PG&E says can't find missing nuclear fuel rod

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

Index:



PG&E says can't find missing nuclear fuel rod

Review Criticizes Info-Tech Company handling 

KEPCO to shut down Takahama reactor over missed pipe inspections

No new Japan nuke shutdowns needed after checks

Iran Threatens Israel on Nuclear Reacto

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PG&E says can't find missing nuclear fuel rod



SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 17 (Reuters) - Utility Pacific Gas & Electric Co. 

said on Tuesday it had not yet found the missing pieces of a used 

nuclear fuel rod at its Humboldt Bay Power Plant near the city of 

Eureka in northern California.



The utility, a unit of PG&E Corp. , said it updated the U.S. Nuclear 

Regulatory Commission on its investigation regarding the missing 

fuel, first reported to the NRC on June 29, and was continuing its 

investigation.



Workers have completed a search of easily accessible areas in the 

plant's storage pool for radioactive fuel without success and a 

review of records plus interviews with former workers have not turned 

up the location, the company said.



The used fuel consisted of three, half-inch diameter by 18-inch long 

segments, weighing a total of about 4 pounds, which were cut from a 

single, 7-foot fuel rod in 1968.



The Humboldt Bay Plant is now closed after the reactor operated from 

1963 to 1976. It was the seventh licensed commercial reactor in the 

U.S. and produced 65 megawatts, or enough power for about 65,000 

homes.



PG&E said it "continues to believe" the the missing fuel is either 

safely stored in the pool or was shipped from the plant to a facility 

licensed to take radioactive material.



"There is no evidence that the used fuel segments were shipped to a 

radioactive waste disposal site; however, in an effort to exhaust all 

scenarios, plant staff are investigating this as a remote 

possibility," the utility said.



"It is unlikely that the fuel is some place where it's not supposed 

to be," said David Lochbaum, nuclear safety engineer for the Union of 

Concerned Scientists, an environmental advocacy group.



Lochbaum said that pieces of fuel rods have been lost at other power 

stations and accounting measures for the material were designed for 

"bundles" of fuel, not for individual rods.



"It's likely they are still in the pool or were shipped off site to a 

licensed waste dump," he said.



PG&E also said there was no evidence that the fuel was stolen.

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



Review Criticizes Info-Tech Company handling 



WASHINGTON (AP) - A company heavily criticized for its handling of a 

federal compensation program for sick nuclear weapons plant workers 

is performing tasks it was not hired to do, a government 

investigation found.



New Orleans-based Science and Engineering Associates, which recently 

became Apogen Technologies, is an information technology company 

contracted by the Energy Department to build a database system for 

the program. But the company also ended up hiring nurses and 

preparing worker claims for doctors to review.



A report by the inspector general of the General Services 

Administration found that the additional work was "outside the scope" 

of what the company was hired to do.



Jack Lebo, a spokesman for Inspector General Daniel Levinson, said 

companies can lose contracts or be asked to pay the government back 

when they do "outside the scope" work. However, that rarely occurs.



Mike Smith, a spokesman for the contractor, disagreed with the 

inspector general's review.



"We believe it's all in scope and what the DOE contract called for 

SEA to do," Smith said.



Levinson's initial findings were outlined in a July letter to Sen. 

Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. In 

response, Grassley sent a scathing letter to Energy Department 

officials and others Tuesday.



"In simple terms, the payments to SEA/Apogen, and the company's work, 

were not authorized by the contract and thus were improper, irregular 

and potentially unlawful," Grassley said.



He said government officials either "knew about the violation and 

allowed it, or were too negligent to detect and stop it."



Richard Miller, a policy analyst with the Government Accountability 

Project, a watchdog group, said the inspector general's findings 

explain problems workers have encountered with the compensation 

program.



"By bypassing contracting rules, DOE wound up with an under-qualified 

contractor whose expertise is in scanning documents and putting them 

in a computer, but was required to know how to set up an efficient, 

multistep workers' compensation claims evaluation process," Miller 

said.



