Facing South - Durham,NC,USA
Despite his green media image, Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers is facing a fight from environmental advocates over his plans to build a polluting new coal-fired power plant in western North Carolina.

In the latest effort to stop the Cliffside project, a coalition of environmental organizations announced yesterday that it's suing Duke to halt construction of the Rutherford County plant until regulators determine whether it meets legal pollution limits and until Duke's building permit includes such limits as operating conditions. The Southern Environmental Law Center and Natural Resources Defense Council are filing the suit in federal district court in Asheville, N.C. on behalf of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund, National Parks Conservation Association, and NRDC.

WWAY NewsChannel 3 - Wilmington,NC,USA
NEW HANOVER COUNTY--GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy wants to bring a uranium enrichment plant to Wilmington. Right now, GE gets enriched uranium from outside companies. The company wants to enrich its own uranium. The plant would bring plenty of jobs and environmental concerns.

Employees of GE/Htachi, a panel from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and curious residents gathered at UNCW Thursday night.

The topic of discussion was GE's desire to build an enriched uranium plant next to their current buildiing off Castle Hayne Road.

The processed uranium would be used to produce energy for GE's nuclear plants.

StarNewsOnline.com - Wilmington,NC,USA
Officials from the federal commission charged with deciding whether a nuclear-enrichment plant is right for New Hanover County assured residents Thursday night that they will conduct a thorough review and consider public opinion.

Several officials from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission spoke to more than 100 people at UNCW's Burney Center.

The meeting was the first of several slated during a review process that could last several years.

By the end of this year, GE Hitachi will apply for a license to build a nuclear-enrichment plant in Castle Hayne. The proposed facility would enrich uranium so it can be used to fuel nuclear power plants that generate electricity.

MarketWatch - USA

SUGAR LAND, TX, Jul 18, 2008 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) -- Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas) -- Renewed concerns over global warming and record-high crude oil prices have left many policymakers rethinking their views on nuclear power plants. Nuclear power stations, unlike their coal-fired counter parts, do not release carbon dioxide, a leading culprit in global warming. As a result, there has been an increased demand for the mining of uranium, which is used for nuclear power.

Hindu - Chennai,India
Mumbai (PTI): India will host an International conference on topical issues in nuclear installation safety in November this year, a top official of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) said on Friday.

The five-day conference is to deliberate on ensuring safety for sustainable nuclear power development, Chairman of AERB S K Sharma said.

The conference, sponsored by International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) coincides with Homi Bhabha centenary year and Silver Jubilee of AERB, Sharma told PTI.

The President of the conference is Andre-Claude Lacoste, Chairman of the Nuclear Safety Authority in France and the conference will be held from November 17 to 21 in Mumbai, he said.

The participants will include nuclear vendors, operators and other related industries from India and abroad. An exhibition and panel discussion are also being arranged, Sharma said.

Cherry Hill Courier Post - Cherry Hill,NJ,USA
WASHINGTON - An opponent of renewing the Oyster Creek Generating Station's license said Wednesday the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission's re-licensing and safety compliance procedures are woefully inadequate.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., also appeared at the hearing, which he requested. He released a statement in which he criticized the NRC and cited an inspector general report that said the NRC "probably" does safety analyses as part of the re-licensing process.

"The communities surrounding the Oyster Creek facility in New Jersey - the oldest operating nuclear plant in the United States - cannot rely on 'probably,'" Lautenberg said in a statement. "The NRC has an obligation to conduct real oversight of the nation's nuclear plants."

Scientific American - USA
Last Friday at 11 A.M., the operators of the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in Vernon, Vt., detected a leak. About 60 gallons (225 liters) of water a minute was escaping from the eastern cooling tower of the 620-megawatt power plant that provides nearly three quarters of the state's electricity needs. By noon, the owners had shut down both the damaged and undamaged cooling towers and had cut the plant's electricity output in half to avoid any harm to the reactor. By Monday, the plant was operating at 23 percent capacity because of limits on the amount of water it could use from the Connecticut River to cool its nuclear core.

But Vermont electric consumers barely noticed-though they might feel it later in their wallets. Despite the shutdown of the state's major power plant, lights, TVs and life's other electrical amenities continued to operate as usual. How is that possible? The company that operates the state's power grid has a contingency plan in case of emergency shutdowns, says Dorothy Schnure, a spokesperson for Green Mountain Power, one of two local utilities that purchase and resell much of the power from Vermont Yankee.

istockAnalyst.com - Salem,OR,USA
Bratislava, 16 July: Russian open joint-stock company TVEL has maintained its position in Slovakia, having won the tender for the supply of nuclear fuel for five power-generating units of the local Mochovce and Bohunice nuclear power plants until 2015, management company Slovenskie Elektrarne has reported.

These plants were built to Russian design and equipped with VVER- 440 reactors.

TVEL will also supply fuel for the third and fourth units of the Mochovce nuclear plant, which are being built, after they are put into operation.

"We are staying with TVEL. We have excellent experience of working with Russian producers of nuclear fuel," said the Slovenskie Elektrane press office.

