World's Oldest Nuclear Power Plant Closes

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

Index:



World's Oldest Nuclear Power Plant Closes

Despite fears, nuclear power industry growing - UN

Brazil Denies Blocking U.N. at Nuke Plant

Nuclear industry still haunted by Chernobyl - U.N.

Earthquake shakes Illinois nukes, no damage reported

IAEA says plenty of uranium for nuclear plants

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



World's Oldest Nuclear Power Plant Closes



LONDON (June 29) - The world's oldest operational nuclear power 

station was closed Tuesday, ceasing electricity generation after 

nearly 45 years.



The British Nuclear Group said the Chapelcross station near Annan in 

Scotland was officially switched off Tuesday morning.



Chapelcross, which began providing electricity for the south of 

Scotland in 1959, was not originally slated for closing until 2008.



But an economic review of Britain's entire Magnox reactor capability 

showed Chapelcross and another facility, Calder Hall at Sellafield in 

northern England, were making a loss. Calder Hall has also been 

earmarked for closure.



"As the world's currently longest-serving nuclear power station, 

Chapelcross has earned a rightful place in the record books as a 

faithful provider of electricity to southwest Scotland and the north 

of England," said Mark Morant, managing director of British Nuclear 

Group's Reactor Sites business.



Some 800 people are employed at Chapelcross and Calder Hall; Morant 

said many would remain at work for some years while the plant is 

decommissioned.



Environmental campaigners welcomed the decision.



"What we hope now is that BNG will apply the same financial criteria 

to the rest of its operations and close the reprocessing operations 

at Sellafield which are also uneconomic," said Jean McSorley of 

Greenpeace.



Opened in the 1950s, the power stations at Chapelcross, Calder Hall, 

and Galloway in southwest Scotland were the prototypes for another 

nine Magnox power stations that were later built across Britain. They 

use a natural uranium fuel which is contained in magnesium alloy 

cans.



The reactors are cooled by gas which then passes through heat 

exchangers to produce steam for the generating turbines.



When Chaplecross was fully operational its four Magnox reactors 

produced 194 megawatts of electricity.

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



Despite fears, nuclear power industry growing - UN



MOSCOW, June 26 (Reuters) - Fears that nuclear power means 

catastrophic accidents and the proliferation of atom bombs have not 

stopped the nuclear industry from growing, the U.N. International 

Atomic Energy Agency said on Saturday.



It was exactly 50 years ago at 5:30 p.m. Moscow time when the Soviet 

Union put the world's first nuclear power plant on line in a town 

called Obninsk, not far from Moscow.



This was nearly nine years after the United States dropped two atomic 

bombs on Japan in 1945, bringing a quick and violent end to the 

Second World War and ushering in the nuclear age with its mushroom 

clouds and nightmares of nuclear holocaust.



"The more we look to the future, the more we can expect countries to 

be considering the potential benefits ... expanding nuclear power has 

to offer for the global environment and for economic growth," IAEA 

chief Mohamed ElBaradei said before travelling to Moscow for a 

conference on nuclear power.



During his four-day official visit to Russia, ElBaradei will have a 

series of meetings with high-level Russian officials, including 

President Vladimir Putin, to discuss the future of nuclear energy and 

the problem of arms proliferation.



But IAEA officials acknowledge that the 50-year life of nuclear power 

has hardly been an easy one.



Accidents at Ukraine's Chernobyl plant and Three Mile Island in the 

United States have boosted the world's anti-nuclear "green" lobbies 

and left atomic energy with a very bad name.



The image of nuclear power has also not been helped by the fact that 

the number of atomic weapons states has nearly doubled since the Non-

Proliferation Treaty entered into force in 1970.



But despite its bad image, the IAEA says countries are still building 

power plants and the industry is far from dying.



Alan McDonald, an IAEA nuclear analyst, said the reason some 

countries choose nuclear energy over more traditional energy sources 

like oil, gas or coal was a lack of resources.



"Nuclear power looks good if you have weak alternatives," he said. 

While North America has an abundance of coal and gas, countries like 

Japan and South Korea do not, and so choose nuclear energy as the 

most economically viable energy source.



There is another aspect of nuclear energy that could help the 

industry improve its image -- the fact that generating atomic energy 

produces almost no "greenhouse" gases, which many countries want to 

limit to help stem global warming.



"New nuclear plants are most attractive where energy demand is 

growing and alternative resources are scarce, and where energy 

security and reduced air pollution and greenhouse gases are a 

priority," ElBaradei said.



The agency said that while Europe and North America have virtually 

stopped building nuclear plants, Asian countries continue to 

construct them to satisfy their power needs.



Of the last 31 nuclear power plants connected to the world's power 

grid, 22 were built in Asia, the IAEA said. The agency noted that 

there are 27 plants now under construction around the world and 18 of 

them are in Asia.



Mike Townsley, a nuclear analyst for the environmental campaigning 

group Greenpeace, said it was irresponsible to build new nuclear 

power plants since many "civilian power" schemes have fed into 

military atom bomb programmes.



"The problem is nuclear power is still seen as a status symbol," he 

said, adding: "You only have to look at countries where nuclear 

programmes have been smokescreens for weapons programmes -- Iran, 

India, Pakistan, Israel, Iraq" and others.



He also said there were insufficient uranium deposits to fuel nuclear 

power plants indefinitely, though the IAEA said there are "sizable 

quantities on all continents."



Townsley said it was "a dying industry, but one whose deadly legacy 

will be with us for hundreds of thousands of years."

