NMC orders new vessel heads for five U.S. reactors

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

Index:



NMC orders new vessel heads for five U.S. reactors

Ohio Nuclear Plant Inspection Delayed   

Reporter Won't Name Wen Ho Lee Sources

IAEA completes inspection of 9 Libyan nuke facilities

Russia-Iran talks on spent nuclear fuel accord set for February  

Cell phones don't emit dangerous levels of radiation: Finnish survey 

Theory: Sun Radiation Caused Extinction 

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



NMC orders new vessel heads for five U.S. reactors



SAN FRANCISCO, Jan 7 (Reuters) - Nuclear Management Co. (NMC) said on 

Wednesday it plans to replace the vessel heads on five reactors at 

three nuclear power stations in the Midwest.



"This was a proactive measure on our part," NMC spokeswoman Maureen 

Brown said, citing problems with cracks and corrosion in vessel heads 

at other U.S. reactors.



NMC, which operates six nuclear power plants in the Upper Midwest, 

said Westinghouse Energy Co. would fabricate, deliver and install the 

new vessel heads beginning this autumn with the 535 megawatt Kewaunee 

plant in Wisconsin.



Westinghouse Electric, with headquarters in Monroeville, 

Pennsylvania, is the U.S. subsidiary of British Nuclear Fuels Ltd., 

the state-owned nuclear fuels and reprocessing company.



New heads, which are bolted down on top of the reactor, will also be 

installed at the twin 518 MW reactors at the Point Beach power 

station near Green Bay, Wisconsin, and twin 538 MW reactors at the 

Prairie Island plant near Red Wing, Minnesota.



Installation at each unit is set to coincide with regular refueling 

at the plants over the next two years, ending with one of the Prairie 

Island reactors in the autumn of 2006.



NMC declined to discuss details of the Westinghouse deal. Nor would 

the Hudson, Wisconsin-based operating company say how long each 

reactor would likely be shut or what it might cost to buy replacement 

power while the plants are down for refitting.



Westinghouse Electric could not be reached late Wednesday for 

comment.



NMC's decision to replace the reactor vessel heads is the latest in a 

string of similar moves by U.S. nuclear power plant operators after 

they discovered small cracks forming where control rods penetrate the 

heavy carbon steel lids.



The worst example of this basic design flaw was found in early 2002 

at FirstEnergy Corp's Davis-Besse plant in Ohio, where boric acid 

leaking through the cracks from inside the reactor ate holes nearly 

all the way through the vessel head, raising safety alarms that shut 

the plant for a lengthy overhaul.



Davis-Besse, still shut nearly two years later, is tentatively 

expected to restart in the first quarter of 2004 pending final 

approval by safety inspectors from the Federal Nuclear Regulatory 

Commission.



NMC operates the Kewaunee plant for Wisconsin Public Service Corp., a 

subsidiary of WPS Resources Inc., and Wisconsin Power & Light, a unit 

of Alliant Energy .



Alliant in November signed an agreement to sell its 41 percent stake 

in the plant to Dominion Resources, Inc. of Richmond, Virginia.



The Point Beach power station, in Two Creeks, Wisconsin, is owned by 

We Energies, a subsidiary of Wisconsin Energy Corp. , while the 

Prairie Island facility is owned by Xcel Energy of Minneapolis, 

Minnesota.

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



Ohio Nuclear Plant Inspection Delayed    



OAK HARBOR, Ohio  Jan 8  A utility asked federal regulators to delay 

a final inspection of a shutdown nuclear reactor, saying a minor 

incident suggested some workers aren't fully prepared to restart it. 



The Nuclear Regulatory Commission agreed to put off inspection of the 

Davis-Besse plant — which had been set to begin Monday — for about a 

week. 



The NRC said the move quashes FirstEnergy Corp.'s plans to seek a 

Jan. 21 meeting with NRC officials to discuss restarting the reactor. 

No new meeting date was set. 



The reactor at the plant along Lake Erie near Toledo has been shut 

down since February 2002. An inspection after the shutdown revealed a 

pineapple-sized hole in the reactor's lid. 



In the incident Tuesday, technicians testing a pressure gauge in an 

emergency safety system failed to tell the control room that the 

safety system would be off-line, First Energy spokesman Todd 

Schneider said. 



That mistake meant the emergency system was off-line for two hours 

without operators shifting to a backup. 



Schneider said the incident was minor but that managers believed the 

plant needed to do a better job of following the rules. 



On Dec 19, the NRC's restart readiness inspectors and a second team 

looking at the plant's safety environment said they could not 

recommend allowing the plant to restart. Managers spent the next 10 

days retraining workers. 

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



Reporter Won't Name Wen Ho Lee Sources



WASHINGTON  Jan. 7 - An Associated Press reporter refused to disclose 

his sources Wednesday despite a federal judge's order to do so for a 

lawsuit against the government by Wen Ho Lee, a former nuclear 

weapons scientist once suspected of spying.



