[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
NRC Blocks Plan to Store Nuclear Waste
Index:
NRC Blocks Plan to Store Nuclear Waste
Hiranuma hints at meeting governors over suspended reactors
Iran's Nuclear Plant Nears Completion
Nuclear security too poor to stop dirty bombs-UN
Framatome ANP Prepares for Nuclear Power's Future
=============================
NRC Blocks Plan to Store Nuclear Waste
WASHINGTON (AP) - Federal regulators on Monday blocked a proposal by
private utility companies to store high-level nuclear waste on an
Indian reservation in Utah's west desert, citing the dangers posed by
a nearby Air Force training range.
Private Fuel Storage, a consortium of eight electric utilities, had
sought to store uranium rods from nuclear reactors in casks on the
Skull Valley Goshute reservation, 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake
City, until a permanent storage facility could be built at Yucca
Mountain in Nevada.
Utah officials objected to the proposal, raising a series of safety
concerns, including the threat posed by military aircraft and the
potential for earthquakes and other problems.
The Air Force flies thousands of training missions each year over the
sprawling Utah Test and Training Range near the Skull Valley Goshute
reservation.
``There is enough likelihood of an F-16 crash into the proposed
facility that such an accident must be deemed credible,'' the Atomic
Safety Licensing Board - an arm of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission -
said in a 222-page opinion Monday. As a result, the board said, it
was holding off approval for the project.
The board said it could reconsider its decision if Private Fuel
Storage can convince the Air Force to reduce or reroute the number of
flights over the reservation or if PFS can show that the concrete and
steel casks where the waste would be stored could withstand an F-16
crash.
At a hearing last year, PFS argued that pilots could steer their
planes away from the nuclear waste before a crash occurred, but the
Atomic Safety and Licensing Board was unswayed.
PFS can also appeal the licensing board's decision to the five-member
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but the chances of the commissioners
overruling the board would be unusual.
In a statement, PFS said it is reviewing the decision.
``While we are disappointed with this initial partial decision, we
continue to believe that our facility meets the federal
regulations,'' said Scott Northard, project manager for PFS.
Goshute Chairman Leon Bear did not return a message left at the
tribe's office.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, called the decision ``a tremendous victory
for safety and sensibility over recklessness and short-term
profits.''
``I have never thought that this proposal was in the best interests
of the citizens of Utah, and I think this decision bears that out,''
Hatch said.
Commercial nuclear power plants around the country are running out of
space to store the spent reactor fuel. Storage pools at many plants
are full, so the companies sought to find a remote area where the
radioactive waste could be stored until the Energy Department builds
a permanent storage dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
The Energy Department hopes to open Yucca Mountain by 2010, but the
proposed facility must still get an NRC license and could get
delayed.
The Skull Valley Band of Goshutes, an impoverished tribe whose
reservation is in Utah's west desert sought the economic benefits of
the project and signed a deal with PFS in 1997 to pursue the plan.
The proposed storage facility would essentially be a 100-acre
concrete parking lot within a controlled 820-acre area. Four thousand
casks with 2 1/2-foot-thick concrete and steel walls encasing a total
of 40,000 metric tons of uranium would be lined up in rows.
``This was about getting cash for exploiting the safety of their
neighbors,'' Gov. Mike Leavitt.
On the Net:
Goshutes: http://www.skullvalleygoshutes.org
Private Fuel Storage:
http://www.privatefuelstorage.com/project/partners-svb.html
Gov. Leavitt: http://www.utah.gov/governor/nukewaste.html
------------------
Hiranuma hints at meeting governors over suspended reactors
TOKYO, March 11 (Kyodo) - Industry minister Takeo Hiranuma said
Tuesday he may visit Fukushima and Niigata prefectures and meet their
governors, seeking to resolve the issue of suspended nuclear reactors
of Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO).
''I am contemplating that I myself will visit (the prefectures),''
Hiranuma, head of the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI),
said at a news conference.
The imminent shutdown of all 17 nuclear reactors run by Japan's
largest utility follows revelations last August that TEPCO falsified
safety reports to cover up defects at its nuclear facilities.
The 17 reactors, which generate a total of 17 million kilowatts,
supply electricity for the areas and provide more than 40% for Tokyo
and vicinity.
Since the cover-up scandal in late August, TEPCO has closed 14 of the
17 reactors for checks so to restore the confidence of local
residents. Operations at the remaining three reactors will be
suspended by the middle of next month.
