News Briefs

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@earthlink.net>]

Nuclear Waste Moved To Cold Storage - (IDAHO FALLS) -- The 
first shipment of nuclear waste from the Three Mile High nuclear 
reactor has been moved to dry storage in eastern Idaho. The 
remains of the crippled Pennsylvania reactor are now in unstable 
wet storage at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental 
Lab. Yesterday's shipment to a new state-of-the-art dry storage 
building 25-miles away was the first of 28 shipments of T-M-I 
material. It all has to be in dry storage by June of the year 2001 so 
that it can eventually be moved to a national repository like Yucca 
Mountain, Nevada. 
-------------

Acceptable' Safety At Nuclear Plant - (MONTICELLO) -- The 
Nuclear Regulatory Commission rates the Monticello Nuclear 
Power Plant as ``acceptable'' when it comes to safety performance. 
The rating comes after a six- month review that ended January 
31st. Safety performance is reviewed twice a year by the N-R-C at 
each licensed nuclear power plant in the U-S. 
--------------

Nuke Plants Get Good Ratings - (AKRON) -- The Nuclear 
Regulatory Commission is giving good performance grades to 
Ohio's two nuclear power plants. Akron-based First-Energy says 
the Davis Besse (BESS-ee) plant in Ottawa County received 
excellent ratings for engineering and good ratings for operations. 
The report says there is a need for improved maintenance at the 
facility. The Perry plant... east of Cleveland... received superior and 
good grades for plant support and engineering... and has improved 
in operations and maintenance. Perry is currently shut down for 
refueling after running for a record 265 days straight. Davis Besse 
has been operating for 164 straight days and was on-line 82-
percent of the time last year. 
--------------

Wednesday March 31, 3:47 am Eastern Time

TEPCO aims to prolong life of nuclear reactors

FUKUSHIMA, Japan March 31 (Reuters) - Clad in uniforms of shiny 
baby-blue overalls, hard hats and gloves, a handful of men are busy 
at work deep in the heart of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power 
station's No. 2 reactor in northern Japan.  

Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), the world's largest private 
power utility, is taking advantage of an annual maintenance 
shutdown to refit the reactor with a 35-tonne stainless steel 
cylinder shroud.  

TEPCO hopes the face-lift will enable it to operate the 28-year-old 
power station, its oldest, for another 30 years or more.

``Both our own evaluations and those of the government say that 
we can safely run the plant for 60 years,'' a TEPCO spokesman 
said.  

TEPCO became the world's first utility to replace a nuclear 
reactor's shroud -- which provides a passage for coolant -- when it 
completed work on Fukushima Daiichi's No. 3 reactor last year. 
Two other reactors are due for a similar overhaul.  

The power company discovered cracks in the shroud of the 
784,000 kilowatt No. 2 unit during maintenance checks in 1994.  

By law, maintenance must be conducted every 13 months and the 
accompanying shutdown usually lasts 40 to 50 days, with the 
replacement of components and other tasks inside the reactor core 
usually carried out by robots.  

The work at Fukushima Daiichi, however, is expected to take a full 
year and the reactor had to be decontaminated to make it safe for 
human workers.  

With some of Japan's oldest nuclear power plants nearly 30 years 
old, the industry needs to address the issue of how long a reactor 
can be operated safely.  

There are no binding laws or guidelines in Japan that set down the 
lifespan of a nuclear reactor, and there is no industry consensus as 
to how long reactors can safely be operated beyond a widely 
accepted 30-year minimum.  

A year ago, Japan Atomic Power Co's 166,000-kilowatt nuclear 
reactor on the Pacific coast became Japan's first nuclear plant to 
be shut down and dismantled after 31 years of operation. It was 
Japan's oldest commercial reactor.  

The decision to close the plant was largely due to economics. It 
was the only reactor in Japan using graphite as its moderator and 
carbon dioxide gas as its coolant, resulting in operation costs that 
were double those of other commercial reactors.  

TEPCO said that whether it actually operated Fukushima Daiichi 
for another 32 years would depend on the economics of the plant.  

The cost of replacing a shroud is more than 10 billion yen ($83 
million), while maintenance checks on a reactor cost on average 
four to five billion yen.  

Those costs are slight, however, compared with the average 350 
billion to 400 billion yen cost of building a new reactor.  

``(We decided to change the shroud) because we believe that it 
makes economic sense to do so,'' the TEPCO spokesman said.  

Finding a site to build a new plant could also be difficult, given the 
unpopularity of Japan's nuclear policy following a spate of nuclear 
plant mishaps in recent years, including clumsy coverup  
attempts. ($1=120 yen)

Sandy Perle
E-Mail: sandyfl@earthlink.net 
Personal Website: http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/1205

"The object of opening the mind, as of opening 
the mouth, is to close it again on something solid"
              - G. K. Chesterton -
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