EU to seek common safety rules for nuclear plants

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

Note: I will be out of the country Sept. 20 - 29 and there will be no 

news distributions during this time, depending on phone/internet 

connections.  



Index:



EU to seek common safety rules for nuclear plants

Liberian ship's cargo "no risk" to public -- FBI

Dominion Energy Signs Contract to Replace Reactor Heads

6 cases found on TEPCO violating law

Greenpeace bid to halt Lucas Heights construction fails

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



EU to seek common safety rules for nuclear plants



BRUSSELS, Sept 12 (Reuters) - The European Union's top energy 

official said on Thursday she would propose common safety standards 

for nuclear plants with cross-border inspections, in a move to 

reassure the public and promote nuclear power.



Atomic energy provides 33 percent of EU electricity and 14 percent of 

all energy consumption in the 15-nation bloc, but policy is largely 

in the hands of individual member states.



"We regulate the quality of bathing water in the European Union but 

there is nothing on the safety of nuclear power plants. We have to 

say that, whether you like it or not, nuclear power is unavoidable," 

EU Energy Commissioner Loyola de Palacio told reporters.



She said she would put forward draft directives in the coming weeks 

to make International Atomic Energy Agency safety standards legally 

binding in the EU, allow cross-border "peer review" of nuclear plants 

and set a deadline for building storage sites for radioactive waste.



De Palacio also said the EU would open talks with Russia on nuclear 

fuel supplies to candidate countries in eastern Europe which are 

entirely dependent on Moscow for fissile material to run Soviet-

designed power stations.



The proposals appeared aimed primarily at dispelling fears in western 

Europe about safety at those plants once those countries join the EU.



CROSS-BORDER INSPECTIONS



De Palacio said she did not plan a corps of EU inspectors, but 

experts from one member state should be able to carry out inspections 

in another EU country.



"We will establish compulsory European standards as was demanded of 

the candidate countries. Once the candidates are in, we will either 

have to stop checks on them, or we will have to check everywhere," 

the commissioner said.



Because of fierce resistance by environmental campaigners, most EU 

states lack long-term storage facilities for spent fuel and store 

nuclear waste at power plants or temporary sites.



De Palacio said funds established in member states to pay for the 

dismantling of ageing nuclear plants were inadequate.



She would demand that such funds be "sufficient and available" in all 

member states.



The commissioner said the EU had no hope of reducing its output of 

greenhouse gases under the Kyoto treaty to combat global warming 

without nuclear power.



The EU has a rule that no member state may depend on a single 

supplier for more than 20 percent of its nuclear fuel, but the 

candidates cannot meet that target because Russia is the only country 

that produces the fuel used in their stations.



"So we have to negotiate with the Russians," de Palacio said. Moscow 

earns hundreds of millions of dollars a year by supplying fissile 

material to run 18 or the 19 nuclear plants in former communist east 

European countries.

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



Liberian ship's cargo "no risk" to public -- FBI



NEW YORK, Sept 13 (Reuters) - The Federal Bureau of Investigation 

said on Friday that a container aboard a Liberian freighter on which 

low traces of radiation were found while it was in a New Jersey port 

does not pose "any risk to the public's health and safety."



A spokeswoman for the FBI's Newark bureau said authorities would 

continue testing all of the cargo aboard the freighter, which is 

under Liberian flag, but owned by a German company, until it has been 

cleared completely.



"But the container of concern was not found to pose any risk to the 

public's health and safety," said FBI Special Agent Sandra Carroll.



"Out of an abundance of caution we will continue with the testing 

until 100 percent of the cargo has been assessed," Carroll said.



The "Palermo Senator" was 6 miles (10 km) off the coast of New 

Jersey, where FBI agents, the U.S. Customs Service, the Port 

Authority of New York and New Jersey and the U.S. Department of 

Energy were continuing their tests.



The Pentagon had dispatched special operations troops trained in 

detecting nuclear weapons to assist with the investigation amid 

concerns about a new terror attack on the United States after the 

country went on a high state of alert for the one-year commemoration 

of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on Washington and New York.



The United States has for months spearheaded a campaign to tighten up 

security at international ports, as it is worried that one day it 

could receive a "dirty bomb" -- a crude nuclear device -- concealed 

in a shipping container and loaded overseas in a port with lax 

security.



