Armenian nuclear power plant shuts down after malfunction

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

Index:



Armenian nuclear power plant shuts down after malfunction

Russia has no plans to resume nuclear tests on remote Arctic island

Cleanup won't end nuclear waste sites 

Russia plans to build more nuclear reactors at home

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Armenian nuclear power plant shuts down after malfunction



YEREVAN, Armenia - Jun 28 (AP) Armenia's Medzamor nuclear power plant 

experienced an electrical malfunction and automatically shut down 

this week but did not leak any radiation, officials said Friday. 	 



The Medzamor plant shut down for several hours on Wednesday after 

registering the malfunction, but is now back to full power, according 

to the press service for Armenia's energy ministry. There was no 

radiation leakage and the shutdown posed no danger, the service said.



The plant, 30 kilometers (20 miles) west of the Armenian capital 

Yerevan, has one working reactor that supplies about 45 percent of 

the small Caucasus Mountains nation's electricity needs. 



The reactor was closed in 1989 amid safety jitters following a 

devastating 1988 earthquake ( news - web sites) in then-Soviet 

Armenia, but restarted in 1995 during an energy crisis in the 

impoverished country. It was closed for four months last year for 

maintenance and debt reasons. 



Armenia has been under pressure to shut down the plant for good 

because of worries about the safety of the Soviet-made reactor. 

Experts have estimated the required safety upgrades at about dlrs 1 

billion over the next 15 years.   

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



Russia has no plans to resume nuclear tests on remote Arctic island, 

defense minister says 



MOSCOW - Jun 28 (AP) Russia's defense minister said Russia has no 

plans to resume nuclear testing on the remote Arctic archipelago of 

Novaya Zemlya, Russian news agencies reported Friday.



Ivanov, who visited Novaya Zemlya on Thursday along with Atomic 

Energy Minister Alexander Rumyantsev, said Russia did not plan to 

resume nuclear tests on Novaya Zemlya, but would continue to use the 

site for other kinds of tests, the Interfax news agency reported.



Russia uses Novaya Zemlya to conduct subcritical test blasts of 

nuclear weapons, in which plutonium is blasted with explosives too 

weak to set off an atomic explosion. Those tests are not prohibited 

under the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which Moscow signed in May 

2000.



Russia has observed a moratorium on full-scale nuclear testing since 

its last test explosion in October 1990, but Moscow says the 

subcritical tests are necessary to ensure the safety of its nuclear 

arsenal.



Rumyantsev said after the visit that Russia had not yet made a final 

decision on whether to build a nuclear waste storage site on Novaya 

Zemlya, Interfax reported. He said the government is considering 

several alternatives, including a site on the Russian mainland.



Russian officials have said Russia is considering Novaya Zemlya for a 

nuclear waste storage site, but they say it would only be used to 

store spent nuclear fuel from decommissioned Northern Fleet 

submarines, not for nuclear waste from abroad.



Last summer, President Vladimir Putin ( news - web sites) signed a 

law allowing Russia to import spent nuclear fuel from other countries 

for storage and reprocessing, a measure that environmental groups say 

could turn Russia into the world's nuclear dumping ground.

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



Cleanup won't end nuclear waste sites 



WASHINGTON -- Jun 25 (USA TODAY) The nuclear power industry and the 

Energy Department are on the verge of victory in their long fight to 

establish a national repository for nuclear waste in the Nevada 

desert. But their likely triumph has been built on an argument that 

the Yucca Mountain facility would allow waste to be cleaned up from 

temporary sites in 39 states -- a claim belied by the department's 

own figures.  



A little-noticed appendix to the Energy Department's environmental 

report on the project shows that by the time Yucca Mountain is filled 

with waste in the year 2036, almost as much high-level nuclear waste 

will remain at temporary storage sites around the country as there is 

today.



Those facts have been obscured in a government-industry public 

relations crusade to sell the public on the wisdom of the project. 

The urgency has been heightened by the threat that waste sites could 

be used by terrorists as radioactive ''dirty bombs.''



As the Senate approaches a showdown on whether to begin shipments of 

spent nuclear fuel to the Nevada site, ads and Web sites portray the 

facility as an alternative to the current temporary storage. ''The 

Senate must vote . . . by July 25 or risk leaving nuclear waste in 39 

states,'' said an ad that ran in Capitol Hill publications last week.



Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis has pushed the same line. ''You 

can't leave nuclear waste in Illinois and 38 other states where it's 

stored temporarily above ground next to schools, rivers, lakes and 

downtown metropolitan areas,'' he told the Chicago Tribune. ''It's 

just not the smart thing to do in the interest of national security 

and environmental protection.''



Similar words appear on the department's Web site, attributed to 

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham ( news - web sites). ''America's 

national, energy and homeland security, as well as environmental 

protection, is well served by siting a single nuclear waste 

repository at Yucca Mountain, rather than having nuclear waste 

stranded in temporary storage locations at 131 sites in 39 states,'' 

Abraham said in a May 8 press release.



