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Vaud says no to nuclear plant in cantonal vote - swissinfo
Voters in canton Vaud have come out against a proposal to keep a nuclear energy plant running indefinitely.
With 64 per cent against, they rejected plans to extend the licence for the Mühleberg plant, in neighbouring canton Bern. But the federal authorities still have the final say.
The plant, which supplies energy to the canton, has a licence to operate until 2012.
The energy ministry had been waiting for the outcome of the consultative vote before deciding whether to prolong the centre's life.
It is obliged to ask the cantons concerned by the decision: Bern and Solothurn have already said yes; Neuchâtel and Freiburg have said no. Vaud was the only canton to vote on the matter.
Residents around plant get locked in - dnaindia.com
The mischief at India's most modern nuclear power plant in Kaiga, 35 km south of Karwar (Karnataka), that left 55 employees ill has struck fear among the residents of nearby Mallapuram. Almost a week after the incident, the township where the affected were taken for medical care, wears a deserted look, with most people keeping indoors.
Though the authorities have signaled 'no danger', employees of the plant and other residents alike are not venturing out even for daily needs. The entire area has been cordoned off and the road to Kaiga from Mallapuram blocked by investigators.
"We are living in constant fear since the incident took place," Suguna (name changed), a teacher who lives with her husband in one of the Type-B quarters, said.She is angry at the restrictions that have been put in place after radioactive material found its way into drinking water at the plant.
Radiation leakage in India nuclear power plant act of sabotage: official _English_Xinhua
The radiation leakage in a state-run nuclear power plant in southern India is an "act of sabotage" possibly by a disgruntled employees at the plant, India's Atomic Energy Commission chief Anil Kakodkar said on Sunday.
Some 50 employees of highly protected Kaiga Atomic Power Plant in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, southern India, fell ill for being exposed to the radiation leakage, after they drank water from a cooler in the operating area on Nov. 24.
"Somebody deliberately put the tritiated water vials into a drinking water cooler. Therefore, we are investigating who is behind the malevolent act. People involved will be punished under the Atomic Energy and other acts after investigation," Kakodkar told the media.
"The investigations are being carried out from two angles. First to ascertain as to who contaminated the water cooler with tritiated heavy water, and the second from radiation protection angle," said Kakodkar.
Radiation Leak at India Nuclear Plant Sickens Workers (Update1) - Bloomberg.com
Workers at a nuclear plant in India took ill after radioactive heavy water contaminated their drinking water and the state-run Nuclear Power Corp. suspects “mischief” may have been the cause.
An unspecified number of workers at the Kaiga plant, in southern Karnataka state, were advised to visit doctors for “routine medical consultation” and are back on normal work schedules, the company said in a statement on its Web site late yesterday. At least 45 workers were hospitalized on Nov. 25 after they received higher levels of radiation than permissible, the Times of India newspaper reported, without citing anyone.
BBC News - Hinkley C plans outlined to public
Proposals for the new Hinkley Point C nuclear power station have been put on show in Somerset.
A series of public consultations begin on Saturday at the village hall, in Cannington, near Bridgwater.
Simon Dunford, the plant's project manager, said the events were about presenting the public with options.
"These could be, do we - possibly - build a bypass on one side of a town or where should we site accommodation units?" he said.
Mr Dunford also said the plans would address what the "legacy benefits" of the building process would be for the local community.
The energy company EDF won the go-ahead to construct the new power station a fortnight ago.
The Hindu: 55 workers at Kaiga receive excessive radiation
CHENNAI: About 55 workers of the Kaiga Atomic Power Station in Uttara Kannada, Karnataka, had to undergo medical treatment after they were exposed to an excessive radiation dosage when they drank water that had been mixed with tritium, a highly radioactive substance.
Top officials of the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited blamed the incident on “an insider’s mischief.” They alleged that “an insider had mixed tritium in drinking water in a cooler kept in the operating island of the first unit” at Kaiga. The incident took place on November 25, when the first unit (220 MWe) was under shutdown for maintenance.
Asked specifically whether security was so lax at the plant that a worker could access a bottle containing tritium, an authoritative official said there were sampling points in the reactor building from where workers took vials containing radioactive substances to the chemical laboratories for analysis.
