USA: Serious March 2006 event revealed.
(May 18, 2007) A recently published NRC report published in the US Federal Register, details the events from FiscalYear2006 which commissioners consider to be significant from the standpoint of public health and safety. One passage details the High Enriched Uranium pillage, which took place at Nuclear Fuel Services' (NFS's) fuel fabrication facility in Erwin, Tennessee, on 6 March 2006. The facility is used to make nuclear fuel for naval reactors.
The event occurred when 35 liters of HEU solution leaked into a glovebox while being transferred. The glovebox would normally have been sealed tightly, but workers had recently moved it and failed to reseal it correctly. The HEU solution was thus able to leak from the glovebox onto the floor and then into an elevator pit where it accumulated.
The NRC report states that criticality would have been possible both in the glovebox and in the elevator pit, but not that criticality ever occurred. It continues to say that "the total volume of the transfer would have been more than enough for criticality in the glovebox or the elevator pit."
Criticality is when a chain reaction releasing heat and large amounts of radiation is initiated within a body of material containing a critical mass of U-235 or another fissile element such as U-233, Pu-239, or Pu-241. This is normally made impossible by very strictly limiting amounts and locations of materials and also by the geometry of vessels made to contain them. The report says that if a criticality accident had occurred in the glovebox or the pit "it is likely that at least one worker would have received an exposure high enough to cause acute health effects or death."
In response to the event, NFS stopped HEU processing in the area of the event and removed the processing enclosure and all its pipework. NFS also filled in the elevator pit with concrete and conducted an extensive review to identify any similar configuration issues.
World Nuclear News, 9 May 2007
BNP Paribas to finance start-up of Belene nuclear construction with 250 mln euro...
(May 18, 2007) The French Bank BNP Paribas has won the tender to provide a 250 million euro loan-financing for the construction of the new 2,000MW nuclear power plant at Belene, Bulgaria., Russian news agency ITAR-TASS reported on May 14. According to the news report, the bank will lead a group of partners in securing the credit of 250 mln euro (US$410 million) needed for the launch of construction. According to industry experts the sum is enough to cover the necessary expenses for the first year, including designing, equipment supply, and beginning of construction works.
The Bulgarian national electricity company NEK confirmed the selection of BNP Paribas but said the loan agreement has not been signed yet. The construction of the Belene NPP has been commissioned to Russia's AtomStroyExport. The final agreement for implementation of the project is expected to be signed before the end of 2007.
The construction contract with Atomstroyexport has a value of 3,997 billion euro and the total construction budget of Belene is estimated to pass 5 Billion Euro. BNP Paribas was the only one of 12 banks not to react on letters from Bulgarian NGOs, WISE and Greenpeace, exposing the risks to investments in the Belene nuclear power plant. All other banks withdrew their initial interest in the project or made their interest depending on strong sustainability conditions. These banks include amongst others leading banks in Central Europe as UniCredit / HVB / Bank Austria - Creditanstalt, Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, Sociètè Gènerale, KBC and JP Morgan Chase. BNP Paribas employs former Bulgarian Energy Minister Milko Kovachev, the architect of the re-start of the Belene NPP project, as consultant. The tender result was two months delayed and coincides with a political crisis in Bulgaria, in which current Economy and Energy Minister Rumen Ovcharov is temporarily placed on non-active pending corruption charges.
Itar-Tass, 14 May 2007, WISE / NIRS Brno, 15 May 2007
US Browns Ferry reactor to reopen.
(May 18, 2007) The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) plans to reopen its Browns Ferry 1 nuclear reactor this month - 22 years after it was shut for safety reasons and 5 years after extensive renovations began. It will be the first nuclear reactor to come into service in this decade. The last one was Watts Bar 1, also a TVA plant, in Tennessee, in June 1996. Construction of Watts Bar 1 started in January 1973(!) and has been halted for years. The TVA is now studying whether to finish Watts Bar 2, where most work stopped in 1988, after construction started in 1972!
As for the Browns Ferry renovation, a TVA spokesman said that the exact cost would not be known for some months, but would "probably not be much more" than $1.8 billion.
The willingness to spend US$1.8 billion (€ 1.3bn) on the overhaul also shows just how hard companies think it will be to build a new plant. Browns Ferry 1, despite being out of use for more than two decades, enjoys the advantage of already having a license. David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists who once worked at Browns Ferry, said the decision to put so much into old technology was noteworthy. "Most people," he said, "are going to buy the new iPod rather than an eight-track tape player." The decision to refurbish rather than start from scratch also saved time, with project completion anticipated in 60 months. The industry has tried hard to shorten the time needed to plan and build a new reactor, but still projects that it will be about 12 years. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has made changes in its licensing procedure that it says will make the process faster and more predictable, but some utilities are nervous about being the first to try it out.
