Tokyo power cuts less likely as TEPCO gets reactor OK

[Sandy, Perle]

Index:



Tokyo power cuts less likely as TEPCO gets reactor OK

Energy Dept. Halts Nuclear Shipments Plan

EBRD agrees funds to make Ukraine's Chernobyl sa

Loss piles woes on UK nuclear firm BNFL

N. Korea reprocesses 'small amount of' spent fuel rods

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



Tokyo power cuts less likely as TEPCO gets reactor OK



FUKUSHIMA, Japan, July 10 (Kyodo) - The Tokyo metropolitan area is 

now not likely to experience significant power shortages this summer, 

after Fukushima Gov. Eisaku Sato gave his consent Thursday to restart 

a reactor operated by Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) in Fukushima 

Prefecture.



Sato gave the go-ahead to restart the No. 6 reactor at TEPCO's 

Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in a meeting with TEPCO President 

Tsunehisa Katsumata, who visited the governor to seek his consent, 

prefectural government officials said.



In Tokyo, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda told a news 

conference, ''If the No. 6 reactor at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear 

power plant is restarted, the likelihood of power shortages in the 

summer will be considerably decreased.''



The reactor has been shut down with other TEPCO reactors because of a 

defect cover-up scandal.



On June 1, the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, an organization 

under the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), gave 

assurances that the reactor is safe.



TEPCO is expected to reactivate the reactor Friday and start 

generating power within two days.



With the central government approval, the utility could legally 

restart the No. 6 reactor without local consent, but METI and TEPCO 

have decided to seek local backing, according to METI officials.



In the meeting, Katsumata told Sato the utility will put priority on 

ensuring the safety of the facility and make efforts to establish 

full transparency, the prefectural government officials said.



In response, Sato called for TEPCO to try harder to restore public 

trust, before giving his consent to restart the No. 6 reactor, the 

officials said.



After the visit, Katsumata told reporters that the company wants to 

restart ''three or more reactors'' to ensure stable power supply.



But Sato remained cautious about approving the resumption of 

operations at nine other reactors in Fukushima Prefecture, saying, 

''We are not considering the possibility at all.''



TEPCO had by the end of April shut down all its 17 reactors --seven 

in Niigata Prefecture and 10 in Fukushima Prefecture -- after 

revelations last August that the company had falsified safety 

reports.



Of the 17, the No. 6 and No. 7 reactors at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa 

nuclear power plant in Niigata resumed operations in May and June, 

respectively. The rest are still off-line.



TEPCO and METI are struggling to restart the suspended reactors to 

avert power shortages in the metropolitan area in July and August.



The restart of the No. 6 reactor, with an output capacity of 1.1 

megawatts, will reduce the possibility of power cuts.



In a related move, METI head Takeo Hiranuma visited Niigata on 

Wednesday and said the No. 4 reactor at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa 

nuclear power plant is also safe.



The reactor is now expected to be restarted sometime later this month 

as Niigata Gov. Ikuo Hirayama has said Hiranuma's guarantee would be 

one of the conditions for his consent to resume operations.

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



Energy Dept. Halts Nuclear Shipments Plan



LOS ANGELES (AP) - A plan to ship nuclear waste from Nevada to New 

Mexico through Southern California was canceled Wednesday because of 

opposition from state officials, the Department of Energy said.



It marked the first time shipment plans have been halted because of a 

state's resistance, DOE spokesman Joe Davis said. There were no 

immediate plans to reschedule the truck shipments of medium-level 

waste on the circuitous 300-mile route through California. They were 

to have started as early as Thursday.



``The waste that we ship to New Mexico for storage, we have never had 

a state that I'm aware of not agree to let us use a route,'' Davis 

said. ``This sets a very dangerous precedent for the future of 

radioactive waste shipments.''



He noted that much of the waste that would have been shipped 

originated in California before it was moved to Nevada.



DOE had not indicated how much waste would have been trucked.



The DOE decision came after the Western Governors' Association 

notified the agency that California did not concur on the route. The 

agency's protocol is to get a state's agreement before shipping, 

Davis said.



``This is not a delay,'' he said. ``We're canceling the shipments 

until the Western Governors' Association and the state of California 

and state of Nevada can engage together and propose a meaningful 

compromise.''



The primary objection was the roundabout route, from Nevada through 

California and Arizona to a disposal facility in New Mexico. Part of 

the trip was along state Highway 127, a former wagon road that 

authorities said was not designed for heavy trucks, is poorly 

maintained in places and is popular with tourists heading to Death 

Valley.



The dispute over the low-level waste could point to a larger fight 

over highly radioactive material that is supposed to be transported 

from nuclear power plants to the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump 

that could open as early as 2010.



California Highway Patrol spokesman Tom Marshall said the agency 

didn't necessarily object to moving low-grade material through the 

state, but didn't want the state to become the primary route for 

shipping higher-grade material.



``We didn't feel the road was adequate to handle the bulkier, the 

heavier, the more dangerous stuff,'' Marshall said.

