[ RadSafe ] Vt. Yankee Nuclear Plant's Radiation 25% Above Standard

[Sandy Perle]

Index:

Vt. Yankee Nuclear Plant's Radiation 25% Above Standard
NRC panel: VY makes grade on emergency shutdown
Huntsman lobbies against transporting nuclear waste
IAEA: More needed to stop terrorists obtaining nuclear weapons
MOX commercial fuel, converted from U.S. warheads, to be returned
INTERVIEW - Canada miner eyes Peru uranium potential
France to study timing of Areva stake sale in '06
Radiation Therapy May Be OK for Heart
========================================

Vt. Yankee Nuclear Plant's Radiation 25% Above Standard

BRATTLEBORO, Vt. (AP)--Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant exceeded 
its state radiation standard late last year by 25%, preliminary 
monitoring results show.

The Douglas administration and the reactor's owner, Entergy Nuclear 
(ETR), have launched a review of the data, which shows that a state 
Department of Health monitor read a higher-than-allowed radiation 
limit.

The monitor was located on a fence near the office building next to 
the Vernon reactor, and the higher level occurred during the last 
three months of 2004.

If the higher level is verified, it could have a profound effect on 
the plant's operation and its future, as well as its plans to build a 
high-level radioactive waste storage facility and its plans to 
increase power production by 20%.

Both projects would result in additional direct gamma radiation 
released into the environment, company officials testified last year 
before the Public Service Board.

Dr. Paul Jarris, commissioner of the Department of Health, on Tuesday 
downplayed the preliminary test results and said they posed no risk 
to public health or safety.

Jarris said the increased radiation, if verified through additional 
calculations, would be equivalent to the radiation in one or two 
chest X-rays.

"We don't believe there's a human health risk," Jarris said. "The 
issue is, we have conflicting data," he said.

Entergy claims it released about 12 millirems of direct gamma 
radiation last year, rather than the 24.9 millirems a state monitor 
showed, Jarris said.

In a stern-sounding letter sent to Entergy officials late last week, 
Jarris and David O'Brien, commissioner of the Department of Public 
Service, asked Entergy to back up its claims of compliance.

"Entergy's methodology for determining compliance and the state's 
methodology for determining compliance with the Health Department 
standard are yielding disparate results," they wrote.

Entergy Nuclear spokesman Robert Williams said a thorough review of 
the data was underway and the company's and the state's results for 
the last quarter of 2004 were different.

Williams declined to say what Entergy's test results were, or to give 
any detailed information about the radiation testing, saying the 
matter was under review.

Williams said the plant would have declared an emergency if it had 
released additional radiation.

"We're looking at a difference in data," he said.
-------------------

NRC panel: VY makes grade on emergency shutdown

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) - A federal regulatory panel has rejected the 
state of Vermont's contention that increasing the power output at 
Vermont Yankee might leave too little time for operators to shut down 
the plant in an emergency.

The Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, which is affiliated with the 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said Tuesday that operator crews at 
the nuclear plant showed in drills last fall that they could use 
alternate means to shut the plant down if an accident forced them 
from the control room.

The Vermont Department of Public Service had raised red flags about 
whether such an emergency shutdown could be accomplished. It filed a 
legal document known as a contention at the board as part of its 
effort to get federal regulators to apply sufficient scrutiny to the 
plant's proposal to boost its power output by 20 percent.

An earlier NRC report had estimated that it would take operators 
forced to use alternate shutdown panels about 21 minutes to start the 
plant's emergency cooling system. The cooling system could be crucial 
in an accident if the water that normally bathes the reactor core 
threatened to boil off, possibly triggering a meltdown.

The new report by the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board said that 
Vermont Yankee's owner, Entergy Nuclear, had changed the shutdown 
procedure and given its six operator crews a new round of training on 
using the alternate shutdown panels.

"Following the completion of training, each of the six crews 
participated in a timed walkthrough of the new procedures, 
demonstrating the ability of each to bring the (cooling) system into 
service within approximately 15 minutes," the board said.

The earlier estimate of 21 minutes to activate the cooling system had 
worried those critical of the plant and it's plan to boost the 33-
year-old reactor's output by 20 percent. That increase was projected 
to reduce the amount of time crews had before the enough of the 
reactor's cooling water boiled away to expose the core from 25.3 
minutes to 21.3 minutes, leaving the crews just an 18-second safety 
margin to activate the cooling system and begin shutting the plant 
down.

While the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board said it was satisfied 
with the drills Vermont Yankee conducted during the fall, the state 
Department of Public Service was withholding judgment Tuesday.

