Port Gibson leaders say they support new nuclear plant

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

Index:



Port Gibson leaders say they support new nuclear plant

Alliant Unit Eyes Sale Of Duane Arnold Nuclear Plant

Dominion Again Seeks Wisconsin OK To Buy Kewaunee Nuclear

Executives: Acquisition will make troubled nuclear plants better

New steam turbine arrives at Cooper Nuclear Station

TEPCO to procure uranium from Canada

Japanese nuclear plant starts test operation to reprocess DU

Study: Mobile phone radiation harms DNA in lab

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



Port Gibson leaders say they support new nuclear plant



PORT GIBSON, Miss. (AP) - Port Gibson's mayor and aldermen have 

adopted a resolution saying they support construction of a second 

nuclear unit at Entergy's Grand Gulf Nuclear Station.



The Claiborne County Board of Supervisors endorsed the company's 

proposal earlier this month.



In a written statement, Mayor Amelda Arnold said Monday: "Nuclear 

energy is a safe, low-cost, emission-free source of power that is not 

dependent on foreign oil and gas. We need more of it."



Entergy has applied for one of two major licenses it would need to 

build a second reactor unit at the site, which has one reactor that 

has been operating since 1985.



The application is with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which 

is scheduled to hand down a decision in October 2006. The license 

application is part of a new, streamlined regulatory-approval process 

designed to reduce the risk of escalating costs and delays for 

potential builders of nuclear reactors.



If Entergy were to receive the license, it would have a 20-year 

option to apply for the second major license.

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



Alliant Unit Eyes Sale Of Duane Arnold Nuclear Plant



CHICAGO (Dow Jones)--Alliant Energy Corp.'s (LNT) Interstate Power & 

Light subsidiary plans to sell its majority ownership stake in Iowa's 

Duane Arnold nuclear plant, the utility said Wednesday.



Selling the single-unit, 580-megawatt facility will reduce the 

customer and shareholder uncertainty associated with owning and 

running nuclear plants, IP&L said. The utility plans to enter into a 

definitive agreement with a prospective buyer within six months. It 

would then seek approval from state and federal regulators.



IP&L said it intends to reach an agreement with the prospective buyer 

to purchase power from Duane Arnold through 2014, when the reactor's 

original 40- year operating license expires. IP&L also wants the new 

buyer to seek a 20-year license extension for the plant from the U.S. 

Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said Tom Aller, the utility's 

president, in the release.



The planned Duane Arnold sale furthers a trend of consolidation in 

the nuclear industry. Nuclear plants can be very efficient generators 

with lower fueling costs than coal and natural gas-fired plants. But 

nuclear plants also have very high overhead costs, which membership 

in a large fleet can help defray.



Duane Arnold is currently run by Nuclear Management Co., an operating 

company formed by a handful of upper Midwest utilities to manage 

their plants. Nuclear Management will continue to run Duane Arnold 

through the sale process, IP&L said.



Alliant is also involved in the planned sale of the Kewaunee nuclear 

plant near Green Bay, Wisc., which Alliant's Wisconsin Power & Light 

unit co-owns with WPS Resources Corp. (WPS) unit Wisconsin Public 

Service Corp. Richmond-based Dominion Resources (D) plans to buy 

Kewaunee, but the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin ruled 

against the sale in November. Dominion, WPS and Alliant filed with 

the Wisconsin commission Monday to answer the agency's concerns about 

the deal and to seek a new ruling.



IP&L owns 70% of the Duane Arnold plant, located in east-central 

Iowa. Central Iowa Power Coop. owns 20% and Cornbelt Power Coop. owns 

10%. IP&L said its decision to sell its stake is independent of any 

future actions by Duane Arnold's other owners.

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



Dominion Again Seeks Wisconsin OK To Buy Kewaunee Nuclear



CHICAGO (Dow Jones)--Dominion Resources (D) and Wisconsin utility 

units of Alliant Energy Corp. (LNT) and WPS Resources Corp. (WPS) 

asked Wisconsin regulators Monday to reconsider an earlier decision 

blocking Dominion from buying the utilities' Kewaunee nuclear plant.



Dominion believes the new filing with the Public Service Commission 

of Wisconsin answered the three specific concerns that led to the 

$220 million deal's rejection, the company said in a late Monday 

press release. Those measures include granting the Alliant and WPS 

utilities the right of first refusal to buy back Kewaunee if it's for 

sale again in the future.



