Germany

On September 5, some 50,000 people marched in the German capital Berlin, in a demonstration against nuclear energy. It was the largest anti-nuclear demonstration in Germany since 1986, when in the months after Chernobyl hundred-thousands of people took the streets. The demonstration was meant as a warning to politicians that anti-nuclear sentiment is still strong and people will engage against any attempt to flaw the phase-out of nuclear power in Germany after the general elections on September 27.

The protest was initiated by local groups from the Wendland, the region in Germany where Gorleben is situated. Gorleben was designated in the 1970's to be location where the countries nuclear waste will be disposed of in salt mines.

Meanwhile, more and more becomes known over the last few months about how Gorleben was selected.

Gerd Luettig, a retired geology professor involved in the 1970s search for a salt deposit to be made a nuclear dump, claimed that a West German provincial leader placed a nuclear waste dump near the border with communist East Germany out of revenge for the East Germans doing the same on their side of the border. In early August 2009, Luettig told ddp news agency that is how Gorleben came to be chosen in 1977 by the then Conservative premier of Lower Saxony state, Ernst Albrecht. Out of 100 salt deposits investigated, all of them in northern Germany, Gorleben was in the final shortlist of eight. The Federal government identified three promising sites, all in Lower Saxony. Gorleben was not among them. After opposition from state officials of Lower Saxony, the federal government let them choose its own site.

Lüttig says Albrecht wanted a location near the border because the East Germans "got us into hot water with their final repository at Morsleben". Gorleben and Morsleben are about 95 kilometers apart. Both villages were close to the border that separated the two Germanies.

Lüttig says West German geologists and Albrecht's state government knew from talks with East German geologists, that the Morsleben former salt mine "was technically defective" and water was flowing into it. "We always feared - and that enraged Mr Albrecht - that one day Morsleben would be flooded and radioactively polluted water could flow towards Helmstedt", then the crossover point at the border, "and despoil a whole landscape there".

Thereupon the premier had declared, "then we'll do the same", Lüttig says. "In further talks Albrecht gathered arguments. He said the county was after all thinly populated and its council had asked him to do something there and that it would benefit the county. Albrecht focussed on that more and more." Lüttig said he and his team had found Gorleben "barely suitable" and only named it "because it's a relatively large salt deposit."

Later in August, it emerged that the former Federal government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl had brushed over scientific objections to the project in the 1980s. A report by the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper claimed that the Kohl government had "sugarcoated" an experts' report saying that the underground Gorleben Salt Dome in Lower Saxony was not in fact suitable for long-term storage of dangerous nuclear waste. The newspaper report said that in 1983 the Kohl cabinet put pressure on the scientists advising the government on the options for nuclear-waste storage to approve the Gorleben site, and had then paraphrased their report making it appear more positive, apparently in an effort to save money. The scientific objections to the Gorleben site centred on the concern that the sediment around the salt-cave is not strong enough to prevent the escape of radiation.

One day after the revelations, on August 26, 2009, Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel said that the salt dome Gorleben "is dead." Gabriel said: "Under those circumstances, research (at Gorleben) can't be continued." Germany's Federal Office for Radiation Protection backed the minister. A spokesman of the office told the Frankfurter Rundschau that the start of the Gorleben project “has many birth defects that are not compatible with today's open and transparent policies and is therefore controversial”.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives Christian-Democrats want to continue pursuing Gorleben, while the Social Democrats are in favor of looking for additional, potentially more promising locations. The Conservatives dislike that plan because most of the alternative candidates are located in states dominated by party colleagues

Despite some 1.5 billion euros (US$ 2 billion) having been spent on research there since 1979 the site has however never become operational for long-term waste storage. Because of the massive public protests, the German government in 2000 stopped researching Gorleben, but that moratorium expires in October 2010 at the latest.

In the September 27, 2009, general elections the phase-out of nuclear power is an important issue. A continuation of the ruling yellow-red government (Christian-Democrats and Social Democrats) is likely to hold on to the planned phase-out (which will lead to the closure of 7 nuclear reactors in the next 3 years.) A pro-nuclear yellow-black coalition (Christian-Democrats and Liberals, favored by chancellor Merkel), was leading in the polls, but over the last few weeks the lead disappeared, and the outcome is very much unsure. A yellow-black coalition will most likely suspend the phase-out but is not in favor of new build.

On the website:
http://www.ausgestrahlt.de/aktionen/anti-atom-demo-59/berichte.html you can find many  press reviews of the September 5 demonstration. Scroll down to find international media.

Sources: www.Indymedia.de, 8 August 2009 / EarthTimes, 25 August  2009 / UPI, 26 August 2009
Contact: BI Umweltschutz Luechow Dannenberg, Rosenstr. 20, 29439 Luechow, Germany, Tel: +49 5841 4684, Email: buero@bi-luechow-dannenberg.de, Web: www.bi-luechow-dannenberg.de

More plutonium in Asse II research mine. There is more than twice the amount of plutonium stored at the Asse waste dump in Germany than previously estimated. Ministers said there was 28 kilograms of plutonium in the Asse II dump, not the nine kilograms previously estimated by operators Helmholtz. The Federal Office for Radiation Protection took over operation of the facility earlier this year after unauthorised material was found there. Low- and intermediate level nuclear waste was deposited at the Asse Research mine in the 60s and 70s for research purposes. These experiments have been terminated, but the waste remains in the pit. Brine influx into the allegedly stable and dry repository was known even when the deposition began.
Bloomberg, 29 August 2009 / Nuclear Heritage Information leaflet

Hundreds of traffic lights in city of Hamburg in northern Germany, stopped working on July 4 after a power cut caused by an incident at the Kruemmel nuclear power station nearby. Around 1,500 of the 1,800 traffic signals in Germany's second biggest city suddenly blacked out and lights at shopping centres also failed. An incident at a transformer of the Kruemmel power station triggered the blackout, said a spokesman from Swedish firm Vattenfall, which runs the plant. The plant only reopened two weeks earlier after a two-year shut down triggered by a fire.

A few days after the July 4 incident, on July 9, Vattenfall admitted there were additional problems. Vattenfall said it had also discovered that at least one of the fuelrods inside the reactor was "defective".  The defect was not connected to the shutdown of the reactor during the electrical transformer fire on July 4. That incident was the second transformer-related shut down in a week for the 1346 MW  BWR. It is unlikely the reactor will be restarted until April or May 2010, according to Vattenfall. The company has decided to buy two new transformers and it will take until spring 2010 to receive and install them.

Vattenfall promised a complete review of the management of the station, saying the short-circuit that triggered the fire in a transformer had the same cause as the transformer fire two years ago. A few days later the plant manager was fired.

The shutdown of Kruemmel has prompted Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel to call for the immediate closure of the eight oldest plants. According to the IAEA, construction of Kruemmel started in 1974, with grid-connection in September 1983 and start of commercial operation in March 1984. Gabriel also said that Germany needed to introduce a nationwide authority to monitor the power stations. At present, the plants are monitored by regional authorities.

