news 2

["Michael Stabin" <michael.g.stabin@vanderbilt.edu>]

The following from Sandy Perle:



From: "Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@earthlink.net>

To: "nuclear news list" <sandyfl@earthlink.net>

Date: Sat, 9 Mar 2002 09:40:48 -0800



Index:

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

US Senate votes to extend nuclear power insurance

Water leaks at Miyagi nuclear plant

U.S. OKs Japan's plan to send MOX fuel back to Britain

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



US Senate votes to extend nuclear power insurance



WASHINGTON, March 7 (Reuters) - As the Senate continued to debate a broad

energy bill, lawmakers on Thursday reached a bipartisan agreement on higher

U.S.

fuel standards for passenger cars and light trucks.



Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry and John McCain, an Arizona Republican,

agreed to a proposal that would raise the combined Corporate Average Fuel

Economy (CAFE) standard for cars and light trucks from the current 25 miles

per

gallon (mpg) to 36 mpg by 2015.



The new proposal extends an earlier version which pegged the CAFE standard

at 35

mpg, while delaying phase-in and implementation by two years to 2007 and

2015,

respectively.



The amendment must be approved by the full Senate, as well as the entire

bill, which

faces an uphill battle.



The Democratic-sponsored energy bill calls for raising the fuel requirements

to cut

petroleum use by more than 2 million barrels a day and reduce foreign oil

imports.

Gasoline demand accounts for 44 percent of the average 19.8 million barrels

of

petroleum consumed in the U.S. market daily.



Kerry said "36 miles per gallon means we will offset the Persian Gulf

imports by

2020."



Most Republicans and a few Democrats from auto-manufacturing states oppose

the

higher fuel standard, saying they fear consumers would have to drive more

costly

cars that are less safe.



The Sierra Club applauded the decision. "As with any compromise proposal,

this is

not 100 percent of what we were seeking," said Carl Pope, executive

director, in a

statement. "But it represents a real and serious step forward."



NUCLEAR MEASURE APPROVED



Meanwhile, the Senate on Thursday voted to extend a federal law providing

nuclear

power plant operators with liability insurance that would kick in if there

was a major

accident at one of their facilities.



The Bush administration sees the law as critical to having more nuclear

power plants

built across the country.



Nuclear power provides about 20 percent of the nation's electricity.

Industry

supporters say nuclear plants are a clean energy source, producing no

emissions

that would contribute to global warming.



The Senate voted to reauthorize the so-called Price Anderson Act, which is

set to

expire this August, and provide nuclear liability insurance for another 10

years. The

House of Representatives approved a longer 15-year extension of the law last

November.



The Senate's decision to extend the law came in the form of an amendment to

comprehensive energy legislation it is debating. The Senate bill, if

eventually passed,

would have to be reconciled with energy legislation that has already cleared

the

House.



Under Price Anderson, the nation's 103 operating nuclear plants are

protected from

liability claims exceeding $9.3 billion in the event of a serious accident.

If the cost of

a nuclear accident was larger than that amount, the law would require the

federal

government to pay the rest.



GOV'T OVERSIGHT SOUGHT ON ENERGY TRADES



Also on Thursday, Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California introduced

an

amendment that would regulate energy contracts in the over-the-counter

market like

those used by bankrupt Enron Corp. <ENRNQ.PK> and are accused of causing

skyrocketing electricity and natural gas prices in the West.



The amendment, which would be voted on next week, would repeal a

Congressional

exemption that allows energy companies to buy and sell electricity, natural

gas, oil,

gasoline, and other energy commodities without disclosing information on

those

deals to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.



Feinstein wants to rein in derivatives trading in highly customized energy

contracts

with values linked to underlying commodity prices. The multibillion-dollar

market is

traded privately among companies, not on regulated exchanges such as the New

York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX).



"This will close the regulatory loopholes that allowed entities such as

(the)

EnronOnline (trading platform) to operate unregulated trading markets in

secret,"

Feinstein said.



Still to come in the Senate's energy bill debate is the contentious issue of

whether to

allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).



Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said on Thursday he wants to finish the

energy

legislation by the end of next week.



"We're going to give the energy bill all of this week, and hopefully all of

next week,

and hopefully we can complete it in that period of time," the South Dakota

Democrat

told reporters.



But Alaska Senator Frank Murkowski, ANWR's biggest proponent, said he "would

doubt very much if we can finish next week," pointing to complicated issues

still to be

dealt with, including ANWR.

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



Water leaks at Miyagi nuclear plant



SENDAI, March 7 (Kyodo) - A few liters of water leaked Thursday from a pipe

in the

turbine building of a nuclear reactor in Miyagi Prefecture, northeastern

Japan, but no

radiation leaked outside the facility, Tohoku Electric Power Co. said.



A worker found the water spraying from an apparent crack at a welding point

in the

pipe at 9:42 a.m. in the No. 2 reactor of the Onagawa nuclear power plant,

which

stretches over Onagawa and Oshika towns, company officials said.



The operation of the 825,000-kilowatt reactor has been suspended due to

regular

checks.



The leak was found during a drill at the plant to check the company's

reporting

system to the local government in case of an accident.



The exercise was held in the wake of a fire at a building of the reactor

Feb. 9, in

which two workers were injured.

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



Data shows world awash in stolen nuclear material



SAN FRANCISCO, March 6 (Reuters) - International researchers have compiled

what they say is the world's most complete database of lost, stolen and

misplaced

nuclear material -- depicting a world awash in weapons-grade uranium and

plutonium

that nobody can account for.