"Throughout this process, we have remained convinced that purchasing 

Kewaunee is the right thing to do for both Wisconsin's electric 

customers and Dominion's shareholders," said Thos. E Capps, 

Dominion's chairman and chief executive, in the release.



The Wisconsin commission rejected the Kewaunee purchase by a 2-1 vote 

in November and issued a written order backing that decision Dec. 16. 

The written order spelled out the reasons for rejecting the deal.



To satisfy those concerns, Dominion said it would also return to the 

Alliant and WPS utilities and their customers any excess ratepayer 

funds in the nuclear plant's qualified decommissioning trust fund 

once the plant is shut down. Utilities with nuclear plants steadily 

collect money from their customers to pay for the eventual shutdown 

and cleanup, or decommissioning, of those plant sites.



Also, Dominion said its planned subsidiary for the Kewaunee site 

would increase its total number of guarantees under a purchase power 

agreement with the Alliant and WPS subsidiaries. The three new 

conditions are in addition to seven already introduced in the 

previous filing seeking permission to buy Kewaunee, Dominion said.



In their own press release, Alliant's Wisconsin Power & Light and 

WPS' Wisconsin Public Service Corp. said the state commission should 

respond to the rehearing request within 30 days.



The single-reactor Kewaunee plant, located near Green Bay, Wis., 

produces 545 megawatts of power.

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



Executives: Acquisition will make troubled nuclear plants better



PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Executives from Exelon Corp. and Public Service 

Enterprise Group Inc. said Tuesday that their creation of the 

country's biggest utility will help three troubled nuclear power 

plants in southern New Jersey run more smoothly. But critics of the 

plants said they have no faith such a massive company would spur any 

improvements.



A day earlier, Chicago-based Exelon announced it would acquire 

Newark, N.J.-based PSEG in a $12 billion stock deal the companies 

said will create cost savings and better service. They expect it will 

take until early 2006 to complete the deal.



The new company would have 18 million customers in Illinois, 

Pennsylvania and New Jersey, assets worth $79 billion, annual 

revenues of $27 billion and yearly profits of $3.2 billion. The 

current combined work force of 28,500 would be trimmed by about 1,400 

jobs.



But the deal would not change plans for any of New Jersey's four 

nuclear power plants, all of which would be owned and operated by the 

new company. Of those facilities, the Oyster Creek plant in Ocean 

County already is owned and operated by an Exelon subsidiary. In 

Salem County, the Salem I and II plants are co-owned by Exelon and 

PSEG and operated by PSEG; the Hope Creek plant is owned and operated 

by PSEG.



Making the three plants on Salem County's Artificial Island more 

efficient will be a boon for both stockholders and energy customers, 

company officials said during a news conference.



"The biggest benefit is the effect good operations at Salem and Hope 

Creek has on wholesale prices," said John W. Rowe, the chairman and 

CEO of Exelon, who would have the same job in the new company.



Electricity generated at the plants is sent to a regional energy 

pool, rather than being transmitted straight to homes and businesses.



The nuclear power business is a target of critics who say the 

industry needs big subsidies to be profitable and holds a danger of 

disaster if things go wrong. The companies' plans did little to quell 

those worries.



Jeff Tittel, director of the Sierra Club's New Jersey office, said 

having bigger companies with higher profit expectations could make 

plants more dangerous.



"I just don't know what's going to happen when you create these 

large, behemoth companies," Tittel said.



Activists have called for Exelon to shutter the relatively small 

Oyster Creek plant when its license expires in 2009. Company 

officials reaffirmed on Tuesday they do not plan on doing so.



That's not a good sign for Norm Cohen, the coordinator of Unplug 

Salem, a group that wants the three Salem County reactors shut down 

permanently. Cohen said continuing to operate that plant shows Exelon 

cares more about profits than safety.



"While they supposedly have a better safety record than PSEG, 

everybody can have a better safety record than PSEG," Cohen said.



Hope Creek, meanwhile, has been shut down since a steam pipe there 

ruptured on Oct. 10.



Some anti-nuclear power activists have said the company should make 

another significant repair there by replacing a recirculation pump 

with a bent rod before the plant restarts.



PSEG officials have said they would wait until the next regularly 

scheduled outage at Hope Creek in the summer of 2006 to make the 

repair.



