India's Cabinet Approves Power Plant

`Nuclear has often been described as clean energy, but obviously it's not'

NEW DELHI, India (AP) - India's Cabinet gave its approval Saturday for the construction of a nuclear power plant with technical and financial assistance from Russia, the government said.

The two countries will sign an agreement on the 2,000-megawatt plant during Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's visit to Moscow, which begins Sunday, the government said in a statement.

Construction is to start in May on the plant in Kudankulam, in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. The first of two 1,000-megawatt light-water reactors is to be completed by 2007 and the second by 2008.

The project will ``open a new window for the country in the high technology area'' and will boost scientific cooperation with Russia, the government said.

The Cabinet has approved $1.4 billion in budget money for the plant the statement said. It said the remainder of the cost would come in a credit from Russia, but it did not say how much more was needed.

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov 4 (Reuters) - While the United States steps up security at its nuclear power plants, energy experts warn the plants' fuel dumps are far more vulnerable than reactors to attack by anyone trying to spread radioactivity.

"Spent fuel has never gotten the same attention as the reactor ... as a result you don't have the same level of security and safety as exists for the reactor," David Lochbaum, a former nuclear plant engineer now with the Union of Concerned Scientists, told Reuters.

"Because it's a softer target and has greater consequences, terrorists may elect to go after the spent fuel," he said.

Security has been tightened at the 103 nuclear power plants in the United States, the source of 20 percent of the country's electricity, since the Sept. 11 hijacked plane attacks that killed about 4,800 people in New York and the Pentagon.

Amid U.S. calls for increased vigilance at strategic sites worldwide, the head of the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency warned on Thursday that an act of nuclear terrorism was "far more likely" than previously thought.

Since Sept. 11, much of discussion in the nuclear industry has focused on whether an aircraft could penetrate the steel and concrete containment building surrounding a plant's reactor.

But nuclear experts are warning that guarding on-site storage facilities for these

same reactors' highly radioactive spent fuel is also a critical issue that must be addressed.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which oversees the U.S. nuclear industry, needs to devote more attention to this issue, agency spokesman Victor Dricks said.

When most of the energy is wrung from the radioactive pellets used to run the power plants, the spent fuel is tightly sealed in water-filled, on-site pools. Water is needed to cool the fuel, which gives off heat and radiation for many years after it is removed from the reactor.

Over the years, the pile of spent fuel from U.S. reactors has grown to more than 40,000 metric tonnes, enough to bury a football field under 15 feet (4.6 metres) of waste material, the Washington-based industry group Nuclear Energy Institute said.

About two-thirds of this fuel is kept in underground pools, which provide far better containment than for the third stored in above-ground buildings.

But most of these pools are housed in far less robust structures than the reactor containment vessels, which are designed to contain the equivalent of a small nuclear explosion should things go badly wrong in the reactor core.

Though the walls of waste storage pools are thick, reinforced concrete lined with steel, the roofs are made of "pretty insubstantial material" like sheet metal, Lynnette Hendricks, director of licensing at Nuclear Energy Institute, told Reuters.

And while the pools lie within high security areas, there are fewer locked doors and safety barriers between spent fuel and the atmosphere than surrounds the fuel in the reactor.

Another concern is the vulnerability of the pools' cooling systems. "If you knock out that system, there are no automatic back-up systems," Lochbaum said.

If the water boils or drains away, the discarded fuel would overheat, either melting or catching fire, threatening to release a radioactive cloud.

The pools, initially designed as temporary containers, can withstand earthquakes, tornadoes and other natural calamities, but were not built to withstand acts of sabotage.

"The pools are not designed to withstand the impact of a jetliner, but they are relatively small ... it would be extremely difficult for an aircraft, even if deliberately targeting one, to hit one," said Dricks of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

When most of the country's nuclear reactors were designed in the 1960s and 1970s, it was assumed their radioactive waste would be shipped off to a central repository or reprocessing facility.

But commercial reprocessing was never successfully developed in the United States, and plans to open a permanent disposal site in Nevada have already been delayed 12 years until around 2010 -- if it opens at all.

While legislators, power companies and environmentalists squabble over what to do with the spent fuel, storage space in the temporary facilities gets ever more crowded.

"Now (pools) hold considerably more (spent fuel) than in a reactor," said Gordon Thompson, a nuclear scientist and executive director of the Institute for Resource and Security Studies, an independent think tank based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

It only takes about five to six years of operation for a power plant to produce more nuclear waste than it holds in its reactor, and the biggest of these pools now holds seven to eight times as much fuel as in a reactor, said Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Nov 5 Australian Broadcasting Company - The Australian Academy of Science has questioned Labor's decision not to back a new research reactor to replace one at Lucas Heights in Sydney.