Sarah Hofmann, the department's director of public advocacy, said 
that the department wanted to wait until a separate report by an NRC 
inspection team that was also looking at the question of whether 
crews could activate the cooling system fast enough.

She said a footnote in Tuesday's ruling left open the possibility 
that the state could file another contention questioning the way the 
Vermont Yankee crew drills were conducted.

"I think the missing piece that we still want to see before we make 
any decision is what the independent inspection team actually thinks 
of the verification that was provided" by the Entergy drills, Hofmann 
said.

That team's report is expected next week, and Hofmann said she was 
disappointed the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board didn't wait until 
the inspection team had weighed in before making its decision on the 
state's contention.

Vermont Yankee spokesman Robert Williams said Vermont Yankee and 
Entergy were pleased with the board's ruling.

"We had altered the (emergency shutdown) procedure to ensure 
compliance," Williams said. "We would not move forward without 
compliance with the regulations. We're confident that we have fully 
complied."

Raymond Shadis of the nuclear watchdog group New England Coalition 
said the board was focused too much on procedural aspects of the 
state's filings and not enough on the underlying issues.

"They're more interested in playing Simon says than in trying to find 
out about what might be a legitimate safety concern," Shadis said.
-----------------

Huntsman lobbies against transporting nuclear waste

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. has urged Energy 
Secretary Samuel Bodman to have nuclear waste remain stored at the 
reactors that produce it, rather than shipping it to a temporary 
storage facility proposed at a Goshute reservation 50 miles southwest 
of Salt Lake City.

Huntsman, who was in Washington, also said Monday that he will ask 
Interior Secretary Gale Norton to override the Bureau of Indian 
Affairs' decision to approve the lease between the utility companies 
seeking to build the repository and the Skull Valley Band of 
Goshutes.

"As I told Secretary Bodman, there's no such thing as temporary 
storage in today's world. If this finds its way to Utah, I'm not sure 
it would ever leave," Huntsman told The Salt Tribune's Washington 
office.

He urged the Energy Department to develop a long-term energy storage 
plan that would allow waste to be stored at reactors for half-a-
century.

"Let's let research and development catch up. If we were to buy 30 to 
50 years onsite, reprocessing could happen. That's not beyond 
reality," Huntsman said.

Bodman did not commit to any action, the Tribune said. The Bush 
administration has budgeted $651 million in the coming year for work 
on a permanent nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada 
and remains committed to that site.

Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett, both R-Utah, said after a meeting 
last week with the White House that rapidly getting Yucca Mountain 
into operation is the best way to prevent interim storage in Utah. 
Both senators previously had agreed to support the Yucca Mountain 
storage in exchange for a White House pledge not to use federal funds 
to ship the waste to Utah.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said last week that will 
introduce legislation that would allow the Energy Department to take 
ownership of waste at the reactors and store it there.

In another development Monday, Nils A. Diaz, chairman of the Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission, told reporters at the National Press Club that 
the canisters holding nuclear waste are designed to withstand attacks 
and "pose no radiological hazard with the present weaponry" available 
to terrorists.

"I think the casks there will be well protected," Diaz said, as 
reported by the Deseret Morning News.

He said the concentration of canisters in one location could make it 
so that an attack - by an aircraft flying into a cluster of casks, 
for example - could result in damage to a few casks being knocked 
into one another. But even if the casks were breached, the radiation 
leakage would be confined to the immediate impact area, and radiation 
would not extend beyond a two-mile zone around the site, he said.
------------------

More needed to stop terrorists obtaining nuclear weapons, ElBaradei 
says

LONDON (AP) - World leaders must do more to stop terrorists from 
obtaining nuclear or radioactive material they could use in a 
devastating attack, the head of the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog warned 
Wednesday.

There is a small chance that international terrorists could steal and 
launch a nuclear weapon, causing horrific casualties, said Mohamed 
ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, 
opening a three-day conference on nuclear security.

Less devastating but more likely, terrorists could obtain radioactive 
material and pack it into a "dirty bomb" with conventional 
explosives, ElBaradei said. Terrorists intent on causing panic and 
mass casualties also could sabotage a nuclear plant or transport, he 
said.

ElBaradei said there had been more than 650 confirmed incidents of 
trafficking of nuclear or other radioactive material in recent years, 
demonstrating that security of such materials must be improved.

Nations also must work harder to track radioactive material and fund 
international efforts to boost security at nuclear facilities and of 
systems for detecting nuclear materials that are being transported.

