[ RadSafe ] Ex-Energy Secretary Abraham Urges US To Boost Nuclear Power

[Sandy Perle]

Index:

Ex-Energy Secretary Abraham Urges US To Boost Nuclear Power
Bush: Nuclear Power To Cut US Dependence On Foreign Energy
First weapons-to-fuel nuclear shipment made to TVA reactor
Enel, EDF in joint studies, including nuclear
Greenpeace says Dutch n-plant must be shut in 2013
Tohoku Electric to manually suspend Onagawa reactor operations
Nevada wants in on meetings on Yucca Mountain radiation standard
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Ex-Energy Secretary Abraham Urges US To Boost Nuclear Power

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- Former U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham 
said Thursday the U.S. should double its nuclear power capacity by 
2030 to help stave off a looming energy crisis.

Abraham, who handed over the Energy Department to Samuel Bodman in 
late January after a four-year term, also urged an easing of 
regulations hampering the construction of liquefied natural gas 
terminals and the opening up of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge 
to oil and gas exploration.

"If we continue on our current demand path, our self-imposed supply 
constraints along with natural supply limitations will eventually 
impose harsh limits on economic growth and quality of life," Abraham 
said in a speech to the U.S. Energy Association.

Abraham also mentioned clean coal technology, hydrogen fuel cells and 
renewable energy as ways to lessen U.S. dependence on imported oil. 
But nuclear power was clearly his focus.

"Nuclear technology has made great strides over the past several 
years in terms of safety, cost-effectiveness and proliferation 
resistance, and it must become a growing part of our energy mix," he 
said.

Abraham later told journalists it was "impossible to reach the kinds 
of goals people are setting" for cutting greenhouse-gas emissions 
while also boosting power generation capacity without nuclear power.

No nuclear power plants have been built in the U.S. since the 1970s, 
said Abraham, who also called for a federal legislative package to 
help construct new plants.

"We need to address the front-end costs of nuclear, which are very 
high versus goal or gas. The operational costs are lower," he said. 
"There needs to be some sort of government participation in that 
first phase to make it worth it for the industry."
----------------

Bush: Nuclear Power To Cut US Dependence On Foreign Energy

MAINZ, Germany -(Dow Jones)- President George W. Bush Wednesday said 
he believed building more nuclear power plants in the U.S. would help 
the country cut its dependence on foreign sources of energy.

Bush made the comments in a "Roundtable with Young Professionals" 
here.

"The best way to diversify, at least for my country, I don't want to 
raise a sore subject here, but to diversify away from dependence on 
foreign sources of energy is for us to take advantage of new 
technologies and expand safe nuclear power in the United States of 
America," Bush said.

Bush said expanding the U.S. nuclear power industry would accomplish 
several objectives. He said nuclear power is a "renewable" source of 
energy, the U.S. has domestic sources of uranium and it would help 
the U.S. meet obligations to " clean air requirements."

Unfortunately, at the moment, there is a lot of political opposition 
to nuclear power in Congress, Bush said.

Bush said he brought up the issue of nuclear power in his State of 
the Union address and promised to push the subject in the future as 
well.

Bush's comments on nuclear power were momentarily carried on an in-
house television that is covering his trip to Germany and broadcast 
in the White House press center. It was not clear whether the 
broadcast was intentional because the event was closed to the press 
corps.
-----------------

First weapons-to-fuel nuclear shipment made to TVA reactor

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - The first shipment of commercial reactor fuel 
made from the government's stockpile of weapons-grade uranium has 
arrived at a Tennessee Valley Authority nuclear station in Alabama, 
ready for loading this spring.

The delivery comes more than seven years after TVA, the nation's 
largest public utility, struck a deal with the Department of Energy 
to put surplus Cold War weapons material to use generating 
electricity for TVA's residential and business customers.

Over the next four years, 39 metric tons of highly enriched uranium 
will be diluted or "downblended" into low-enriched commercial reactor 
fuel for TVA's Browns Ferry station near Athens, Ala.

That's enough to provide electricity to every household in the United 
States for 122 days. For TVA, it will be more than enough for 10 
reactor refuelings, which occur every 18 months to two years.