Labor's decision has been welcomed by the Greens, but attacked by the Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister says the decision would rob Australia of a valuable tool for scientific research and the treatment of cancer.

The academy's secretary of science policy, Professor Michael Barber, says a state of the art reactor is critical to the national interest, both in health care and research.

He says Labor's Knowledge Nation plans offer many positives and is important to Australia.

However, he warns a knowledge nation is scarcely possible without a research reactor.

5 Nov - Australian Broadcasting Corporation - The ALP says it is committed to blocking the Honeymoon uranium mine, north-west of Broken Hill.

The proposed mine intends to use the acid in-situ leaching method of uranium extraction and could mean up to 70 jobs based in Broken Hill.

Its owners, Southern Cross Resources, were only a few steps away from gaining a mining licence from the Coalition Government when the election was called.

The Opposition's environment spokesman Nick Bolkus says the Labor Party has never made secret its distaste for the nuclear industry.

"The major point for the proponents of that mine to keep in mind is, and the public generally, we've had this existing mine policy, the two mine policy for quite a few years, and in essence everyone's been on notice that if there's an existing mine we would have to live with it, but factor into your risk assessment the chance of Labor winning government," he said.

TOKYO, Nov. 5 (Kyodo) - The Board of Audit is inspecting two nuclear energy research institutions and the education ministry, which supervises them, for failure to completely dispose of nuclear waste stored at their facilities, according to sources related to the case.

The two institutes are the Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute (JNC) and the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute (JAERI).

They store low-level nuclear waste generated during research activities at their atomic power reactors and also accept such waste from other research entities, according to the sources.

The board said the institutes have much lower disposal rates than commercial nuclear power plants.

If the institutions dispose of the waste, the state can cut expenses used for storing waste and constructing new storage sites, the sources said.

The JNC generates about 6,000 200-liter drums of nuclear waste annually and was storing a total of about 166,000 drums as of the end of fiscal 2000. Storage expenses for that year totaled 3.7 billion yen. The institute can store 212,000 drums.

The JAERI produces about 3,400 drums per year and currently stores about 154,000 drums at its facility. Its storage expenses for fiscal 2000 were about 2.2 billion yen. The institute can hold up to 179,000 drums.

But the JNC and the JAERI lag behind in waste disposal since a law governing the disposal of waste generated by research institutes is still being discussed by the Nuclear Safety Commission.

Rules for commercial nuclear power plants are regulated in the Nuclear Reactor Regulation Law.

The board plans to urge the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry to establish the law, related regulations and a disposal system as part of an effort to promote the disposal of nuclear waste at research institutions, the sources said.

5 Nov Australian Broadcasting Corporation - An expert in the field of radiopharmaceuticals has challenged Prime Minister John Howard's assertions that Australia must go ahead with a new nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights to continue the supply of medical isotopes.

The Labor Party will not replace the existing reactor at Lucas Heights, but Mr Howard says that could jeopardise medical research.

However Dr Jim Green from Wollongong University says when the existing reactor was shut down for three months last year the supply of medical isotopes was not affected as the need was supplied by cyclotrons and imports.

He says the Government's own reports recommend it look at alternative production.

"The federal department of the environment issued a report in 1999 which also said that alternative options may be suitable as an alternative to replacing the nuclear reactor so even the Government is acknowledging that this argument is a bit of a furphy."

VIENNA, Nov 3 (Reuters) - Austria's vice-chancellor said on Saturday that the Czech Republic would have to change its position on the controversial Temelin nuclear power plant if it is to join the European Union.

Vice-chancellor Susanne Riess-Passer was speaking one week after Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel rejected the idea of a veto of Czech EU entry for putting the Temelin plant -- which lies only 60 km (about 40 miles) from the Austrian border -- on line.

"If the Czech Republic wants to become an EU member, the government had better change its stance on the Temelin issue," Riess-Passer said in an interview on Austrian state radio.

Even though Schuessel is against a Czech EU veto, his conservative People's Party opposes putting the plant into operation and would like to see it decommissioned.

But Riess-Passer's far-right Freedom Party, which governs in coalition with Schuessel's party, refuses to budge on Temelin and wants to keep the Czechs out of the EU if they open the plant.

"We will not yield on this," former Freedom Party leader Joerg Haider, who still dominates the populist grouping and sits on the policy-making coalition committee, told Reuters in September.

The Czech government, which hopes to join the EU in 2004, has adamantly rejected Austria's calls to keep Temelin out of operation.

