Germany, Austria pressure Prague on nuke plant

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

Index:



Germany, Austria pressure Prague on nuke plant

PPL cleared to upgrade Pennsylvania nuclear plants

German detained for smuggling plutonium

French prosecutor orders Chernobyl sickness probe

BNFL plans Chapelcross shutdown to retrive N-fuel

German defence ministry denies radar deaths report

Mobile firms to provide radiation levels soon

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



Germany, Austria pressure Prague on nuke plant



BERLIN, July 17 (Reuters) - Germany and Austria piled diplomatic 

pressure on their Czech neighbour on Tuesday over a controversial 

nuclear power plant which both Berlin and Vienna want closed because 

of fears the reactor might be unsafe. 



Officials in Berlin and Vienna say Temelin's position 60 km (40 

miles) from their borders is too close for comfort as the plant's 

Soviet design does not meet Western safety standards. 



In a strongly worded statement on Monday, the German government said 

it "urges the government of the Czech Republic to lift its decision 

to allow the Temelin nuclear plant to operate and to close the 

plant." 



On Tuesday Berlin said it wanted talks with Prague on the issue. 



Vienna suggested that Prague's efforts to join the European Union 

could be hit by the controversial reactor although Germany tried to 

downplay any link. 



Austrian Foreign Minister Benita Ferrero-Waldner hinted in Warsaw on 

Tuesday that closing the plant would do Czech efforts to join the 15-

member EU no harm at all. 



"You need goodwill on both sides to hold constructive talks, and I 

therefore expect that the Czech side shows this goodwill, and takes 

concrete steps at last," Ferrero-Waldner said after meeting her 

Polish counterpart Wladyslaw Bartoszewski. 



Berlin took a different view. 



"This has no connection with EU expansion...this is something else," 

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said in Brussels on Monday 

evening. 



Germany emphasised that it was a Czech decision to use atomic power 

if it wanted, but the power station's proximity to Germany gave it 

the right to make its voice heard. 



"Germany recognises the Czech Republic's sovereign right to use 

nuclear power to generate electricity within its own borders," 

government sources said. 



"At the same time, the German government is entitled to express the 

fears of local citizens about the planned operation of a nuclear 

plant just 60 km from the German border. 



"Germany believes the Temelin question can in no way be linked to 

current negotiations about the Czech Republic joining the EU. This is 

also the EU's position," the sources said. 



The $2.5 billion power station has suffered a string of technical 

glitches since it was first turned on for operational testing last 

year. It has been shut for weeks due to turbine problems in the non-

nuclear part of the plant. 



Shares in the dominant Czech power utility CEZ fell a whopping 21 

percent on Monday after the German government statement calling for 

the plant to be shut, but they recovered around seven percent on 

Tuesday. 



Environment Minister Juergen Trittin, architect of Germany's decision 

last year to phase out nuclear power over the next two decades and 

boost investment in renewable energy sources, has long opposed the 

Temelin plant. 



Trittin has noted that conservative politicians in Bavaria, the 

southern German province that borders the Czech Republic, are highly 

sceptical about EU expansion and could use the row over Temelin to 

nurture opposition to taking in eastern members. 

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



PPL cleared to upgrade Pennsylvania nuclear plants

  

NEW YORK, July 16 (Reuters) - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission 

approved a request by PPL Corp. <PPL.N> to increase the generating 

capacity of its two Susquehanna nuclear power plants by 1.4 percent, 

or about 14 megawatts per unit. 



The NRC said in a statement on Friday that its staff determined that 

PPL could safely increase the power output of the two reactors with 

minor modifications to plant equipment. 



The power increase will boost the generating capacity of each unit to 

about 1,100 megawatts. 



One megawatt provides enough electricity to light about 1,000 average 

homes, which means the so-called uprate will enable PPL to light 

about 28,000 more homes. 



PPL told the NRC it intends to upgrade unit 2 this month and unit 1 

following its scheduled spring 2002 refueling outage. 



The Susquehanna station is located near Berwick, Pennsylvania. 

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



German detained for smuggling plutonium

  

BERLIN (Reuters) - A worker at a German nuclear reprocessing facility 

and his girlfriend who were contaminated by plutonium have been 

detained for smuggling the radioactive material out of the plant, 

prosecutors said Monday. 



The 47-year-old man admitted taking a number of contaminated wash 

towels and a bottle of liquid from the reprocessing plant in 

Karlsruhe, in southwestern Germany, earlier this year. 



He told police he was unaware the bottle contained plutonium and said 

he had smuggled the items out to show how slack security checks at 

the plant were, the state prosecutor's office in Karlsruhe said. 



