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Turkish police say seized uranium weighs 140 grams
Note: I will be out of the country from Oct. 3 - 28, and there will be no news mailings
during this time.
Index:
Turkish police say seized uranium weighs 140 grams
Japanese Nuclear power watchdog mulls panel with locals
Japan reprimands trade officials for nuclear coverup
NRC open for hearings on Ginna nuke license renewal
More cracks found in Miyagi nuclear reactor shroud
Russian Ex-Inspector: Halt Waste Imports
Radiologists welcome inquiry into risks of full-body CT scans
====================================
Turkish police say seized uranium weighs 140 grams
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey, Sept 29 (Reuters) - A Turkish police official said on Sunday the
amount of uranium recently seized by officers was around 140 grams (5 ounces) and did
not weigh 15 kg (33 lbs) as initially reported.
The state-run Anatolian news agency on Saturday reported that paramilitary police in
the southern province of Sanliurfa detained two men after discovering 15 kg of uranium
in a lead container hidden beneath a taxi car seat.
But that amount had included the weight of the container and the radioactive material
was actually around 140 grams, an official from the gendarmes force in Sanliurfa said on
condition of anonymity.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna was also sceptical because
the amount previously reported would have been enough to make a nuclear bomb,
spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told Reuters on Sunday.
The Turkish official said the weapons-grade uranium was seized on Friday after police
stopped the vehicle on a road in Sanliurfa, which borders Syria and is about 250 km
(155 miles) from the Iraqi border.
The incident comes at a time of heightened tension between the United States and Iraq,
accused by Washington of developing weapons of mass destruction.
U.S. President George W. Bush claims Baghdad has tried to acquire uranium to develop
a nuclear bomb as his administration works to build international support for a military
operation to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
The IAEA also questioned the contents because the word uranium was spelled in a
strange way on the container, which itself was made in West Germany, Fleming said.
"We have no primary information and are trying to verify the contents of the object but
it's very suspicious," she said.
The Anatolian agency on Sunday quoted Sanliurfa's provincial governor Muzaffer Dilek
as saying experts had yet to determine the amount of uranium but that intelligence
agents believed it only weighed about 100 grams.
Dilek also said police charged the two men in connection with the case but released
them pending trial.
"These people said they believe that what was given to them was medical material," he
said, adding police were now looking for two other suspects.
------------------
Japanese Nuclear power watchdog mulls panel with locals
TOKYO, Sept. 29 (Kyodo) - The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency is considering
forming an external panel that would include local authorities to assess how nuclear
plant operators should deal with equipment problems such as wear and tear, agency
officials said Saturday.
The agency, a unit of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, has a plan to
introduce ''defect standards'' as part of preventive measures following attempts by
Tokyo Electric Power Co. and other utilities to cover up equipment problems.
To enhance the disclosure of safety information, the agency wants to be able to decide
whether utilities can keep their power plants running when problems are discovered.
Due to a lack of standards on dealing with facility problems that turn up in internal
inspections, operators are technically obliged to restore faulty equipment to pristine
condition.
This is said to be one of the causes for the cover-ups, as utilities decided to hide minor
defects from the government so they would not have to shut off the reactors.
In the new scheme, the external panel would separately evaluate the safety of plants in
which operators find problems, the officials said.
The agency thinks having local authorities on the panel could be an effective way to
assuage people living near nuclear power plants where problems are discovered.
The agency would likely make such operations limited to one year, the officials added.
-----------------
Japan reprimands trade officials for nuclear coverup
TOKYO, Sept 27 (Reuters) - Japan's trade ministry said on Friday it has reprimanded
five senior ministry officials for failing to take quick action in investigating a nuclear
cover-up scandal by the nation's largest power utility.
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency was criticised for taking more than two years
to reveal the scandal after being informed by a whistle-blower that Tokyo Electric Power
Co Inc (TEPCO) falsified reports on nuclear safety inspections.
The agency is a unit of the ministry.
"The way the investigation was conducted and the time it took to unveil the incident are
considered improper, and have harmed public confidence in the nuclear industry," Trade
Minister Takeo Hiranuma told a news conference.
"We have to say that the length of the two-year investigation is considered too long,
although the heavier responsibility rests on TEPCO," Hiranuma said.
TEPCO admitted in late August that it had hidden the existence of cracks at several of
its nuclear reactors over a period of several years, partly by falsifying data on safety
checks.
Since then several other power firms have said they also failed to report cracks at their
nuclear reactors.
Hiranuma told reporters he would forgo his salary for two months to take responsibility
for the incident.
The senior officials being reprimanded include Yoshihiko Sasaki, the head of the
agency, and Hiranuma said he accepted an offer by Sasaki to forfeit a month's salary.
Resource-poor Japan relies on nuclear power for one-third of its power supply.
--------------
NRC open for hearings on Ginna nuke license renewal
NEW YORK, Sept 26 (Reuters) - Residents near the Ginna nuclear reactor in Upstate
New York will have an opportunity to request a hearing with the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission on an application to extend the power plant's operating license.
Rochester Gas & Electric Corp. (RG&E) filed an application to extend the operating
license by 20 years in July.
