[ RadSafe ] Japanese governor approves repairs to plutonium reactor

[Sandy Perle]

Index:

Japanese governor approves repairs to plutonium reactor
Fukui governor OKs remodeling Monju nuclear power reactor
Radioactive waste ban bill passes Utah Senate
Envirocare sale finalize, focus now on bills regulating waste
Officials still mum on final cost of cleanup in Oak Ridge
NRC chairman praises TVA's $1.8 billion reactor project
======================================

Japanese governor approves repairs to plutonium reactor

TOKYO (AP) - A regional government on Sunday approved repairs to an 
experimental Japanese plutonium reactor shut down after an accident a 
decade ago, possibly allowing the facility to restart within three 
years.

The Monju fast breeder reactor has been the centerpiece of a national 
government campaign to expand resource-poor Japan's reliance on 
nuclear energy.

But the 1995 accident and a bungled cover-up seeded distrust of 
nuclear power among Japanese voters. Two years ago, a high court 
ruled that a 1983 permit authorizing Monju's construction was 
illegal.

The national government appealed that decision to the Supreme Court, 
where a decision is pending.

Gov. Issei Nishikawa of Fukui prefecture (state) said Sunday he is 
confident that the Monju reactor is safe and that repairs can begin, 
said Fukui atomic safety department official Kazuyoshi Terakawa.

He announced his decision after meeting Sunday with Education and 
Science Minister Nariaki Nakayama.

The Monju reactor uses plutonium fuel instead of conventional 
uranium, and produces more plutonium that can then be reused as fuel.

The repairs of the reactor, built on the Japan Sea coast about 350 
kilometers (220 miles) west of Tokyo, will take over two years, while 
testing and other preparations to restart the facility would require 
about six months, Terakawa said.

The Mainichi newspaper reported that the repairs would cost 17.9 
billion yen (US$172 million; euro134 million).

No one was injured when more than a ton of volatile liquid sodium 
leaked from a secondary cooling system at the reactor on Dec. 8, 
1995, and no radioactivity escaped. But Monju's operators came under 
fire for concealing videotape footage that showed extensive damage to 
the reactor.

The fast breeder reactor has been targeted by anti-nuclear activists 
and others who feel its technology is particularly unsafe.

Many other nations have abandoned similar projects because of the 
high costs and dangers associated with handling plutonium, which is 
highly radioactive and can be used to make nuclear weapons.

Japan has reportedly already spent a cumulative 800 billion yen 
(US$7.7 billion, euro6.0 billion) on the one Monju reactor.

Fukui was also the scene of Japan's deadliest-ever nuclear-plant 
accident, when a corroded cooling pipe - carrying boiling water and 
superheated steam - burst at a plant in Mihama last August, killing 
five workers. No radiation was released in that accident.

Japan's 52 nuclear reactors supply 35 percent of the country's 
electrical energy needs.
-----------------

Fukui governor OKs remodeling Monju nuclear power reactor

FUKUI, Japan, Feb. 6 (Kyodo) - Fukui Gov. Issei Nishikawa said Sunday 
he has approved a plan to retool the troubled Monju fast-breeder 
nuclear reactor, paving the way for resumption of the power 
generation facility's operation following a 1995 sodium leak 
accident.

Nishikawa told Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology 
Minister Nariaki Nakayama that he backs the central government's plan 
to seek resumption of the Monju reactor, saying the ministry "has 
shown a responsible stance."

Nakayama said, "I am very grateful for the governor's decision."

The fast-breeder reactor in Fukui's Tsuruga, run by the state-run 
Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute, has been shut since the 
sodium leak sparked a fire on Dec. 9, 1995.

The experimental reactor is designated by the government as a 
prototype for future reactor models that would play a key part in the 
national nuclear fuel recycling policy, under which plutonium will be 
produced through spent-fuel reprocessing.

By using plutonium-uranium mixed oxide fuel, fast-breeder reactors 
like the Monju are supposed to be able to produce more plutonium than 
they consume.

Nishikawa formerly set the establishment of a nuclear power research 
center and the construction of the Hokuriku Shinkansen Line as 
conditions for approving the remodeling of Monju for its resumption 
of operations.

The government approved the establishment of a Shinkansen bullet 
train station in Fukui late last year and compiled the outline of the 
research center in January.

However, such steps to restart Monju's operation could run counter to 
a Nagoya High Court ruling in January 2003 that nullified a 1983 
government approval of the building of the Monju reactor in the first 
place.

In the ruling, the court's Kanazawa branch supported the claim by 32 
plaintiffs that the 1995 massive leak of sodium coolant at the 
reactor resulted from shortcomings in the safety assessment for Monju 
prior to construction.
----------------

Radioactive waste ban bill passes Utah Senate

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - A bill that would keep so-called "hotter" 
radioactive waste from entering Utah for storage or disposal cleared 
the state Senate Wednesday.

The 26-0 vote came one day after Envirocare, a west desert storage 
facility, officially changed hands and its new owner said the company 
would abandon its permit to handle the hotter waste.