Energy Department spokesman Joe Davis said the agency was reviewing 

Grassley's letter and, as previously announced, was seeking to 

"establish a new contract for the work performed by SEA/Apogen in the 

past."



Apogen is competing for the new contract, Smith said.



The Energy Department and its contractor have been criticized during 

multiple congressional hearings for their handling of the 

compensation program, which is supposed to help workers exposed to 

toxic substances while building bombs.



The department has received about $95 million for the program since 

Congress created it four years ago. However, just 31 out of about 

25,000 workers who filed claims have received payments, according to 

Energy Department records.

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



KEPCO to shut down Takahama reactor over missed pipe inspections



TOKYO, Aug. 18 (Kyodo) - Accident-hit Kansai Electric Power Co. said 

Wednesday it has failed to carry out pipe inspections at 11 

designated points at three of its nuclear reactors in Fukui 

Prefecture, adding that it would immediately shut down the one 

reactor currently in service.



The pipes in question are at the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors at the 

Takahama Nuclear Power Plant and the No. 3 reactor at the Oi Nuclear 

Power Plant, according to KEPCO. Operations at the latter two 

reactors have already been suspended.



The revelation comes amid KEPCO investigations following the 

country's deadliest nuclear plant accident Aug. 9 at its Mihama 

Nuclear Power Plant, when steam from a ruptured pipe killed four 

people and injured seven others.



KEPCO, the country's second largest utility, had not inspected the 

corroded pipe since the reactor went onstream in 1976.



Other power companies reported to the Nuclear and Industry Safety 

Agency on Wednesday that they have carried out inspections on all 

pipes at their thermal and nuclear plants.



With the shutting down of the No. 3 reactor at the Takahama plant, 

seven of KEPCO's 11 nuclear reactors will be out of service. They 

include the No. 3 reactor involved in the accident at the Mihama 

plant.



Eight of the 11 inspection points that were overlooked involved pipes 

at the Takahama No. 3 reactor, including the main water pipes.



A KEPCO official said, "Since we inspected the same points at the 

Takahama No. 4 reactor, which is the same type, we concluded that the 

pipes were safe."



The latest revelations bring to 15 the total number of places that 

KEPCO has yet to check, not including locations on the pipe involved 

in the Mihama accident.



KEPCO admitted on Monday it failed to inspect supplementary steam 

pipes at four locations -- the Mihama No. 3 reactor, the No. 1 

reactor at Takahama, and the No. 3 and No. 4 reactors at the Oi 

plant.



KEPCO said last Friday it will suspend operations of all its nuclear 

reactors to check pipe safety.

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



No new Japan nuke shutdowns needed after checks



TOKYO, Aug 18 (Reuters) - No more Japanese nuclear reactors need to 

be closed for inspections, the operators said on Wednesday after 

submitting reports ordered by the government following Japan's 

deadliest nuclear industry accident last week.



Four workers were killed on Aug. 9 when super-hot non-radioactive 

steam gushed from a broken pipe at a plant run by Kansai Electric 

Power <9503.T> at Mihama, in western Japan.



Seven workers were injured in the accident, which heightened public 

mistrust of Japan's scandal-prone nuclear industry.



A day after the mishap, Kansai Electric said the pipe that burst had 

not been inspected in 28 years and that no action had been taken even 

after the company was advised by a sub-contractor that the pipe was 

potentially dangerous.



The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), Japan's nuclear 

watchdog, had told the 10 nuclear power firms to check documentation 

to ensure that inspections on pipes similar to the one that ruptured 

at Mihama had been carried out properly.



The agency had told the firms to submit their reports by Wednesday. 

If the records had shown that inspections had been neglected, the 

plants would have had to shut down for checks, an official at Japan's 

Trade and Industry Ministry said.



Similar checks have been ordered at non-nuclear power plants.



The companies excluding Kansai said their inspections had been 

carried out properly, although a NISA official said it was premature 

to say that all was well.



"They're saying there are no problems, but we have to take a good 

look through the reports and in some cases we may have to tell them 

to carry out additional checks," he told Reuters.