“There are standard protocols for handling and managing the transportation and depositing of such radioactive substances. Some insider has played the mischief,” the official said. The incident was detected when the workers’ urine samples showed an excess of tritium.
Nuclear power plants safe: Atomic Energy Council - The China Post
Responding to the fears expressed by residents and lawmakers of the risk posed by nuclear power plants built on earthquake zones, government officials reemphasized the safety of the facilities with a press release this week.
The safety of the two reactors near Taipei Basin is guaranteed and the earthquake-resistant design is solid, said the Cabinet-level Atomic Energy Council (AEC) in the release.
In response to local media reports and legislators' concerns that the first and second nuclear power plants in north Taiwan threaten the region, the council reaffirmed that the earthquake-resistant designs can withstand nearly eight times the strength of the 7.3-magnitude earthquake that struck Taiwan a decade ago on Sept. 21, claiming more than 2,400 lives.
Nuclear fleet shows its age - thestar.com
Kathy Hogeveen remembers the sugar cubes most.
They were there, along with the free coffee, at the visitor's centre at Pickering nuclear station. It was the mid-1970s and Hogeveen and her friends were typical teenyboppers — restless and bored. They used to ride to the plant on their bikes to watch movies about the wonders of safe, clean, low-cost nuclear power. There, in what seemed like their own private theatre, they'd suck on a seemingly endless supply of cubed sweets.
Cuban nationals land at Florida nuclear plant: NRC | U.S. | Reuters
A group of Cuban nationals who fled their country by boat landed in the cooling canal of a nuclear power plant along Florida's coast on Thanksgiving Day, according to a U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission event report issued Friday.
The plant's operations were not disrupted by the incident, according to the report.
The Turkey Point nuclear power plant control room received a call from an individual stating that he was a member of a group of 33 Cuban nationals that had landed in the cooling canal. The group was made up of 29 adults and 4 children.
HSE reports on nuclear reactor designs
Interim assessment reports for two nuclear power station designs being considered for construction in the UK have been made public today.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has published the reports on Step 3 of its Generic Design Assessment of the designs put forward by EDF/AREVA and Westinghouse.
The GDA process enables the HSE and the Environment Agency (EA) to assess new nuclear power station designs before an application for a site licence has been received.
The reports concerning EDF/AREVA’s EPR design and Westinghouse’s AP1000 reflect progress to date and highlight issues to be resolved during the next phase, a detailed assessment which will conclude in June 2011.
Opposition grows to nuclear power station plans at Oldbury (From Gazette Series)
OPPOSITION is growing to plans for a new nuclear power station in Oldbury on Severn.
Another round of public exhibitions on plans for the new site, which could have up to four huge cooling towers measuring between 70 and 200 metres high, was launched on Saturday and residents and local councillors turned out to see what the nuclear station might look like.
Shepperdine resident Reg Illingworth said: "There are now fairly significant objections from quite a number of people.
Nuclear plans still flawed, says watchdog - Times Online
The nuclear safety regulator has warned that two new reactor designs earmarked for use in Britain remain incomplete and could be rejected unless improvements are made.
The Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (NII) said that it was concerned about several features of both the US-Japanese and French reactor technologies that had been proposed for use in a new generation of British nuclear power stations.
The NII, which is part of the Health and Safety Executive, is conducting a safety review of the so-called AP-1000 reactor from Toshiba-Westinghouse and the European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) from Areva of France.
Final approval of the designs is not due to be granted until 2011, but an update on progress said that significant questions remained unanswered.
Nuclear reactors contain safety flaws, watchdog reveals | Business | guardian.co.uk
In the race to provide energy for the nation's future, two multinational companies have led the way with designs for reactors that promised clean, green electricity with unprecedented safety.
But detailed reviews by the Health and Safety Executive highlight a series of shortcomings in security and safety systems in both reactors that must be fixed or redesigned before the power plants can be approved for construction.
Safety officials reviewed plans from the European companies, Areva and EDF, which make the EPR reactor, and similar documents for the AP1000 reactor built by the American multinational power company, Westinghouse, and ruled that both need to improve the safety of their power plants before they can be approved for construction.
FT.com / Europe - French nuclear watchdog exposed
Andre-Claude Lacoste was taken aback when French politicians demanded a public inquiry into the country’s nuclear industry a few weeks ago.
