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Sweden nuclear phase-out report delayed, talks go on



Index:



Sweden nuclear phase-out report delayed, talks go on

Pentagon: Uranium Didn't Harm N.Y. Unit

Japan Nuclear Fuel President Sasaki to resign

UK's Sellafield nuclear plant to cut discharges

UN uses atomic technology to fight malaria mosquito

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Sweden nuclear phase-out report delayed, talks go on



STOCKHOLM, April 29 (Reuters) - A report on whether Sweden should 

stick to plans to phase out its nuclear power stations has been 

delayed as government and industry have failed to agree on the future 

of the electricity sector, officials said on Thursday.



A government-appointed commission was due to hand the report to the 

industry minister on Friday but it has been delayed, probably until 

next week, while talks continue.



It will include recommendations on the future of the 600-megawatt 

Barseback unit 2, which Industry Minister Leif Pagrotsky has said 

should be shut down in 2004 as part of a plan to exit nuclear power 

by the end of the decade.



Sweden has said closing Barseback 2 depends on expanding the green 

power sector but efforts to boost renewable energy have been slow and 

green electricity cannot fill the gap that would be left by the shut-

down.



The government's negotiator Bo Bylund, who heads the commission, told 

the minister on Thursday he needed more time to produce his report.



"The negotiations continue about changes in the energy system which 

also concern the second reactor at Barseback. I am going to shortly 

announce the results of my work," Bylund said.



Lars Andersson, an official on Bylund's negotiating team, who 

originally said the report would be released on Friday, was unable to 

say when it would be published.



Martin May, spokesman for state power company Vattenfall VATN.UL 

which operates Barseback, noted there had been a Swedish radio report 

which said the government aimed to close Barseback 2 in a year or 

two.



"That has not been confirmed by the government or by us," May said.



Swedish radio said the government negotiator had proposed that the 

second reactor in Barseback close in either 2005 or 2006 and that two 

other reactors at the plant also be given closing dates.



"I will not comment on this report," said Swedish government official 

Lars Andersson.



Swedes voted in a 1980 referendum to phase out the country's atomic 

plants by 2010, but so far Sweden has only closed one reactor, the 

Barseback unit 1 in 1999.



A political decision to close more nuclear plants has been repeatedly 

postponed and industry generally resists the idea.



Sweden has 11 power-producing nuclear reactors at four installations, 

which generate about half the country's annual output of over 140 

terawatt hours of electricity.

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



Pentagon: Uranium Didn't Harm N.Y. Unit



WASHINGTON (AP) - Members of a National Guard military police unit 

who said they fell ill after exposure to depleted uranium in Iraq did 

not have abnormal levels of the metal, Pentagon officials said 

Thursday.



The results did not reassure at least one of the soldiers.



Members of the 442nd Military Police Company, based in Orangeburg, 

N.Y., had complained of headaches, soreness and insomnia. A private 

test this month indicated that four of them had unhealthy levels of 

uranium in their urine.



Further tests by the military showed that depleted uranium exposure 

did not cause the ailments, the Pentagon said.



"Those people all had normal levels of uranium in their urine," said 

Dr. Michael Kilpatrick, deputy director of the Deployment Health 

Support Directorate.



Depleted uranium is the hard, heavy metal created as a byproduct of 

enriching uranium for nuclear reactor fuel or weapons material. It is 

about 40 percent less radioactive than natural uranium, Kilpatrick 

said.



The U.S. military uses the metal in rounds fired by M1 Abrams tanks 

and A-10 attack jets to penetrate tank armor - a practice that has 

been criticized for causing unnecessary risks to soldiers and 

civilians.



"As long as this is exterior to your body, you're not at any risk and 

the potential of internalizing it from the environment is extremely 

small," Kilpatrick said.



Most studies have indicated that depleted uranium exposure will not 

harm soldiers. But a 2002 study by Britain's Royal Society said 

soldiers who ingest or inhale enough depleted uranium could suffer 

kidney damage. The report cautioned its results were inconclusive and 

recommended a long-term study of soldiers exposed to the metal.