The second participant in the tender American company Westinghouse expressed extreme disappointment with Slovakia's decision. In an interview with specialised publication Nuclear Fuel, a spokesman for the company said that Westinghouse will now have to leave the VVER-400 fuel market.

AFP -

PARIS (AFP) - Newly formed global energy giant GDF Suez of France is interested in nuclear power operator British Energy but only if the company is split up and sold off site by site.

"If the plan remains to sell British Energy in one go, then it will be sold without us," said GDF Suez head Gerard Mestrallet in an interview with Les Echos daily to appear Thursday.

To acquire the company in a bloc "would require an enormous amount of investigation and in a very short period of time, a very heavy investment in an industry where the least problem costs a lot of money," Mestrallet said.

"That is not in our plans."

The head of GDF Suez, formed Wednesday after shareholders approved the tie-up between Gaz de France and Suez, noted the issue could be revisited "if one returned to the initial plan, which envisaged a sale of the company site by site."

Forbes - NY,USA
COLUMBIA, S.C. -

A request by electric power provider South Carolina Electric and Gas to begin working on the site where it hopes to build two nuclear reactors was put on hold by state regulators Wednesday.

An environmental group had asked for more time to build opposition to the company's request.

SCE&G, a subsidiary of Scana Corp., and state-owned utility Santee Cooper want to construct and operate two additional reactors at their V.C. Summer Nuclear Station near Columbia.

In a letter to the commission, SCE&G said it needs to start the site work immediately so it can replace railroad tracks that will be needed in late 2009 for work on its existing reactor in Fairfield County.

EP Magazine - Dallas,TX,USA
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has made available to the public an unclassified version of an annual report to Congress outlining the previous year's security inspection program. The report covers the security inspection program, including force-on-force exercises, for commercial power reactors and certain fuel cycle facilities for calendar year 2007.

According to the report, required under the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the NRC conducted 199 security inspections at commercial power reactors, of which 22 were force-on-force inspections. These force-on-force inspections use a well-trained mock adversary force to test a facility's ability to respond to the level of threat the facility is required to defend against. The 199 security inspections yielded 122 findings from these reviews, of which 117 were of very low security significance and five were of low to moderate security significance. The results of the security inspections conducted at Category 1 fuel cycle facilities are discussed in the Safeguards Information version of this report.

Bloomberg - USA
July 17 (Bloomberg) -- Rolls-Royce Group Plc, the world's second-biggest maker of aircraft engines, plans to set up a nuclear division to manufacture equipment and provide advice to governments on atomic energy programs.

The London-based company estimates that by 2023 the value of work in the civil nuclear industry will rise to 50 billion pounds ($100 billion) a year from 30 billion pounds today. Rolls-Royce has 2,000 employees in the U.K., France and the U.S. who do nuclear-energy work such as maintaining power plants for U.K. Royal Navy submarines, the company said today in a statement.

``Our experience is directly applicable to all phases of new-build programs that are planned in the U.K. and globally, and also to the upgrade of existing plants,'' Chief Executive Officer John Rose said in the statement. Rolls-Royce's nuclear capabilities are ``matched by only a handful of companies worldwide,'' he added.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff and officials of Progress Energy and Duke Energy Power Co., will meet Thursday, July 17, to discuss the Shearon Harris and Oconee nuclear power plants' transition from the current fire protection program to an alternative program that allows licensees to focus on the areas of greatest fire risk. The two plants volunteered to participate in a Transition Pilot Program. Plant officials will discuss their applications to amend their operating licenses, and NRC staff will discuss the process for reviewing these applications. 

The meeting, which will be open to the public, will begin at 9 a.m. with a brief ceremony to recognize the participants in the Transition Pilot Program. Formal discussions will begin at 9:30 a.m. The ceremony and the meeting will be held in Conference Room T-2B3 in the agency’s Two White Flint North building at 11545 Rockville Pike, Rockville, Md.

“The Oconee and Shearon Harris plants that volunteered to participate in the pilot program have reached a major milestone in their transition to a risk-informed fire protection program and we want to recognize this achievement,” said Eric Leeds, Director of the NRC’s Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation. “Our staff is currently reviewing the applications from Duke Power and Progress Energy and believe that the information developed during preparation of their applications will help the remaining plants to complete their transitions.”

Deutsche Welle - Germany

 Skyrocketing fuel prices are leading more and more Germans -- including one prominent member of the Green Party -- to challenge the country's cherished plan of mothballing its 17 nuclear power plants.

A few years ago, it would have been unthinkable for a Green party member to resign over the party's inflexibility about decommissioning atomic power plants.

But that's exactly what happened on Monday, July 13, when Margareta Wolf, a former member of parliament and deputy party spokeswoman, announced she had severed her ties with Germany's Green Party.

In an official statement, Wolf said she was quitting because of the Greens' intransigience by insisting on simultaneously phasing out nuclear power and freezing the construction of new coal-burning plants.

"My party has maneuvered itself into a strategic dead-end on this issue, from which it will only emerge if it returns to an objective, non-romanticized debate and starts an open dialogue that doesn't defame every thing that gets voiced," Wolf wrote.

 Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Increasing numbers of Germans say it's time to put a halt to the stop...