Duke Power Nuclear Fuel Costs Lowest in Country

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

Index:



Duke Power Nuclear Fuel Costs Lowest in Country

NRC sees tornado safety concern at Duke S.C. nuke

Russian nuclear experts say raising Kursk is safe

NATO general opens Belarus Chernobyl victims centre

U.S. nuclear fugitive arrested in Spain

French arrest 3 for nuclear trafficking - report

Report: Staff Cuts Lead to Lab Woes

U.S. asks lab to study reducing lead time for nuclear tests

Senate wants study of US transport infrastructure

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



ke Power Nuclear Fuel Costs Lowest in Country

  

CHARLOTTE, N.C., July 23 /PRNewswire/ -- Duke Power's nuclear fuel 

costs for the three-year period 1998 to 2000 were the lowest in the 

country, and Duke-operated stations were ranked first, second and 

third. 



Based on information filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory 

Commission, Catawba Nuclear Station in York, S.C., had the lowest 

fuel costs over the three-year period at .423 cents per kilowatt-

hour. McGuire Nuclear Station in Huntersville, N.C., was second at 

.433 cents, and Oconee Nuclear Station in Seneca, S.C., was third at 

.439 cents. 



"This means Duke Power's management of nuclear fuel costs has saved 

customers more than $100 million," according to Ken Canady, vice 

president of nuclear engineering. 



Broken down annually, the data shows Duke Power's fuel costs in 2000 

were $27.4 million lower than a comparably sized U.S. nuclear system 

performing at the median of .478 cents per kilowatt-hour. In 1999, 

Duke Power saved $36.8 million compared to the industry median of 

.498 cents. In 1998, Duke Power's fuel costs were $45.7 million lower 

than the industry median of .521 cents per kilowatt-hour. 



Canady attributed the company's success in keeping fuel costs low to 

three factors:  excellent plant operations, efficient fuel cycle 

designs and effective fuel contracting. 



"Our stations safely and reliably produced more than 56 million 

megawatt- hours of electricity in 2000, a company record," he said. 

"This was combined with fuel cycle designs that obtained maximum 

production from our fuel." 



The company also searches worldwide markets to obtain the best prices 

for fuel. "By being able to take advantage of the international 

competitive markets for uranium and enrichment services, we are able 

to get the best prices for our customers," Canady added. Duke Power 

purchases uranium from several suppliers, including ones in Canada, 

Australia and the United States. It also purchases enrichment 

services from companies in Europe and the United States. 



Duke Power owns McGuire and Oconee stations. Catawba is jointly owned 

by North Carolina Municipal Power Agency Number 1, North Carolina 

Electric Membership Corporation, Piedmont Municipal Power Agency, 

Saluda River Electric Cooperative Inc and Duke Power. 

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



NRC sees tornado safety concern at Duke S.C. nuke

  

NEW YORK, July 20 (Reuters) - The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on 

Friday said it has found safety concerns regarding tornado mitigation 

procedures at Duke Energy Co.'s <DUK.N> Oconee nuclear power plant in 

South Carolina. 



"In March of this year, the NRC conducted an inspection at the Oconee 

plant, and inspectors identified that the licensee had not corrected 

deficiencies in the implementation of the plant's tornado mitigation 

strategies," the NRC said in a statement. 



"Specifically, because of the location of some equipment, plant 

personnel would be unable, in a sufficient amount of time, to align a 

pump to provide lake water to the steam generators, should such water 

be needed to mitigate the effects of an accident during a tornado," 

the NRC said. 



The NRC categorized the safety significance of the tornado mitigation 

issues as white, or of low to moderate safety significance. 



A green finding receives normal NRC oversight, while white, yellow or 

red assessments mean increasing NRC involvement, including more 

inspections. 



The NRC said the pump alignment problem, along with additional 

concerns over tornado mitigation at Oconee, will mean another NRC 

inspection will be conducted at the plant. 



The NRC also said it cited the Oconee plant for a violation related 

to the tornado mitigation, and said Duke Energy has 30 days to 

respond to that notice of violation. 



The Oconee plant, located in Seneca, S.C., is made up of two units, 

each with a generation capacity of 846 megawatts (MW), giving the 

plant a total capacity of 1,692 MW. 

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



Russian nuclear experts say raising Kursk is safe



MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian nuclear experts dismissed fears Tuesday 

that the operation to raise the Kursk nuclear submarine from the 

Arctic seabed could pose ecological problems, saying tests showed 

there were no radiation leaks. 



The Kursk sank to the bottom of the Barents Sea after an unexplained 

explosion last August, killing all 118 crew members. 



On Sunday, drivers began cutting holes in the hull of the sub to fix 

cables that will eventually be used to hoist it to the surface. 