"It truly is frightening," Lyudmila Zaitseva, a visiting fellow at Stanford

University's

Institute for International Studies, said on Wednesday. "I think this is the

tip of the

iceberg."



Stanford announced its database as U.S. senators held a hearing in

Washington to

assess the threat of "dirty bombs," or radioactive material dispersed by

conventional

explosives.



The Stanford program, dubbed the Database on Nuclear Smuggling, Theft and

Orphan Radiation Sources, is intended to help governments and international

agencies track wayward nuclear material worldwide, supplementing existing

national

programs that often fail to share information.



The project took on added urgency following the Sept. 11 attacks on New York

and

Washington, which spurred fears that extremists might seek to use nuclear

weapons

in the future.



"It blows the mind, the lack of information," said George Bunn, a veteran

arms control

negotiator and a member of the database group. "What we're trying to say is:

'What

are the facts?"'



CHILLING FACTS



The facts, even on cursory examination, are chilling.



Zaitseva said that, over the past 10 years, at least 88 pounds (40 kg) of

weapons-

usable uranium and plutonium had been stolen from poorly protected nuclear

facilities in the former Soviet Union. While most of this material

subsequently was

retrieved, at least 4.4 pounds (2 kg) of highly enriched uranium stolen from

a reactor

in Georgia remains missing.



Other thefts have included several fuel rods that disappeared from a

research reactor

in the Congo in the mid-1990s. While one of these fuel rods later resurfaced

in Italy -

- reportedly in the hands of the Mafia -- the other has not been found.



The Stanford group, led by nuclear physicist and arms control researcher

Friedrich

Steinhausler, decided to form its database after becoming alarmed over the

patchy

nature of most of the available information.



Combining data from two existing unclassified databases and adding new

information

from sources ranging from government agencies to local media reports, the

team has

evaluated each entry for accuracy and probability.



An expert at the Federation of American Scientists, the oldest U.S. arms

control

group, welcomed the establishment of the database, saying it could play a

crucial

role in helping governments ascertain the real level of nuclear threat.



"This is a smart step," said Michael Levi, director of the group's Strategic

Security

Project. "Knowing what's out there is the first step to bringing it back

in."



'ORPHAN' RADIATION ALSO A THREAT



The database includes illicitly obtained weapons-grade nuclear material as

well as

"orphaned" radiation sources -- scientific or medical material that may have

been

lost, misplaced or simply thrown away but which still poses a health and

security

threat.



Steinhausler said the database would be open only to approved researchers,

and

that the Stanford group was beginning to contact government agencies in the

United

States and Europe about sharing information to build more effective

international

supervision of nuclear material.



"We cannot supply the means to improve the situation," Steinhausler said in

a

statement. "We're pinpointing weaknesses and loopholes and saying, 'Do

something

about it."'



Zaitseva, visiting Stanford from the Kazakhstan National Nuclear Center,

said the

database was helping to build a dim picture of the market for stolen

uranium,

plutonium, and other dangerous materials.



But she added that while in many cases those behind nuclear thefts can be

identified, the ultimate destination of the nuclear material has remained a

mystery.



"We haven't found a single occasion in which the actual end users have been

caught," Zaitseva told Reuters.



"We can only guess by the routes where the material is going. We can't say

for sure

if it is Iraq, Iran, North Korea, al Qaeda or Hezbollah. We can only make

assumptions."



She added that the dangers of an unsupervised, underground market in nuclear

material were likely to grow, noting that a U.S.-sponsored program to secure

nuclear

components in the former Soviet Union thus far had only locked up about a

third of

an estimated 600 tons of weapons-usable material.



"It's just not protected," she said. "This is hot stuff. If you steal 20

kilograms of that

material, you can build a nuclear weapon."

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



U.S. OKs Japan's plan to send MOX fuel back to Britain



TOKYO, March 6 (Kyodo) - The United States has approved a Japanese

government

plan to send plutonium-uranium mixed oxide (MOX) fuel stored at a nuclear

power

plant in Takahama, Fukui Prefecture, back to Britain, Japanese sources said

Wednesday.



The MOX fuel contains about 3,500 kilograms of U.S.-origin uranium and 250

kg of

plutonium, and its transfer required approval by the U.S. government under a

Japan-

U.S. accord on the use of nuclear energy.



The U.S. approval paves the way for the transfer of the MOX fuel from Kansai

Electric Power Co.'s Takahama plant on the Sea of Japan coast to Britain as

early as

this summer, the sources said.



In 1999, Kansai Electric Power imported the MOX fuel from British Nuclear

Fuels

PLC (BNFL) but the British company was found to have falsified manufacturing

data

for the fuel.



Following the revelation, a plan to use the MOX fuel for the first time in

Japan was

canceled, and Japan and Britain agreed that BNFL would take the fuel back to

Britain.



According to the transfer plan, the MOX fuel will be carried by two British

armed

vessels with armed police from the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority

(UKAEA) aboard.



The vessels will each be equipped with three 30-millimeter guns and can

deploy a

high-speed armed boat. The UKAEA officers will be armed with assault rifles,

shotguns and pistols, and equipped with gas masks.



The U.S. government sees no problem with the transfer plan, and no risk of

the MOX

fuel being seized by terrorists, the sources said.



The plutonium in the MOX fuel could be converted for use in nuclear weapons.



The shipment of the MOX fuel is the first of its kind following the Sept. 11

terror

attacks on the United States.







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