H. Josef Hebert was deposed for 2 1/2 hours by Lee's lawyers and 

repeatedly was asked to disclose sources for stories about Lee, 

according to Hebert's lawyer, Lee Levine. The deposition took place 

at the offices of Lee's attorneys.



Lee is suing the departments of Energy and Justice, alleging they 

provided private information on him to reporters and suggested he was 

a suspect in an investigation into possible theft of secrets from Los 

Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico. All but one of 59 counts against Lee 

eventually were dismissed and then-President Clinton apologized for 

Lee's treatment.



Lee is seeking reporters' notes and other documents to argue his case 

against the government. The case is seen as a test of a reporter's 

right to protect sources.



Last month, New York Times reporters Jeff Gerth and James Risen also 

refused to reveal their sources.



Reporter Robert Drogin of the Los Angeles Times and former CNN 

reporter Pierre Thomas are scheduled to give depositions Thursday. 

Both plan to protect their sources, according to their lawyers.



Thomas is represented by Charles Tobin. Drogin's lawyer is the same 

as Hebert's.



The reporters could face jail time if they are found in contempt of 

court for not revealing their sources.

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



IAEA completes inspection of 9 Libyan nuke facilities



VIENNA, Jan. 2 (Kyodo) - A team of scientists from the International 

Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have inspected nine out of 10 nuclear 

facilities previously undeclared by Libya, an IAEA spokesman said 

Friday.



The spokesman said the team, which included IAEA Director General 

Mohamed ElBaradei, returned to the agency's headquarters in Vienna on 

Thursday after inspecting uranium enrichment and other facilities. 

The team plans to inspect the remaining facility, which is used for 

storing uranium, in the near future, the spokesman said.



The IAEA sent the team to Libya last Saturday following the 

declaration on Dec. 19 by Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi that Libya 

intends to disclose and drop its weapons of mass destruction 

programs.



While in Libya, ElBaradei met with Qaddafi and other Libyan 

officials, and the team conducted interviews with Libyan nuclear 

scientists and other persons of interest, the spokesman said.



The IAEA plans to inspect more Libyan nuclear facilities on an 

intermittent basis and plans to submit a final report to its 

governing board by March, the spokesman said.

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



Russia-Iran talks on spent nuclear fuel accord set for February   



MOSCOW (AFP) Jan 8 - Russian Atomic Energy Minister Alexander 

Rumyantsev is to travel to Iran next month to discuss speeding up the 

construction of a nuclear plant at Bushehr, in the south of the 

country, a ministry spokesman revealed. 

   

The visit had been scheduled for this month but was put back to the 

second half of February because of an earthquake last month at Bam 

that killed some 30,000 people and left an estimated 75,000 others 

homeless, Nikolai Shingarev told the ITAR-TASS news agency. 



The two sides are to "discuss accelerating the construction of the 

Bushehr power plant and a protocol on the return of spent fuel that 

could be signed at this time," Shingarev said Thursday. 



Russia has made completion of the Bushehr nuclear plant conditional 

on Iran signing an undertaking to return the spent fuel. 



The signature was due to take place last year but was postponed by 

Tehran on several occasions for "technical reasons." 



On December 18, after strong Western pressure, Iran signed up to a 

Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty additional protocol providing for 

surprise UN inspections of its nuclear sites to fend of US 

accusations that it is preparing a nuclear weapons programme. 



Shingarev said the Russian firm TVEL "has produced fuel that will be 

sent to the Bushehr plant after the signing" of the Moscow-Tehran 

accord on the return of spent nuclear fuel. 



Iran last October agreed to make a full declaration of its nuclear 

activities and temporarily suspend uranium enrichment, though it 

stressed that the suspension was "provisional and voluntary." 



Uranium enrichment is at the centre of international concern that 

Iran may be capable of building an atomic bomb. Tehran has said it 

reserves the right to restart enrichment "at any moment." 



Russia has overridden strong objections from the United States to 

maintain its nuclear cooperation with Iran. 

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



Cell phones don't emit dangerous levels of radiation: Finnish survey  

 

HELSINKI (AFP) Jan 8 - A Finnish survey of the country's most popular 

cell phone models found they all emitted far less radiation than the 

agreed European limits, the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority of 

Finland (STUK) said. 



"None of the phones I tested came close to the max limits," Tim 

Toivo, the STUK scientist who carried out the survey, told AFP. 



Toivo tested 12 of Finland's most popular cell phone models from 

manufacturers Nokia (news - web sites), Motorola, Samsung, Siemens 

and Ericsson (news - web sites) in an attempt to measure how much 

radiation is absorbed into the user's head. 



While research over recent years has indicated that cell phone 

radiation could cause brain damage, the STUK survey shows that the 12 

tested models at least emit such low radiation levels that they are 

not harmful. 