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



Brazil Denies Blocking U.N. at Nuke Plant



BRASILIA, Brazil (June 29) - Brazil's defense minister denied Tuesday 

that his country was blocking U.N. inspections of its nuclear 

enrichment facilities.



"Brazil accepts inspections," Jose Viegas told reporters. "What we 

have to negotiate are the specific characteristics of the safeguard 

agreement."



Viegas made his remarks in response to comments by International 

Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed El Baradei carried in newspapers 

Tuesday. He said that Brazil must allow access to the uranium 

enrichment plant or stand in violation of international treaties.



Although Brazil signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 1997 

and said its nuclear program has purely peaceful objectives, 

questions about its commitment have simmered for more than a year.



The government earlier this month confirmed that IAEA inspectors were 

denied access in February and March to centrifuges at the facility in 

Resende, some 60 miles southwest of Rio.



It cited the need to protect industrial secrets and said the 

centrifuges were, and will remain, off-limits for visual inspection.



The centrifuges are used to enrich uranium so it can be used for fuel 

in nuclear reactors and potentially in bombs.

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



Nuclear industry still haunted by Chernobyl - U.N.



MOSCOW, June 27 (Reuters) - The nuclear industry is still struggling 

to overcome the damage done to its reputation by Chernobyl, even 

though nuclear power is an "environmentally superior" energy source, 

the U.N. atomic agency said on Sunday.



"Despite the array of measures that have been put in place since 

Chernobyl to offset the possibility of a severe accident, these risks 

can never be brought to zero and they continue to weigh heavily on 

public perceptions," International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed 

ElBaradei said.



The Chernobyl disaster occurred in April 1986, when an explosion at 

the Ukrainian power plant spewed a cloud of radioactivity across 

Europe and the Soviet Union.



Around 30 people died from radiation exposure after the accident, 

nearly 2,000 children later developed thyroid cancer and thousands of 

other fatal illnesses have been blamed on it. More than 100,000 

people were resettled, causing physical, economic and psychological 

hardship.



In a speech at a conference marking the 50th anniversary of the first 

nuclear power plant near Moscow, ElBaradei said that the nuclear 

power industry has never fully recovered.



He said that in 1986, the year of the Chernobyl accident, atomic 

energy accounted for around 16 percent of the world's energy output --

 the same ratio as today.



"The environmental superiority of nuclear power as a source of 

electricity -- particularly important in light of recent concerns 

about greenhouse gases and climate change -- has frequently received 

less attention than the accumulation of spent (reactor) fuel and 

radioactive waste."



The IAEA has said that nuclear power emits virtually no greenhouse 

gases, which are believed to be the cause of global warming.  



ElBaradei added that in the future, nuclear power would probably be 

recognised as indispensable in developing countries which lack 

natural resources like gas, oil or coal.  



Later at a news conference, ElBaradei told reporters that greater 

reliance on nuclear energy could avoid the "excessive use of fossil 

fuel" and prevent an environmental catastrophe.

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



Earthquake shakes Illinois nukes, no damage reported



NEW YORK, June 28 (Reuters) - Exelon Corp declared "unusual events" 

at three nuclear stations in northern Illinois after a small 

earthquake shook the region early Monday morning.



The energy company said in statements to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory 

Commission the earthquake did not cause any equipment damage and all 

of the reactors continued to operate.



The quake, which occurred at about 1:30 a.m. CDT (0630 GMT), measured 

about 4.5 on the Richter scale and was centered about 10 miles north 

of Ottawa, Illinois, according to Exelons reports. Ottawa is located 

about 80 miles southwest of Chicago.



The Richter scale is used to express the total amount of energy 

released by an earthquake. Although the scale has no upper limit, 

values are typically between 1 and 9, and each increase of 1 

represents a 32-fold increase in released energy.



An "unusual event" is the lowest of four levels of emergency 

classification used by the NRC.



The nuclear stations were the 1,600 megawatt Dresden in Morris, the 

2,288 MW LaSalle in Seneca and the 1,752 MW Quad Cities in Cordova. 

Together the plants can generate enough electricity for more than 5.5 

million homes.



Exelon, of Chicago, owns power plants that produce more than 24,000 

MW and distributes electricity to 5.1 million customers in northern 

Illinois and southeastern Pennsylvania. One MW can power about 1,000 

homes.

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



IAEA says plenty of uranium for nuclear plants



MOSCOW, June 27 (Reuters) - Known and easily accessible uranium 

deposits across the globe can provide enough fuel for the nuclear 

power industry for 50 to 65 years, the U.N. International Atomic 

Energy Agency (IAEA) said.



In a report released for the 50th anniversary of the world's first 

nuclear power plant in Obninsk, Russia, this weekend, the IAEA also 

said there was plentiful uranium outside of the easily accessible 

deposits to be exploited.



"Uranium resources -- deposits with less geological assurance, beyond 

current extraction technology or lacking market attractiveness -- are 

at least twice as much."



"Technology advances in exploration and extraction technologies will 

make them available, if demand for them develops," the IAEA said.



The agency said there are "substantial unconventional resources" in 

phosphate deposits and seawater, which contain vast amounts of very 

dilute uranium that could be extracted fuel nuclear energy for 

millennia once advanced extraction technologies are developed.



The IAEA also pointed out that spent reactor fuel still contains more 

than 98 percent of its original energy and can be recycled to get at 

the remaining power potential.



"Taking all factors into account, there are certainly no resource 

constraints on nuclear power development in the 21st century and, 

most likely, for a long time thereafter," said Yuri Sokolov, IAEA 

deputy director General for nuclear energy.



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

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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