Nuclear Research
MANCHESTER is in a race to become the nuclear research capital – even though town hall chiefs insist the city is still ‘nuclear free’. The government has created a new national nuclear laboratory which provides testing, disposal and research facilities. Control of the new laboratory, which consists of six separate sites employing 650 staff, is up for grabs and Manchester University is a leading contender to run it.
Manchester Evening News 19th Aug 2008 more >>
Nuclear Free Local Authorities
Manchester is advertising for a Principal Policy and Research Officer for the Nuclear Free Local Authorities.
Guardian 20th Aug 2008 more >>
Bradwell
Professor Andy Blowers: The publication of draft strategic siting criteria for new nuclear power stations has been portrayed as a green light for the go-ahead at Bradwell. It is being suggested by British Energy that no criterion applied to Bradwell would eliminate it as a potential site. It could equally be argued that, taken together, the criteria suggest that Bradwell would be an extremely poor choice for a power station and its associated wastes that are likely to remain on site for well over a hundred years. A careful reading of the criteria strongly suggests that far from being developed on a strategic basis they have been drawn up with specific sites already in mind.
No2NuclearPower website 19th August 2008 more >>
Dounreay
MORE than 1,500 tonnes of radioactive material have been turned into harmless seawater as part of the clean-up of the Dounreay nuclear plant. The liquid sodium metal is the first of the major hazards to be destroyed. It is seen as a milestone in decommissioning the Caithness plant, which is due to be returned to a greenfield site by 2025 at a cost of £2.7 billion.
Scotsman 20th Aug 2008 more >>
Windscale
For the first time since a fire 50 years ago, engineers have taken a look inside the Windscale Pile 1 reactor at the Sellafield nuclear plant. The decommissioning team looked inside the affected area with an endoscope to take pictures from the core, allowing for the removal of the remaining fuel and isotopes in the reactor pile.
Wigan Today 19th Aug 2008 more >>
Companies
E.ON, the energy company whose plans for Britain’s first new coal-fired power station for more than two decades have sparked fierce protests, said yesterday it was considering a £300m investment in building one of the country’s biggest biomass power plants. The company said it wanted to construct the 150 megawatt plant at the port of Bristol as part of its multimillion-pound investment programme in a range of generating technologies. The company is also looking at the possibility of building at least two nuclear power stations.
Guardian 20th Aug 2008 more >>
Georgia
Letter from David Lowry: Your defence correspondent rightly highlights concerns over sensitive nuclear materials “going missing” from Georgia, and potentially being made into a “dirty” radiological bomb. Britain played a role a decade ago in removing enriched uranium from Georgia for safer storage at Dounreay. It was airfreighted from Tbilisi with American support on April 24, 1998, and then taken from RAF Kinloss to Dounreay by road. In 1998, the Government announced Dounreay would undertake no further commercial irradiated fuel reprocessing. Of current concern are a nuclear waste dump at Tskhinvali and reported storage of some radioactive waste or radioactive contamination at bases in Georgia, at Lilo, Vaziani, Godogani and Matkhodzhi.
Telegraph 20th Aug 2008 more >>
The chaos in Georgia has forced the United States to halt a high-priority program that was helping the former Soviet republic to identify possible smugglers of nuclear bomb components across its borders, long considered a transit point for terrorists seeking to obtain weapons of mass destruction, according to US officials.
Boston Globe 19th Aug 2008 more >>
Proliferation
The Bush administration intended for the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) to jump-start a global nuclear power revival without the attendant proliferation risks. But as the administration comes to a close, the partnership has only heightened proliferation concerns, leaving GNEP’s future murky.
Bulletin of Atomic Scientists 31st July 2008 more >>
Spain
Spain’s government Tuesday vowed to take tough action against a nuclear plant after the country’s safety watchdog recommended a multi-million-euro fine over a radioactive leak. The leak at the Asco I plant in the western province of Tarragona occurred last November, but it was not detected until March 14 and the plant’s managers notified the nuclear safety body, the CSN, on April 4. Thousands of people were subsequently tested for radiation poisoning, although the CSN said there appeared to be little danger to the local population or the staff at the plant, owned by Spanish energy group Endesa.
Energy Daily 19th Aug 2008 more >>
Canada
Electric utility Hydro-Quebec said on Tuesday that it plans to spend C$1.9 billion ($1.8 billion) to refurbish its 675-megawatt Gentilly-2 nuclear generating unit to extend the unit’s life span to about 2040.
AFX 19th Aug 2008 more >>