The previous German government of SPD and Greens introduced in 2000 the phaseout program for the 17 nuclear reactors by 2021. But the conservatives argue that nuclear energy must be kept alive to allow renewable industries to catch up as Germany must meet long-term commitments to cut carbon dioxide emissions. According to the phaseout schedule, three reactors have to be shut in 2010 (Biblis A and B and Neckarwestheim 1), with four more in the following two years. (see Nuclear Monitor 686, 2 April 2009)

Meanwhile, it seems that Vattenfall is again losing a lot of customers. After the 2007 accidents in Kruemmel (and Brunsbuettel, which is still off-line) the company lost already some 250,000 customers in Northern-Germany.

Kruemmel operator Vattenfall unwillingly turned nuclear safety into an important election issue in Germany, although many people say that the nuclear issue is not decisive in the question on which party to vote. On September 5, three weeks before the general-elections, a nationwide anti-nuclear demonstration will take place in Berlin.

Sources: The Local, (Brd), 4 July 2009 / Der Spiegel, 7 July 2009 / Nuclear Engineering International 9 July 2009 / EarthTimes, 9 July 2009
Contact: Dirk Seifert, RobinWood, Nernstweg 32, 22765 Hamburg, Germany
Tel: + 49 40-3808 92 – 21
Email: energie@robinwood.de
Web: www.robinwood.de

Indonesia: Tender postponed indefinitely.
Indonesian State Minister of Research and Technology Kusmayanto Kadiman announced late last month (May) that the tendering process for new nuclear power plants, expected to be completed by the end of the year, have been postponed indefinitely. The process has lacked political support and with presidential elections due in July, the government has pulled the plug. Kusmayanto said, ‘It's impossible to decide now. For the fastest, it will possibly take at last six more years.’ This destroys plans to have a nuclear power plant operating in the 2016-2019 timeframe established by Indonesian Law No. 17/2007.

Nuclear Reaction, 18 June 2009

Sweden: smiling sun banned from Parliament.
Seven antinuclear activists who went to the Swedish Parliament to listen to the energy debate on June 16, were forced to leave the public gallery and were thereafter taken into inquiry by the police. This has never happened before. The reason was that five of them where wearing t-shirts with the smiling sun, the well known antinuclear symbol. Most of them activists were members of the Swedish antinuclear movement and some belong to the Swedish Green woman.

Email: Eia Liljegren-Palmær, 19 June 2009

U.K.: Serious accident averted at Sizewell.
A serious accident at the Sizewell A Magnox reactor was only averted because a worker cleaning clothes in a laundry noticed cooling water leaking from a spent fuel storage pond. In January 2007 40,000 gallons of radioactive water (1 gallon (UK) is about 4.54609 liter)  leaked from a 15ft (4.5 meter) split in a pipe in the cooling pond, containing 5,000 spent fuel rods and alarms failed to warn staff or were ignored. If the pond had emptied of water and exposed the highly-radioactive rods would have caught fire with an airborne release of radioactivity. Thanks to the worker in the laundry staff were able to contain the leak - discharging the radioactive waster into the sea - and re-fill the pond.

A new report on the accident has now been published. It is written by nuclear consultant Dr John Large, commissioned by the Shut Down Sizewell Campaign and based on Nuclear Installation Inspectorate reports released under Freedom of Information. The NII report highlighted a number of serious concerns surrounding the accident. Not only did the pond alarms fail, but had it worked it would have triggered another alarm that had already been on for two days but ignored by staff. There was also poorly designed and poorly installed instrumentation and control equipment. The NII report also suggests that it chose not to prosecute the operators because of staff shortages.

N-base briefing 618, 17 june 2009

Spain: renewal of operation license Garona?
On June 8, the five-member board of Spain's Nuclear Safety Council (CSN) unanimously agreed to recommend that the Garona nuclear plant in northern Spain should get a new 10-year operating licence if it upgrades its safety equipment. The 38-year-old nuclear plant's licence expires on July 5. Nuclear Safety Council chairwoman Carmen Martinez Ten said the decision was taken on technical and security grounds and not for reasons of "energy policy, economics or another nature".

The Spanish government will have to take a clear stand for or against nuclear power before July 5, when it decides whether to renew the operating licence Garona, the oldest of the country's six nuclear plants. Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, whose socialist government has backed the developmentof  renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power, has said he wants to phase out nuclear energy in the country when the life span of its six nuclear plants expires. A decision to prolong the life of the Garona plant would be a major u-turn for Zapatero, who pledged to gradually phase out nuclear power during general elections in 2004 and 2008. However, the prime minister said. "The decision regarding Garona will be coherent with the commitments in our election programme as long as the supply of power is guaranteed," This statement was seen by some observers as a sign that the government was leaning towards renewing, maybe for a short period. Later in June, CSN said the government asked their opinion about renewing the permit for two, four or six years, rather than the 10 years. The 500 megawatt Garona plant provided just 1.3 percent of Spain's electricity last year and grid operators say its closure would pose no supply problems.

The Spanish branch of Greenpeace has urged the government not to renew the licence of the plant, arguing it is unsafe. It has called it the "plant of 1,000 fissures". The two utilities running the plant, Iberdrola and Endesa, estimate it will cost 50 million euros (US$70 million) to carry out the upgrades to the plants safety equipment recommended by the CSN.

Spain, along with Denmark and Germany, is among the three biggest producers of wind power in the European Union and the country is one of the largest world producers of solar power.

AFP, 11 June 2009 / Reuters, 19 June 2009

Blows for IAEA Fuel Bank proposal. Developing countries blocked plans by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for nuclear fuel banks that aim to keep countries from acquiring sensitive nuclear technology by offering them alternatives. The Vienna-based agency and Western countries had hoped the IAEA's governing board would give the green light for fleshing out plans to sway countries to buy rather than make nuclear fuel, by offering an insurance in case their supply is cut off for political reasons. But a June 18, joint statement by the Group of 77 (a coalition of developing countries and the Non-Aligned Movement) said that "none of the proposals provide a proper assurance of supply of nuclear fuel." The plans "should not be designed in a way that discourages states from developing or expanding their capabilities in the nuclear fuel cycle". The 35 members of the board agreed only that the nuclear agency "may continue its consultations and discussions" to further work on the fuel bank proposals, according to diplomats at the meeting.

The idea of the IAEA Fuel Bank was to keep countries from acquiring uranium enrichment and reprocessing technologies, which can be used not only for energy purposes, but also for making nuclear bomb material. However, developing countries fear that such plans would pressure them to give up their right to peacefully using nuclear energy.

Meanwhile, in May the Dutch minister of Foreign Affairs Verhagen, concluded that the British, German and Dutch (the countries that form the Urenco enrichment consortium) initiative for assured supply for low enriched nuclear fuel failed. In May he wrote to Dutch Parliament that “many countries see this condition (giving up enrichment and reprocessing) as discriminating and an unacceptable violation of their rights under the non-proliferation treaty”.

Another blow for the concept of Multilateral Approaches, which is seen by many proponents of nuclear power as one of the main ways to counter proliferation worries.

Earthtimes, 18 June 2209 / Laka Foundation, 18 may 2009

Discussion on new-build in Germany heats up. Germany's economy minister ruled out building new nuclear power stations but said the life of some reactors might be extended and the development of alternative technologies stepped up. "We need limited extensions until we are able to work with sensible alternative technologies in an economical and environmentally friendly manner," Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily in an interview, published on June 19.. "That includes the possibility of equipping existing nuclear power stations with state-of-the-art technology in order to make them even safer and more efficient," the conservative minister said. "But I see no need to build new nuclear reactors." General elections are due in September. On September 5, a nationwide demonstration will take place in Berlin.