The merger does not change that, said E. James Ferland, the president 

and CEO of PSEG who would become the chairman of the board of the new 

Exelon Electric and Gas firm.



Ferland said Exelon has had a role at PSEG's three New Jersey nuclear 

plants since they opened in the 1970s and 1980s and has taken a more 

active role this year. The analysis that determined Hope Creek would 

be safe to operate another 18 months with the old recirculation pump 

is largely the work of Exelon, Ferland said.



Ferland said Hope Creek should be ready to be restarted by the end of 

the year. The company, though, has agreed to wait until after meeting 

with the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission before restarting the 

plant. That meeting has not been scheduled.



At the Hope Creek and Salem I and II plants, PSEG has been trying to 

fix what it calls a "safety culture" problem brought to light in part 

by whistle blowers who have complained that the plants have not been 

as safe as they should be.



Recent changes to operations there include an expanded office for 

dealing with employee safety concerns and a campaign that has placed 

safety-related posters all over the facility.



Ferland said the Exelon acquisition will mean smoother operations at 

the plants because Exelon already runs 17 nuclear plants at 10 sites 

and has a strong standard operating procedure for the plants.



"It's like a cookbook: This is how we run our plants," Ferland said.



For the Sierra Club's Tittel, that's part of the problem.



"Exelon has already had already been a partner in the Salem nuclear 

plants and there have been more problems since they became a 

partner," Tittel said.

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



New steam turbine arrives at Cooper Nuclear Station



BROWNVILLE, Neb. (AP) - The first of two new steam turbines has 

arrived at the Nebraska Public Power District's Cooper Nuclear 

Station.



The new turbines, built by Siemens Power Generation of Mulheim, 

Germany, will cost about $35 million to install. But NPPD said the 

turbines will ensure safe and reliable generation at Cooper well into 

the future.



The first turbine arrived at Brownville Monday.



The second will arrive at the nuclear station sometime later this 

month or in early January. Both turbines will be installed during a 

refueling outage that starts in January.



The installation is expected to help NPPD in the process of obtaining 

a 20-year operating license extension from the Nuclear Regulatory 

Commission for the plant.

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



TEPCO to procure uranium from Canada



TOKYO, Dec. 22 (Kyodo) - Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Wednesday it 

will begin to procure Canadian uranium for nuclear power plants when 

Saskatchewan Province's Cigar Lake mine in which it has a 5 percent 

stake starts commercial production in 2007.



TEPCO plans to purchase 350 tons annually from the mine over 15 

years, it said. The amount is equal to 10 percent of its annual 

uranium consumption.



TEPCO will be the first Japanese power utility to independently 

procure uranium from a foreign country. Japanese power utilities have 

so far formed consortiums to purchase uranium from overseas.



Idemitsu Kosan Co., a major oil refiner-distributor, also has a 7.9 

percent stake in the Cigar Lake uranium mine and plans to provide 

uranium purchases to power utilities in Japan.



With uranium reserves proven at 136,000 tons, Cigar Lake is viewed as 

one of the world's leading uranium mines, TEPCO said.

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



Japanese nuclear plant starts test operation to reprocess depleted 

uranium





TOKYO (AP) - A nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in northern Japan 

started tests with depleted uranium Tuesday - a major step in 

experiments aimed at reprocessing fuel to boost energy self-

sufficiency here, despite a series of accidents and safety concerns.



The test at Rokkasho, about 580 kilometers (360 miles) northeast of 

Tokyo, marked the plant's first use of radioactive materials, said 

Masanori Hiroo, a spokesman for plant operator Japan Nuclear Fuel 

Ltd.



The 2.1 trillion yen (US$20 billion; 14.95 billion) plant is crucial 

to Japan's hopes of using a reprocessed reactor fuel called mixed 

oxide, or MOX.



Its opening - now planned for 2006 - is years behind schedule due to 

a radioactive water leak there in 2002 and protests from area 

residents and officials.



Hiroo said the test, expected to last a year before real reprocessed 

fuel is introduced, involves handling possible problems.



The reprocessed fuel could be used in reactors that burn a uranium-

plutonium mixture - or in more advanced fast-breeder reactors that 

use plutonium, and which also produce more plutonium that can be used 

as fuel.



The government's energy policy calls for converting as many as 18 

electricity-generating reactors to use MOX as a transition to fast-

breeder reactors. All of Japan's MOX would be made from spent fuel 

rods at the Rokkasho plant, then shipped out to fuel other plants in 

the country.



