[ RadSafe ] Exelon plans to divest generation to get merger OK

[Sandy Perle]

Index:

Exelon plans to divest generation to get merger OK
U.S. plans inert-bomb tests for bunkerbuster nukes
Deficiencies found in mock terrorist attack at Nevada Test Site
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Exelon plans to divest generation to get merger OK

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Exelon Corp. and Public Service 
Enterprise Group said Friday they are prepared to sell off a portion 
of their fossil fuel and nuclear power plants to clinch regulatory 
approval of their proposed merger.
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U.S. plans inert-bomb tests for bunkerbuster nukes

WASHINGTON, Feb. 3 (Kyodo) - The United States plans to conduct an 
inert-bomb test in fiscal 2006 as part of its ongoing research to 
develop a bunkerbuster nuclear bomb, congressional sources said 
Thursday.

President George W. Bush intends to seek outlays for the planned test 
in his budget plan to be submitted to Congress on Monday for the 
fiscal year starting Oct. 1, the sources said.

The plan to move toward development of the weapons is likely to 
undermine an international conference to be held from May 2 in New 
York to review the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which bans 
nonnuclear states from obtaining atomic weapons and obliges nations 
with nuclear arms to work toward disarmament.

The Bush administration launched the research in 2003 for what it 
calls the "robust nuclear earth penetrator," which is aimed at 
attacking underground facilities such as alleged hideouts of 
terrorists and stores of biological and chemical weapons.

The bunkerbusters and "mini-nuclear" bombs form the core of the Bush 
administration's policy to develop ready-for-use nuclear arms to deal 
with what it calls "terrorists" and "rogue states."

The sources said the Defense Department and the Energy Department 
have been working since last summer toward testing the bunkerbusting 
nuke by dropping inert bombs from bombers. Inert bombs are usually 
nonexplosive military practice bombs.

The test is aimed at assessing whether nuclear warheads can withstand 
the impact of ground penetration, the sources said. Depleted uranium, 
lead and other materials will be used for the inert bombs instead of 
plutonium and other nuclear fission materials.

The research project at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 
California and elsewhere involves modification of existing nuclear 
bombs such as the B61 and B83 bombs.

With the original target of completing the preliminary study in three 
years, the Bush administration included some $27 million for the 
research in its fiscal 2005 budget plan.

But Congress dropped all the outlays when it passed the fiscal 2005 
budget appropriation bill.

House of Representatives member David Hobson, a Republican from Ohio 
who strongly opposed the outlays, acknowledged that the president's 
budget for the Energy Department for fiscal 2006 will include 
spending for the study.

"I don't think it will be near that amount," he said, referring to 
the $27 million dropped from the fiscal 2005 budget bill.
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Deficiencies found in mock terrorist attack at Nevada Test Site

LAS VEGAS (AP) - Security has been beefed up at the Nevada Test Site 
after guards failed to stop a mock terrorist attack on a bunker built 
to safeguard weapons-grade nuclear material.

The Aug. 12 exercise exposed outdated training and tactics for 
defending the Device Assembly Facility, and found shortcomings in 
transfer-of-ownership paperwork for nuclear material, a National 
Nuclear Security Administration official said Thursday.

"We have changed procedures, added guards and augmented training," 
said Kevin Rohrer, an NNSA spokesman in North Las Vegas. "We've taken 
corrective actions."

The exercise involved agents from the Energy Department's Office of 
Independent Oversight and Performance Assurance.

Rohrer declined to describe the exercise, the number of guards on 
duty or whether the attackers got inside the facility designed as the 
most secure part of the 1,375-square-mile federal reservation.

"That gets into security vulnerabilities that we really don't want 
the bad guys to know," he said.

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., a member of the Senate Armed Services 
Committee, was notified shortly after the failed test. Ensign aide 
Jack Finn provided no details about steps taken to improve security 
afterward, but said Thursday that Ensign was satisfied after sending 
two national security aides to meet with test site officials.

The $100 million Device Assembly Facility was built to consolidate 
handling of weapons-grade plutonium, highly enriched uranium and high 
explosives during assembly and disassembly of nuclear weapons and 
experiments.

The compound includes administration, receiving, staging, assembly 
and shipping bays in a buried compound guarded by gun turrets. Gravel 
suspended in a superstructure is designed to drop and entomb the 
facility if nuclear material detonates.

Rohrer said no nuclear material was at the facility during the 
exercise.

Training was updated and more guards were added before the facility 
began receiving shipments of nuclear material in September from the 
Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the NNSA spokesman 
said.

"Security was certified as adequate," Rohrer said, adding that 
deliveries were for nuclear safety training and experiments - not 
full-scale testing.

"We're not doing nuclear testing and have no plans for nuclear 
testing," Rohrer said.

Test site guards had been notified a security exercise was planned, 
but were not told when or where it would take place.

The test site, nearly the size of Rhode Island, was the location of 
above- and below-ground nuclear detonations from 1951 to 1992.

In recent years, parts of the site some 65 miles northwest of Las 
Vegas have been used for underground "subcritical" experiments 
designed to test the nuclear stockpile without reaching critical mass 
for full-scale nuclear reactions.

Other sections of the vast test site are used for hazardous materials 
spill training and Department of Homeland Security counterterrorism 
exercises.

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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) 296-1144

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