Nuclear Reaction, 22 June 2009

Japan: MOX target delayed. Japanese plans for 16-18 reactors to be using mixed oxide (MOX) fuel by 2010 have been put back by five years, the country's Federation of Electric Power Companies (FEPCO) has announced. Up until 1998, Japan sent the bulk of its used fuel to plants in France and the UK for reprocessing and MOX fabrication. However, since 1999 it has been storing used fuel in anticipation of full-scale operation of its own reprocessing and MOX fabrication facilities. Japan Nuclear Fuel Ltd's (JNFL's) reprocessing plant under construction at Rokkasho-mura is scheduled for completion in August 2009, but earlier this year the company put back the completion date for its planned J-MOX fabrication facility from August 2012 to August 2015. Construction work on the fabrication facility is scheduled to begin in November 2009. Four shipments of reactor-grade plutonium recovered from used fuel have been sent back to Japan from European reprocessing plants since 1992. The most recent arrived in Japan from France in May 2009.

World Nuclear News, 12 June 2009

Australia: union action on radioactive waste. The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) has welcomed the support of Australia’s peak trade union body ACTU in pushing for an end to any federal government move to impose a radioactive waste dump on the Northern Territory and developing a credible and responsible approach to radioactive waste management in Australia. On June 4, the ACTU Congress in Brisbane passed a resolution critical of the government’s delay in delivering on a 2007 election commitment on radioactive waste management and called for an independent and public inquiry into the best options for dealing with radioactive waste.

“The ACTU’s active support in this issue is powerful and very welcome,” said ACF nuclear campaigner Dave Sweeney. “The federal government was elected on a promise to scrap the heavy handed waste dump laws and make radioactive waste policy responsible and transparent.  It has failed to deliver on this promise and this resolution is an important reminder to the government and to Resources Minister Ferguson that the community expects better.”

The ACTU now joins a broad range of environment and public health groups, Indigenous organisations and state, territory and local governments concerned by the federal government’s lack of responsible and inclusive action on this issue.

ACF Press release, 5 June 2009

U.S.: doubts about decommissioning funds. Two days after Associated Press reported that operators of nearly half of the US' 104 nuclear reactors are not setting aside enough funds to cover projected decommissioning costs, the NRC has contacted owners of 18 nuclear power plants asking them to explain how the economic downturn has affected funds they must set aside to cover future decommissioning costs. The AP report said the shortfalls have been caused by a combination of falling investments and rising decommissioning costs. Plant operators are required to establish funding during a reactor's operating life to ensure the reactor site will be properly cleaned up once the plant is permanently closed, the NRC said, adding that its review of the latest reports from reactor operators "suggests several plants must adjust their funding plans." Tim McGinty, director of policy and rulemaking in the NRC's Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation said: "This is not a current safety issue, but the plants do have to prove to us they're setting aside money appropriately."

Platts, 19 June 2009

Sigmar Gabriel, the German environment minister has accused the nuclear power industry of decades of lying to the public about a nuclear dump that is in danger of collapsing and is taking in 12 cubic meters of radioactive brine daily.

Sigmar Gabriel, a Social Democrat, told a newspaper: "We have now found files with proof that the claim that Asse was an exploratory mine was a pack of lies. It was intended to be a final repository right from the start - the nuclear industry used Asse to even save the costs of interim storage. The waste was just tipped in and they even had the audacity to demand that costs be kept as low as possible."

The dump in question is Asse II at Wolfenbüttel near Braunschweig, some 225 km southwest of Berlin. It was meant to be the pilot for a final repository in salt at Gorleben, 135 kms northeast, where illegal plans have just been revealed.

Gabriel demands that the operators of nuclear power stations pay the more than two billion euros it will cost to fix Asse II and that they make a public apology. 

Gabriel cites an exchange of letters in November and December 1969 between the AEG Company and the then operator of Asse II, the Gesellschaft für Strahlenforschung (Society for Radiation Research).

The correspondence explicitly refers to the final storage of radioactive wastes. The operator states that storage capacity would last "until the year 2000".  Gabriel says the operator had even confirmed in writing to the nuclear industry "that the future price of the storage of radioactive waste materials will not be calculated according to strict commercial principles".

He adds that the environment ministry only received the files after massive pressure and a long delay. "The present-day claim that Asse was a research mine is an audacious, fat lie." It was now clear that the responsibility for the catastrophic conditions in Asse II lies with the nuclear industry and its former operator, the Society for Radiation Research.

The minister told the paper: "There was a shameless gang at work. I can only call on the nuclear industry to finally accept its responsibility and apologize publicly." It would have an opportunity to do so next week at a conference of the energy and water industries.

"And the nuclear power station operators must pay for fixing the problem even before lawmakers get active. We can't accept that costs of more than two, perhaps three or four billion euros for fixing a cheap final repository in Asse are dumped on the taxpayers."

A spokesman for the local activists fighting dumping at Gorleben, Wolfgang Ehmke of the Bürgerinitiative Umweltschutz Lüchow-Dannenberg, said Gabriel could use the same drastic words about Gorleben. "We didn't even speak as plainly when it emerged recently that already in the 90s the Gorleben salt dome was being constructed as a final repository." Ehmke adds that since the 80s the nuclear power industry even cited the "exploratory mine" as proof of disposal although not a gram of waste was stored in it and the salt is highly contentious among experts.  "Anyone who claims that open-ended research is being done in Gorleben and a fair, transparent search of alternate sites is being done is lying," says Ehmke.

Environment Minister Gabriel appealed to Chancellor Angela Merkel to make the nuclear industry foot the bill for fixing Asse II. Merkel belongs to the conservative Christian Democrat party, which leads the government, in which the Social Democrats are the junior coalition partners.

It's a fraught relationship and with an election due in September its differences are becoming ever more obvious. Merkel's party backs nuclear power and wants Gorleben officially declared the final waste repository although geologists warn that it has the same problems as Asse.

Germany officially has four deposits for nuclear waste. A pit was dug in salt at Gorleben to explore its suitability and a surface hall nearby holds containers of highly active waste in "interim" storage. Morsleben is an abandoned rock salt mine. Schacht Konrad is a former iron mine.

Source: Diet Simon
Contact: BI Lüchow Dannenberg, Rosenstr. 20, D-29429 Lüchow, Germany.
Tel: +49 - 5841-4684
Email: buero@bi-luechow-dannenberg
http://www.bi-luechow-dannenberg.de

Drop in global nuclear output. Nuclear power plants provided 2601 billion kWh during 2008. This lowest figure for five years drops its contribution to world electricity supplies to an estimated 4%.

No new reactors started operation in 2008, but, according to the World Nuclear Association, construction did begin on ten units: China (six units), Russia (two) and South Korea (two).

World Nuclear Association, 29 May 2009

Sellafield – a lost cause..

In February, in an embarrassing case of remembering ‘where but not what’, operators of the Low Level Waste repository near Drigg had to resort to place an ad in a local newspaper asking past employees if they could remember what items of nuclear waste they had tumble-tipped into the site’s open trenches way back in the 1960’s & ‘70’s. Now, in an equally embarrassing reversal of misfortune – a case of ‘what but not where’, Sellafield operators admit that whilst they can describe two items of waste listed on their books at Sellafield - they can’t remember where they put it. Sellafield’s in-house Newsletter of April 29, reports that a routine stock take had identified that two storage cans containing a small quantity of legacy material were missing from their expected location. A detailed and extensive search was underway and  the incident had been classified at Level 1 on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES).