For over six months, he stored the wash towels and the bottle in his 

flat. 



Authorities at the Karlsruhe plant, which is in the process of being 

shut down, only realized something was amiss in June when a routine 

urine test showed the worker, whose name was not released, had above-

average levels of radioactive contamination. 



After an investigation was launched, the man told his girlfriend to 

dispose of the towels and bottles, authorities said. 



According to the prosecutor, she threw clothing belonging to the man 

into a charity clothes bank in the town of Landau and the bottle into 

a hedge on the edge of the town, north of Karlsruhe. 



Last Friday she showed police where she had stashed the contaminated 

articles. Tests found that both she and the couple's daughter were 

also contaminated. 

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



French prosecutor orders Chernobyl sickness probe



PARIS (Reuters) - The Paris public prosecutor's office ordered an 

investigation Monday into whether French citizens fell sick because 

of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, judicial sources said. 



The decision follows legal moves by a group of 51 plaintiffs with 

thyroid ailments who allege French authorities failed to warn the 

public of the dangers of radioactive fallout from the world's worst 

nuclear disaster. 



The sources said the prosecutor's office had determined there were 

sufficient grounds to launch an inquiry into the complaint, which the 

group filed against persons unknown for unintentional injury and 

associated counts. 



An investigating magistrate will conduct the probe. Such a move under 

French law does not necessarily lead to charges. 



The plaintiffs, backed by two pressure groups, allege the French 

authorities did nothing to alert people to the potential dangers from 

a radioactive cloud that drifted west from Chernobyl when a reactor 

exploded in April 1986. 



The plant in Ukraine shut down for good last December. 



Last year, a 31-year-old Frenchman suffering from thyroid cancer, 

Yohann van Waeyenberghe, lost an attempt to have criminal proceedings 

launched against French officials for alleged bodily harm in the 

Chernobyl affair. 



A court ruled Waeyenberghe could not demonstrate a scientific link 

between his illness and the accident. 



Radioactivity from the Chernobyl explosion drifted across France 

between April 27 and May 5, 1996. 



West Germany, Austria and Italy took various precautions, including 

restrictions on the consumption of milk and dairy products, but 

French authorities said there was no need for special measures to 

protect against any health risks. 



An official French scientific study published last December estimated 

the incidence of thyroid cancer in France had risen fivefold among 

men and more than doubled among women between 1975 and 1995. 



The study, however, said the rise had been noted before the Chernobyl 

disaster and that the causes had not been established. 



It criticized the authorities for failing to monitor the population 

for evidence of cancer risks after the accident. 

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



BNFL plans Chapelcross shutdown to retrive N-fuel



LONDON, July 16 (Reuters) - British Nuclear Fuels said on Monday it 

was switching off all reactors at its ageing Chapelcross nuclear 

power station in Scotland after reassesing the seriousness of an 

accident earlier this month when radioactive fuel was dropped during 

refuelling. 



"At this stage we are planning to shut down this week the three 

reactors which are still operating at Chapelcross to faciliate the 

recovery of the dropped fuel," a BNFL spokesman told Reuters. 



On July 5 a batch of spent radioactive fuel was dropped at the 196 

megawatt Chapelcross power station. 



State-owned BNFL said it initially thought all 24 of the one metre 

long fuel rods were still in a retrival basket and had only slipped a 

couple of feet, but on Thursday July 13, it was discovered that 12 

rods were missing from the basket and had probably fallen 80 feet 

down a discharge shaft into water. 



"This is where the rods were going anyway, although obviously they 

would normally have been taken down in a controlled fashion," the 

spokesman said. 



He said there was "no evidence of untoward radiation readings," but 

that refuelling at BNFL's Calder Hall station which uses a similar 

refuelling system to Chapelcross had been suspended. 



Environmental groups said the accident was worrying. 



"Fuel rods are not designed to be dropped any distance and not 24 

metres. A recent test on a nine metre drop led to fuel rods being 

fractured," said Shaun Burnie at Greenpeace. 



Malcolm Grimston, a nuclear expert at the Royal Institute of 

International Affairs said the accident was serious, but had not 

neccessarily resulted in a radiation leak. 



"You don't want these sorts of things happening, but I wouldn't think 

dropping the rods into water would be so serious compared with the 

battering the rods get when they are in the reactors," he said. 



The Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, the country's nuclear 

watchdog said it was being kept informed. 



"We believe there will be a clearer picture tommorrow," an NII 

spokesman told Reuters. 