Former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn, now co-chairman of the Nuclear Threat 
Initiative group, said the world was not doing enough to prevent a 
catastrophic nuclear or radioactive attack.

"The threats are outrunning our response," he said. Nunn said the 
greatest dangers were that terrorists could steal highly enriched 
uranium and build a nuclear bomb, or take radioactive material to 
build a "dirty bomb."

He also said there was a danger of many new nations obtaining nuclear 
weapons, heightening tensions and increasing the risk of a nuclear 
accident or theft by terrorists.

Linton Brooks, the administrator of the U.S. National Nuclear 
Security Administration, told The Associated Press in an interview 
that America was working hard and cooperating with allies to secure 
dangerous materials at home and overseas.

Nuclear weapons, he said, tended in most countries to be better 
guarded than civilian facilities. "It's not easy, but it's as not as 
hard as it should be" for terrorists to get hold of material they 
could use to make a crude nuclear bomb, Brooks said.

Radioactive material that could be packed into a "dirty bomb" is far 
harder to protect because it's scattered in many types of facilities. 
"There are so many isotopes in so many places," he said.

Dangerous radioactive material has many civilian uses, including 
medical diagnosis and treatment equipment.
-------------------

MOX commercial fuel, converted from U.S. warheads, to be returned 
home within weeks

LA HAGUE, France (AP) - U.S. weapons-grade plutonium has been 
transformed into a special commercial nuclear fuel at a factory in 
southeast France and is being readied for return to the United 
States, the company in charge of the operation said Wednesday.

Four rods of MOX, as the commercial fuel is known, reached the Cogema 
factory in northwest France on Tuesday night after being transported 
in a heavily guarded truck from the Cadarache plant in the south, 
some 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) away, Areva said.

The fuel is to be shipped back to the United States in the coming 
weeks from the nearby port of Cherbourg, the Areva statement said.

It was the first time that France has transformed weapons-grade 
plutonium into MOX, a mixture of plutonium oxide and uranium oxide 
that can be used in commercial nuclear reactors.

Greenpeace, the environmental group, had protested the arrival here 
in October of the U.S. plutonium.

The U.S. Energy Department had to ship the plutonium - 125 kilograms 
(275.5 pounds) - overseas for conversion because no plant in the 
United States can do it.

The plutonium was taken from nuclear warheads to be transformed into 
a commercial fuel to help fulfill the terms of a September 2000 U.S.-
Russia disarmament accord in which both countries promised to destroy 
34 tons of military plutonium.

The MOX is to be used at South Carolina's Catawba Nuclear Station - a 
test run to confirm that the fuel works there. A MOX factory would 
then be built with French help in Savannah River, near Aiken, South 
Carolina, to dispose of the rest of the plutonium that the United 
States agreed to destroy. Another MOX factory would be built, likely 
with Areva help, in Russia.
------------------

INTERVIEW - Canada miner eyes Peru uranium potential

LIMA, Peru, March 15 (Reuters) - Canadian miner Vena Resources aims 
to explore for uranium, a key fuel for nuclear power, in mineral-rich 
Peru this year, the first such attempts since the 1980s, the company 
said on Tuesday.

"We don't have any limits on our exploration budget, so while there 
is the opportunity, we're going to take it," Vena Resources Chairman 
Juan Vegarra told Reuters in an interview.

Vena Resources recently purchased the Macusani deposit in southern 
Peru, which Peru's Institute of Nuclear Energy (IPEN) says contains 
10,000 tonnes of proven uranium reserves and 30,000 tonnes of 
estimated resources.

Countries such as France, Japan and the United Kingdom are big users 
of nuclear power, which is considered cleaner than coal and oil-
fueled energy.

Growing demand for uranium from China, which is developing nuclear 
power and was the world's fastest-growing economy last year, has made 
Peru's deposits more attractive.

"We're talking about a uranium potential (in southern Peru) that is 
much bigger than people realize, so we're interested," Vegarra said. 
"The current data on Macusani is only one area of the dozens we're 
studying," he added.

Vena Resources aims to begin exploration at the 35,000-acre (14,000-
hectare) site in the next few months and will also mine any uranium 
it finds, rather than sell the site to a bigger company to extract 
ore.

Despite research by IPEN in the 1980s, a lack of funds has prevented 
Peru from developing its uranium deposits in the past. Peru may also 
have uranium in its central Andes and on its northern coast, IPEN has 
said.