The plant's first reactor was shut down on Wednesday after a leak was discovered in a pump, the CTK news agency reported. It quoted a Temelin spokesman as saying the problem would force the plant to go off line for about three weeks.

He did not say whether there had been any radioactive fluid associated with the leak.

Last month, the Soviet-designed plant boosted output at its first reactor to 75 percent of total capacity.

JERUSALEM (AP) - Israel has made no secret of the fact that it has a nuclear reactor, which it says it uses for peaceful purposes. But a new television documentary says Israel developed nuclear weapons from French technology acquired in the late 1950s.

While no Israeli official will confirm or deny such reports, the film has not been stopped by Israel's military censor.

It shows a former French Defense Ministry official saying that the head of the French Atomic Energy Commission, Francis Perrin, advised then-Prime Minister Guy Mollet to give Israel a nuclear bomb.

``Francis Perrin called Guy Mollet,'' says the official, Abel Thomas. ``He told him that Israel should be supplied with a nuclear bomb.''

Neither Mollet nor Perrin is still alive. Thomas was the chief of political staff for Maurice Bourges-Mounory, France's defense minister at the time.

He said the offer came after Moscow threatened nuclear strikes against France, Israel and Britain for having sent troops into the Sinai peninsula. The deployment came after Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal, which had been owned by British and French businesses.

At the time, France was appreciative of Israel's defense of the French Suez businesses and also sympathetic to the threats facing the Jewish state, following France's own occupation in World War II, the documentary says.

The documentary, previewed by The Associated Press, is to be broadcast in Israel on Sunday. It says France supplied a nuclear reactor and scientists and technicians to set it up in Israel. The French agreed to supply enriched uranium, the documentary says, and cites foreign reports as saying France also supplied a plant for producing plutonium.

Further quoting foreign sources, the documentary says France also sold Israel Mirage jets that had been adapted to carry a nuclear payload.

A French Defense Ministry spokesman in Paris said Friday that he knew nothing about the allegations. He said there would be no comment until ministry officials had seen the documentary.

The film, ``A Bomb in the Basement - Israel's Nuclear Option,'' marks the first time Israel's nuclear armory has been covered in depth by the Israeli media, which is subject to military censorship, said creator Michael Karpin.

Israel describes its policy as one of ``nuclear ambiguity,'' where it will neither confirm nor deny its nuclear capability but pledges not to be the first in the region to use nuclear weapons.

It says its nuclear plant, at Dimona in the Negev Desert, is for peaceful research and industry.

In the film, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, then deputy defense minister, acknowledges asking ``for a nuclear reactor and other things'' in his negotiations with the French. But he does not specifically confirm or deny Israel's possession of nuclear weapons.

Mordechai Vanunu, a former technician at Dimona, is serving 18 years in an Israeli prison for giving pictures taken inside the reactor to The Sunday Times of London in 1986.

Based on the photographs, experts concluded Israel had the world's sixth-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons. The CIA estimated more recently that Israel has between 200 and 400 nuclear weapons.

In the documentary, the late Paul C. Warnke, the chief U.S. arms control negotiator at the time, said Washington was opposed to Israel having a nuclear capability because of fears it would force its Arab neighbors to seek one too.

Warnke, who died Wednesday, said that after pressuring Israel, U.S. inspectors were allowed into parts of the Dimona plant but were unable to get a full picture of its activities.

``We inspected Dimona on a couple of occasions, subject to tight Israeli restrictions, but we couldn't really tell,'' he says in the documentary.

In the film, Karpin quotes foreign sources as saying Israel has prepared to use nuclear weapons three times, the last in 1991 when Iraqi missiles fell in Israel during the Gulf War.

Earlier, he says, Israel was on nuclear alert on the eve of the 1967 Mideast war and during the 1973 war, two days after a surprise Syrian attack on Israel's northern border.

WATERFORD — AP Nov 4 The state has a comprehensive plan to evacuate southeastern Connecticut should a terrorist attack or an accident result in a radiation leak from the Millstone Power Station.

The plan, detailed in a report that takes up two large binders, covers everything from the medical response needed to the number of buses required to evacuate local schools.

"We're very confident of our plan," said John Wiltse, director of the state's Office of Emergency Management.

Thousands of details in the report have been ironed out over 20 years, including the communication each town would have with Millstone to determine if a mass evacuation would be necessary.

The Connecticut Office of Emergency Management and the Federal Emergency Management Agency have conducted annual drills in Waterford and the surrounding towns of Groton, East Lyme, Ledyard, New London and Montville.

The drills test each town's ability to handle a variety of emergencies at the nuclear power plant complex, from a minor security breach to a full meltdown. In an evacuation, food, shelter and water would be provided by towns bordering Millstone.