The Chapelcross power station is a first generation Magnox plant 

around 40 years old and BNFL has already said it will be closed 

between 2008 and 2010, although technical issues or market conditions 

could result in an earlier closure. 

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



German defence ministry denies radar deaths report

  

BERLIN, July 17 (Reuters) - The German defence ministry denied a 

newspaper report on Tuesday that 58 soldiers had died from exposure 

to radiation from radar equipment. 



"This is incorrect," a spokeswoman for the ministry said, responding 

to a report in Bild newspaper which said the troops had died after 

years of unprotected exposure to radiation and microwaves. 



The spokeswoman added that the ministry would issue a statement later 

on Tuesday. 



A government-commissioned report last month said some 250 soldiers 

had developed cancer from radiation from radar equipment in the 1960s 

and 1970s. 

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



Mobile firms to provide radiation levels soon



STOCKHOLM/HELSINKI, July 16 (Reuters) - The world's leading mobile 

phone makers said on Monday they would start publishing information 

later this year about the level of radiation emitted by their phones 

in response to consumer concern. 



The largest cellphone maker Nokia <NOK1V.HE>, the second-largest 

Motorola <MOT.N> and the fourth-largest Ericsson <LMEb.ST>, have 

agreed with a European standards-setting body on a way to measure 

radiation absorption on phones globally. 



"There have been requests by some consumers that this information 

should be readily available," said Nokia Mobile Phones spokesman 

Tapio Hedman. "We are providing them with information they feel is 

important." 



The agreement with the European Committee for Electrotechnical 

Standardisation's (CENELEC) comes after years of lobbying from 

consumer and other organisations for companies and regulators to 

agree on a global standard of measuring radiation emitted from 

handsets. 



Reports have alleged that radio waves from mobile phones can affect 

the human brain. Last year, a UK government-sponsored scientific 

inquiry, chaired by Sir William Stewart, warned children to avoid 

excessive use of mobile phones because their thinner skulls made them 

prone to absorbing radiation. 



"We have worked together with Nokia and Motorola on this. It will not 

be any kind of warning label, but specification information included 

in the phone package together with other technical measures," said 

Mikael Westmark, responsible for health issues at Ericsson. 



The issue has come to the fore in recent years as the usage of 

cellphones around the world has risen sharply and consumers spend an 

increasing amount of time talking or sending messages on their 

wireless devices. 



At the end of March this year, there were 770 million mobile phone 

users globally and Nokia expects that figure to rise to one billion 

in the first six months of 2002. 



U.S. neurologist Christopher Newman last year filed a lawsuit against 

leading U.S. phone companies, including Motorola Inc, saying that the 

use of his mobile phone had caused a malignant brain tumour. 



Neither Ericsson, nor Nokia were named in the Newman lawsuit. All 

three companies say research conducted over several years has found 

no evidence to link health problems with mobile phones. 



RADIATION LEVEL TO FEATURE IN USER MANUAL 



Manufacturers do not plan to label the phones with the actual level 

of radiation, called Specific Absorption Rate (SAR), nor put it on 

phone packages. The information would be included in user manuals. 



SAR -- the best way of measuring radiation -- shows the absorption of 

energy by the human body in watts per kilogram. The maximum safety 

limit is 2.0, while most phones on the market are now showing values 

between 0.5 and 1.0. 



Mobile phones are, in effect, tiny radio stations that send and 

receive. Hedman said one of the big challenges would be to explain to 

consumers what the new number actually means. 



"The SAR value that will be included in the phone package will be the 

maximum value, rather than the average one. When you talk, you very 

seldom reach the maximum level in a properly constructed network," 

said Westmark. 



He said the SAR value was highest when dialling and then dropped 

steeply off after the connection was made. 



Ericsson and Motorola said they would include the SAR figure with its 

phones from October, and Nokia said it would start doing it at around 

the same time. 



"It's not that as of October 1, you're going to see a lot of this 

information suddenly appear. It'll be rolled out in new products over 

time," said Norman Sandler, Motorola's director of global strategic 

issues. 



The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) already requires 

cellphones to meet radiation safety standards, and all manufacturers 

are required to inform the FCC of the SAR levels on their phones 

before they are approved for sale nationally. 



Consumers can already get this information from the FCC, and Nokia 

has published them in the user manuals of its U.S. phones, Hedman 

said.



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

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



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

You are currently subscribed to the Radsafe mailing list. To unsubscribe,

send an e-mail to Majordomo@list.vanderbilt.edu  Put the text "unsubscribe

radsafe" (no quote marks) in the body of the e-mail, with no subject line.