Whilst the May 8, edition of the Sellafield Newsletter makes no further mention of the loss, the local Whitehaven News newspaper helpfully reveals that the radioactively ‘hot’ storage cans, capable of giving off a high dose of radiation, are still missing and the search for them could take several more weeks. The cans, described as being the size of thermos flasks, can only be handled by remote control robotic equipment and were listed as being stored in a sealed cave within the Windscale Active Handling Facility which analyses old reactor fuel and where human entry is forbidden because of the high radiation levels.

Though Sellafield Ltd is clinging to the hope that the lost cans, described only as containing historic or legacy waste, have been moved to another secure facility on the site, they have so far offered no explanation as to how remotely controlled robots could have effected such a removal service unobserved by managers and workers alike, or by the site’s alert security services. The Regulators have been informed.

CORE Briefing, 8 May 2009

EDF calls for support for nuclear industry. New nuclear power stations will not be built in Britain unless the government provides financial support for the industry. According to the Financial Times, Vincent de Rivaz, chief executive of the UK subsidiary of EDF, said that a “level playing field” had to be created that would allow the nuclear industry to compete with other low-emission electricity sources such as wind power.

However, Mr de Rivaz said the company still needed to assure its investors, which include the French government with an 85 per cent stake, that the investment made commercial sense. “We have a final investment decision to make in 2011 and, for that decision to give the go-ahead, the conditions need to be right,” he said. Mr de Rivaz suggested that the best way to support the nuclear industry would be to make sure penalties paid by rival fossil fuel power generators under the European Union’s emissions trading scheme were kept high enough to make nuclear investment attractive. Since the emissions trading scheme began operating in 2005, however, the price of the permits has proved highly volatile and has fallen sharply in the past year.

His comments call into question the government’s plans for a new generation of nuclear power stations, which ministers have insisted can be delivered without any additional subsidy.

Financial Times, 26 May 2009

German nuclear waste storage site developed illegally?

The salt dome at the Gorleben nuclear waste depot in north Germany was developed illegally into a permanent storage facility claims a newspaper, citing an internal assessment by the government agency that runs the depot. After first refusing to say whether the internal assessment exists, the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) now denies that the salt deposit has already been made a final repository. And it also emerged that Angela Merkel, now German prime minister, in 1996 ignored scientific warnings by the environment ministry she then headed that keeping nuclear waste in the Gorleben salt was likely to contaminate regional drinking water supplies. Since work began on the underground facility in the 1980s, only permission for ‘exploration’ has been granted.

The May 28 edition of the daily Frankfurter Rundschau alleged that without official authorization, the costs of assessing the salt dome’s suitability were high because ’the construction of the permanent storage depot was begun parallel to the investigation’.  Although not wanting to confirm the existence of the document, the paper said, the agency did admit that costs had been higher than necessary. Some 1.5 billion Euro (US$ 2.13 billion) has been invested in the site.

Work on the Gorleben mine has been suspended since 2000, when the government decided to wait until 2010 to resume the controversial project.  The appearance of the documents has confirmed the doubts of nuclear energy opponents, who all along have alleged that Gorleben was earmarked as final repository before the safety of the salt was adequately investigated.

Diet Simon, Email 29 May 2009

U.S.: Obama signs US-UAE nuclear deal.

President Barack Obama gave official backing to the agreement allowing the U.S. to share nuclear technology with the United Arab Emirates. Obama at first planned to sign the deal in April but a number of lawmakers voiced concern, particularly following the airing on U.S. television networks of a video showing an Abu Dhabi sheikh brutally beating an Afghan businessman (see Nuclear monitor 688, 'InBrief'). Some lawmakers argued Abu Dhabi doesn't have enough legal safeguards against leakage of nuclear technologies. U.S. officials said they viewed the nuclear agreement and video as separate issues. The Obama administration has praised the legal infrastructure Abu Dhabi is developing in support of its nuclear program as well its close cooperation with the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog, the IAEA. The U.A.E. has renounced its right to enrich uranium or reprocess plutonium, which, according to U.S. officials, minimizes the risk of nuclear materials being diverted for military purposes. Once the State Department submits the U.A.E. legislation to Congress, lawmakers will have 90 days to amend or seek to kill it. Some U.S. representatives, including Republican vice chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, have said they will fight it. Some say the deal could spark a nuclear arms race across the Mideast.

Wall Street Journal, 21 May 2009

Alberta, Canada: Pro-nuclear vandals strike.

The nuclear debate in Peace River is no longer peaceful. Pro-nuclear vandals attacked a trailer used by nuclear opponents to get their message out. The pro-nuclear vandals painted a swastika and profanity on the side of the trailer. They also threw Molotov cocktails to further destroy the sign. The damage to the sign was bad enough but the situation could have been much worse. They cut the farmer's fence along highway 743 to get into the trailer. The horses in the field could have easily got on the highway and been involved in a collision with a vehicle. It was fortunate that the flames from the Molotov cocktail did not ignite the surrounding dry grass as the ensuing fire could have easily travelled to the farmer's home which was only 200 feet (70 meters) away. The fire could have spread a long way before anyone noticed as the vandals attacked during the middle of the night. This attack on our message came a day after two nuclear opponents received a death threat because of letters they wrote to the newspapers voicing their concerns about the impact the nuclear reactors will have on their farms. The police are investigating both occurrences.

Bruce Power announced they have set aside Can$50 million (US$45m, 32m Euro) to promote the construction of a nuclear reactor at Peace River. Grass-roots organizations and community residents have virtually no resources to publicize the nuclear information that Bruce Power doesn't want the public to know about. The trailer that was attacked by "pro-nuclear vandals" used up the majority of our resources.

Peace River residents are being asked to be the nuclear sacrifice zone for Alberta yet the local, provincial and national media have provided scant coverage of our concerns. This week, it was vandalism and death threats. Will someone have to be hurt or killed before our struggle becomes newsworthy?

Email: 10 May 2009, Pat McNamara, entwork@hotmail.com

In 1977 the Gorleben saltdome was assigned as the location for the disposal of German high-level radioactive waste. The mine, planned to be used as a disposal site for high-level radioactive waste in a saltdome at Gorleben, is about half finished. Until now, 1.3 billion Euro is spent. It will take a few decades more before the first waste-container can be stored, unless the whole project is skipped due to ungoing scientific and popular opposition.

At 840 meters below surface there is a large space with nets under the ceiling to prevent pieces of salt from falling down. There are two shafts 400 meters from eachother. Between both shafts a system of horizontal galleries (7,5 meter wide and 5 meter high) is constructed to allow natural air circulation. It is 37 degrees Celcius and there are measuring apparatus in side-walls, floor and ceiling to measure the convergence: the movement of salt. In 3,5 years (2002-2005) the convergence was 60 centimeters. Therefore employees have to scrape the galleries to keep them at the necessary height.