Wiltse said there has never been any specific threat against Millstone and any future threat would be "extremely remote."

Gov. John G. Rowland recently deployed National Guard troops to Millstone and the Connecticut Yankee nuclear plant in Haddam, which is being decommissioned.

It is impossible for the nuclear reactor at Millstone to explode like an atomic bomb, since the uranium in regular, commercial nuclear reactor fuel is not enriched enough.

According to David A. Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer and a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists, the temperature rises in a plant's core so much during a meltdown that the uranium fuel rods would melt through the bottom of the reactor. The fuel rods would sink about 50 feet beneath the plant, react with ground water, and produce large explosions of radioactive steam and debris that would affect nearby towns.

Lochbaum also is worried about the potential for an attack on the spent fuel rod pool next to the reactor.

"An attack on those spent fuel pools would be much more catastrophic," Lochbaum said.

A successful attack could empty the water from the pool, causing the spent fuel to overheat and create a radioactive fire that could contaminate much of the region, he said.

Anti-nuclear activists on Saturday called on Millstone's owners, Dominion Nuclear Connecticut, to make radiation-blocking potassium iodide pills available to anyone living within a 25-mile radius of the plant. The pills act to block radioactive iodine by saturating the thyroid gland with stable iodine.

"The health of our children and families may depend on it," said Joseph Besade, a member of the Connecticut Coalition Against Millstone.

Inquiry call over company guarding UK nuclear plants

War on Terrorism: Observer special

Antony Barnett and Conal Walsh
Sunday November 4, 2001
The Observer

The Sudanese businessman whose factory was bombed by the Americans after they claimed it was making chemical weapons for Osama bin Laden owns a major stake in the company providing security at Britain's main nuclear power stations.

With authorities warning that nuclear sites could be the next target of a terrorist attack, the disclosure prompted the Conservative Party to demand an immediate government statement to reassure the public.

The Observer can reveal that Salah Idris, whose pharmaceuticals factory was destroyed by US cruise missiles in 1998, has multi-million pound investments in two British security firms through a secretive offshore company. These firms act as security consultants and supply security systems at 11 nuclear stations throughout the UK, including Sellafield and Dounreay.

They also have security contracts with some of Britain's top potential terrorist targets, including Canary Wharf, the House of Commons and Army bases. The companies would have highly sensitive details of all the facilities where they install equipment.

At the time of the attack on Idris's El Shifa factory in Sudan, Tony Blair gave his full support to the US, claiming Washington had 'absolutely compelling evidence' that the plant was part of a bin Laden move to 'develop a capacity' to make chemical weapons.

Idris has always strenuously denied the allegations, and is suing the US government for £35 million compensation. Despite growing support for his case in the US and Britain, Washington refuses to retract any of its claims and is contesting the lawsuit.

Oliver Letwin, the Shadow Home Secretary, said: 'In the current climate, people will be rightly concerned about The Observer's allegations, which raise very serious questions. They require an urgent response. Either the Government has cleared Mr Idris of any wrongdoing, or they should launch an immediate investigation.'

Security is being reviewed at civil nuclear installations amid concerns that they could be terrorist targets after a warning by the United Nations nuclear safety watchdog that nuclear terrorism was now 'far more likely'.

Idris holds a 20 per cent stake in the security firm Protec via his offshore company, Global Security Systems. Protec is a security consultancy and provides hi-tech closed circuit television systems, infra-red detectors and alarms.

Its chief executive Bill Moir said Idris played no active role: 'We've never met him. He just happens to be a major investor in a company which is a shareholder in us. He has nothing to do with the com pany from an operating point of view at all.'

Last month, The Observer revealed that Idris owns 75 per cent of IES Digital, a company which makes and installs security equipment. It supplies the British Army, the Foreign Office and the Houses of Parliament.

David Hitchins, IES Digital's marketing manager, said: 'We provide security for some of the most sensitive sites in the UK, right up to government Ministers and the Army. All our engineers are vetted thoroughly.'

Hitchins claims the Government has complete confidence in Idris. He said the businessman's involvement in IES was solely as an investor, and he had no day-to-day involvement. 'I see him once a year,' he said.

Idris said in a statement: 'I am not, nor have I ever been, a terrorist or associated with terrorists. In particular, I have never met nor spoken with Mr Osama bin Laden, nor with any agent of his. Nor have I ever knowingly done business with him or any of his agents.'

US officials once accused Idris of having financial dealings with Islamic Jihad, the Egypt-based terrorist group now in league with bin Laden. Idris's assets in the US - frozen after the CIA allegations - were released in May 1999, a move which he claims as proof that America had no evidence linking him to any terrorist organisation.