About 1,000 soldiers returning from Iraq have been tested for 

exposure to the metal. Of those, three showed unhealthy levels in 

urine samples. All three had fragments embedded in their bodies, 

Kilpatrick said.



Soldiers must choose to take a test for depleted uranium. All members 

of the 442nd will be able to take one if they ask, Kilpatrick said. 

Twenty-seven members of the unit have been tested so far.



One company member, Sgt. Ray Ramos, said the latest results did not 

reassure him. He has suffered from migraine headaches, breathing 

problems and pain in his elbows since returning from Iraq in 

September.



An earlier test suggested depleted uranium may have been partially 

responsible for his pain. He said he will pursue a third test from an 

independent doctor to compare the results.



"When I become ill, or possibly become ill later on, I want to have 

things in place," said Ramos, 41, of New York City.



The Pentagon is monitoring a group of 70 veterans from the first Gulf 

War who have pieces of depleted uranium embedded in their bodies. 

Kilpatrick said none of them has shown health problems related to 

depleted uranium.



Charles Sheehan-Miles, executive director of the Nuclear Policy 

Research Institute and a Gulf War veteran, said the military should 

test all soldiers returning from Iraq to determine whether fears 

about the metal are valid.

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



Japan Nuclear Fuel President Sasaki to resign



AOMORI, Japan, April 30 (Kyodo) - Masashi Sasaki, president of Japan 

Nuclear Fuel Ltd., a spent nuclear fuel storage and reprocessing 

firm, said Friday he will resign in June now that he has fulfilled 

his duty of returning the operations of its reprocessing factory to 

normal.



Sasaki told a news conference, "I have lived up to my duty of 

returning the (reprocessing) factory to a state at which spent 

nuclear fuel can be transported into it."



On Wednesday, Aomori Gov. Shingo Mimura approved the restart of the 

transportation of spent nuclear fuel to the factory in Rokkasho, 

Aomori Prefecture. "The day of April 28 marked a key stage in my 

professional life," he said.



The delivery of spent nuclear fuel to the factory had been suspended 

due to a series of leaks of water since 2001 at one of spent fuel 

storage pools.



On Feb. 1, 2002, the firm said the leaks occurred because the pool's 

stainless steel sheet had developed cracks due to an inappropriate 

manner of welding.



Sasaki said he will give up his post after a shareholders' general 

meeting in late June. His successor has not yet been picked.



But Sasaki denied suggestions he is resigning to take the blame for 

the welding problem, calling attention to the fact that he is set to 

serve out his four-year term as president.



Sasaki, a former senior executive at Tokyo Electric Power Co., one of 

the major shareholders at Japan Nuclear Fuel, assumed the presidency 

at the nuclear fuel storage company in January 2001.

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



UK's Sellafield nuclear plant to cut discharges



LONDON, April 21 (Reuters) - A new treatment system now operating at 

Britain's Sellafield nuclear power plant will dramatically cut the 

amount of radioactive waste being released into the Irish Sea, 

operator British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) said on Wednesday.



BNFL said discharges of technetium-99 (Tc-99) would be reduced by 90 

percent as part of a two billion pound ($3.54 billion) waste 

treatment project, helping the plant address international concern 

about the effect on marine life.



"It's something our international neighbours will be very pleased 

about. For many years we have been looking for means of taking it out 

of our discharge stream," a BNFL spokeswoman said.



"We can effectively remove most of the key radioactive material 

through various processing plants but this particular one has always 

been a bit problematic."



Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik hailed the cut as "an 

important victory for Norway."



"The end to the radioactive discharges will mean clean seafood 

supplies for all of us in the years to come," he told a news 

conference in Oslo.



Norway has found traces of Tc-99 from Sellafield in everything from 

lobsters to shellfish along its coasts and Nordic nations say the 

impact on marine life has not been properly documented.