While checking for stowaways on the "Palermo Senator" on Wednesday at 

Port Newark, New Jersey, Coast Guard agents detected low levels of 

radiation and ordered the ship out to sea.



The North American arm of shipping giant Hanjin chartered the vessel 

before subletting it to German company DSR/Senator Lines. Hanjin 

officials said on Thursday that there were no radioactive materials 

listed on the ship's manifest.

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



Dominion Energy Signs Contract to Replace Reactor Heads At Four 

Nuclear Reactors in Virginia



RICHMOND, Va., Sept. 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Dominion Energy, 

the electric generating unit of Dominion (NYSE:D), announced Thursday 

that it has signed an agreement with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries 

America Inc. and Westinghouse Electric Company to supply new reactor 

heads for the company's four nuclear reactors in Virginia.



The heads will be installed on the reactors at North Anna and Surry 

power stations by the spring of 2005.  The capital project cost is 

$175 million, and has been incorporated in the company's plans. The 

replacements will occur during scheduled refueling outages for each 

of the four reactors.



The replacements will resolve degradation issues associated with 

penetrations, or tubes, on the vessel heads.  The tubes guide control 

rods in and out of the uranium fuel core, absorbing neutrons and 

controlling the fission inside the reactor.  The reactor head is more 

than 6 inches thick carbon steel with a quarter-inch stainless steel 

liner.



Dominion inspected the North Anna and Surry reactor heads in 2001 

after several companies found heads damaged by acidic water that was 

seeping from inside the reactor around the control rod tubes.  The 

water, which contains boric acid to supplement control of the fission 

process, cools the uranium fuel.  The industry identified all 

pressurized water reactors as having the potential for this problem 

and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission ordered inspections.



The company identified nine penetrations with apparent seepage or 

that did not meet American Society of Mechanical Engineers code on 

two of the four reactor heads -- six indications on Surry Unit 1 and 

three on North Anna Unit 2 -- and made repairs.  There were no 

indications of damage on the North Anna Unit 1 or Surry Unit 2 

reactor heads.



Dominion plans to replace three of the vessel heads in 2004 and one 

in 2005.  The units can operate safely in the interim.  Dominion will 

continue to conduct thorough inspections during refueling outages 

that occur every 18 months.



North Anna Power Station is in Louisa County, Va., and consists of 

two units, each with three-loop Westinghouse pressurized water 

reactors capable of generating 1,842 net megawatts of electricity.  

Surry Power Station, in Surry County, Va., consists of two units, 

each with three-loop Westinghouse pressurized water reactors capable 

of producing 1,625 net megawatts of electricity.



During ultrasonic inspection of 79 reactor vessel head penetrations 

at Dominion Energy's Millstone Unit 2, three control rod housing 

tubes were found to have minor indications that were not through-

wall. The indications found were 22-thousandths of an inch deep. 

Repairs were made to all three tubes.

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



6 cases found on TEPCO violating law



TOKYO, Sept. 13 (Kyodo) - The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency 

said Friday that six of the 29 possibly false reports on defects at 

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) nuclear plants may have involved the 

utility's violation of law by failing to meet technical requirements.



The preliminary results of its investigation also suggest problems 

with a further five reports stem from neglect or falsification of 

facility inspection results, and four from an inappropriate attitude 

toward safety, it said.



But the agency found no problem with the remaining 14 reports, saying 

falsification charges on them accrue from differences in technical 

views between TEPCO and General Electric Co. (GE) of the United 

States, whose subsidiary was undertaking the utility's facility 

checks.



The most serious cases of failure to meet technical requirements 

concern cracks in core shrouds of five reactors in the firm's two 

plants in Fukushima Prefecture and cracks in the steam dryer of the 

No. 1 reactor of the Fukushima No. 1 plant.



The agency submitted the results to an inaugural meeting of a panel 

on nuclear safety regulations set up to hammer out measures to 

prevent similar scandals, including revisions to the Electric Utility 

Law and the Nuclear Reactor Regulation Law.



The subcommittee under the nuclear safety division of the council on 

natural resources and energy aims to compile an interim report by the 

end of this month.



