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Expert panel urges Ottawa to build new reactor to produce medical isotopes | National News | The Free Press
An expert panel is recommending that the federal government build a new nuclear reactor to produce medical isotopes and guarantee an adequate supply for the country.
The Expert Review Panel On Medical Isotope Production says the best way to keep isotopes stocked is to build a new research reactor to replace the downed unit at Chalk River, Ont.
It makes the recommendation in a report to Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt, which the government received Monday and released Thursday.
"We recommend that the government expeditiously engage in the replacement of the (National Research Universal) reactor as we believe a multipurpose research reactor represents the best primary option to create a sustainable source of (the isotope molybdenum 99), recognizing that the reactor's other missions would also play a role in justifying the costs," the report says.
The Associated Press: Minnesota tribe to rally against nuclear expansion
A Minnesota Indian community with a nuclear power plant as its neighbor is holding a rally to voice opposition to a utility's expansion plans there.
Friday's rally by the Prairie Island Indian Community is the latest step it has taken to sound off against Xcel Energy Inc.'s plans for the Red Wing plant.
The utility plans to spend $600 million to upgrade the plant so it can handle higher pressure and temperatures that could add 164 megawatts to its output. Regulators have also signed off on expanded waste storage.
Tribal members say they are concerned about health and safety risks from the plant.
KPLU: Hundreds Sound Off on Proposed Idaho Nuke Plant (2009-11-20)
A new nuclear facility in the Northwest? Residents of southwest Idaho appear sharply divided over a proposed new nuclear power plant near the Oregon-Idaho border. Thursday night, around 250 people filled a high school auditorium for an initial public hearing on the project. KPLU's Tom Banse reports from Payette, Idaho.
Full story
A small Idaho company called Alternate Energy Holdings is proposing a large commercial nuclear power plant on private ranchland in rural Payette County. Payette resident Kent Porter was one of dozens of locals who testified they'd welcome a nuke plant.
Kent Porter: "Someday if we don't get cheap power to keep our farmers going, we're all going to pay dearly when our food prices go up."
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A new nuclear facility in the Northwest? Residents of southwest Idaho appear sharply divided over a proposed new nuclear power plant near the Oregon-Idaho border. Thursday night, around 250 people filled a high school auditorium for an initial public hearing on the project. KPLU's Tom Banse reports from Payette, Idaho.
Full story
A small Idaho company called Alternate Energy Holdings is proposing a large commercial nuclear power plant on private ranchland in rural Payette County. Payette resident Kent Porter was one of dozens of locals who testified they'd welcome a nuke plant.
Kent Porter: "Someday if we don't get cheap power to keep our farmers going, we're all going to pay dearly when our food prices go up."
Nuclear power potential a long way off for oilsands energy needs: study
Nuclear power could help meet growing oilsands energy needs, but won’t likely happen before 2025, a study released late Friday said.
Petroleum Technology Alliance Canada, which looked at alternatives to natural gas in oilsands development, said nuclear energy still poses many challenges.
Existing technology can’t produce required pressurized steam for in-situ oilsands development, the study found, while high costs, a lack of commercial development or regulatory approvals would mean emerging options wouldn’t be ready for nearly a decade.
No meeting halfway on nuke licensing rules - Local - San Luis Obispo
After protests, NRC agrees to reschedule hearing slated for point equidistant — and far — from Diablo Canyon and San Onofre plants
Bowing to local pressure, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission has agreed to reschedule a hearing to take public comment on generic rules governing the renewal of nuclear power plant licenses.
The meeting had been set for Tuesday evening in Westlake Village, a Los Angeles County town near Thousand Oaks.
However, local elected officials and activists argued that San Luis Obispo County residents were unlikely to attend a meeting held about 160 miles away.
The agency has agreed to postpone the hearing to an undetermined later date and location, said Roger Hannah, NRC spokesman.
GE Hitachi advances new nuclear reactor design | Green Business | Reuters
GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy said on Wednesday it has submitted the revised design documents for its Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR) to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
GE Hitachi said the submission marks a milestone in the company's effort to move forward with the 1,520-megawatt design which two U.S. utilities have selected to use for two new nuclear plants, some of the first reactors proposed after a three-decade lapse in U.S. nuclear expansion.
Two other U.S. utilities dropped the ESBWR design fearing that the time needed to obtain NRC certification would slow their efforts to pursue construction of new reactors.
Water looms as key issue for nuclear proposal
Sitting in on Mayor Julián Castro's town hall meeting Monday evening felt like watching some old movie in which you know all the lines by heart.