METI and TEPCO are concerned about the possibility of a summer power
shortage due to the suspension of the reactors and are feeling for a
chance to resume reactor operations soon.
But the two governors so far appear reluctant.
Fukushima Gov. Eisaku Sato said that now is not the time to consider
allowing TOPCO to resume operations. Niigata Gov. Ikuo Hirayama said
the central government should ensure the safety of nuclear reactors.
Hiranuma said he will also send Nuclear and Industry Safety Agency
officials, including its director general Yoshihiko Sasaki, to the
two prefectures later this month to reassure local residents about
the safety of the reactors.
Agency officials are expected to visit Kashiwazaki, Niigata
Prefecture, on March 21 and Fukushima Prefecture on March 24 and 26
to explain measures METI and the agency have taken.
In late August, it was revealed that during the 1980s and 1990s TEPCO
falsified safety reports and covered up defects found during safety
checks at the Fukushima No. 1 and Fukushima No. 2 nuclear power
stations, and at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power station in
Niigata Prefecture.
The Fukushima No. 1 station has six reactors, the Fukushima No. 2
station four reactors, and the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa station seven.
---------------
Iran's Nuclear Plant Nears Completion
BUSHEHR, Iran (AP) - Iran's first nuclear power plant, which the
United States claims can be used to make nuclear bombs, is nearing
completion and all major components are installed, Iranian officials
said Tuesday.
``Over 70 percent of the work has been accomplished,'' Assadollah
Sabori, deputy head of Atomic Energy Organization of Iran said in a
press conference. ``The main thing left is shipping nuclear fuel from
Russia, which is expected to take place in May,'' he said.
The United States has accused Iran of seeking to develop nuclear
weapons and says the plant will be able to produce nuclear material
for a bomb. Iran says the plant will be used to meet the country's
growing electricity needs.
Sabori spoke after more than 80 international journalists and
photographers toured the facility in southern Iran for the first time
Tuesday.
Steam generators, pressure vessels, pressurizers and reactor cooling
plants have already been installed. The components, shipped to Iran
from Russia in the past 18 months, form the core of a nuclear
reactor.
Sabori said 1,100 Russian experts and over 3,000 Iranians are working
at the plant's first unit. He said Iran had the option of setting up
three other reactors at Bushehr, 745 miles southwest of the capital
Tehran.
He said Iran has agreed to return the spent nuclear fuel to Russia
but that some formalities remained before Iran makes the deal
official.
Iran says the 1,000-megawatt Bushehr plant is part of efforts to
supply enough electricity to its 66 million people. Iran has approved
a plan to produce 6,000 megawatts of power through nuclear energy by
2020.
On Monday, the White House challenged Iran's claims that it was
building the plant strictly for energy production.
``We completely reject Iran's claim that it is doing so for peaceful
purposes,'' White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said. State
Department spokesman Richard Boucher called Iran's nuclear weapons
program robust.
But Naser Shariflou, head of Bushehr, denied that Tuesday. ``Simply,
it is impossible to make a bomb with a plant like this,'' he said.
Shariflou said the International Atomic Energy Organization has
already installed equipment including cameras to monitor the plant's
activity.
``Everything will be under the direct supervision of the IAEA. Even
the spent nuclear fuel will be watched closely by IAEA cameras here
before it is shipped to Russia,'' he said.
David Albright, head of the Institute for Science and International
Security in Washington and a former weapons inspector in Iraq, told
the AP Tuesday that Bushehr can be used to produce weapon-grade
plutonium.
``Plutonium with a high fraction of plutonium 240, commonly called
reactor-grade plutonium, can be used to make a crude nuclear
explosive. Moreover, Bushehr could be used to produce weapon-grade
plutonium directly,'' Albright said.
He said a uranium enrichment plant under construction at Natanz, in
central Iran, was a gas centrifuge plant that can make either low
enriched or highly enriched uranium; the latter is used in a nuclear
weapon. IAEA inspectors visited Natanz last month.
Rasul Sediqi, an Iranian nuclear scientist, said the plutonium
obtained from the Bushehr plant will be of no use for nuclear
weapons.
``The plutonium obtained consists of plutonium 239 and 240. And it's
extremely difficult to separate them because Iran doesn't have such
an advanced technology to do so,'' Sediqi told The Associated Press.
Plutonium 239 is the weapons-grade plutonium used in nuclear weapons.
American analysts, however, said it is possible to make weapons out
of material that contains 240, ``as long as it is not too high a
percentage,'' said Joseph Cirincione, of the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace. ``This provides Iran with a source of weapons
material, if they have the facility to reprocess the fuel and
separate the plutonium.''
