Greenpeace breaks into Sizewell B nuclear plant

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

Index:



Greenpeace breaks into Sizewell B nuclear plant

North Korean diplomat says reactor ready soon

Report Questions Nuke Plant Safety Plan

Fire damages power unit of fusion science institute in Gifu

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



Greenpeace breaks into Sizewell B nuclear plant



LONDON, Jan 13 (Reuters) - Greenpeace protesters broke into a major 

British nuclear power station on Monday in a bid to highlight what 

they said was the plant's vulnerability.



Using just 30 pounds-worth of equipment, 19 protesters successfully 

broke into the control building at Sizewell B power station in 

Suffolk.



"It was very easy to get inside," said Blake Lee-Hardwood, Greenpeace 

campaigns director. "If we had been terrorists we could have caused 

big damage."



British Energy, which operates Sizewell B, played down the incident 

and denied it showed any vulnerability.



"We are still confident in our security policies that strictly adhere 

to the guidelines set by the Office for Civil Nuclear Security," said 

a spokeswoman. "We believe we responded appropriately to what 

happened."



The protesters broke in shortly after 6 a.m. on Monday, cutting a 

hole in a wire mesh fence and gaining access to the control building 

unopposed.



Nine of them climbed onto the roof of the building and two made their 

way to the top of the dome that covers the reactor.



Suffolk police confirmed they had been called shortly after the 

incident took place, but said they did not enact any contingency 

plan.



Last October, Greenpeace protesters breached Sizewell B's perimeter 

fence, peacefully occupying the site.



"It is a terrifying thought that if we can do this then anyone can," 

said Greenpeace volunteer Rob Gueterbock speaking from the reactor 

dome.

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



North Korean diplomat says reactor ready soon



VIENNA, Jan 11 (Reuters) - A North Korean diplomat said on Saturday 

that the controversial Yongbyon nuclear reactor, focus of spiralling 

tensions with the United States, would become operable in a few 

weeks' time.



The reactor will be ready "to start in a few weeks, not a few 

months," said Son Mun San, counsellor for relations with the Vienna-

based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear 

watchdog agency.



The reactor that is part of the Yongbyon nuclear facility is capable 

of producing weapons-grade plutonium.



North Korea threatened to reactivate it late last year after earlier 

admitting to pursuing a nuclear arms programme in violation of a 1994 

pact.



Pyongyang raised the stakes in December by expelling IAEA monitors 

and removing their seals and cameras from Yongbyon, then on Friday 

alarmed the world by announcing it was withdrawing from the nuclear 

Non-Proliferation Treaty.



North Korea's ambassador in Vienna, speaking at the same news 

conference as his IAEA counsellor, said work on the reactor was 

moving quickly because the plant was needed for energy to get through 

the winter.



"We will do our best to quickly start generating the electricity," 

ambassador Kim Gwang Sop said.



The IAEA said the timetable of a few weeks was in line with 

Pyongyang's announced intention to have the reactor up and running 

within one to two months of removing the U.N. seals on December 12.



"When last we were there, they had brought 1,000 fuel rods to the 

reactor site. They hadn't loaded the fuel and they hadn't conducted 

work on the process of restarting," an IAEA spokesman told Reuters.



Son Mun San, speaking at the news conference at his country's 

Austrian embassy, said 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods that could be 

used to produce nuclear weapons-grade material were still in a 

storage pond at the Yongbyon facility.



The facility also includes a reprocessing plant capable of converting 

the spent fuel into weapons-grade material and a plant for 

fabricating new fuel rods.



Asked if the reprocessing plant was being started up again, Son Mun 

san said the plant "is in preparedness to be started" but added he 

could not say if or when it would start operating.



The news conference was called by the embassy to discuss North 

Korea's decision to withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

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



Report Questions Nuke Plant Safety Plan



WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) - Emergency plans for the Indian Point 

nuclear plant fail to address terrorist threats, and leave hundreds 

of thousands of people inadequately protected from radiation 

poisoning, an independent study concluded.-



``Simply stated, the world has recently changed. What was once 

considered sufficient may now be in need of further revision,'' 

according to the report, released Friday, which analyzed evacuation 

plans for the plant situated 35 miles north of midtown Manhattan.



The report, commissioned by Gov. George Pataki, also found emergency 

plans rely on outdated technology and are based on incomplete drills 

and unrealistic expectations.



At 500 pages and filled with mapped wind currents and charted 

radiation exposures, the report was prepared by James Lee Witt 

Associates, a consultant firm headed by a former head of the Federal 

Emergency Management Agency.



Pataki hired Witt last summer to review emergency planning for New 

York state's nuclear power plants, starting with Indian Point 2 and 

Indian Point 3 in the Westchester County village of Buchanan.



Since Sept. 11, 2001, when one of the planes that hit the World Trade 

Center first flew over Indian Point, fear of a terrorist attack on 

the plant has made emergency planning a major issue in the lower 

Hudson Valley. Dozens of politicians have called for a shutdown of 

the plants.



The report found numerous shortcomings in the emergency plans and 

said they are inadequate to ``protect the people from an unacceptable 

dose of radiation,'' but did not come to specific conclusions about 

how many people are at risk at certain distances. It also did not 

consider the safety of the plants themselves, or take a position on a 

shutdown of the reactors.



Pataki did not call for a shutdown, as some activists had hoped, but 

called on FEMA and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to ``take a hard 

look at the standards used to certify these emergency plans and 

determine if they are strong enough to meet the post-Sept. 11 

reality.''



An estimated 11.8 million people live within 50 miles of Indian 

Point, far more than around any of the nation's other nuclear plants. 

There are 256,000 suburbanites within 10 miles of the nuclear 

station, located in the Westchester County village of Buchanan.



Alex Matthiessen, who leads the environmental organization 

Riverkeeper, said Pataki ``ought to be using his position as the 

state's top elected official to demand that the Bush administration 

and the NRC shut down the plant and fix these problems.''



Rep. Sue Kelly, a Republican whose district includes Indian Point, 

said the Witt report had persuaded her that the plants should be shut 

down ``until I can look my constituents in the eye and tell them they 

are protected.''



The study does not attempt to predict the likelihood or effect of a 

terrorist attack, but it says a successful one could severely shorten 

the amount of time available for an evacuation.

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



Fire damages power unit of fusion science institute in Gifu



GIFU, Japan, Jan. 10 (Kyodo) - A fire broke out at the National 

Institute for Fusion Science in Gifu Prefecture on Thursday night and 

damaged 5 million yen worth of research equipment.



The fire was put out in about 30 minutes and no one was injured, 

officials of the government facility said.



The fire erupted inside the large helical device laboratory at around 

9:40 p.m. and damaged a power protection unit, including its steel 

case and other objects nearby, the officials said.



The institute, which is administered by the education ministry, is 

involved in experiments to produce fusion plasma through the large 

helical device, the largest in the world.



The experiments involve heating hydrogen through high frequency 

electromagnetic waves. The institute does not handle radioactive 

materials, the officials said.



The power protection unit, which costs 5 million yen, was housed in a 

steel case measuring 3.5 meters high and 3 meters wide.



The officials said researchers switched off the power of the heating 

unit at around 9:20 p.m. before ending Thursday's experiments.



On hearing the fire alarm, about 30 administrative workers and 

researchers inside the institute rushed to the scene and put out the 

fire with fire extinguishers, the officials said. No-one was inside 

the lab when the fire broke out.



The Japanese government founded the institute in May 1989 to promote 

research of fusion plasma.



Located in Toki, Gifu Prefecture, which sits almost in the center of 

Honshu, the institute is shared by all universities across Japan.



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

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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