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RG&E files plan to keep rates flat, sell Ginna nuke
Index:
RG&E files plan to keep rates flat, sell Ginna nuke
FirstEnergy: Davis-Besse plant restart under way
Libya Returns Nuclear Fuel to Russia
Nigeria Denies Nuclear Ambitions
=========================
RG&E files plan to keep rates flat, sell Ginna nuke
NEW YORK, March 9 (Reuters) - Rochester Gas and Electric Corp. said
Tuesday it filed a plan with New York regulators to keep electric and
natural gas rates flat for five years in an effort to win state
approval to sell its nuclear plant.
The New York Public Service Commission Staff, the New York State
Consumer Protection Board and other parties joined RG&E in support of
its rate proposals.
If the commission approves of the proposals, the company said it
expects to complete the sale of the 470 megawatt Ginna reactor in New
York to a unit of Constellation Energy Group Inc. of Baltimore by
June 30, 2004.
This is an unprecedented task, as electric rates have not increased
during the past ten years. This joint agreement will require RG&E to
operate the business as efficiently as possible," said Jim Laurito,
president of RG&E.
RG&E, of Rochester, New York, said it would like the commission to
approve of the proposals by the end of May 2004.
RG&E, a unit of Energy East Corp. of Albany, serves about 355,000
electric customers and 291,000 gas customers in the Rochester area.
---------------------
FirstEnergy: Davis-Besse plant restart under way
SAN FRANCISCO, March 8 (Reuters) - Utility FirstEnergy Corp. on
Monday said it had begun to restart its Davis-Besse nuclear power
plant in Ohio after a costly two-year outage to replace a damaged
reactor vessel head and make other plant improvements.
FirstEnergy said start-up steps began after receiving Nuclear
Regulatory Commission authorization on Monday to restart the plant
and begin to produce a nuclear reaction in the reactor core.
The 925 megawatt Davis-Besse plant, on the shore of Lake Erie near
Oak Harbor, Ohio, is expected to reach its full power production
within two weeks, FirstEnergy said.
The plant will send electricity onto the Midwest power grid when it
climbs to about 15 percent to 18 percent of its generating capacity
(139 megawatts to 167 megawatts), probably on Thursday or Friday, a
plant spokesman said.
Davis-Besse, which can produce electricity for about 900,000 homes,
was forced to close in February 2002 when it was discovered that
leaking boric acid had chewed holes nearly all the way through the
reactor vessel's carbon steel lid, a serious safety violation.
FirstEnergy formally requested the NRC's authorization to restart the
plant at a Feb. 12 meeting with NRC inspectors.
"We are fully committed to operating this plant safely and reliably,"
said Gary Leidich, president and chief nuclear officer of FirstEnergy
Nuclear Operating Co.
James Caldwell, regional administrator for the NRC's Chicago office,
which has tracked FirstEnergy's work at Davis-Besse, said the
regulatory agency "has reasonable assurance that the Davis-Besse
facility can be restarted and operated safely."
MORE INSPECTIONS
NRC inspectors were at the plant Monday to track the restart, and
Caldwell said they "will maintain round-the-clock inspection coverage
of plant activities. Expanded inspection coverage at Davis-Besse will
continue beyond start-up," he said, including the addition of a third
on-site inspector.
The NRC official and Jack Grobe, chairman of an NRC plant oversight
committee, told a telephone news conference that Davis-Besse, which
has about 800 employees, will have to go through annual inspections
by independent observers for five years to ensure no slips in safety
performance.
A nuclear watchdog group, however, said the NRC must do a better job
identifying safety problems at plants before they worsen.
David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer at the Union of Concerned
Scientists, said Davis-Besse got high marks from the NRC shortly
before the leak was discovered.
"Until we sharpen the focus of our regulatory monitor, we may not be
detecting comparable problems at other plants," he said.
In addition to replacing the reactor vessel cap, during the outage
FirstEnergy had to install other power equipment, improve programs
and procedures to run the plant, and demonstrate to NRC inspectors
that it was committed to operate the plant safely.
FirstEnergy also put in a new management team at Davis-Besse.
The utility has said that repairs at Davis-Besse, including purchased
power to replace missing megawatts for two years, have cost more than
$600 million.
The NRC has investigated the Davis-Besse leak and sent the results to
the U.S. Justice Department, which is also running its own probe
through the U.S. Attorney's office in Cleveland, an NRC spokesman
said.
-----------------
Libya Returns Nuclear Fuel to Russia
MOSCOW (March 8) - Enriched nuclear fuel the former Soviet Union
provided to Libya two decades ago was returned to Russia on Monday,
the International Atomic Energy Agency said.
Russia's Interfax news agency quoted an unidentified Atomic Energy
Ministry spokesman as saying 88 nuclear fuel assemblies - bundles of
rods that contain fuel used for reactors - were returned from the
Tajura research center outside Tripoli, which had received it between
1980 and 1984.
The Tajura facility includes a 10-megawatt reactor built in 1980 with
equipment from the Soviet Union.
