Samurai-Sword Maker's Reactor Monopoly May Cool Nuclear Revival

From a windswept corner of Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island, Japan Steel Works Ltd. controls the fate of the global nuclear-energy renaissance. There stands the only plant in the world, a survivor of Allied bombing in World War II, capable of producing the central part of a nuclear reactor's containment vessel in a single piece, reducing the risk of a radiation leak. Utilities that won't need the equipment for years are making $100 million down payments now on components Japan Steel makes from 600-ton ingots. Each year the Tokyo-based company can turn out just four of the steel forgings that contain the radioactivity in a nuclear reactor. Even after it doubles capacity in the next two years, there won't be enough production to meet building plans.

Bloomberg

'Disposable' nuclear reactors raise security fears

A US government-led plan to design small nuclear reactors for deployment in developing countries is continuing despite ongoing fears about security and proliferation risks.

The Bush administration has ear-marked $20 million in its 2009 budget toward the US Department of Energy's efforts to design nuclear power plants in the 250-to-500 megawatt range as part of its Global Nuclear Energy Program (GNEP).

The money marks the first substantial commitment to building the new plants since President Bush announced the program in February 2006. The latest nuclear plants designed for US domestic use have capacities about 1300 megawatts.

GNEP, which now includes 21 member countries, hopes to begin construction of its first reactor in a country currently without nuclear power in 2015, saying the plants will provide a clean, safe source of electricity.

New Scientist

Foes of Indian Point Begin Legal Battle

Opponents of the Indian Point nuclear power plants, including New York State, got their day in court on Monday — sort of — to explain why they thought the two reactors should not be allowed to operate 20 more years. It signified the first time that a state had stepped forward to flatly oppose license renewals.

New York Times

A nuclear brain drain

A casual observer at a nuclear power plant these days might notice a peculiar phenomenon: lots of receding hairlines and graying temples at the controls. Within the next decade, most of the nation's highly skilled nuclear specialists -- engineers, plant operators, maintenance technicians, radiation chemists and fuel assembly designers -- will become pensioners.

The retirement wave comes at a crucial time, just as the nation's utilities are preparing to build the first new nuclear plants in several decades.

The News & Observer

Suit seeks to halt PPL nuke plans

Alleging regulatory agencies failed to fully address environmental concerns, the head of a nuclear power watchdog group has filed a federal lawsuit that seeks to prevent PPL from increasing the generation capacity of the Susquehanna Steam Electric Station.

The suit, filed Wednesday by Eric Epstein of the Harrisburg-based group Three Mile Island Alert, seeks to halt all action by PPL until the company addresses “unresolved water use, water safety and interagency issues.”

Times Leader

Will U.S. become world's nuclear-waste dump?

The federal government is weighing a Utah company's request to import large amounts of low-level radioactive waste from Italy - a step critics say could lead the United States to become a nuclear garbage dump for the world. If approved, the company would ship up to 20,000 tons of metal piping, sludge, wood, contaminated clothing, and other mildly radioactive material from Italian nuclear-power plants to Tennessee, process most of it, then dispose of the remainder in Utah. It would be by far America's largest import of nuclear waste.

Link.

Florida outage may spark probe by federal energy agency

The federal government wants to know why the failure of a single switch in a substation west of Miami led to a power outage that rolled across the state Tuesday afternoon and cut off electricity for more than 2 million people.

An official at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said Wednesday that his agency was considering taking an active role in an examination of the blackout because a small-scale malfunction usually doesn't have such far-reaching effects.

"When you have any incident that knocks off 2.5 million people, it obviously grabs your attention," said Joe McClelland, director of the Washington-based agency's office of electric reliability.

The commission probably will decide by the end of the week whether it will assign its own investigators to work with the nonprofit Florida Reliability Coordinating Council to analyze the power failure, which started at a Florida Power & Light Co. substation and affected 1.2 million homes and businesses.

Depending on what the agencies find, the analysis could lead to a formal investigation and fines of up to $1 million per violation.

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