In 2005 Joachim Kutowski (head of the Department Geology Gorleben of the DBE -the German Company for Contruction and Operation of Final Waste Disposal) pointed out that saltdomes are not very suitable for retrievable storage of radioactive waste, because in time the galleries will silt up. Furthermore the radioactive waste produces heat and the containers can sink away in warmer salt layers and it would then not be easy to locate them if necessary for retrieval. The highest point of the saltdome is 250 meters below the surface level.

During construction the DBE located several carnallite-layers (hydrated potassium-magnesium-chloride) which had to be sidestepped. Therefor the actual disposal will, according to Kutowski, be at a different location at the dome than originally foreseen. Because the high level waste produces heat, the casks have to be stored 50 meters from each other. Given the amount of waste, twice as much space is needed as available now. From the galleries and shafts holes have to be digged out to store the waste in.

One of the reasons for the opposition to believe the saltdome is not suitable is that it is not even meeting its own standards: there should be a layer of impermeable clay over the saltdome, but it is missing for a few square kilometers. So the question is why Gorleben was chosen in the first place? Kutowski states that the decision to see Gorleben as the prime location might not have been taken on just geological grounds but also for political reasons: unemployment, located near the East-German border (but after the reunification in 1990 is was suddenly located in the heart of Germany) Kutowski said in 2005: “So there was no pile of scientific evidence in favor of Gorleben. It was about finding a suitable location, not the best available one”.

This was again confirmed in April this year when it was revealed that in de mid 1980s government geologists were bullied by top government officials to change their findings regarding the suitability of the Gorleben location.

This has been revealed by Professor Helmut Röthemeyer, pensioned former department head of the Federal Physics Technology Agency (PTB), which examined the salt deposit at Gorleben in the mid-80s. The PTB commissioned deep drilling of the salt dome and because of what they revealed it advised against using the salt as a final nuclear repository. The testdrillings hadn’t delivered the hoped-for findings. It was discovered that in the Ice Age a groove was made by a runnel (a small stream) through the stone covering the salt making the stone “unable to hold back contaminations from the biosphere over time”.

When a meeting was called with another federal agency to discuss the findings and the recommendation to explore other sites, Röthemeyer explaines, unexpectedly representatives of the federal chancellor’s [prime minister’s] office, the research and technology ministry and the interior ministry also attended. (There was no environment ministry until after the Chernobyl explosion in Ukraine.) The ministry officials demanded that the PTB change its findings. "There was nothing in writing,” Röthemeyer told the newspaper, “there was no written order, but we clearly had to take that conversation as an order.”

The group fighting nuclear waste dumping at Gorleben says they’ve twice demanded the Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS), which succeeded the PTB, to hand them records of the position taken by the PTB or to at least see them. “The irrelevant criteria for the 1977choice of location paired with this wrong course setting in the mid-80s led nuclear waste disposal into the next dead end,” says the group’s media spokesman, Wolfgang Ehmke on April 19, 2009.

In the 2000 Phase-out law, a 10-year moratorium was declared to give the then SPD/Green coalition time to renew the search for another site. Very little happened afterwards.

In September last year a damning report about nuclear waste leaking from the Asse II storage facility in Lower Saxony became known. The report said nearly 130,000 barrels of low- to medium-grade nuclear waste had been mishandled and warned that groundwater leaking from the mine was radioactive. Environment minister Gabriel said Asse-II was "the most problematic nuclear facility in Europe" -- in part because the mine stood in danger of collapse. The Asse scandal (Asse II is geologically similar to Gorleben) could derail the plans of the CDU/CSU to start drilling again at Gorleben as soon as possible in order to show the population that progress was being made on the issue of storage and to postpone the planned phaseout of nuclear power.

Sources: Press release, BI Luchow-Dannenberg, 19 April 2009 / Der Spiegel online, 4 September 2008 / Nuclear Monitor 625, 8 April 2005

Good news from the highest administrative court in Germany: The country's two oldest nuclear power stations are not allowed to extend their operation. Anti-nuclear groups are likely to rejoice. This decision makes it even more likely that all nuclear power stations in Germany will stop operation in a bit more than a decade, as in the corresponding law.

The ruling by the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig concerns the power stations at Brunsbüttel, about 90 kilometers from Hamburg at the mouth of the Elbe River, and Biblis A, about 60 kilometers from Frankfurt. Hamburg is Germany's second-largest city with about 1.7 million people, Frankfurt its fourth-largest with 650,000.

Block A in Biblis was the first nuclear power plant in the then West Germany, starting operation in 1961. Brunsbüttel started up in 1976. Both nukes have a history of mishaps, including near-meltdown at Brunsbüttel. Biblis has the dubious reputation of being a "junkyard reactor" because of the frequency of its breakdowns.

The Leipzig judgment, handed down on 26 March, 2009, confirmed those of lower courts and rejected complaints by the power companies operating the plants. The owners wanted to achieve longer running times by transferring the remaining output quota of another station to these two.

There is tension in the fractious coalition government of conservatives and social democrats over a past government's law (the 2000 Phase-out law) to close down all German nuclear power production in about ten years. According to the German Ministry of the Environment (BMU), Biblis A has some 180 operational days to go ('Restlaufzeit').

Because Brunsbüttel is out of operation since an accident in July 2007 the closure, originally planned spring 2009, is now set far beyond the September general elections (actually 2012). Neckarwestheim-I will likely be the next one to be closed and has some 320 operational days left. According to the phase-out law, the last of the 17 nuclear power plants has to shut down in 2022. (See table)

The power industry is lobbying hard to have the law overturned and is backed in this by Chancellor Angela Merkel, a conservative. Nuclear power will be an important issue in the coming national elections late September. On September 5, three weeks before the elections, a nation-wide antinuclear demonstration is planned in Berlin. The demonstration is also to commemorate the 'Tractor-treck' 30 years ago, when farmers from the Wendland-region traveled to Hannover (the capital of Lower Saxony) to protest the plans for a reprocessing plant, a nuclear fuel plant, an interim storage and a final disposal-facility at Gorleben. In Hannover, five days later, 100,000 people joined the farmers in one of the largest anti-nuclear demonstrations in Germany.

Source: Diet Simon / website BMU: http://www.erneuerbare-energien.de/inhalt/43032/4590/

Contact:  BI Umweltschutz Lüchow-Dannenberge.v., Rosenstr. 20, 29439 Lüchow, Germany
Tel: +49 5841 4684
Email: buero@bi-luechow-dannenberg.de
Web: www.bi-luechow-dannenberg.de

Closure dates German nuclear reactors (January 2009)

Crisis? What crisis!

A uranium supply crunch could be around the corner due to industry-wide cuts to development projects, rising demand, and uncertainty about Russia's plans for its decommissioned nuclear arsenal, Jerry Grandey, CEO of uranium company Cameco Corp, said on March 11. Grandey expects a situation where uranium will be in high demand because of cuts among miners left under funded due to tight credit conditions. "I think the financial crisis is clearly impacting the ability of every supplier to raise capital," he said. "When you see project cancellations, you see expansion derail, you see some projects that will just go slower. That is just simply taking away future supply and sowing the seeds of the next spike in the uranium price."