------------------
Nuclear security too poor to stop dirty bombs-UN
VIENNA, March 11 (Reuters) - The U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said on
Tuesday stricter security measures were urgently needed to keep
radioactive material out of the hands of terrorists, who could use it
to wreak havoc with "dirty bombs."
Opening an international conference on dirty bombs, International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) head Mohamed ElBaradei said the September
11, 2001 attacks had shown terrorists were not afraid to handle
deadly radioactive material to construct such a bomb.
"Given the apparent readiness of terrorists to disregard their own
safety, the personal danger from handling powerful radioactive
sources can no longer be seen as an effective deterrent," he said.
U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham told the conference that
terrorists were prepared to "employ technology never intended for use
as weapons, to murder thousands of innocent and unsuspecting people
in the most shocking and ruthless way."
Dirty bombs -- the popular term for radiological dispersion devices --
are made by attaching radioactive material to a conventional
explosive to spread it over a wide area.
Britain said in January it had evidence that Osama bin Laden's al
Qaeda network tried to develop a dirty bomb in the late 1990s.
But some counter-terrorism experts and even officials within the IAEA
argue that such bombs are generally of little interest to groups like
al Qaeda as they are less effective than more easily accessible
weapons.
But ElBaradei said that while a dirty bomb might not necessarily kill
its victims, the most severe impact would be "panic and social
disruption associated with exposure to radiation, the very purpose of
an act of terror."
There have been more than 280 confirmed cases of criminal trafficking
of radioactive material, but "the actual number of cases may be
significantly larger than the number reported to the agency," he
said.
While there has yet to be a dirty bomb attack, ElBaradei said recent
reports about terrorist plans to use dirty bombs worth were taking
seriously and that states should spent time and money to beef up
nuclear security.
"While a number of countries are stepping up relevant security
measures, many others lack the resources...to effectively control
radioactive sources."
ElBaradei said the problem of radioactive material disappearing from
regulator's records was especially acute in the countries of the
former Soviet Union, where the IAEA has cooperated with Russia and
the United States in operations to recover deadly radioactive
material.
TAKING ACTION
Abraham said the IAEA had put together a programme to help states
take the legal, regulatory and technical steps needed to protect
radioactive materials.
Highly radioactive materials have a wide variety of uses in medicine,
agriculture and industry -- to treat cancer, keep stored grain from
rotting and analyse pipes for fissures.
Experts from the U.N. and other organisations have warned that
security has been so lax at some hospitals and other facilities --
even in the U.S. and western Europe -- that radioactive materials
could easily be pilfered.
While nuclear material that can be used in full-scale nuclear weapons
has long been recognised as dangerous, standard radioactive material
has not been subject to the same kind of security.
------------------
Framatome ANP Prepares for Nuclear Power's Future With Financial
Commitment to Central Virginia Community College
LYNCHBURG, Va., March 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Framatome ANP Inc., an AREVA
and Siemens company, has pledged $1 million to the Central Virginia
Community College (CVCC) Educational Foundation to strengthen its
education partnership with the Lynchburg, Virginia, community
college. This donation represents the largest single corporate
contribution to CVCC's Major Gifts Campaign.
CVCC and Framatome ANP have formed an innovative training partnership
in which CVCC actively participates in the training of Framatome ANP
employees in various nuclear maintenance technologies. This work
study program was designed to meet the needs of Framatome ANP in
developing a highly-skilled workforce while providing educational and
career opportunities to students. A total of 60 students will be
enrolled by July 2003 in the nuclear maintenance technology program --
28 students are currently enrolled in the program.
"The future looks bright for nuclear power, and one of the greatest
challenges facing our industry is maintaining a qualified and well-
trained workforce," said Tom Christopher, president and CEO of
Framatome ANP Inc. "Our partnership with CVCC will help us meet our
company's increasing needs for a highly-skilled workforce as we
continue growing to meet the demands of the nuclear power industry."
Framatome ANP Inc. is based in Lynchburg and currently has 3,400
employees throughout the U.S.
-------------------------------------------------
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/
************************************************************************
You are currently subscribed to the Radsafe mailing list. To unsubscribe,
send an e-mail to Majordomo@list.vanderbilt.edu Put the text "unsubscribe
radsafe" (no quote marks) in the body of the e-mail, with no subject line.
You can view the Radsafe archives at http://www.vanderbilt.edu/radsafe/