President Vladimir Putin has vowed to raise the sub, recover the 

bodies of its crew and dispose of its nuclear reactors. But some 

environmentalists believe sealing the reactors on the sea floor would 

be safer. 



The vice president of the Kurchatov Institute, one of Russia's 

leading nuclear laboratories, told a news conference that tests 

carried out after the accident confirmed the submarine's reactor had 

shut down, the reactor's emergency system worked and there were no 

radiation leaks. 



"We have carried out all preparatory work and considered all possible 

situations that could occur during the lifting, transporting and 

docking of the submarine," Nikolai Ponomaryev-Stepnoi said. 



"Together with the chief designer, we have concluded that not only in 

a normal situation, but also in any out-of-the-ordinary case, the 

nuclear reactor would remain in the same state." 



SALVAGE OPERATION 



Divers recovered 12 bodies from the wreck last year before bitter 

winter conditions forced an end to salvage operations. 



The Barents Sea is one of the world's most important fisheries, and 

any leak of radiation could be devastating. Residents in the area 

have also expressed concerns over the safety of docking the submarine 

on land. 



But Alexander Kiryushin, director of the bureau that designed the 

Kursk's nuclear reactor, said the level of radiation measured 

corresponded to the background level in the Barents Sea. 



The plan to raise the Kursk envisions sawing off its damaged torpedo 

bay and leaving it on the sea floor for the time being. 



The rest of the 18,000-ton craft would be lashed to a giant floating 

pontoon, hoisted to the surface and towed into port. The operation is 

due to be completed by late September. 



Ponomaryev-Stepnoi said the radiation levels of the submarine would 

be constantly monitored during the lifting operation and the reactor 

would then be examined in dock. 



Kiryushin said all reactors were designed to take into account any 

possible emergency situations, adding that in the case of submarine 

reactors this would include collisions, explosions and other impacts.



Russia says the submarine sunk to the bottom of the sea after its 

torpedoes exploded. The cause of the explosion has not yet been 

determined. 



Moscow contracted Dutch salvage firm Mammoet and Rotterdam's marine 

services firm Smit International to lift the Kursk, and divers have 

already begun cutting holes in its hull to affix cables that will be 

used to raise it to the surface. 

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



NATO general opens Belarus Chernobyl victims centre

  

GOMEL, Belarus, July 23 (Reuters) - The Supreme Commander of NATO 

forces in Europe took time out from conflict resolution on Monday to 

open a blood transfusion centre revamped with U.S. funding to help 

victims of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. 



U.S. General Joseph Ralston, whose visit came at a low point in 

Belarussian-U.S. relations, said the project was an expression of 

goodwill towards Belarus, many of whose 10 million citizens were hit 

by fallout from Chernobyl in April 1986. 



"Let this hospital be a symbol of what we can achieve when we work 

together as partners towards a common cause and common good," Ralston 

said as he opened the Gomel Hospital Blood Transfusion Centre in the 

town of Gomel in eastern Belarus. 



The United Nations estimates five million people across Europe were 

exposed to radiation after the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear 

plant, 125 kilometres north of the Ukrainian capital Kiev. 



More than 4,000 people who took part in the former Soviet Union's 

clean-up attempt have since died and another 40,000 involved in the 

operation became ill or were disabled. 



Medical experts believe the incidence of cancers and other disabling 

diseases will continue to rise in the region, which is plagued by 

poor medical services and a lack of funding. 



The United States has provided $561 million in humanitarian aid to 

Belarus since the impoverished former Soviet republic gained its 

independence in 1991, U.S. figures show. 



But the U.S. administration is one of the most vocal critics of 

President Alexander Lukashenko, dismayed at his poor record on human 

rights and press freedoms which has left Belarus isolated and shunned 

by Western governments. 



Lukashenko has run Belarus with an increasingly authoritarian hand 

since winning power by a landslide in 1994 and dissolving an 

opposition-led parliament in 1996. 



Critics label him Europe's last dictator but the president, who says 

he is confident of winning September's presidential elections, has 

support in rural areas and amongst older voters. 



Western governments fear the elections will not be free and fair and 

have accused officials of harassing election monitors and suppressing 

critical media and potential opposition figures. 



U.S. Ambassador to Belarus Mike Kozak repeated his call for free 

elections and for Belarus to honour its obligations to the 

Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe. 



"If the Belarussian authorities were to comply with their commitments 

from today, we would be prepared to undertake a series of concrete 

steps to restart high-level contacts and to encourage greater two-way 

trade, investment and military cooperation," Kozak said at the 

ceremony. 