A statement from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.
nuclear watchdog, said it helped Libya in recent days with the
removal of weapons-grade uranium from the research facility for
transport back to Russia.
Libya, after long negotiations with the United States and Britain,
recently acknowledged having a nuclear weapons program and pledged to
scrap it.
The uranium was 80 percent enriched and was in the form of fresh,
unused fuel, the Vienna-based IAEA said in a statement. It was in
fuel components containing about 28.7 pounds of fissile uranium-235,
as well as about 6.6 pounds of non-fissile uranium, the statement
said.
Naturally occurring uranium contains only small amounts of the
isotope uranium-235, which is needed to support chain reactions in
nuclear reactors and weapons. The metal must be refined to boost the
concentration of that isotope, a process called enrichment.
The $700,000 fuel return operation was funded by the U.S. Department
of Energy under a three-way program with Russia and the IAEA to
address nuclear safety and proliferation risks.
The IAEA said Russia intends to blend it down into low-enriched
uranium, making it unsuitable for use in a nuclear weapon.
Uranium enriched to 80 percent of the U-235 isotope is barely usable
for nuclear weapons. Bombmakers prefer 90-percent or more enriched
uranium. The IAEA says 55 pounds of highly enriched uranium is
considered "significant," that is, sufficient for a bomb.
--------------------
Nigeria Denies Nuclear Ambitions
LAGOS, Nigeria (March 5) - The Nigerian government denied Friday that
it ever sought atomic weapons, distancing itself from earlier
statements that suggested its military wanted to develop nuclear
capability.
Friday's denial, coupled with the other claims, left experts unsure
if the African powerhouse was trying to mask its nuclear ambitions,
or if it was guilty only of government bungling.
The Nigerian vice president's office said five weeks ago that a
visiting North Korean delegation had offered the country missile
technology. On Wednesday, the Defense Ministry cited a top Pakistani
official as saying Pakistan was trying to decide how to help the
Nigerian military "strengthen its military capability and to acquire
nuclear power."
But the same Nigerian Defense Ministry spokesman who made the claim
about the North Korean offer later retracted the statement. And on
Thursday, Nwachukwu Bellu, the Nigerian Defense Ministry official who
signed the statement about Pakistan's supposed offer, called the
document a "mistake."
Pakistan also denied that its official - Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen.
Mohammad Aziz Kahn - made any such offer in a visit Wednesday.
Another denial came Friday, from President Olusegun Obasanjo's
spokeswoman, Remi Oyo.
"Nigeria is not seeking any deal with any country as regards
acquiring nuclear weapons," Oyo told The Associated Press. "We're
surrounded by friendly nations,"
She dismissed the government's controversial statements as "something
that went awry."
U.S. officials and international analysts wonder if Nigeria -
Africa's most populous nation with 126 million people - is privately
angling to become the world's latest nuclear power or posturing for
overseas aid or influence in return for abandoning such ambitions.
"It was an extraordinary statement. I wonder how it could have been
issued in error," said Susan Rice, former Assistant Secretary of
State for African Affairs under President Clinton.
Rice, a senior fellow at Washington's Brookings Institution, warned
that Nigeria's history of military takeovers made it an unstable
place for nuclear technology.
Nigeria is not entirely nuclear-free, but the U.N. nuclear watchdog,
the International Atomic Energy Agency, says a reactor it does have
is for research purposes.
"They are inspected regularly by the IAEA to ensure they are not put
to any other uses other than what they're meant for," IAEA spokesman
Mark Gwozdecky said.
In a document published by the Vienna-based International Atomic
Energy Council, the Energy Commission of Nigeria appealed last
September to the IAEA for "nuclear fuel" to operate a "miniature
neutron source reactor." Commission director-general I.H. Umar was
cited as saying it was built for Nigeria in March 1999 by China's
Nuclear Energy Industry Corporation.
Umar declined to comment when reached by telephone.
According to the IAEA document, the international body initially
disallowed shipments of nuclear fuel to fuel the Nigerian reactor
"due to the absence of a sufficient nuclear regulatory framework in
Nigeria."
Gwozdecky said the Nigerian facility is "under our safeguards."
Air Force Gen. Charles Wald, deputy commander of U.S. forces at the
U.S. European Command in Stuttgart, Germany, said he was unaware if
Nigeria had such aspirations.
Remi Oyewumi, a Nigerian political analyst in the capital, Abuja,
suggested Nigeria's government may want nuclear weapons because they
"confer prestige, no doubt, and Nigeria is also known for wanting
prestigious things."
Even a corrected statement issued by Nigeria's Defense Ministry on
Thursday cited the nation's chief of defense staff, Gen. Alexander
Ogomudia, as praising Pakistan's nuclear program for lifting the
country from its status as a "developing nation."
"General Ogomudia stressed that Pakistan was no longer a developing
nation because it had gone beyond that with its nuclear capability,"
the defense ministry statement said.
Associated Press writers Glenn McKenzie in Lagos and Todd Pitman in
Stuttgart, Germany contributed to this report.
------------------------------------
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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