DOE is spending about $500 million on the project - and that's 
estimated to be about half the cost of continuing to store or dispose 
of the material.

The first shipment arrived Jan. 23. Most of the uranium comes from 
the Savannah River Site in South Carolina and the Y-12 nuclear 
weapons plant in Oak Ridge. Additional sources are the Idaho National 
Laboratory and BWX Technologies in Lynchburg, Va.

TVA gets the uranium free but will pay about $165 million to prepare 
it for the Browns Ferry reactors. Still, the federal agency, which 
supplies electricity to about 8.5 million people in Tennessee and six 
surrounding states, expects to save 20 percent to 25 percent on fuel 
costs.

"Converting this material to reactor fuel is by far the lowest-cost 
option for dealing with this material," said Bill Brumley, NNSA's Y-
12 site manager. "Downblending it and burning it as fuel in power 
reactors eliminates its use for weapons, lowers costs and provides a 
benefit to the public."

TVA Chief Nuclear Officer Karl Singer called it an "excellent example 
of how federal agencies and contract partners can work together to 
provide safe, reliable and efficient generation to meet the energy 
needs of the Tennessee Valley and the nation in an environmentally 
sound manner."

Not everyone is happy. Environmentalists are appealing a decision by 
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to let Nuclear Fuel Services Inc. 
process the material at its Erwin plant without a full environmental 
impact statement study or public hearing.

"We are little bit torn about this," said Will Callaway, executive 
director of the Tennessee Environmental Council, which is among the 
suing organizations.

"It was hard to argue with the question of downblending and the 
benefits that that serves. Certainly if that promotes further removal 
of nuclear warheads that is a good thing," he said. "But that 
facility has got to ensure environmental compliance and they need to 
answer lingering questions about ground water and potential surface 
water contaminations."

NFS, which for years has supplied nuclear fuel to the U.S. Navy, 
spent $26 million on new facilities for the DOE-TVA processing work 
and added about 130 employees. Framatome Advanced Nuclear Products 
fabricates the product into fuel assemblies in Richland, Wash.

"The operation has gone very well," NFS spokesman Tony Treadway said. 
"We have had no major bumps in the road and processing is going on on 
a daily basis."

TVA will use the recycled weapons material, which tests suggest will 
perform the same as regular fuel, only in its two currently operating 
reactors at Browns Ferry. The decision is in part political because 
TVA's two other nuclear stations in Tennessee are involved in making 
the bomb material tritium for DOE. Watts Bar makes tritium and 
Sequoyah is a backup source.
----------------

Enel, EDF in joint studies, including nuclear

ROME, Feb 23 (Reuters) - Italian utility Enel and French utility 
Electricite de France 1/8EDF.UL 3/8 are going to study projects "of 
common interest" across Europe, including in the nuclear field, the 
two firms said on Wednesday.

In a joint statement, the companies said Enel CEO Paolo Scaroni and 
EDF chairman Pierre Gadonneix had "an encouraging discussion" on 
Wednesday at which they agreed to set out a programme for the study 
plans.

Enel and EDF have been locked in talks for months in search of an 
agreement to allow Enel to re-sell some of EDF's output in the French 
market and pave the way for a partnership in nuclear power 
generation.

The discussions come against the backdrop of tensions between the 
Italian and French governments over the liberalisation of their 
respective energy markets, with Rome accusing Paris of restricting 
access to France.

"Scaroni and Gadonneix have defined a programme that foresees the 
study of projects of common interest in France and in the rest of 
Europe, including cooperation in the nuclear sector," Wednesday's 
statement said.
----------------

Greenpeace says Dutch n-plant must be shut in 2013

AMSTERDAM, Feb 24 (Reuters) - The environmental lobby group 
Greenpeace on Thursday staged a protest against Dutch cabinet 
ministers' proposal to keep the country's sole nuclear power plant 
open beyond a planned target closure date of 2013.

Greenpeace activists placed 200 yellow barrels, carrying a 
radioactive material tag, in front of the Dutch parliament in The 
Hague, which is due to discuss the idea of keeping the 450-megawatt 
Borssele open for longer later on Thursday.