Britain insists the level of exposure to humans from the plant is 

within legal limits and says the Tc-99 cuts would equate to about 10 

percent of the radiation exposure from all liquid discharges.



"Although there is no evidence that the discharge of Tc-99 into the 

sea at its current discharge limit is harmful to man or the 

environment, it has prompted some concern, particularly in 

Scandinavia, because Tc-99 can be detected at very low levels in 

coastal waters and in certain shellfish and seaweed," Britain's 

environment minister Elliot Morley said.



Ireland and environmental groups have repeatedly called for the 

closure of Sellafield, located on England's northwest coast, claiming 

it pollutes the Irish Sea with radioactive waste.



Last month the European Union told Britain to clean up the plant, 

ordering full safety inspections and giving a June 1 deadline for the 

UK government to produce an action plan.

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



UN uses atomic technology to fight malaria mosquito



SEIBERSDORF, Austria, April 24 (Reuters) - The United Nations is 

harnessing nuclear technology to try to eradicate the mosquitoes 

whose bite transmits malaria, a deadly disease devastating the 

African continent.



Sunday is Africa Malaria Day, when governments will focus attention 

on a disease which kills millions of Africans a year, most of them 

children, and costs the continent at least $12 billion in lost gross 

domestic product.



Bart Knols, a Dutch entomologist at the U.N. International Atomic 

Energy Agency (IAEA), estimates there are "three to five hundred 

million cases of malaria every year on a world-wide scale, 90 percent 

of which occur in sub-Saharan Africa."



"Sub-Saharan Africa also suffers the major burden... of mortality," 

he told Reuters during a tour of the IAEA's entomology laboratories.



One African child dies of malaria every 20 seconds. People in poor, 

remote villages are usually unable to get treatment and so Knols's 

research aims to nip the problem in the bud by destroying the 

mosquito that transmits the malaria parasite.



The IAEA is best known for its inspections of countries like Iran and 

Iraq who are suspected of building atomic weapons. But the agency has 

already used its expertise to wipe out the dreaded tsetse fly, which 

can transmit fatal sleeping sickness, from the island of Zanzibar.



NUKING MOSQUITOES



The Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) is a simple idea. Scientists breed 

insects and expose the males to enough radiation to render them 

sterile. The males are then released into the environment to breed 

with the females, whose eggs are unfertilised and never hatch.



"The whole idea or concept is that the population would actually 

start to crash and eventually may actually lead to eradication of the 

insect, and therefore eradication of the disease and less malaria," 

said Knols, who has personally suffered nine bouts of malaria through 

working with mosquitoes.



Alan Robinson, the entomologist in charge of the IAEA's entomology 

unit, said the $4 million project was still in its infancy. He 

described it as a "high-risk project" with many hurdles to overcome 

before it is ready for field trials.



Over the next five years, they need to reach a point where they can 

produce a million sterile male insects a day.



The males they breed must be robust enough to survive when released 

from planes into the environment and tough enough to compete with 

fertile males during mating. The females, the ones which bite humans, 

only mate once in their two-week lives.



Knols and Robinson point out that in the 1970s, El Salvador 

successfully used the SIT to eradicate the malaria mosquito from part 

of the country.



"They brought that insect into the lab, started producing it in large 

numbers, sterilised it and then released it in a small area... about 

15 square kilometers, and successfully induced 100 percent sterility 

in the population," Knols said.



Afterwards, they started a much larger project in which they were 

producing a million male insects a day. But when civil war broke out 

the project ended.



"We think we can do a better job than they did in El Salvador," said 

Robinson.



He said the technique of sterilisation could not be used all over 

Africa and would have to be combined with other population control 

techniques to eradicate the malaria pest.



"But there's no alternative to irradiation for the sterile insect 

technique. It's a very clean technique," he said, adding that there 

was no risk of contamination. "The insects are not radioactive when 

they're released."



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

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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