The Browns Ferry project has a checkered history. The TVA set out to build two reactors there in 1966, predicting operation by 1970 at a construction cost of US$247 million, plus $66 million for the first load of fuel. Unit 1 opened in August 1974, and Unit 2 the following year, at a cost of more than $500 million, or about $2 billion in today's dollars.
In March 1975, an electrician was using a candle in a room full of cables, under the control room, to look for air leaks, a procedure that the authority described as normal. He set a fire that burned for hours and disabled the reactor's emergency core cooling system. The fire is still regarded as the second most serious commercial nuclear accident in the U.S., after the meltdown at Three Mile Island in March 1979. The reactor reopened, but 10 years later, in March 1985, the TVA shut all three of the reactors on the site because of numerous safety problems. Unit 2 reopened in May 1991, and Unit 3 in November 1995.
As the plant sat idle for 22 years, the clock was ticking on its 40-year operating license. But in May 2006, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission granted a 20-year extension on all three Browns Ferry plants.
New York Times, 11 May 2007 / World Nuclear Industry Handbook
Finnish town council refuses to sell land for nuclear plant.
(May 18, 2007) The city council of Finnish town Loviisa has nullified the town's preliminary agreement to sell land to Germany's E.ON for a nuclear power plant. The town council voted 16-11 against the deal. For Loviisa city head Olavi Kaleva the decision was "a bit of a surprise. Part of the nuclear power supporters turned against it." The town in southeastern Finland had agreed to sell the land, located north of an existing nuclear power plant owned by Fortum, to E.ON for €6.5 million (US$8.8 million) in April, but the council's vote overruled the agreement. Kaleva said the city had no alternative plans at this stage to pursue a land deal with E.ON, but it would still consider whether to proceed in some way. "But there is little choice for alternative plots. This area had been designed for energy generation use in terms of zoning. It was currently the only option we had to offer," Kaleva said. Utility Teollisuuden Voima (TVO) has two operation reactors in Olkiluoto (and that is building the fifth reactor Olkiluoto 3) and Fortum that has two operating reactors in Loviisa have both started environmental impact assessments for Olkiluoto and Loviisa (not at the same place E.ON wanted to buy).
PlanetArk, May 10, 2007, Ulla Klötzer.
Russia and Myanmar sign contract for nuclear research center.
(May 18, 2007) Russia has agreed to help build a nuclear research center in Myanmar, the Asian state run by a military that is under European and US economic sanctions. "The agreement foresees cooperation in the design and equipping of a center for nuclear research in Myanmar," including a small light-water nuclear reactor, Russia's atomic energy agency Rosatom said in a statement. Myanmar is under US and European economic sanctions imposed in response to rights abuses by the country's military dictatorship.
According to Rosatom the nuclear center in the current deal with Myanmar will be under the control of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The statement also said that the center will be operated by Atomstroiexport, a Rosatom subsidiary, without giving a date for when the project would be built. The center is to include a laboratory for the production of medical isotopes and a complex of buildings and equipment for the reprocessing and burial of nuclear waste, Rosatom said.
ChannelNews Asia, 16 May 2007
Germany: more money for nuclear research.
(May 18, 2007) The fact that the German government renounced nuclear energy in 2000 and pledged to take its last plant off the grid by 2020 might lead you to think that it would scale back its nuclear research programs. What, after all, is the point in spending money on developing a technology which is on its way out? However, the current administration seems reluctant to give up nuclear quite yet.
Early May German Research Minister Annette Schavan raised eyebrows with her announcement that she would increase research spending between 2008 and 2011 by up to 40 million Euro. Most of the money has been earmarked for young researchers working on nuclear waste storage and nuclear security issues. Up until now, the Education and Research Ministry funded nuclear research programs with 30 million Euro annually.
Der Spiegel online, 8 may 2007
U.K.: still Chernobyl restrictions
(May 18, 2007) The Food Standards Agency has published its latest reports on the monitoring of farms and sheep for contamination following the 1986 Chernobyl accident. There remains 197,300 sheep on 371 holdings that are still subject to restrictions because of raised levels of radioactivity. There are 6,600 sheep in England under restrictions, 180,000 in Wales and 10,700 in Scotland. In June 1986 there were 4,225,000 sheep under restriction orders.