"Nuclear reprocessing is an extremely important operation that we 

must achieve from energy security and environmental point of view," 

said Japan Nuclear Fuel President Isami Kojima. "We'll place safety 

control as top priority as we continue efforts to improve service 

quality."



Nuclear power is vital to resource-poor Japan's plans to become more 

energy independent. Its 52 active nuclear plants supply more than a 

third of its energy.



The government wants to build 11 more reactors, boosting nuclear 

power to 40.7 percent of Japan's energy supply by 2010.



On Tuesday, workers hauled into the plant about 53 tons of depleted 

uranium - less radioactive than ordinary uranium.



Japan's only other plutonium-using reactor has been closed since a 

1995 accident.



The country's nuclear power industry has been plagued by safety 

problems and shutdowns in recent years.



A 1999 reprocessing plant accident outside Tokyo killed two workers 

and exposed hundreds to radioactivity.



In the nation's deadliest nuclear power plant accident, five people 

were killed at Mihama in central Japan after a corroded pipe ruptured 

in August, spraying workers with boiling water and steam.



The accidents have fanned public worries about nuclear energy and 

pressed the government to review its policy.



On Tuesday, about 100 people gathered outside the Rokkasho plant to 

demand the operation be scrapped.



"The reprocessing could trigger radioactive pollution," Greenpeace 

Japan said in a statement. "We see no justifiable reason to push 

forward the reprocessing project."

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



Study: Mobile phone radiation harms DNA in lab



Radio waves from mobile phones harm body cells and damage DNA in 

laboratory conditions, according to a new study majority-funded by 

the European Union, researchers said on Monday.



The so-called Reflex study, conducted by 12 research groups in seven 

European countries, did not prove that mobile phones are a risk to 

health but concluded that more research is needed to see if effects 

can also be found outside a lab.



The $100 billion a year mobile phone industry asserts that there is 

no conclusive evidence of harmful effects as a result of 

electromagnetic radiation.



About 650 million mobile phones are expected to be sold to consumers 

this year, and over 1.5 billion people around the world use one.



The research project, which took four years and which was coordinated 

by the German research group Verum, studied the effect of radiation 

on human and animal cells in a laboratory.



After being exposed to electromagnetic fields that are typical for 

mobile phones, the cells showed a significant increase in single and 

double-strand DNA breaks. The damage could not always be repaired by 

the cell. DNA carries the genetic material of an organism and its 

different cells.



"There was remaining damage for future generation of cells," said 

project leader Franz Adlkofer.



This means the change had procreated. Mutated cells are seen as a 

possible cause of cancer.



The radiation used in the study was at levels between a Specific 

Absorption Rate, or SAR, of between 0.3 and 2 watts per kilogram. 

Most phones emit radio signals at SAR levels of between 0.5 and 1 

W/kg.



SAR is a measure of the rate of radio energy absorption in body 

tissue, and the SAR limit recommended by the International Commission 

of Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection is 2 W/kg.



The study also measured other harmful effects on cells.



Because of the lab set-up, the researchers said the study did not 

prove any health risks. But they added that "the genotoxic and 

phenotypic effects clearly require further studies ... on animals and 

human volunteers."



Adlkofer advised against the use of a mobile phone when an 

alternative fixed line phone was available, and recommended the use 

of a headset connected to a cell phone whenever possible.



"We don't want to create a panic, but it is good to take 

precautions," he said, adding that additional research could take 

another four or five years.



Previous independent studies into the health effects of mobile phone 

radiation have found it may have some effect on the human body, such 

as heating up body tissue and causing headaches and nausea, but no 

study that could be independently repeated has proved that radiation 

had permanent harmful effects.



None of the world's top six mobile phone vendors could immediately 

respond to the results of the study.



In a separate announcement in Hong Kong, where consumers tend to 

spend more time talking on a mobile phone than in Europe, a German 

company called G-Hanz introduced a new type of mobile phone which it 

claimed had no harmful radiation, as a result of shorter bursts of 

the radio signal.



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

Sandy Perle

Senior Vice President, Technical Operations

Global Dosimetry Solutions, Inc.

2652 McGaw Avenue

Irvine, CA 92614 



Tel: (949) 296-2306 / (888) 437-1714  Extension 2306

Fax:(949) 296-1902 



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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