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Severity of Nuclear Incident Downplayed
Staff, Radio Sweden
Sweden’s nuclear inspection agency has played down claims that a reactor malfunction last month was the most serious incident ever at this country’s nuclear plants.
Two back-up generators failed during a power failure at the Forsmark nuclear power station in July, which led authorities to shut down four of Sweden’s 10 reactors. They are still closed, while investigators make sure that similar errors cannot happen again. ..
(28 Aug 2006)
See also Short-circuit nearly caused a meltdown and Power firms stung by cost of nuclear shutdown.
Pakistan key to Chinese nuclear exports
Antoaneta Bezlova, Asia Times
BEIJING – Pakistan’s growing nuclear-energy needs and its leaders’ determination to look to China for investment and know-how in the field are proving an important incentive for the latter’s ambitions of becoming a global player in the nuclear-power industry.
While China itself is still in the process of seeking foreign help to expand its nuclear sector, government officials have made it clear that their ultimate goal is to build an internationally competitive nuclear-power industry and venture overseas.
Using its domestically built reactors, China has already completed a 300-megawatt nuclear power plant in Chashma in Pakistan and is constructing another of the same size there. ..
Beijing aims to sign a deal in November that will see China helping Pakistan build six nuclear power plants with an installed capacity of 300MW each. The agreement will be inked during a visit by top Chinese leaders to Pakistan, bringing the South Asian country a step closer to meeting its target of having 8,000MW of nuclear power capacity by 2025. ..
(12 Sept 2006)
Feds reject nuke storage plan
Paul Foy, La Crosse Tribune/Associated Press
The U.S. Interior Department last week rejected a nuclear waste stockpile at an American Indian reservation in Utah’s west desert.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said the decision kills a plan to store 44,000 tons of spent fuel rods on the Goshute Indians’ Skull Valley reservation, about 50 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.
It’s not dead, said John Parkyn, chairman and CEO of Private Fuel Storage. “We’ll respond to questions posed by the Department of Interior that they felt have not been answered,” Parkyn said Monday.
The Interior Department used its power to veto a lease Goshute leaders approved for the stockpile. The agency also refused to yield federal land for a transfer station where fuel rods would be transferred from rail cars to tractor-trailers. ..
(12 Sept 2006)
Popular Mechanics: The Nuclear Option (podcast)
The Popular Mechanics Show
Could nuclear power be the next source of green energy? With the threat of global warming looming and the need for renewable resources pressing, environmentalists are finding an unlikely bedfellow in nuclear power.
We’ll talk with Popular Mechanics contributing editor Alex Hutchinson about new reactor designs, we’ll hear an argument for nuclear power from Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore and Union of Concerned Scientitsts physicist Ed Lyman will weigh in with some of the problems that still face civilian atomic power.
Plus, technology columnist and documentary filmmaker Roger X. Cringely navigates the tangled tubes behind net neutrality, and we’ll hear about some here-and-now applications for nanotechnology from Sandia National Labs fellow Jeff Brinker. And a special thanks to Paul Holcomb at the Bold Headed Broadcast for his Senator Ted Stevens remix.-Benjamin Chertoff
(29 Aug 2006)