It probably served some purpose on the front end — forcing CPS Energy officials to realize that their proposal for a $5.2 billion investment in two nuclear plants falls well short of a sure thing — but it didn't seem to shift opinions around much.
Still, with all the talk about how the Big Decision will affect our grandchildren, it was easy to wonder which question will appear most prescient decades from now.
Perhaps it will be the handwritten, photocopied ‘No Nuclear Energy!' sheet passed out at the front door, on which a man named Ray Davidson Hillman guaranteed that if all North American nuclear plants are not shut down soon, the planet won't support life in one or two hundred years. If he's right, of course, no one will be around to realize how smart he was.
Environmentalists seek to bar TVA nuclear reactor :: WRAL.com
Five environmental groups petitioned federal regulators Wednesday to block the only commercial nuclear reactor now under construction in the United States - an unfinished 1970s-era reactor the Tennessee Valley Authority is working to complete after three decades in mothballs.
The groups claim TVA failed to consider the impact on the Tennessee River, public health and safety and the utility's need for more electricity when it revived a 1976 application for an operating license for the Watts Bar Plant Unit 2 reactor near Spring City, Tenn.
"TVA keeps pushing for more nuclear reactors in spite of the massive cost overruns they always have when they build them," said Bill Reynolds, the nuclear committee chairman for the Sierra Club's Tennessee chapter.
Piketon cool to nuke plan | Cincinnati.Com
Despite the promise of thousands of jobs in this hard-hit part of Appalachia, some community members are skeptical as Duke Energy considers building a nuclear power plant at a former uranium enrichment plant here.
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"Myself and a few other members are disillusioned and upset," said Lorry Swain, a South Shore, Ky., resident who serves on a 20-member community panel formed last year to give the Department of Energy environmental cleanup advice at the site.
She said the panel, created under federal law to increase local input around decisions at the 3,700-acre Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion plant, didn't learn about Duke's proposal until a few days before it was announced on June 18.
With a great deal of fanfare, Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, U.S. Sen. George Voinovich and Duke Energy Chairman James Rogers announced the formation of the Southern Ohio Clean Energy Park Alliance to pursue development of the Midwest's first nuclear power plant in decades. The plan comes under an Energy Department initiative to convert former government weapons sites to clean-energy alternatives.
Marking the 50th anniversary of the first U.S. nuclear meltdown - Los Angeles Times
On the morning of July 14, 1959, Sodium Reactor Experiment trainee John Pace received the bad news from a group of supervisors who had, he recalled, "terribly worried expressions on their faces."
A reactor at the Atomics International field laboratory in the Santa Susana Mountains had experienced a power surge the night before and spewed radioactive gases into the atmosphere.
"They were terrified that some of the gas had blown over their own San Fernando Valley homes," recalled Pace, who was 20 at the time. "My job was to keep radiation out of the control room."
Reactor pressure vessel shipped | Japan Times
Chugoku Electric Power Co. showed reporters Tuesday the reactor pressure vessel that will contain the nuclear fuel for a power plant in Matsue, Shimane Prefecture.
News photo
Heavy lifting: A pressure vessel that will contain the nuclear fuel for a power plant in Matsue, Shimane Prefecture, is removed from a plant in Kure, Hiroshima Prefecture, on Tuesday. KYODO PHOTO
The 21-meter-high, 910-ton device was taken from its plant in Kure, Hiroshima Prefecture, and put on a cargo ship as reporters and photographers watched.
The pressure vessel will be transported 480 km to the nuclear plant in Shimane, which is scheduled to be activated in December 2011.
Progress Energy's proposed Levy County nuke plant hits another roadblock - St. Petersburg Times
Progress Energy's plans for its new Levy County nuclear plant hit another potential roadblock Wednesday when an arm of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ruled that the Green Party of Florida and two other groups can challenge the plant's federal permit.
In a 112-page ruling, the NRC's Atomic Licensing Board found that the Green Party and its allies had successfully raised "certain major issues" about the plant's environmental impact that deserve a full-fledged legal hearing with oral arguments.
One issue: The utility has yet to figure out where it will send the new plant's radioactive waste, and thus may have to store it on site longer than expected.
1963: Closing of the Graphite Reactor | Frank Munger's Atomic City Underground | knoxnews.com
In this remember-when photograph, a big crowd gathered on Nov. 4, 1963 to witness the shutdown of the historic Graphite Reactor at Oak Ridge. Note the relative dearth of women in the crowd.
The Graphite Reactor, of course, was built during World War II as a prototype facilitiy for production of plutonium. It was the world's first continuously operated nuclear reactor and went critical for the first time in the pre-dawn hours of Nov. 4, 1943.