While this so-called Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) is limited to two 

watts of radiation per kilogram (2.2 pounds) in Finland and the rest 

of Europe, none of the models Toivo tested emitted more than 1.12 

watts per kilogram. 



"They were all pretty much in line with the levels of what the 

manufacturers were saying," he said. "Only one to two phones showed 

results a bit different from the data the manufacturers had 

published." 



The test revealed that the Siemens A55 phone emitted the least 

radiation at 0.45 w/kg, while the Siemens ME45 emitted the most 

radiation at 1.12 W/kg. 

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



Theory: Sun Radiation Caused Extinction   



ATLANTA (AP) Jan 8 - The second-largest extinction in the Earth's 

history, the killing of two-thirds of all species, may have been 

caused by ultraviolet radiation from the sun after gamma rays 

destroyed the Earth's ozone layer.    



Astronomers are proposing that a supernova exploded within 10,000 

light years of the Earth, destroying the chemistry of the atmosphere 

and allowing the sun's ultraviolet rays to cook fragile, unprotected 

life forms. 



All this happened some 440 million years ago and led to what is known 

as the Ordovician extinction, the second most severe of the planet's 

five great periods of extinction. 



"The prevailing theory for that extinction has been an ice age," said 

Adrian L. Melott, a University of Kansas astronomer. "We think there 

is very good circumstantial evidence for a gamma ray burst." 



Melott is the leader of a team, which includes some astronomers from 

the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, that presented the 

theory Wednesday at the national meeting of the American Astronomical 

Society. 



Fossil records for the Ordovician extinction show an abrupt 

disappearance of two-thirds of all species on the planet. Those 

records also show that an ice age that lasted more than a half 

million years started during the same period. 



Melott said a gamma ray burst would explain both phenomena. 



He said a gamma ray beam striking the Earth would break up molecules 

in the stratosphere, causing the formation of nitrous oxide and other 

chemicals that would destroy the ozone layer and shroud the planet in 

a brown smog. 



"The sky would get brown, but there would be intense ultraviolet 

radiation from the sun striking the surface." he said. The radiation 

would be at least 50 times above normal, powerful enough to killed 

exposed life. 



In a second effect, the brown smog would cause the Earth to cool, 

triggering an ice age, Melott said. 



The extinction "could have been a one-two punch," said Bruce S. 

Lieberman, a paleontologist at the University of Kansas and a co-

author of the theory. "Our theory builds on earlier theories" that 

included an ice age. 



Before the extinction, the Earth was unusually warm. Melott said 

climate experts have been unable to find a model that would explain 

the sudden onset of massive glaciers. 



"They need something to jump start the ice age," he said. "The gamma 

ray burst could have done it." 



Jere H. Lipps, a paleobiologist at the University of California, 

Berkeley, said gamma rays as a source of the Ordovician extinction 

should be regarded as only one of several theories. "It is a 

hypothesis that should be tested," Lipps said. 





He said the widely-accepted idea that the dinosaurs were wiped out by 

an asteroid 65 million years ago started out as a "wild idea" but 

that it gained wide support after other research. 



Most of the life killed in the Ordovician extinction were primitive 

sea creatures. Those that lived at or near the surface would be 

greatest risk from the ultraviolet radiation. Melott the species 

killed lived in shallow waters or reproduced with larvae that spent 

part of their lives near the water surface. Animals living in deep 

water were not harmed. 



There were only primitive plants living on land, but they, too, would 

have been affected, he said. 



Melott said it is almost certain that Earth has been zapped by a 

gamma rays several times in its 4.5 billion year history. 



"You can expect a dangerous gamma ray burst every few hundred million 

years," he said. "It could happen tomorrow or it could be millions of 

years." 



Supernovae, the source of gamma rays, usually leave behind remnant 

clouds of dust, shock waves and black holes that can be detected for 

millions of years. Melott said there is no known evidence of such a 

nearby supernova, but that in 440 million years the Milky Way would 

have rotated almost twice and traces of the explosion could have been 

moved during that time. 



The Ordovician was the first of five great extinctions in history. 



The Devonian, 360 million years ago, killed 60 percent of all 

species; the Permian-Triassic, 250 million years ago, killed 90 

percent of all life; the late Triassic, 220 million years ago, killed 

half of all species; and the Cretacious-Tertiary event destroyed the 

dinosaurs and half of all other species about 65 million years ago. 



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

Sandy Perle

Vice President, Technical Operations

Global Dosimetry Solutions, Inc.

3300 Hyland Avenue

Costa Mesa, CA 92626



Tel:(714) 545-0100 / (800) 548-5100  Extension 2306

Fax:(714) 668-3149



E-Mail: sperle@globaldosimetry.com

E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net



Personal Website: http://sandy-travels.com/

Global Dosimetry Website: http://www.globaldosimetry.com/



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