He said global mined output is 115 million pounds a year, compared with consumption of about 180 million pounds that he expects to grow at between 2 and 3 percent per year. (1 pound –lbs- is 0.45 kg) The shortfall has been made up by stockpiles, as well as annual sales of about 24 million pounds of uranium from decommissioned Russian nuclear weapons, which Cameco manages along with two partners under a 1999 commercial agreement. That deal expires in 2013, and Grandey said questions linger about how much uranium Russia may sell past that date, and how much may have degraded past the point where it can be sold. He said many expect Russian sales could fall by half.

Reuters, 11 March 2009

EDF: Slash renewables target to protect nuclear.

EDF and E.ON have warned the U.K. government they may be forced to drop plans to build a new generation of nuclear power plants unless the government scales back its targets for wind power. The demand – contained in submissions to the government's renewable energy consultation – reinforces the worries of wind developers that the two sectors cannot thrive simultaneously. Électricité de France (EDF) is calling on the government to lower its proposed renewable electricity target from 35% of supply in 2020 to just 20%. The company says building the wind capacity needed to hit a 35% target is “not realistic or indeed desirable” due to the problem of intermittency. EDF’s views were revealed early March when the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) published a summary of responses to its consultation on its renewables strategy. EDF’s response says that at times of high wind, output from wind and nuclear could exceed demand. “As a result… plant will need to be curtailed i.e. instructed not to generate.” In reality, only nuclear will be curtailed, it says, as wind generation is subsidised so operators will pay to continue generating. The UK will also need wind farms to operate to meet its EU renewable energy target. If nuclear plants have to be regularly turned off, this “damages the economics of these projects, meaning that less will be built.”

ENDS report, 12 March 2009 / Guardian, 16 March 2009

UK: Sellafield clean-up bill.

Why did the U.K. government use an emergency procedure over the Sellafield clean-up bill? The dispute over whether the government followed the rules in telling parliament that it would land the taxpayer with an unlimited bill in the event of a nuclear accident at Sellafield has taken a further twist. Paul Flynn, the Labour MP for Newport West, has tabled an early day motion asking whether the indemnity covering the private owners of Sellafield is valid.

Flynn has pursued two successive energy ministers, Malcolm Wicks and then Mike O'Brien, since the government used emergency procedures last summer to inform parliament that the taxpayer would foot an unlimited bill following a nuclear leak or explosion at the plant.

Wicks and O'Brien said the government had to do this because the matter was urgent. Both admit errors in not placing the details of the change in the House of Commons library so that any MP who wanted to object could raise this in parliament. They said that if they had not done this the contracts allowing a big US-led consortium to run Sellafield could not go ahead.

But when a parliamentary researcher, David Lowry, tabled a freedom of information request it was revealed that civil servants knew months before they applied for an indemnity that they would have to do so – suggesting the emergency procedure was not necessary in the first place. (See also NM 682, 'In brief' and 675; 'Consortium selected for Sellafield').

Guardian (UK) blog by David Hencke, 10 March 2009

IAEA: vote for new Director General in March.

The International Atomic Energy Agency's board of governors will vote on March 26 for a new director in a closed session. There are two nominations to succeed Mohamed ElBaradei: Japan's ambassador to the agency, Yukiya Amano, backed mainly by industrialized countries, and South Africa's Abdul Samad Minty, with core support among developing nations. In order to be appointed, a candidate must secure a two-thirds vote of the 35-member IAEA Board of Governors by secret balloting.

IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei, who shared the Nobel peace prize with his agency in 2005, leaves office in November after 12 years. Industrialized nations want an IAEA chief less politically outspoken than ElBaradei, sticking more to executing the IAEA's technical mandate, whose priority they see as preventing diversions of nuclear energy to bomb making.

They believe the low-key Amano would depoliticise the agency better than Minty, a former anti-apartheid activist identified with developing nation positions on disarmament. But developing nations see Amano as too close to Western powers.

Reuters, 5 March 2009 / IAEA Staff Report, 12 March 2009

Construction means delays and cost overruns, always and everywhere.

Taiwan: on March 9, Taipower chairman Chen Kuei-ming told the legislature an additional NT$40 billion (US$1.15 billion) to NT$50 billion would be needed if the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant is to reach a stage where its two generator units can begin operations in 2011 and 2012. The additional funding would bring the construction costs at the Gongliao, Taipei County, plant to between NT$270 billion and NT$280 billion, Chen said. On the same day, Minister of Economic Affairs Yiin Chii-ming said it was unlikely that the plant would be completed tin 2009 as scheduled. “It will probably take two more years,” he said.

Taipei Times, 10 March 2009

Australia: The battle for Indigenous hearts and mines.

The Australian Uranium Association has launched a new strategy in an attempt to outflank continuing concern from many Indigenous Australians over the environmental and social impacts of uranium mining. The AUA is the industry’s main lobby group and is comprised of many of Australia’s uranium producers and explorers including resource giants BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto. It is attempting to reposition the uranium industry as a solution to widespread Indigenous poverty in remote and regional Australia and in February launched its Indigenous Dialogue Group – a twice-yearly forum of executives from five uranium companies and five Aboriginal representatives. The move has attracted sharp criticism from many Indigenous people who rearranged the acronym to spell DIG – the industry’s real agenda. The Australian Nuclear Free Alliance, a network of Indigenous, environment and public health individuals and organisations formed in 1997, has condemned the move as an industry PR exercise. ANFA committee member and 2008 Nuclear Free Future Award winner Jillian Marsh stated, “It is cynical for the uranium industry to act as if it can deliver for Aboriginal people. The main lasting effect of uranium mining for Aboriginal people is radioactive waste on their country and no resources to clean up the mess left by miners.”

....and more Australia: 

French nuclear giant Areva has a setback to its plans to develop the Koongarra uranium deposit inside Kakadu national park in the Northern Territory with traditional Aboriginal owners strongly rejecting a company application for development consent. Koongarra is fully surrounded by but not technically part of the World heritage listed Kakadu, Australia’s largest national park. At a meeting in February traditional owners heard from the company and discussed the potential impacts of a large scale uranium operation near the highly visited and culturally significant Nourlangie Rock before rejecting the Areva plan and calling for the long term protection of the Koongarra region. Under the provisions of the Aboriginal Land Rights Act the decision means that there will be a five-year moratorium before Areva can again seek development consent.

Dave Sweeney, e-mail 17 March 2009

U.S. Department of Energy cannot account for nuclear materials at 15 locations.

A number of U.S. institutions with licenses to hold nuclear material reported to the Department of Energy (DOE) in 2004 that the amount of material they held were less than agency records indicated. But rather than investigating the discrepancies, Energy officials wrote off significant quantities of nuclear material from the department's inventory records. That's just one of the findings of a report released February 23 by Energy Department Inspector General Gregory Friedman that concluded "the department cannot properly account for and effectively manage its nuclear materials maintained by domestic licensees and may be unable to detect lost or stolen material."

Auditors found that Energy could not accurately account for the quantities and locations of nuclear material at 15 out of 40, or 37 percent, of facilities reviewed. The materials written off included 20,580 grams of enriched uranium, 45 grams of plutonium, 5,001 kilograms of normal uranium and 189,139 kilograms of depleted uranium.

"Considering the potential health risks associated with these materials and the potential for misuse should they fall into the wrong hands, the quantities written off were significant," the report says. "Even in small quantities normally held by individual domestic licensees, special nuclear materials such as enriched uranium and plutonium, if not properly handled, potentially pose serious health hazards."