"We would rather have it closed today than tomorrow," a Greenpeace 
spokesman said. "The government set 2013 as the closure date and we 
expect them to keep their promises."

Bowing to public and environmentalist pressure, the Dutch have phased 
out almost all nuclear power plants except the Borssele plant, whose 
operator says its life could be extended by at least 20 years while 
keeping safety a priority.

Last week Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot and junior minister for 
environment Pieter van Geel revived the debate on nuclear energy in 
the Netherlands, indicating Borssele should be kept open for longer.

Van Geel said his government had only recently become aware that it 
would cost it nearly one billion euros to shut down the plant and 
wanted to launch a public discussion on prolonging its life and 
investing the savings in renewable energy.

But economy minister Laurens Jan Brinkhorst -- a member of the 
centrist D66, the smallest partner in the three-way Dutch coalition 
government -- said Borssele should be shut in 2013 unless parliament 
decides otherwise.

Borssele, which produces some 4 to 5 percent of Dutch electricity, 
was built in 1973 and it was anticipated at the time it would have a 
40-year lifespan.

Utility EPZ, the plant's operator, won a court battle against the 
government two years ago to leave the plant open past an initial 
planned closure date of 2004, set by Dutch parliament in 1994.

Concerns about radioactive waste and the 1986 disaster at the former 
Soviet Union's Chernobyl plant have sparked widespread opposition to 
nuclear power in the environmentally-conscious Netherlands.

But there have been growing calls to keep Borssele open.

A recent Dutch opinion poll showed that 65 percent think Borssele can 
remain open while 23 percent say it should not.
---------------

Tohoku Electric to manually suspend Onagawa reactor operations

SENDAI, Feb. 25 (Kyodo) - Tohoku Electric Power Co. said early Friday 
it will manually suspend operations of the No. 1 boiling-water 
reactor at the Onagawa nuclear power plant in Miyagi Prefecture due 
to a surge in nitrogen supply within the reactor's storage facility.

Tohoku Electric said there is no radiation leak outside of the plant.
----------------

Nevada wants in on meetings on Yucca Mountain radiation standard

LAS VEGAS (AP) - Nevada wants to be part of federal meetings about 
the Environmental Protection Agency's effort to comply with a court 
ruling that stalled a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, 
lawyer for Nevada said Wednesday.

The state should be included in EPA meetings with the Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission and the Energy Department, lawyer Martin Malsch 
told the Advisory Committee on Nuclear Waste, a Washington, D.C., 
panel that advises the commission on waste issues.

"Nevada's requests to EPA to establish a public docket and to meet in 
public with interested stakeholders have gone unanswered," Malsch 
said. He accused the government agencies of imposing "an iron curtain 
of secrecy around their deliberations."

Malsch said the state filed Freedom of Information requests and 
obtained documents from the meetings, which took place in recent 
months. But he said many documents had been redacted.

Ultimately, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission would license and 
regulate Yucca, the proposed repository for high-level nuclear waste 
90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The Energy Department plans to apply for an operating license from 
the commission by the end of the year. The state opposes the project.

The question before the EPA is a 10,000-year radiation safety 
standard the agency set for Yucca Mountain. The Energy Department has 
said it can meet that standard. But a federal court last year 
directed the EPA to draft a new standard or better explain how its 
10,000-year standard complies with a stricter standard recommended by 
the National Academies of Science.

The academies recommend the repository radiation standard cover the 
period in which the "peak dose" of radiation is emitted from waste 
entombed 1,000 feet under the mountain. Nevada officials maintain 
that would be far longer than 10,000 years.

The EPA is expected to release a draft of its new rule-making 
decision in late spring or early summer, but has not indicated to 
Nevada what the rule will look like, Malsch said.

The waste panel today discussed its options for advising the five-
member Nuclear Regulatory Commission on the EPA rule when it is 
released.

Panel member William Hinze said it will be important to build public 
confidence in the new standard.

"If we start changing these things, it's very important to bring the 
community, the world, the country into an understanding that we are 
still protecting the safety of the public and the environment," Hinze 
said.

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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/