N-Base Briefing 525, 12 May 2007
Major Security Breach at U.S. Palisades Nuclear Plant.
(May 18, 2007) A story appearing in the June 2007 edition of Esquire magazine that reveals a major security lapse at the Palisades nuclear power plant in Covert, Michigan, confirms that reactor security around the country is grossly inadequate. NIRS/WISE has called on the U.S. Congress to investigate the security breach at Palisades.
The Esquire story, entitled "Mercenary," details how the head of Palisades security - William E. Clark - had largely fabricated his background, experience and security credentials, presenting himself as an expert on armed deterrence. Clark has since resigned his position. "Mercenary" reveals that officials at the Palisades nuclear power plant failed to detect false assertions in Clark's resume that claimed he had high level security clearance from the U.S. Department of Defense . Clark also passed a Nuclear Regulatory Commission-regulated background check. He was hired by the plant's previous owner, Consumers Energy Company, and operator, Nuclear Management Company, but was kept on by the new owner and operator, Entergy, since it acquired Palisades one month ago.
Esquire,12 May 2007, at http://www.esquire.com/features/mercenary0607
Germany: no more CO2 after closure of nuclear reactors.
(May 18, 2007) Closure of Stade and Obrigheim, two of the 19 nuclear power stations in Germany, and replacement of the capacity (in total 990 MW) with conventional coal-fired stations has not lead to more emissions of CO2. This whilst the economy grew with 3% and the replacing stations emitted 7 million ton more CO2 (of course the indirect CO2-emissions of the nuclear power stations were never accounted for).
According to the umbrella organization of the electricity producers this remarkable result is reached due to increased efficiency of the coal fired stations. A German coal fired station reaches an average efficiency of about 40% (new ones are at 45%) while global average is at 30%. Germany alone contributes to approx. 75% of the decline in emissions of CO2 of the 'old' (15 member states) EU. Compared to 1990 (benchmark date) Germany emits 19% less CO2.
These developments clearly prove that closing down nuclear power stations is possible without increasing the CO2-emissions. Of course the proof is in the pudding as the main pudding is still to be made in the coming twenty years when Germany will (as still planned) gradually close down its 17 remaining nuclear power stations.
With the fastest growing market for wind and other renewables (in BNP, in work, in percentage of the electricity production) in at least Europe, Germany seems to be on the right track (well, if nuclear power is continued to be phased-out.)
Energie Nederland, 2 May 2007
Brazil: environment minister opposes Lula's nuclear option.
(May 18, 2007) A week after the Brazilian president Lula said he would push for more reactors if enough hydroelectric plants cannot be built, Brazil's environment minister attacked proposals for new nuclear power plants.
Brazil relies on hydroelectric dams for more than 80 percent of its energy needs.
To address the prospect of looming power shortages in Latin America's largest economy, President Lula's government is weighing a plan to build at least four new reactors with a total capacity of 4,000 megawatts by 2030. But Environment Minister Marina Silva defended the hydroelectric option as "clean and without risk" but said that environmental concerns should always be taken into account when authorizing new dam projects. "The ministry is against nuclear energy. We have a clean energy matrix, an advantage that no other country has," said Silva, a former activist in the Amazon rain forest. "Nuclear energy has a serious problem that is waste disposal." She advocates the use of hydroelectric, wind and biomass energy sources.
Brazil now has two nuclear reactors near the coastal resort of Angra, which account for about 3 percent of all power. The National Energy Policy Council will meet in June to discuss completion of the Angra 3 nuclear plant. Many officials expect the council's approval despite Silva's objections.
Reuters, 3 & 10 May 2007
U.K. Waste for Sweden.
(May 18, 2007) Radioactive waste metal from Sellafield and other nuclear sites will be shipped to Sweden for decontamination under a contract between the British Nuclear Group and Studsvik. The Swedish company plans to take scrap metal contaminated with low-levels of radioactivity to Sweden for treatment. The metal would be recycled for re-use, including in consumer goods. The recovered radioactivity will be shipped back to the UK for storage in the Drigg facility near Sellafield. The Liberal Democrats are raising the issue in Parliament, but the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, which runs the UK's civil nuclear sites, has strongly defended the plan. The NDA said many European countries and the USA allow the re-use of contaminated metals and the proposal would help reduce the volume of low-level waste stored in the UK at a time when existing facilities were filling up.
N-Base Briefing 525, 12 May 2007