Auditors also found that waste-processing facilities could not locate or explain the whereabouts of significant quantities of uranium and other nuclear material that Energy Department records showed they held. In another case, Energy officials had no record of the fact that one academic institution had loaned a 32-gram plutonium- beryllium source to another institution.

Global Security Newswire, 24 February 2009

Chinese expert warns of nuclear talents vacuum.

Even China, supposedly the country with the largest nuclear power expansion program acknowledges its limitations. The country is in great need of nuclear science talents from the young generation, a nuclear physicist said in Beijing early March. Zhu Zhiyuan, director of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Shanghai Branch, said China must step up efforts to attract and cultivate more young nuclear talents, in order to meet the demand of the country's future development.

China has already strengthened nuclear science education in recent years. However, according to Zhu Zhiyuan, these efforts could not at once make up for the lack of nuclear specialist education in the country caused by previous insufficient attention towards the field for more than a decade. "Many young people at the time were simply afraid of nuclear technologies, while others assumed the prospect of nuclear power as unpromising," Zhu said. Even now, few of the students enrolled in nuclear physics departments of Chinese universities or research institutes chose the field as their top choice.

Xinhua, 3 March 2009

Philippines: Protest against re-commissioning Bataan increases.

It seems as the Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC) intensifies its protest over House Bill 4631 authored by Rep. Mark Cojuangco mandating the rehabilitation, re-commissioning and commercial use of the mothballed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant (BNPP). In a March 5 protest action in front of the House of Representatives and coinciding with a Committee on Appropriations hearing on the BNPP, FDC advocates wore eyeball replicas with the retina part covered with a radiation symbol to symbolize the people’s vigilant watch over attempts to revive the contentious nuclear facility in Morong, Bataan through a legislative measure. “From now on, the public and the broad social movement against the revival of BNPP will keep tabs on each legislator’s position, action and/or inaction on the said issue. However, special attention will be given to the 184 legislators who have rendered their support to the said bill,” FDC said in a statement.

FDC said legislators should be wary of their constituents’ perception concerning their support for the opening of BNPP.  Through a sustained information and education campaign, their constituents are being made aware of the dangers of the BNPP and its enormous weight on the economic life of the people should the bill be passed into law. The group also warned legislators vying for re-election in 2010 that support for the BNPP revival bill, without first understanding the dangers of the nuclear power plant from reliable scientific study could be a “kiss of death” come election day.

For more on the anti-Bataan campaign: http://notobnpp.wordpress.com/

Press release Free from Debt Coalition, 5 March 2009

EDF in antitrust spotlight.

On March 11, investigators from the European Commission raided the offices of Électricité de France (EDF) seeking evidence of price-fixing in the French electricity market.

Commission officials were joined by inspectors from the French Competition Authority in a raid on the utility's headquarters in Paris. The Commission said that it suspected that EDF was engaged in activity that abused its dominant position in the market. "The suspected illegal conduct may include actions to raise prices on the French wholesale electricity market," it said.

The state-controlled company generates and supplies most of the electricity used in France, while also controlling the transmission grid operator RTE. The primary sources for EDF’ s electricity is a fleet of 58 nuclear reactors, while other sources include hydro and gas. A "true internal energy market" is a main goal of European energy policy, as is a minimum of 10% interconnection between national grids and further separation of power generation and transmission.

The Times, 12 March 2009 / WNN, 12 March 2009

Germany wide protest against RWE and Belene.

From 1 to 8 March, protests took place in 54 German towns against the construction of the nuclear power station Belene in North Bulgaria. The protests focus on RWE, because Germany's second largest energy company wants to invest over 1,5 Billion Euros into the nuclear power plant on the shores of the Danube. With the week of protest, environmental groups want to commemorate the large 1977 earthquake in the Belene region. During that quake, only several kilometres from the planned nuclear site blocks of flats collapsed and over 120 people were killed. "Nuclear power stations have no place in an earthquake zone," comments Schuecking and points out that the European Seismological Commission predicts medium to heavy earthquakes for the Belene region. According to estimates of the environmental organisation, Belene is one of the most dangerous nuclear power stations currently planned in Europe.

Protest actions took place against RWE and some of their important shareholders. In the Ruhr region and  Westphalia protesters picketed in front of RWE client centres. In

municipalities that are shareholders of RWE and whose mayors have a seat in the RWE board, protests were held in front of town halls. In Southern and Northern German, protests concentrated on the Allianz insurance company, which is with almost 5% the single largest German shareholder in RWE.

Urgewald, press release, 3 March 2009 / www.ausgestrahlt.de

Germany's supreme court has handed down a ruling that nuclear opponents welcome as strengthening their rights. The group that has resisted nuclear waste dumping at the north German village of Gorleben for 31 years says the ruling, confirming the right of residents along the waste transport routes to litigate against the transports, is a clear reprimand of lower courts.        

The Lüchow-Dannenberg Civic Initiative for the Environment (BI) sees the ruling "strengthening the cause of the nuclear opponents". For years lower administrative courts had refused complainants along the route to Gorleben the right to challenge transport permits issued under nuclear law.        

The supreme court now ruled in favour of two complainants who argued that their constitutional rights were breached because they were refused access to lower courts since 2003. The BI now contends that the judgment proves that "for years a gigantic police apparatus was used to transport nuclear waste to Gorleben on a questionable legal basis".

"We have always demanded that protection of the population must take priority over protection of purely financial interests of the atomic industry," commented a BI spokesman. Moreover, during the last transport (in November) the radiation minimisation regulation was breached because the casks contained substantially more radioactive material and radiated significantly more.

That was why police leaders gave out the order beforehand that police should stay at least 6.5 metres away from a critical danger zone. "But what about the population, houses and plots along the transport route that are knowingly and directly exposed to the high radiation risk?"

The BI spokesman states that breaches of basic rights are regularly and knowingly committed whenever nuclear waste is transported.

On the agenda of breaches to enforce the transports against the interests of the population are the basic right to life and physical integrity (Art. 2), the right to freedom of assembly (Art. 8), the right to privacy of correspondence, posts and telecommunication (Art. 10) and the right to property (Art. 14). And finally, Article 19 assures every citizen: 'Should any person's rights be violated by public authority, he may have recourse to the courts.'

The supreme court said the female plaintiff's right to effective legal protection was violated because the lower court denied her access to appeal in an unacceptable manner. The BI is still waiting for a supreme court ruling on assembly bans along the transport routes.        

In another development, nuclear opponents are furious that the Asse II nuclear dump in an old salt mine that is taking in water, is to be fixed at taxpayers' expense. Some 75% of the radiation of the waste stored in Asse, is coming from nuclear power plants. The companies of those plants -EnBW, Eon, RWE and Vattenfall- are, according to a proposed chance of the German Atomic Law are to be let off the hook. The repairs are to cost billions of euros

Sources:  Diet Simon, email: 30 January 2009 / http://www.ausgestrahlt.de/atom/asse-mail

German Nuclear Waste Site in Danger of collapsing.
The Federal Office for Radiation Protection (BfS) had learned late last year that pieces of the ceiling of the 750-meter deep chamber were unstable and could collapse on top of the 6,000 radioactive waste drums below. The information about the Asse nuclear waste site  (an old salt mine) was posted discreetly on the radiation office's Web site late Wednesday, January 14. The BfS said it could not rule out damage to the waste containers should the Asse site ceiling collapse, but gave its reassurances that it would reinforce the seals of the chamber with concrete to stop any radioactive dust or air escaping. The office said the measures were only a precaution and that there was no immediate danger posed by the site. It said the waste inside the chamber contained only low-levels of radioactivity. The site has not been used for fresh radioactive storage since 1978, with environmental groups regularly calling for waste there to be removed and stored in a safer location.