The bill now goes to the House of Representatives for consideration.

Class A waste, considered the least dangerous, will still be allowed 
under the bill sponsored by Sen. Curtis Bramble, R-Provo. But all 
higher classifications of waste will be banned. The storage of B and 
C wastes has been hotly debated because the materials are considered 
hundreds to thousands of times more radioactive than class A.

Despite the overwhelming vote, the discussion was not without some 
contention Wednesday.

Sen. Patrice Arent, D-Murray, took a dig at Bramble, suggesting he 
had copied from legislation she had planned to carry this year. Some 
portions of Bramble's bill are identical to Arent's, which was tossed 
out by an interim study committee.

She also implied the Democrats in the House of Representatives had 
also tried to carry similar bills in the past and not been supported.

"But today is not a day to nurse hurt feelings," Arent said. "It's a 
day to celebrate."

Arent also cautioned lawmakers not to allow the bill to be watered 
down or changed as it now moves to the House of Representatives.

Former Senate President Al Mansell, R-Sandy, downplayed the 
celebration, saying that in truth, the bill does nothing to change 
state policy. The B and C wastes are already banned from Utah because 
bringing it here already required action by the legislature and the 
governor, Mansell said.

"The ban is not a change in state policy. B and C is banned today and 
has been banned at all times since these original laws were passed," 
Mansell said. "It's not right to say that over the years we have not 
had a policy."

Under Bramble's bill, however, action by the governor or the 
Legislature would be moot, unless lawmakers change the statute.

Bramble's bill will not only ban the hotter waste from coming to 
Utah, but it also prohibits permits for the waste from being issued. 
It also prevents the state's representative on a regional compact 
committee from considering or seeking contracts that could bring 
waste here.

The bill also addresses other areas of waste storage and management, 
including fees paid to the state by storage companies, and expands 
the roles of state agencies that oversee the industry.
----------------

Envirocare sale finalize, focus now on bills regulating waste

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - The sale of the nuclear waste handling company 
Envirocare has been completed, a newspaper reported, and now the 
focus shifts to Utah's Capitol Hill, where lawmakers are trying to 
limit what types of radioactive waste can be brought into the state.

Envirocare of Utah officially changed hands Jan. 26, as Salt Lake 
City businessman Steve Creamer and a New York investment firm 
finalized their December purchase of the radioactive waste disposal 
company, The Salt Lake Tribune reported Tuesday.

Details of the sale were not immediately released, but Creamer 
scheduled a news conference for later in the day to release more 
details of the sale of the company's facility about 80 miles west of 
Salt Lake City.

Creamer has declined to comment until the sale was final, but had 
said he would address whether the facility would take hotter waste 
than what it currently is licensed to accept, the least dangerous 
Class A waste.

Envirocare of Utah has a conditional permit to accept hotter waste, 
known as classes B and C.

Though the company's former owners had said they had no plans to use 
the conditional permit for the hotter waste, they also have said they 
have no plans to abandon it.

Last month, Gov. Jon Huntsman categorically said he would not allow 
hotter waste into Utah, and vowed to get legislation passed to keep 
it out. Creamed declined at the time to say whether the company had 
agreed to back such a bill, saying they were under a confidentiality 
agreement until the sale was final.

There are two competing bills now before state senators.

Sen. Patrice Arent, D-Murray, and six allies are backing Senate Bill 
166, a bipartisan measure that seeks to ban the hotter waste and 
prohibit a company or person from even applying to accept the 
material.

The legislation has been assigned to the Senate Revenue and Taxation 
Committee, whose chairman, Sen. Curtis Bramble, R-Provo, is 
sponsoring a competing proposal which originated with a task force 
that met for two years to examine hazardous and radioactive waste 
disposal.

Bramble last week said he could scuttle the bill in favor of one that 
would place an outright ban on bringing B and C level nuclear waste 
to the state.

Envirocare founder, sole shareholder and President Khoshrow Semnani 
announced in December he had agreed to sell the company to a group 
led by New York City-based Lindsay Goldberg & Bessemer. The group 
includes Creamer Investments and several other local investors.

Envirocare disposes of low-level nuclear waste and radioactive-
tainted hazardous wastes from around the country. Envirocare has been 
at the center of several controversies over its radioactive waste 
landfill and has tried to improve its image recently with 
informercials, featuring a former Miss America, and a DVD.

Former Envirocare President Charles Judd in December said he would 
seek a permit to accept B and C wastes and highly radioactive 
material from a Fernald, Ohio, Superfund site at his proposed Cedar 
Mountain waste site in Tooele County.
---------------

Officials still mum on final cost of cleanup in Oak Ridge

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. (AP) - The final cost to taxpayers still hasn't been 
determined in one of the largest nuclear cleanups in history.

BNFL Inc. has decommissioned three uranium-processing facilities in 
the last six years and disposed of 350 million pounds of radioactive 
material.