Mining is the backbone of Peru's $60 billion economy and has 
flourished in recent years because of high international metals 
prices. Mining accounts for more than half the Andean nation's total 
exports and Peru is the world's No. 5 copper producer and No. 6 in 
gold.
-------------------

France to study timing of Areva stake sale in '06

PARIS, March 16 (Reuters) - France will consider the timing of the 
partial privatisation of nuclear power firm Areva in 2006, Finance 
Minister Thierry Breton said on Wednesday, rowing back on initial 
plans to float it at the end of the summer.

The government had previously said it hoped to carry out the share 
sale at the end of the summer, and Areva said in late February that 
it might be ready for it by the end of May.

Breton reiterated the likely timing for part-privatisation of state-
owned utilities Electricite de France and Gaz de France.

He told his first news conference in his new post as Finance Minister 
that the GDF sale should be completed before the summer, market 
conditions allowing, and that EDF should follow before the end of 
this year.

"I hope that if market conditions allow, we should carry out the GDF 
sale before the holidays. We will do everything to make that happen," 
he said.

"I hope that the EDF sale can happen before the end of the year," he 
added.

Last week, France announced the flotation of under 30 percent of toll-
road operator Autoroutes du Nord et de l'Est de la France (SANEF), 
with a capital increase of up to 950 million euros.

Breton said the SANEF offer had been well received. "The order book 
is completely full, he said.
------------------

Radiation Therapy May Be OK for Heart

WASHINGTON (March 15) - Women receiving radiation for breast cancer 
may no longer face an increased risk of potentially deadly heart 
damage from the treatment. More than 40 percent of women with breast 
cancer undergo radiation following surgery.

Studies in the 1970s indicated that radiation therapy for breast 
cancer also exposed the heart to radiation and increased the woman's 
long-term risk of dying from cardiac disease. Radiation was kept in 
use because the benefit of reduced cancer recurrence was greater than 
the heart risk.

Over the years radiation therapy has been improved to deliver doses 
much more accurately, and a new study, published in Wednesday's 
Journal of the National Cancer Institute, indicates the heart risk 
has been sharply reduced, perhaps eliminated.

"I would like this to be reassuring to women with breast cancer who 
are going to receive radiation, that radiation is safe," lead 
researcher Dr. Sharon Giordano of the University of Texas M.D. 
Anderson Cancer Center said in a telephone interview.

Giordano and colleagues studied the records of women treated for 
breast cancer between 1973-1979, 1980-1984 and 1985-1989. Long-term 
follow-up is needed because the effects of radiation on the heart may 
not show up for more than a decade.

The researchers compared 13,998 women with cancer in the left breast -
 near the heart, meaning treatment could potentially expose the heart 
to more radiation - to 13,285 women with cancer in the right breast.

They found that among the women treated in the 1970s the 15-year 
death rate for heart disease in women with left-breast cancer was 
13.1 percent, compared with 10.2 percent for those with right-breast 
cancer.

For the group treated in the early 1980s the heart death rates fell 
to 9.4 percent for left-breast cancer and 8.1 percent for right-
breast cancer.

And by the late 1980s, 5.8 percent of women with left-breast cancer 
died of heart disease within 15 years compared with 5.2 percent with 
right-breast cancer, nearly eliminating the difference between the 
groups.

While the study does not compare rates with women who did not have 
radiation, heart disease remains the No. 1 cause of death in women 
overall.

In 1989 the death rate for heart disease in women age 20 and over was 
397 per 100,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and 
Prevention. Projecting that over 15 years would result in an overall 
death rate of 5.79 percent.

Jack Cuzick of Cancer Research-UK in England, who was not part of the 
study team, commented in an accompanying editorial that the 
converging heart death rates strongly indicate that the excess heart 
risk from radiation is being eliminated.

"Radiotherapists have heeded this call," Cuzick said, though he urged 
follow-up research to make it clear if the excess risk has been 
completely eliminated.

Giordano's research was supported by the National Institute of 
Health.

In a separate study in the same issue of JNCI, a team of researchers 
led by Dr. Rowan T. Chiebowski of the Los Angeles Research Institute 
in Torrance, Calif., report that rates of breast cancer for most 
minority women are lower than for white women, but that despite the 
lower rates, black women are more likely to die from the cancer.

Several factors may contribute to this higher mortality, including 
poorer socio-economic status with reduced access to health care, 
lower frequency of mammography with delayed diagnosis and reduced 
chemotherapy.

In addition, the researchers noted that black women were nearly twice 
as likely as white women to be obese and they had a higher rate of 
more aggressive cancers than whites. They urged further study to 
determine if genetic differences also are a factor.

-------------------------------------
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 at dosimetry.com
E-Mail: sandyfl at earthlink.net 

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