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



EBRD agrees funds to make Ukraine's Chernobyl safe



CHERNOBYL, Ukraine (Reuters) - A European development bank agreed 

Wednesday to give Ukraine millions of dollars to build a new shield 

over Chernobyl, site of the world's worst civil nuclear disaster.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development said it would 

give the former Soviet state 75 million euros this year to stabilize 

the old "sarcophagus" covering the gaping hole in reactor No. 4, 

which some experts say is crumbling and leaking radiation into nearby 

towns and cities.



And it said it would start funding the $750 million project to kick-

start work on a new arc to surround the reactor.



Chernobyl closed in 2000, nearly 15 years after the reactor exploded, 

spewing a deadly cloud of radioactivity over Ukraine, neighboring 

Belarus, Russia and some of Western Europe and leaving a legacy of 

health problems in the former Soviet states.



Hans Blix, who was head of the Vienna-based International Atomic 

Energy Agency when the reactor exploded, told reporters the Chernobyl 

project was moving into a more active stage.



"The Chernobyl program has been before me since I was in Vienna in 

1986 and with my Ukrainian friends I would like to see it to a safe 

conclusion," Hans Blix, head of the EBRD-managed Chernobyl Shelter 

Fund, said after a tour of the site.



EBRD officials said they had selected a design for the mammoth 

protective arc over the reactor and construction would start next 

year after Ukraine eased tax rules for companies involved in the 

project.



But Blix said the project still faced hurdles due to complicated 

certification procedures for imports and problems getting into 

neighboring Belarus, another former Soviet state which is ruled by 

hardline leader Alexander Lukashenko. 

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



Loss piles woes on UK nuclear firm BNFL



LONDON, July 9 (Reuters) - State-owned British nuclear fuels and 

reprocessing firm BNFL unveiled a loss for the last year of over one 

billion pounds ($1.6 billion) on Wednesday, piling on the woes for an 

industry in financial crisis.



The 1.088-billion-pound pre-tax loss for the year to March 2003 was 

well down on British Nuclear Fuels Ltd's 2.328 billion pound deficit 

in the previous year.



But it included a number of new exceptional items and showed lower 

sales and a bigger operating loss than a year ago at 190 million 

pounds against 68 million.



The poor results came on top of news last week that the government 

had dumped plans to part-privatise the company in the wake of 

financial troubles faced by its main customer, the already privatised 

nuclear generator British Energy Plc.



British Energy was rescued by a state loan this year after power 

market liberalisation sent the price of its electricity in an 

oversupplied market below its cost of production.



A planned restructuring for British Energy transfers much of the cost 

of reprocessing its fuel onto BNFL, and ultimately onto the UK 

taxpayer, by tearing up old reprocessing contracts and replacing them 

with cheaper ones.



BNFL said it would take a 230-million-pound charge for the change to 

British Energy contracts. It also took a 415-million-pound charge for 

an increase in the expected cost of decommissioning two nuclear power 

stations, and made a further 175-million-pound provision against two 

fixed-price nuclear clean-up contracts in the United States.



Chairman Hugh Collum mapped out the future for the business now that 

a stock market flotation is off the agenda, and as the nuclear 

industry in Britain, which supplies a quarter of the nation's 

electricity demand, faces an uncertain future.



"This will be a business that lives, first and foremost, off its 

intellectual capital," he said. "But it will succeed only by 

exercising commercial skills on a par with its technical ones and 

working closely with the local communities where we operate."



BNFL is in limbo after the government ducked a decision on whether to 

build new nuclear power stations in a recent policy pronouncement.



Meanwhile the European Commission is due to start a probe into the 

planned restructuring of British Energy within weeks. Anti-nuclear 

groups have launched a legal challenge to the bailout, while other 

power firms argue that British Energy's continued operation has 

depressed power prices still further and put their business in 

jeopardy.

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



N. Korea reprocesses 'small amount of' spent fuel rods



SEOUL, July 9 (Kyodo) - South Korea's top intelligence agency said 

Wednesday that North Korea is believed to have reprocessed a small 

amount of 8,000 spent fuel rods stored in its Yongbyon nuclear 

complex, according to Yonhap News Agency.



The National Intelligence Service (NIS) made the statement in a 

briefing to the parliamentary intelligence committee.



Yonhap quoted two lawmakers of the intelligence committee as saying 

the NIS ''believes that North Korea recently reprocessed a small 

amount of about 8,000 spent fuel rods in its Yongbyon nuclear 

facilities.''



It is the first time the South Korean intelligence agency has 

commented on the North's start of reprocessing spent fuel rods, a 

crucial step that could produce several nuclear bombs within months.



In China-brokered talks with the United States in Beijing in April, 

North Korea told U.S. diplomats it has already possess nuclear 

weapons and started reprocessing spent fuel rods.



Since the nuclear dispute flared last October when North Korea 

admitted to having a secret uranium enrichment program to produce 

nuclear weapons in violation of a 1994 antinuclear pact, the North 

kicked out the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors from the 

nuclear facilities and threatened to reprocess spent fuel rods.



The NIS also told the parliamentary intelligence committee that North 

Korea conducted explosive testing about 70 times at Yongdok- dong, 

about 40 kilometers northwest of the Yongbyon nuclear complex, 

according to Yonhap.



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

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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