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



U.S. nuclear fugitive arrested in Spain

  

MADRID, July 23 (Reuters) - A U.S. citizen convicted of selling 

nuclear arms parts to Israel has been arrested in Spain after 16 

years on the run, police said on Monday. 



Richard Kelly Smith, 71, escaped before being sentenced in the U.S. 

on 15 counts of exporting nuclear arms technology and 15 counts of 

falsification of documents. 



He was picked up two weeks ago in Malaga on Spain's southern Costa 

del Sol, where he had been living since 1985, police said. 



Spain's High Court will now consider whether to extradite him, they 

added. 



"In 1985 Los Angeles authorities filed an international warrant for 

(Smith's) arrest and extradition...so we are complying with that 

request," a spokesman for the national police in Malaga said. "The 

case has been transferred to the High Court." 



Smith had previously been chairman of a Los Angeles-based company 

that developed microchips called "Kryptons," which are involved in 

the firing mechanism of nuclear weapons, police said. 



Between 1980 and 1982 he falsified documents so that his company 

could sell the Kryptons to an Israeli company for an undisclosed sum. 





The U.S. embassy in Madrid declined to comment. 



Spain's Justice Ministry as recently as 1992 received a "verbal 

petition" from Washington for Smith's arrest and extradition, a 

Justice Ministry spokesmen said. 



The spokesman added that since Smith's arrest, Washington has made no 

formal extradition request. 

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



French arrest 3 for nuclear trafficking - report

  

PARIS, July 22 (Reuters) - French police have arrested three men on 

suspicion of trafficking nuclear material after seizing five grams of 

enriched uranium used to make nuclear weapons, the newspaper Journal 

du Dimanche said on Sunday. 



Police and judicial sources declined to confirm the report, but a 

spokesman for the country's Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) said the 

matter was in the hands of the interior ministry. 



A CEA physicist said separately this seemed to be the first time 

usable radioactive materials had been seized in France. 



"As far as the CEA knows, this is the first time that radioactive 

materials have been discovered in France. Until now, one had only 

found radioactive waste," Philippe Bergeonneau told Reuters. 



Journal du Dimanche said police arrested a French man and two 

Cameroonians earlier this week in Paris and seized five grams of 

enriched uranium 235, which was inside a glass bottle contained 

within a lead outer-casing. 



"The amount may seem small, but it was presumably a sample aimed at 

luring a buyer interested in several kilograms," the newspaper said. 



NOT ENOUGH FOR A BOMB 



The newspaper said police had seized aeroplane tickets to eastern 

European countries and nuclear analysis notes written in Cyrillic 

script, presumably Russian, from an apartment belonging to one of the 

men. 



Bergeonneau said 10 kilograms of uranium 235 would be needed to make 

a nuclear bomb but apart from its military uses, this kind of uranium 

was also used in research nuclear reactors. 



He said closer analysis of the material found in Paris would enable 

scientists to establish its exact composition, but he said it was 

premature to say whether it would be possible to determine its 

origin. 



Bergeonneau said several cases of nuclear trafficking had been 

discovered in other countries since the break up of the Soviet Union.



In January 2001, Greece found hundreds of highly radioactive metal 

plates, containing plutonium and americium, buried in a forest near 

the northern port of Thessaloniki. 



Officials at the time said they thought the plates had been brought 

in from former Soviet republics or Bulgaria and buried there while 

the traffickers waited for a buyer. 

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



Report: Staff Cuts Lead to Lab Woes



WASHINGTON (AP) - Staff shortages resulting from Energy Department 

budget cuts in the Clinton administration have contributed to 

problems at nuclear weapons laboratories, the agency's internal 

watchdog reports. 



Budget cuts from 1995 to 1998 reduced staff by about one-quarter, 

leading to a critical shortage from which the department has yet to 

recover, Inspector General Gregory H. Friedman said in his recent 

report. 



Among the problems cited: 



A two-year shutdown in California of the Lawrence Livermore National 

Laboratory's plutonium facility, attributed partly to high turnover. 



A 6,000-gallon mineral oil leak at the Los Alamos National Laboratory 

in New Mexico that destroyed more than $1 million worth of laser 

equipment. No federal workers were present at the time. 



At some of the department-run labs, emergency management, laser 

safety, and the safety of high explosives and nuclear weapons are the 

responsibility of a single person. 



The staffing shortages have not jeopardized public safety, department 

spokesman Jeanne Lopatto said. 



``Safety at our labs is very secure and it is something that we are 

constantly vigilant of,'' she said Sunday. 



The report recommended that department officials develop a strategy 

to recruit and retain scientific and technical personnel and 

restructure the work force to prevent future problems. As of January 

2001, the department faced a shortage of 577 scientific and technical 

specialists. 



Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham is leading a campaign to recruit and 

retain workers, Lopatto said. 

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



U.S. asks lab to study reducing lead time for nuclear tests



WASHINGTON, July 21 (Kyodo) - The administration of President George 

W. Bush has instructed a nuclear research institute to study ways to 

significantly shorten the time required to prepare for underground 

nuclear testing, sources close to Congress said Friday. 



In an apparent signal that some in the administration favor the 

resumption of nuclear tests, the Bush administration instructed the 

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to find ways to reduce the 

preparatory period, or lead time, from the current three years to a 

year and a half or half a year, the sources said. 



However, the House of Representatives in late June rejected the 

administration's funding request for fiscal 2001 for underground 

nuclear testing, blocking the government's possible move toward the 

resumption of nuclear weapons testing until at least next year. 



An official at the California-based laboratory admitted to having 

received the instruction through the Defense Department. 



''What the administration is asking (the) lab to do is to look at how 

the lead time might be reduced,'' the official told Kyodo News. ''It 

is not a move to resume or return to underground tests.'' 



Once the government decides to conduct a nuclear test, it usually 

takes about three years to conduct it at an underground testing 

facility in Nevada. 



While the United States has suspended underground nuclear tests since 

1992, the U.S. Senate in 1999 rejected ratifying the nuclear 

Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) due mainly to opposition from 

Republican Party lawmakers skeptical of its enforceability and 

verifiability. 



Joseph Cirineione, director of the Non-Proliferation Project at the 

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said it is ''absolutely 

true'' that the administration has requested such funds to Congress. 



The administration wants to shorten the lead time from the current 

three years to ''a matter of months,'' he said. 



Some in the Bush administration are calling for the development of a 

new nuclear warhead with pin-point accuracy to target military 

facilities, assuming development by ''rogue states'' of mass-

destruction weapons at their own underground facilities, according to 

arms controlling sources. 



Pro-nuclear testing members in the administration ''want to take an 

incremental strategy to just move a little closer towards testing 

without actually making a political decision to test, just to make it 

easier for there to eventually be a decision to test,'' Cirineione 

said. 



Foreign ministers of the Group of Eight (G-8) major nations agreed 

Thursday during their meeting in Rome that they will ''urge all 

states to maintain global existing moratoria on nuclear testing'' 

until the CTBT is put into effect. 



The CTBT was completed in 1996, but cannot enter into force until it 

has been approved by the U.S. and 43 other countries with nuclear 

reactors for research or power generation. The U.S. is the only G-8 

nation that has not yet ratified the CTBT. 

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



Senate wants study of US transport infrastructure

  

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Prompted by a freight train derailment and 

fire in a tunnel that virtually paralyzed Baltimore, the Senate 

approved a measure Monday to study the risks of transporting toxic 

chemicals and other hazardous substances. 



Proposed by Nevada Democrat Harry Reid, the assistant majority 

leader, the measure would require the Transportation Department and 

the General Accounting Office to determine whether the U.S. rail and 

highway networks were adequate to handle dangerous cargo. 



"That tunnel is 100 years old," Reid said in a floor speech about 

last week's accident in Baltimore. "So that tunnel was dug through 

that area about 1900" and "has had almost nothing done to it since 

then." 



Reid said the volume of hazardous chemical transport increased by 

more than one third in the last 25 years. He said approximately 

261,000 people were evacuated nationwide because of rail-related 

accidents from 1978-95. 



Evacuations linked to rail accidents are often ordered because of a 

toxic chemical threat. 



"During that period industry reported eight transportation accidents 

involving small volumes of high-level radioactive waste transported," 

Reid said. 



He said a witness at a Senate hearing earlier in the day testified 

that 70 percent of the bridges in America did not meet basic safety 

standards. 



"We have all kinds of trouble with our infrastructure in America 

today, and we need to do something about it," Reid said. "Let's at 

least have some knowledge of what's out there when we're making these 

treks of very hazardous materials." 



Reid's amendment passed 96-0 and was included in the Senate's version 

of the $59 billion transportation spending bill for fiscal 2002. 



That legislation is being debated by the Senate this week, and 

includes a provision to place tough conditions on the Bush 

administration's plans for allowing Mexican commercial trucking 

throughout the United States. 



The bipartisan language now in the bill has drawn a veto threat from 

the White House, but Arizona Republican John McCain and others are 

working behind the scenes to modify the trucking proposal enough to 

get it through the Senate. 



The House version of the spending bill past last month would ban 

Mexican trucks from extending their access beyond a narrow commercial 

zone in U.S. border states. 



The expanded Mexican truck provision is a part of the North American 

Free Trade Agreement ignored by the Clinton administration for years.



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

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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