The head of France’s Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN) could not understand why his joint letter with two other European regulators demanding design changes to a new-generation EPR reactor being built in France, Finland and soon in the UK, should have prompted a storm in a country traditionally supportive of nuclear power.
'Inadequate cleaning and flushing' of generator closed nuclear plant | StarNewsOnline.com | Star News | Wilmington, NC
'Inadequate cleaning and flushing' of generator closed nuclear plant
Broken generator’s governor wasn’t flushed adequately
Southport | The 10-day shutdown of the Brunswick Nuclear Plant in September was due to inadequate cleaning and flushing procedures during maintenance of the governors on the power plant’s emergency diesel generators (EDG), the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in a report on its special inspection of the shutdown.
“Since the licensee’s cleanliness and flushing procedures were not adequate … the inspectors concluded that foreign material was likely introduced into the (emergency diesel generator) governor during licensee maintenance activities in April 2009,” the NRC report said.
AFP: French bid for Emirates nuclear plant at risk: report
A French attempt to win a 41-billion-dollar (27.2-billion-euro) contract to build nuclear power stations in the Emirates is at risk over pricing, the La Tribune newspaper reported on Wednesday.
The newspaper reported that the top official at the presidential Elysee Palace, Claude Geant, had held a meeting with the heads of big French companies concerned on Tuesday to discuss a further reduction in the price which the government in Abu Dhabi considered too high.
Present at the meeting were the head of French nuclear power group Areva, Anne Lauvergeon, the head of GDF Suez, Gerard Mestrallet, Christophe de Margerie who leads oil group Total and Henri Proglio of the electricity group EDF, the report said.
NRC allows Entergy fuel secrecy: Rutland Herald Online
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has given Entergy Nuclear permission to keep a change in its technical specifications secret that deals with the nuclear fuel that will be loaded next spring into Vermont Yankee's core.
A subcontractor for Entergy, Global Nuclear Fuels, had requested the secrecy, saying it involved proprietary information.
Entergy Nuclear spokesman Larry Smith said Monday that the proprietary information belonged to Global Nuclear Fuels, and he said the request had met the criteria set out by the NRC. Entergy was notified Monday that the exemption was granted.
At issue are the thermal stresses that occur in the reactor core, which if above a certain standard, can damage fuel cladding. Damaged fuel leaks radiation.
CPS board postpones decision on executives
CPS Energy trustees took no action Wednesday morning after deliberating for nearly 11 hours over the fate of several top executives connected to a nuclear cost estimate — much higher than expected — that was kept from the utility's board and the City Council.
The board came out of executive session shortly before 1 a.m. to announce that it would continue deliberation Monday.
“The seriousness of this issue warrants that this board takes care, takes caution,” Chairwoman Aurora Geis told the sparse crowd that waited. “People's lives are at stake.”
Tuesday's meeting was a continuation of Monday's nearly five-hour session, during which the board heard results of an internal investigation into how contractor Toshiba Inc.'s high cost estimate for the multibillion-dollar nuclear expansion was kept under wraps.
New Times SLO | PG&E seeks to renew Diablo license
Utility giant Pacific Gas and Electric announced Nov. 24 that it has applied to renew its operating license for the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant.
PG&E chief nuclear officer John Conway did not reveal the price tag on the renewal process, but he said the renewal would cost millions of dollars, in accordance with California Public Utilities Commission regulations, which he did not detail.
The current license is set to expire in 2024 and 2025 for Units One and Two of the plant, respectively. The new license, should it be approved, would extend 20 years from those dates.
In the next step in the application process, according to PG&E Site Vice President Jim Becker, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will review PG&E’s application and make a decision on the further need for hearings.
“It’s fair to say this will be a multiyear process,” Becker said at a media conference.
Asia Times Online: Turkey's radioactive waltz with Russia ends
Energy-hungry Turkey's nuclear flirtation with Russia came to a painful end last week when the government, under pressure from many fronts, canceled the September 2008 tender that awarded the contract to build and operate the country's first nuclear power plant to Russia's Atomstroyexport and its domestic partners.\n\nTurkey plans to build two nuclear power plants, one in the Black Sea Sinop region and the second in Akkuyu, near the town of Mersin, on the Mediterranean coast.\n\nThe cancellation of the outcome of last year's controversial selection for the latter site came as a shock to many, including the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government itself.
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