Kansai Electric has already said it will gradually shut all of its 

reactors for safety checks, starting last Friday.



It said on Wednesday it would shut down a third unit at its Takahama 

plant, in the same prefecture as Mihama, on Wednesday evening, a 

month earlier than planned.



Kansai said it had no plans to restart any idle thermal power plants 

but would buy electricity from other other utilities to make up 

shortfalls.



CONFIDENCE LOW



Resource-poor Japan, which has 52 nuclear reactors, relies on atomic 

energy for more than a third of its electricity needs and ranks 16th 

in the world in dependence on nuclear power, according to the 

International Atomic Energy Agency.



France, in comparison, relies on atomic energy for 80 percent of its 

electricity needs while the United States gets about 20 percent of 

its power from atomic plants.



The accident at Mihama was another black eye for Japan's nuclear 

power industry, although accidents are rare.



Data compiled by Japan's Industry Ministry show there were six 

unplanned stoppages of 51 Japanese reactors in operation in 2001, 

compared to 161 unplanned stoppages at 56 French reactors.



But public confidence in the industry is low following a string of 

safety scandals and the industry's reputation for covering up 

problems.



Tokyo Electric Power Co Ltd. <9501.T>, the world's biggest privately 

owned electric utility, had to temporarily close all 17 of its 

reactors after revelations in 2002 that it had tampered with safety 

records.



However, the only previous fatal accident at a nuclear plant in Japan 

was in 1967, when one person died in a fire at a plant in Ibaraki 

prefecture just north of Tokyo.



As with the latest incident, there was no radiation leak.



The worst previous accident at any nuclear facility in Japan occurred 

at a uranium-processing plant in Tokaimura, north of Tokyo, in 

September 1999, when an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction was 

triggered after three poorly trained workers used buckets to mix 

nuclear fuel in a tub.



The resulting release of radiation killed two workers and forced the 

evacuation of thousands of nearby residents.

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



Iran Threatens Israel on Nuclear Reactor



TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Accompanied by a warning that its missiles have 

the range, Iran on Tuesday said it would destroy Israel's Dimona 

nuclear reactor if the Jewish state were to attack Iran's nuclear 

facilities.



"If Israel fires a missile into the Bushehr nuclear power plant, it 

has to say goodbye forever to its Dimona nuclear facility, where it 

produces and stockpiles nuclear weapons," the deputy chief of the 

elite Revolutionary Guards, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr, said 

in a statement.



Bushehr, a coastal town on the Persian Gulf, is the site of Iran's 

first nuclear reactor. Built with Russian assistance, it's due to 

come online in 2005.



Iran says its nuclear program is strictly for generating electricity. 

But Israel and the United States strongly suspect Iran is secretly 

building nuclear weapons.



Israel has not threatened to attack the Bushehr reactor, but it has 

said it will not allow Iran to build a nuclear bomb. In 1981 Israeli 

fighters destroyed a nuclear reactor under construction outside 

Baghdad because it feared Iraq would acquire a nuclear weapon.



Israel has never confirmed nor denied having nuclear weapons, but it 

is widely believed to be a nuclear power. Its reactor at Dimona in 

the Negev Desert is said to be the source of plutonium for its 

alleged nuclear warheads.



Zolqadr did not say how Iran would attack Dimona, but the head of the 

Revolutionary Guards' political bureau, Yadollah Javani, said Iran 

would use its Shahab-3 missile.



"All the territory under the control of the Zionist regime, including 

its nuclear facilities, are within the range of Iran's advanced 

missiles," Javani said in a separate statement.



Iran announced last week it had successfully test-fired a new version 

of the Shahab-3, which has a range of about 810 miles. Israel is 

about 600 miles west of Iran.



U.S. officials say the missile, whose name means shooting star in 

Farsi, is based on the North Korean "No Dong" rocket. Iran says 

Shahab-3 is entirely Iranian-made.



With help from the United States, Israel has developed the Arrow anti-

ballistic missile 



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

Sandy Perle

Senior 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@dosimetry.com

E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net



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

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





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