Jeff Stevens, BNFL's Oak Ridge general manager, says the project will 
be all but finished by the middle of March. There are signs that the 
project is slowing down - including the work force, which is about 
450 people after as many as 1,500 worked at the site, Stevens said.

In 1997, BNFL signed a $238 million fixed-price contract with the 
U.S. Department of Energy. The job included three buildings with more 
than 5 million square feet of floor space. The equipment inside also 
posed problems because it was once used to enrich uranium for atomic 
bombs and nuclear reactions and was classified.

"Certainly, a project of this size and complexity - really anything 
being decommissioned - has its bumps and bruises. That's par for the 
course," Stevens told The Knoxville News Sentinel. "But it's been 
very successful. We're very proud we actually got this thing done. 
It's a one-of-a-kind project."

The DOE and BNFL are still negotiating the price of some final 
details. The Energy Department won't say how much the total cost of 
the project turned out to be, but previously confirmed it was well 
beyond $300 million.

That figure came before the project was extended from August to the 
current completion date in mid-March.

BNFL, a government contractor, has claimed it expects to lose more 
than $150 million.

Last year, BNFL reportedly agreed to a huge payout - as much as $500 
million - from the U.S. government to settle the company's losses at 
Oak Ridge and another operation in Idaho.

BNFL has dismantled equipment and decontaminated the interiors of the 
K-29, K-31 and K-33 buildings at the Oak Ridge plant. Those buildings 
are now virtually empty, and the company's super-compactor also has 
been disassembled.

Stevens said his company has developed special capabilities to use if 
they get to decommission gaseous diffusion plants at Paducah, Ky., 
and Portsmouth, Ohio.

Among the final tasks to be complete at Oak Ridge is getting rid of 
about 35 trailers and hundreds of waste containers that are now 
available for other projects.
----------------

NRC chairman praises TVA's $1.8 billion reactor project

ATHENS, Ala. (AP) - The chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission 
is impressed with the Tennessee Valley Authority's $1.8 billion 
effort to transform a long-idled reactor at the Browns Ferry Nuclear 
Plant into a modern top performer.

"My distinct impression is that Browns Ferry has been transformed 
into a very good operating plant," NRC Chairman Niles J. Diaz said 
during a tour on Thursday. "TVA has made the commitment of management 
and resources to make this a top operating unit in this country."

The visit to the three-reactor Browns Ferry station was the first for 
Diaz in his eight years on the NRC board. But he said the regulatory 
agency is closely monitoring what will be the first major addition of 
nuclear power in the United States in the 21st century.

"We need to be satisfied that the right engineering is being done and 
that the right amount of core resources and persons are in place," he 
said of the Unit 1 project, which has nearly 2,500 people working 
around the clock with a goal of restarting the unit by May 2007.

Unit 1 is the oldest reactor in TVA's nuclear fleet. The nation's 
largest public utility also operators two-reactor Sequoyah station 
near Chattanooga, Tenn., and the single-reactor plant at Watts Bar 
near Spring City, Tenn.

Browns Ferry Unit 1 first started in 1974 and made international news 
in March 1975 when a worker using a candle to check for air leaks 
started a fire that disabled safety systems throughout the plant. 
This was the worst commercial reactor accident in the United States 
prior to the Three Mile Island meltdown in Pennsylvania in 1979 - an 
event that led to stricter safety standards and TVA's voluntary 
shutdown of its nuclear plants, including Browns Ferry, in 1985.

Browns Ferry Unit 2 returned to service in 1991; Unit 3 followed in 
1995. Together they have proved to be some of the nation's leading 
performers.

"I think TVA is pretty savvy. They have already done two (Browns 
Ferry reactors), so I think they have a pretty good amount of lessons 
learned," Diaz said. Still, he said the NRC is giving Browns Ferry 
Unit 1 a "higher amount of scrutiny" not only because of the 
project's scope but because a new generation of nuclear workers is 
being trained in the process.

TVA nuclear chief Karl Singer said plant workers are following 
"essentially the same processes we did on the restart of Units 2 and 
3, but also we are applying the lessons we learned from those 
programs."

The recovery is about 55 percent complete. Most of the engineering 
work is done and no major problems were discovered, Singer said. 
Craft workers are installing new electrical cables, pipes and other 
equipment. Major components also are being refurbished.

As part of the work, TVA also is upgrading the capacity of Unit 1 
from 1,098 megawatts to 1,250 megawatts. Similar power upgrades are 
planned for the plant's other two reactors, which TVA wants to 
continue to operate for another 20 years.

"I think that TVA should be congratulated on a job well done," Diaz 
said.

But anti-nuclear activists continue to question TVA's investment in 
the Browns Ferry unit.

"We still think it's an awfully risky venture," said Stephen Smith, 
executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, a 
Knoxville-based environmental group. "If it performs like it did in 
the past, this is certainly not a good investment, especially when 
TVA could be pursuing cleaner technologies."

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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

Global Dosimetry Website: http://www.dosimetry.com/ 
Personal Website: http://sandy-travels.com/