UK nuke dump plan caving in...
(June 25, 1992) NIREX has decided to postpone its planning application for an underground nuclear waste dump at Sellafield in Cumbria by one year. It claims the delay is required to gain more information and a "fuller understanding" of the Sellafield site and the dump design. The decision, says Friends of the Earth-London, (FOE) is "one step short of a full retreat". One year, the group says, is nowhere near enough time to fill in the knowledge gaps in NIREX's plans. Over the last 12 months, FOE has detailed several fundamental flaws in NIREX's plans for a dump it claimed would be 'safe for all time'. For more information, contact: Simon Roberts, FOE, 26-28 Underwood St., London N1 7QJ, UK; tel: +44-071 490 0224. FOE (GreenNet, foe.press, 3 June 1992)
...while costs escalate by £800 million. The predicted bill for the proposed Nirex nuclear waste dump has escalated by more than 30 per cent in the past eleven months, Friends of the Earth (FOE) has disclosed. Nirex now estimates that the dump will cost £3.3 billion, compared to £2.5 billion quoted when Nirex named Sellafield in Cumbria as its chosen site for further investigation in July 1991. The new costs were explicitly ignored when Nirex announced its one year delay in submitting a planning application for the proposed dump on 2 June 1992. [In that announcement, Nirex stated that: "The revised timing is unlikely to have a significant effect on the total program costs".] FOE expects the costs will inevitably escalate further as Nirex attempts to reconcile the fundamental contradictions in its safety case. Contact: Dr. Patrick Green, tel: +44 71-253 4156 or -328 3837 (home); for address, see above. FOE (GreenNet, foe.press, 23 June 1992)
Series of 'incidents' at French facilities include contamination of workers. A series of incidents which have occurred since last fall have affected the French nuclear facilities at Saclay, Fontenay-aux-Roses, Cadarache, Grenoble, and Marcoule. Although the French nuclear regulatory agency DSIN refers to them as "mini-incidents", one of them (a level 2 on the French scale), which occurred at one of the labora-tories at Saclay and Cadarache, involved the dispersion of uranium and plutonium workshop and contaminated five rooms and five employees' protective clothing. DSIN says that while none of the incidents was too serious in itself, taken together they "revealed certain deviations in the facilities" operation. Besides the incidents of last fall, authorities discovered 21 deviations from technical specifications at Saclay, two at Grenoble, and 13 at Cadarache. The most serious of these involved "disrespect" of more im-portant rules, such as those designed to guarantee against criticality risk in handling of plutonium and enriched uranium.Nucleonics Week (US), 14 May 1992
Worker contaminated at US uranium facility. On 1 May at the Sequoyah Fuels uranium conversion plant, a worker had to "evacuate" in "a small cloud of uranium mist" after a mysteriously overpressurized pipeline in the DUF4 production building blew a gasket. [Honestly! That's what Sequoyah Fuels management actually said.] In a press release, SFC said the alert had been triggered by "a potential leak" of uranium. But the leak was actual. A crew in moon suits had to decontaminate the DUF4 building. The NRC says no uranium leaked to the outside. Nucleonics Week (US), 11 May 1992, p.6
July 18-20: National Organizing Meeting on Space Nuclear Power and Weapons, Washington DC, US. The Florida Coalition for Peace and Justice, which for several years has been active in opposing the government's plans to develop and deploy a space nuclear reactor, is hosting this meeting. The purpose of the meeting is to develop a national movement against nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons in space. For registration information, contact: the Coalition at P.O. Box 2486, Orlando FL 32802, USA, or call +1 407 422 3479.
European directory of renewable energy suppliers and services 1992, Cross, B. (Ed.), James & James Science Publishers Limited, 360pp plus 56pp, ISBN 1-873936-10-9. Focusing on Europe, the directory contains overviews of activities in the main fields of renewable energy (eg. biomass, photovoltaics), editorial articles contributed by government or national body representatives on each renewable energy field, specific projects described as case studies, listings of conferences and courses, a bibliography, an overview of organi-zations active in renewable energy, glossaries of terms and a detailed index. Also contains a 56-page supplement giving some information on renewable energy in the US. The directory is sponsored by a number of renewable energy companies in Europe. A useful tool for energy activists, though the price is high and no discount is offered for citizen's groups (review copies are available, however). Order from James & James Science Publishers, 5 Castle Road, London NW1 8PR, UK, Fax: +44 71 284 3737 (Cost: ?24.95). In North America: Books International, P.O. Box 605, Herndon VA 22070, USA, Fax: +1 703 689 0660 (Cost: US$45.00).