Currently, 45,662 metric tons of nuclear waste is stored at scores of 

sites in 39 states. Government figures show that even when Yucca 

Mountain has reached its congressionally mandated capacity, 42,416 

tons will remain scattered in more than 30 states. As waste is carted 

off to Nevada at a rate of 3,000 tons a year, nuclear power plants 

will continue to produce 2,000 tons a year of new waste.



Nuclear Energy Institute spokesman Steve Kerekes acknowledged that 

opening Yucca Mountain would not amount to a complete cleanup of 

nuclear waste. ''But inaction is not resolution of this issue,'' he 

said. The government has a legal obligation to the industry to 

provide for long-term disposal of its waste, he noted.



The Energy Department estimates that Yucca Mountain could hold all 

the nuclear waste produced now and in the future if Congress lifted 

the storage limit of 70,000 tons. The limit was set in a 1982 law to 

ensure that not all the nation's nuclear waste would go to one site.



Davis said there are other reasons to go forward with the Yucca 

Mountain site, including providing a home for waste from nuclear bomb 

making and from nuclear-powered Navy vessels.



Critics say the arguments of Yucca's proponents hide the real reason 

for the lobbying push: the self-interest of the nuclear power 

industry. ''It's all about political payback to these companies that 

have poured a lot of money into campaigns,'' says Robert Alvarez, a 

senior adviser to former secretary of Energy Bill Richardson in the 

Clinton administration. ''These guys are looking at ways to transfer 

waste and cut their storage costs.''



The nuclear power industry has helped itself with heavy political 

spending. Members of the Nuclear Energy Institute gave $13.8 million 

to candidates for federal office in the 2000 elections. They also 

spent $25 million that year to lobby Washington. That puts them among 

the nation's top-spending industries.

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



Russia plans to build more nuclear reactors at home, hopes to win 

contract for building one in Finland 



MOSCOW - June 21 (AP) Having shed the trauma caused by the Chernobyl 

nuclear disaster, Russia has launched an ambitious 

program of building new nuclear reactors at home and hopes to win a 

contract for constructing one in Finland, top nuclear officials 

said Friday.

  

"We are going to make a big surge forward after a long period of 

stagnation," said Oleg Sarayev, the head of the Rosenergoatom 

consortium in charge of Russia's nuclear power plants.



In March 2001, Russia launched its first new nuclear reactor since 

the Chernobyl catastrophe, at a plant in the southern Rostov 

region.



Rostov's 1,000-megawatt reactor is of the VVER-1000 type that uses 

pressurized water to cool its fuel rods instead of the less-

stable graphite used in RBMK reactors, like the one that exploded at 

Chernobyl.



A reactor at the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine, at that time a part of 

the Soviet Union, exploded in 1986, contaminating a huge area and 

sending a radioactive cloud over much of Europe. The explosion, the 

world's worst nuclear accident, is believed to have eventually 

killed some 8,000 people.



The catastrophe caused a public backlash against nuclear power and 

forced Soviet and then Russian nuclear officials to shelve their 

plans for expanding the industry.



But with the memory of the Chernobyl disaster fading and energy 

shortages becoming increasingly common, regional authorities 

throughout Russia are welcoming the construction of new nuclear 

plants, which spark little in the way of public protest.



Sarayev said Friday that reactor No. 3 at the Kalinin power plant in 

western Russia is nearing completion, and another three reactors 

at the Kursk ( news - web sites), Balakovo and Rostov power plants 

will follow. In a separate effort, Rosenergoatom is also 

modernizing the oldest of Russia's 30 existing nuclear reactors to 

extend their lifetime, Sarayev said.



He claimed that Russia's nuclear safety standards were tougher than 

in the West, and said that most Russian plants meet strict 

norms and regulations.



Deputy Nuclear Power Minister Valery Lebedev said that Russia was 

competing against companies from the United States, 

Germany and France to build a nuclear reactor in Finland. "There is a 

good chance that we will win, taking into account the fact that 

the Soviet Union built a nuclear reactor in Finland which is 

considered one of the safest in the world," Lebedev told reporters.



Russia has also signed contracts to build nuclear power plants in 

China, India and Iran.



The dlrs 800 million deal with Tehran has vexed the United States, 

which fears it could help Iran build atomic weapons. But Russia has 

brushed off U.S. concerns, saying Iran won't acquire weapons material 

from the project.



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

Sandy Perle

Director, Technical

ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Service

ICN Plaza, 3300 Hyland Avenue

Costa Mesa, CA 92626



Tel:(714) 545-0100 / (800) 548-5100  Extension 2306

Fax:(714) 668-3149



E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net

E-Mail: sperle@icnpharm.com



Personal Website: http://sandy-travels.com

ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Website: http://www.dosimetry.com



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