The plant, rated at 470 megawatts, is located in Wayne County, New York. It's current
operating license expires on Sept. 18, 2009.
Operating licenses are issued by the NRC for commercial power reactors to operate for
up to 40 years. This term was selected on the basis of economic and antitrust
considerations, not technical limitations.
The NRC has a process in place for renewing an operating license for up to an
additional 20 years of plant life if certain requirements are met for plant operations.
The deadline for hearing requests is 30 days from the date of publication of the Federal
Register notice, expected shortly.
RG&E is a unit of regional energy giant Energy East Corp. <EAS.N> of Albany, New
York.
To date, the NRC has approved 20-year license renewals for 10 reactors. While, the
owners of 16 other reactors, including Ginna, have filed for license renewal and some
24 others are expected to do so over the next six years, according to data from the
Nuclear Energy Institute, a nuclear trade group.
There are 103 operating nuclear reactors in the United States.
----------------
More cracks found in Miyagi nuclear reactor shroud
SENDAI, Sept. 26 (Kyodo) - Tohoku Electric Power Co. said Thursday it has detected
six additional cracks in a reactor at its nuclear power plant in Miyagi Prefecture, bringing
the total number of cracks to 73.
Tohoku Electric said Monday it had detected during regular inspections 67 cracks in the
lower and middle portions of the shroud of a reactor pressure vessel of the No. 1 reactor
at the Onagawa nuclear power plant, which spans Onagawa and Oshika towns.
But the company found six more cracks in the lower portion of the shroud after analyzing
a videotape recorded by an underwater camera, company officials said. The number of
cracks in the middle portion of the shroud remained at 12.
The longest of all the 73 cracks was found to be about 10 centimeters, 4 cm shorter than
the company had announced Monday.
''We could not find out the details of the cracks because we were only watching monitors
at the site when we first found the cracks during the inspection,'' a company official said.
-----------------
Russian Ex-Inspector: Halt Waste Imports
MOSCOW (AP) - A former top nuclear safety official urged Russia on Wednesday to
suspend imports of spent nuclear fuel from abroad, saying the country must handle its
own nuclear waste first.
Viktor Kuznetsov, Russia's top nuclear safety inspector in the early 1990s, also said that
authorities must concentrate on improving safeguards at the country's nuclear facilities
to prevent the theft of radioactive materials.
``Russia needs a moratorium on imports of spent nuclear fuel from abroad,'' Kuznetsov,
who works with an environmental protection group, told a new conference.
A controversial bill allowing the government to import spent nuclear fuel from abroad for
reprocessing and storage was approved by the parliament last year despite opinion
polls showing most Russians opposed the idea.
President Vladimir Putin signed the bill into law in July 2001, and the nuclear ministry
has already imported spent nuclear fuel from Soviet-built nuclear power plants in
Bulgaria and Ukraine.
Most environmental groups have remained strongly critical of the nuclear waste imports,
saying the practice would turn Russia into the world's nuclear dumping ground.
Nuclear ministry officials argue that Russia could earn $20 billion over the next decade,
importing some 22,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel. They say that the earnings would be
used to help build more waste storage facilities and clean up nuclear pollution left after
the Soviet era.
Kuznetsov claimed that the construction of new processing and storage facilities would
take many years during which the existing storage space would be filled and unable to
incorporate Russia's own waste.
He also argued that the government must quickly tighten security at the nation's nuclear
facilities and install world-class protection systems to stop radioactive thefts which have
become customary over the last decade.
Only one of Russia's 116 research nuclear reactors - the Kurchatov nuclear research
institute in Moscow - has a modern safety system installed with the U.S. money,
Kuznetsov said. Security at the other 115 reactors, 80 percent of which use highly
enriched uranium, is below world standards, he said.
----------------
Radiologists welcome inquiry into risks of full-body CT scans
Sept 27 (Australian Broadcasting Company) The Royal Australian College of
Radiologists (RACR) has welcomed a decision by the New South Wales Government to
call an investigation into the health risks of full-body CT scans.
The college has joined the Government in expressing concern about the procedure
which is being promoted as the latest way of detecting a range of diseases including
cancer.
People are paying up to $1,000 for the procedure which exposes them to large amounts
of radiation - in some cases up to 500 times more than a standard chest x-ray.
RACR president Dr Paul Sprague is concerned people are exposing themselves to
radiation when there is no evidence showing the scans are reliable.
"The college is certainly concerned to see the best possible standards for best practice
in the delivery of our area of medical specialty," Dr Sprague said.
"I think there needs to be a clear referral path ideally for people to be referred to ensure
that the equipment that they are having investigations on is appropriate, and also that
the quality of the equipment and the nature of the investigation is appropriate," he said.
Dr Sprague favours imposing tighter regulations on the growing industry, including
requirements that patients obtain a referral from an independent doctor and that the
risks of the scan be fully explained.
"I think it is an important step that it be looked at and that there is appropriate criteria in
place so that the best possible practice and best use of radiation or radiological
investigation is available to the Australian public," he 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: sperle@icnpharm.com
E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net
Personal Website: http://sandy-travels.com/
ICN Worldwide Dosimetry Website: http://www.dosimetry.com/
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