Yet US officials claim their 'real concerns' about him were based on 'sensitive information'.

November 4, 2001
The Observer In a move which will accelerate controversial plans to build a new generation of nuclear power stations, the Government is set to exempt the atomic industry from a 'green' energy tax.

The exemption - to be recommended by the Government's energy review chaired by Trade and Industry Minister Brian Wilson - will make nuclear power more competitive than coal and gas. This will be seen as a strong signal that Ministers believe there is a future for new nuclear generation in the UK.

The nuclear generators British Energy and British Nuclear Fuels have argued that nuclear - which, unlike fossil fuels, does not emit carbon dioxide - represents the only realistic way of delivering future cuts in greenhouse gases and avoiding over-reliance on imported gas.

Both have argued they should be exempted from the the Climate Change Levy - a tax on the consumption of energy by industry - which does not distinguish between carbon polluters and nuclear power. It appears the Government has accepted this.

The decision will infuriate environmental campaigners, who believe nuclear should not be given the advantage already given to renewable energy, such as wind and solar power,which is already exempt from the tax.

The energy review, by the Cabinet Office's performance and innovation unit, will produce a draft report by 15 November. It will address the issue of building fresh nuclear power stations, and stress the possibilities of the renewable sources.

The study will make clear that if there are to be new reactors, they must be built in numbers to take advantage of economies of scale.

British Energy's submission to the review proposes 10 new plants to replace old Magnox reactors as they come off stream. With BNFL, it argues that measures such as exemption from the levy are crucial if new plants are to be built.

The review is likely to look at options involving building between five and 10 stations. A Whitehall source said: 'It will recommend nuclear gets climate change levy exemption. It will be part of a package on nuclear [that] would underpin the economics of [new stations].'

Pete Roche, of Greenpeace, said: 'This is disastrous. Any move to create more dangerous nuclear waste, that we have no idea what to do with, will be widely opposed.'

Ontario's nuclear power plants are getting away with dumping lethal amounts of water pollutants in the Great Lakes, according to provincial records obtained by an environment group.

The Pickering and Darlington nuclear plants on Lake Ontario and the Bruce on Lake Huron make up three of the top five industrial facilities in Ontario that dumped toxic wastes into the water that were powerful enough to kill fish and other aquatic life, the records show.

"Nuclear has often been described as clean energy, but obviously it's not," said Jerry DeMarco, managing lawyer at the Sierra Legal Defence Fund.

The information was contained in water pollution violation records obtained by Sierra, a Toronto environmental law clinic, from the environment ministry for 1999, the most recent complete files available.

In tests performed on waste-water discharges from the plants, the Darlington nuclear plant discharged effluent lethal to rainbow trout 33 times in 1999. It happened 11 times at the Pickering plant and six times at the Bruce plant on Lake Huron.

In a report being published today, Ontario, Yours to Pollute, Sierra found industries violated the water pollution laws on 3,296 occasions, down slightly from 3,363 in 1998.

Sierra wants the ministry to begin enforcing water pollution laws more stringently and to bring more of the offending industries to court, where fines can run into millions of dollars and corporate officials can be jailed.

"It's ludicrous that they let them go on for years at a time without citing them for the violations," DeMarco said. Industries can often stall ministry investigations by making small attempts to reduce pollution emissions, DeMarco said.

Chinook Group Ltd., a Sarnia chicken feed manufacturer with 557 water pollution discharge violations, the highest number for the second year.

Praxair, a chemical manufacturer with 228 violations at four facilities in Sarnia, Sault Ste. Marie, Maitland and Mooretown.

Ontario Power Generation, with 187 violations at three nuclear plants and five coal-burning facilities.

Ministry spokesperson John Steele defended the methods used to deal with industries that don't fully comply with water pollution regulations.

"Taking a company to court doesn't clean up the problem," Steele said, adding the ministry's system of cleanup orders forces companies to invest in pollution controls.

Steele said Chinook has invested $2 million in pollution control technology and has hired a consultant to prepare a report on how to improve water pollution discharges.

Praxair has made improvements in Sarnia and Sault Ste. Marie but remains under investigation by the province. No decision on laying charges has been made, Steele said.

Stepan installed $1 million worth of pollution control equipment and should meet water pollution regulations in 2002, he said

Ontario Power uses chlorine to disinfect cooling water and kill zebra mussels and that chemical was responsible for the violations, he said.

The electricity utility has been given until 2002 to fix the problem and the ministry is reviewing its proposal for dechlorinating the cooling water.

The number of pollution control orders issued by the ministry rose to 1,265 in 2001 from 307 in 1999, Steele said.