The reactor operated for 20 years, contributing greatly to the nation's development of radioisotopes for medicine and other uses and for pioneering work with neutron-scattering experiments, etc.
Head of German nuclear plant sacked after reactor breakdown : Europe World
Swedish-based electricity group Vattenfall sacked the head of one of Germany's nuclear power stations on Tuesday, three days after a short circuit crippled the reactor he was in charge of. Although the fault did not involve the reactor itself, it has brought the controversial issue of nuclear power back into play just three months before the country's general election.
The incident occured at the Kruemmel reactor east of Hamburg, one of Germany's 17 reactors.
Vattenfall blamed the plant manager, whom it did not name, for failing to install discharge detectors on a transformer as promised to the German authorities.
It added that the two electrical transformers supplying power to on-site machinery would not be repaired, but completely replaced after one of the units failed Saturday.
Canada isotope reactor idled until October -report | Industries | Healthcare | Reuters
A Canadian nuclear reactor that normally produces a third of the world's medical isotope supply will be idled until at least October and likely longer, the Globe and Mail reported on Tuesday, citing unnamed sources.
The Chalk River reactor in eastern Ontario has been out of operation since May 17 because of a heavy water leak.
The Toronto-based newspaper, citing sources close to the situation, said government-owned Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. plans to hold a briefing on Wednesday, when they are expected to announce they need more time to carry out repairs.
FACTBOX: The International Nuclear Event Scale | Green Business | Reuters
More than 20 years after the Chernobyl disaster, public fear of nuclear power remains strong.
But nuclear accidents are very rare and the industry is one of the most tightly regulated, with a global system of measuring the threat posed to public safety.
The International Nuclear Event Scale (INES) was designed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
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ACCIDENTS
LEVEL 7 - MAJOR ACCIDENT - External release of a large part of the radioactive material in a large facility like a power reactor, threatening serious health effects; delayed health problems over a wide area, possibly involving several countries; long-term environmental consequences.
Example: The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster in the Soviet Union, now in Ukraine, caused widespread environmental and human health problems.
LEVEL 6 - SERIOUS ACCIDENT - Large external release of radioactive material, likely to result in full use of emergency measures to limit serious health problems.
Example: The 1957 accident at the Kyshtym reprocessing plant in the Soviet Union, now Russia, led to a large off-site release. Emergency measures including evacuation of the population were taken.
The Associated Press: Exelon delays plan for Texas nuclear plant
Power generator Exelon Corp. said Tuesday it has called off plans for now to build a new nuclear plant in Texas because of worries over the economy and the limited availability of federal loan guarantees.
The Chicago-based company, the largest nuclear power generator in the U.S., is the second company in the past two months to postpone work for a new nuclear plant. St. Louis-based AmerenUE said in April that it was suspending work on a reactor in Missouri.
"We just aren't in a place to pursue the nuclear project," John Rowe, Exelon's chairman and CEO, told The Associated Press in an interview regarding the company's plans to add two nuclear reactors in Victoria, Texas.
toledoblade.com - Davis-Besse reports blast
Federal regulators are looking into the cause of an explosion that occurred early Thursday morning inside the electrical transmission switchyard on FirstEnergy Corp.'s Davis-Besse nuclear complex.
No injuries occurred, and no radiation was released.
The plant's nuclear reactor, shielded by a steel containment shell and concrete building well-removed from the blast, never stopped operating.
Idaho; Proposed Nuclear Plant on Snake River Delayed, Not Gone : Indybay
Elmore County commissioners on Monday submitted a request to the Planning and Zoning commissioners to examine possible changes to the current comprehensive land use plan’s identification of areas for industrial development. By so doing they acknowledged that the current application to build a nuclear reactor along the Snake River is in violation of the comprehensive plan and their request means the plan, which took several years to develop with county wide input, would have to be significantly altered to allow for the proposed facility.
Commissioners weighed the county’s restriction of heavy industrial development to the Simco Road area near Ada County. The Elmore Planning and Zoning Commission had already recommended AEHI’s application be rejected as a blatant violation of the County’s Comprehensive Plan.
Shepperdine residents 'kept in the dark' over nuclear power station plans (From Gazette Series)
PEOPLE living near a site earmarked for a new nuclear power station claim they are being kept in the dark over the proposals.
At a public meeting, more than 40 residents of Shepperdine and Oldbury criticised energy company E.ON for not keeping them informed about its plans to build a new power station in their village.
During the last 12 months the energy giant has bought land in the Oldbury and Shepperdine area and secured a connection to the National Grid.
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