Another advisory panel was also inaugurated the same day with the aim 

of also compiling an interim report this month assessing the agency's 

two-year probe into the damage cover-up scandal.



In a meeting held earlier in the day, members of the review 

committee, which was put directly under the economy, trade and 

industry minister, criticized the agency, a unit of the ministry, for 

not giving serious enough attention to whistle-blowing in the 

incident. The agency was tipped off about falsification of reports in 

July 2000 by a GE official, who was later fired.



Kazuo Sato, head of the semipublic Nuclear Safety Research 

Association who became chairman of the panel, said the agency's 

view that the defects it was told about pose no safety problem was 

insufficient to justify its slow response to the case.



Lawyer Yuko Sumita said from her experience as a prosecutor a lack of 

contact with the informer soon after the agency was tipped 

off caused the investigation to be prolonged.



The agency is under fire for taking two years to disclose the 

possibility that nuclear reactors could be running with cracks, but 

has 

explained it carried out the probe in secret in consideration of the 

privacy of the informer.



It took the agency until Aug. 29 before announcing the allegations, 

after TEPCO began being cooperative.



TEPCO, meanwhile, announced the same day it will suspend two more 

reactors in Fukushima Prefecture for about 50 days starting 

next Monday to confirm suspicions that cracks in their shrouds remain 

unfixed.



The largest utility in Japan has already halted one reactor each in 

the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant in Niigata Prefecture and the 

Fukushima No. 2 plant for similar checks, and is slated to halt 

another reactor in the Fukushima plant in mid-October.



In a related development, Koji Omi, minister in charge of science and 

technology policy, told a press conference Friday he plans to 

take up the importance of safety regulations in an address to a 

meeting next Monday of the International Atomic Energy Agency.



''Japan has standards for design of nuclear plants, but it is a 

problem that it lacks the criteria for maintaining them like those 

seen in 

the United States,'' Omi said, pointing to the need for the Nuclear 

Safety Commission to set up such rules.



At the Fukushima No. 1 plant's No. 1 reactor, for example, TEPCO 

found cracks in the shroud in 1995, but plant officials failed to 

report them to the government.



By leaving the cracks intact until it replaced the shroud in 2000, 

the firm may have failed to comply with the Electric Utility Law's 

technical requirements, the agency said.



TEPCO was also found to have instructed GE inspectors to falsify a 

report and scrap a repair record on cracks found in 1989 in the 

steam drier of the same reactor, so that it could fix three of the 

six cracks without reporting to the government.



The agency was tipped off about this falsification in July 2000 by 

the informer.



The attempt to destroy a repair record may be a violation of the law 

requiring power utilities to retain such records, the agency said.



Submitting a report to the review meeting about its probe, agency 

officials explained that officials involved thought in the early 

stages 

that disclosing unconfirmed findings would cause confusion.



But the report shows that the agency refrained from contacting the GE 

side until October 2001, when the probe was deadlocked. It 

was only after getting GE's cooperation that the deadlock was broken, 

according to the report.



In March this year, GE told the agency that one employee had admitted 

to partly falsifying a record on dryer cracks in the 

Fukushima reactor at the request of TEPCO, adding the employee also 

hinted at other falsification cases.



TEPCO admitted Aug. 7 to the possibility it falsified facility 

inspection reports, and later finalized a list of 29 inspection 

reports from 

the late 1980s to 1990s that may have been falsified, it shows.



The reports cover 13 of the 17 reactors at the firm's Fukushima No. 1 

and No. 2 plants and its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant.

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



Greenpeace bid to halt Lucas Heights construction fails



Sept 13 (Australian Broadcasting Co.) Environmental group Greenpeace 

has failed in its bid to halt the  construction of the second 

nuclear reactor at Sydney's Lucas Heights.



Greenpeace had challenged the validity of the construction licence in 

 the Federal Court, on the grounds that world-best practice in 

nuclear  waste management was not considered.



However, Judge Bryan Beaumont today dismissed the application.



Greenpeace campaigner Stephen Campbell says the decision is based on 

a  technical legal issue and the organisation is considering seeking 

leave  to appeal against it in the High Court.



"The judge has said that the law at this stage does not require the  

regulator to take into account international best practice in 

relation  to radiation and safety and nuclear protection," Mr 

Campbell said.

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

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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