closed at the end of the Cold War, still holds 14
tons of weapons-grade plutonium and six tons of enriched uranium. The
government hopes to turn Rocky Flats into a wildlife preserve.
On the Net: Energy Department: http://www.energy.gov
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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://www.geocities.com/scperle
ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Website: http://www.dosimetry.com
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