Deutsche Welle, 16 January 2009

Brazil to start enriching uranium at Resende. Industriás Nucleares do Brasil (INB) has been issued a temporary licence by the Brazilian Nuclear Energy Commission (CNEN) to start enriching uranium on an industrial scale at its Resende plant.

INB has held an environmental licence to enrich uranium since November 2006, but the plant's operating permit, which is valid for one year, has been now been amended by the CNEN. Production of enriched uranium is expected to begin in February, with some 12 tons of enriched uranium expected to be produced by the end of 2009. The ultra-centrifugation enrichment technology used at the plant was developed by the Naval Technology Centre in Sao Paulo (CTMSP) and the Institute of Energy and Nuclear Research (IPEN). However, the technology is similar to Urenco's technology.

The Resende plant currently has two cascades of centrifuges. The first cascade commenced operation in 2006 and the second was expected to do so in 2008. Stage 1 - eventually to be four modules totalling 115,000 SWU per year and costing US$170 million - was officially opened in 2006. Each module consists of four or five cascades of 5000-6000 SWU per year. It is planned that a further eight cascades are installed by 2012, which will take the capacity to 200,000 SWU. By that time, INB is expected to be able to produce all the enriched uranium used in the Angra 1 reactor and 20% of that used in Angra 2. Those are the country's only operating power units at the moment, although plans to complete Angra 3 are advancing and many more reactors are expected in time.

Up until now, uranium used to fuel Brazil's nuclear power reactors has been sent as uranium concentrate to Cameco in Canada to be converted into uranium hexafluoride (UF₆) gas, which has then been sent to Urenco's enrichment plants in Europe. After enrichment, the gas has been returned to Brazil for INB to reconvert the UF₆ gas to powder, which is then used to produce nuclear fuel pellets.

World Nuclear News, 14 January 2009

Australia/UK: Plutonium secretly dumped at sea?
Declassified UK Government files show that 500g of plutonium and about 20 kg of radioactive wastes were secretly removed from the 1950s bomb test site at Maralinga in Australia. The UK Government removed the wastes in 1978 and although there is no official record of what happened to it the suggestion in the files is that it was secretly dumped at sea.

N-base Briefing 596, 7 January 2009

Sellafield privatisation: Rushed liabilities deal
Commercial insurance companies refused to consider any policy regarding liabilities for an accident at Sellafield which might be bought in courts outside the UK which were not party to existing liability conventions. Energy minister Mike O'Brien told the House of Commons the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority approached the nuclear insurance market in 2007 when it was preparing the contract for a private company to run Sellafield. The Government and NDA eventually indemnified the private companies chosen to run Sellafield and the Drigg waste facility against any costs arising from an accident - even if it was shown to be the fault of the commercial company.

Meanwhile, documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show the lengths ministers and civil servants took to prevent MPs from having the opportunity to discuss the decision to make the contract for running Sellafield more financially attractive to private companies. The Government agreed to take over responsibility for the costs of any accidents at Sellafield after the preferred bidders, Nuclear Management Partners, said it would not sign the contract unless it was indemnified against all costs. Ministers abandoned normal procedures to ensure that by the time MPs learned of the arrangements it would be too late to make any changes.

N-base Briefing 596 & 597, 7 & 14 January 2009

Turkey: AtomStroyExport revises bid.
A consortium led by Russia's AtomStroyExport submitted a revised bid for the tender to build Turkey's first nuclear power plant minutes after the contents of its initial bid were announced. At 21.16 cents per kWh, the initial bid submitted by the consortium is nearly triple the current Turkish average wholesale electricity price of 7.9 cents per kWh. Turkish energy minister Hilmi Guller told a press conference that AtomStroyExport had submitted a revised price "linked to world economic developments". Although it would be unorthodox for a bid to be revised once submitted in the tender process, AtomStroyExport's is the only bid on the table and Guller suggested that there would be room for bargaining. The revised bid would be opened and assessed by Turkish state electricity company TETAS who would assess it before passing it on to the country's cabinet for approval. No details of the revised bid have been released.

Turkish plans call for the country's first nuclear power plant to be operational by 2014, with proposals for 10-12 reactors by 2020 but would-be reactor builders appear to be treading carefully. Although six parties participated in the tendering process for the country's first nuclear reactor, AtomStroyExport's consortium was the only one actually to submit a bid.

World Nuclear news, 20 January 2009

Australia : no nukes to cut carbon emissions.
The Australian government  will not choose for nuclear power to help tackle climate change. The Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering - representing engineers and scientists – urged to do so in a report, calling the government to spend A$6 billion on researching ways to slash the carbon emissions from electricity generation. The academy's report says no single technology will solve climate change, and takes a look at everything from nuclear power to clean coal and renewable energy.
Federal Energy Minister Martin Ferguson responded by saying the government was committed to meeting its greenhouse gas reduction targets without turning to nuclear power. "It is the government's view that nuclear power is not needed as part of Australia's energy mix given our country's abundance and diversity of low-cost renewable energy sources," he said. "The government has a clear policy of prohibiting the development of an Australian nuclear power industry." The report's author Dr John Burgess said he was not disappointed by the minister's comments on nuclear power. "I guess what we're slightly concerned about is that without nuclear energy the other technologies have to work," Dr Burgess said.

The statement is important as the world is starting to prepare for the crucial Climate talks in Copenhagen, Denmark, December this year. If nuclear power will not get the support of major players (ie. financial state aid, subsidies via post-Kyoto flexible mechanisms as CDM and the Carbon Trade schemes) it will be considered and received as a major knock-out to the nuclear industry.

Business Spectator, 16 January 2009

Russian economic crisis decreases nuclear safety.
The nuclear industry in Russia is being negatively affected by the countries economic crisis; and the situation is expected to worsen in 2009. This is according to a recently released annual report by the states nuclear regulatory body. Ongoing job cuts at nuclear facilities include the personnel directly responsible for safety control. Activists call on the Russian government to quickly adopt a plan to insure public safety and nuclear security. The deteriorating social and economic situation in Russia is likely to result in significant drop of nuclear safety' level at many nuclear facilities. Some nuclear facilities have already seen jobs cut because of reduced national income due to declining oil prices and the global recession.  It is possible that further cut jobs in Russians and may bring back the nuclear proliferation problems related to illegal trade of radioactive materials. These radioactive materials can be used for building a "dirty bomb". According to governmental report, obtained by Ecodefense, staff cuts have been underway since 2007.

According to the recently released annual report written by the Russian nuclear regulator, Rostekhnadzor,  there have been "job cuts at facilities responsible for nuclear-fuel cycle of personnel responsible for safety control and maintenance". The report also criticises nuclear facilities management for "not paying enough attention to ensuring nuclear safety". In a disturbing criticism of iteself, Rostekhnadzor reports that it doesn't have enough safety inspectors to do it's own job properly.

Press release Ecodefense, 23 December 2008